initial commit of ebook 4412HEADmain

11 files changed, 87340 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/4412-0.txt b/4412-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d112196
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4412-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,19963 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 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
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: December 28, 2001 [eBook #4412]
+[Most recently updated: December 4, 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
+
+ CHAPTER I. THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+ CHAPTER II. 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
+ CHAPTER XI. THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER
+ CHAPTER XII. THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
+ CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGNETIC AGE
+ CHAPTER XIV. AN ATTRACTION
+ CHAPTER XV. FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
+ CHAPTER XVI. UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON
+ CHAPTER XVII. GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD
+ CHAPTER XVIII. THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA
+ CHAPTER XIX. A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE
+ CHAPTER XX. CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO
+ CHAPTER XXI. RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON
+ CHAPTER XXII. INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER
+ CHAPTER XXIII. CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE
+ CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL
+ CHAPTER XXV. IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP
+ CHAPTER XXVI. RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO
+ CHAPTER XXVII. CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS
+ CHAPTER XXIX. IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE OF THE FIRST
+ CHAPTER XXX. CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST
+ CHAPTER XXXI. THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON
+ CHAPTER XXXII. PROCESSION OF THE CAKE
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. NURSING THE DEVIL
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE
+ CHAPTER XXXV. CLARE’S MARRIAGE
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
+ CHAPTER XXXVII. MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII. AN ENCHANTRESS
+ CHAPTER XXXIX. THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE RESCUE!
+ CHAPTER XL. CLARE’S DIARY
+ CHAPTER XLI. AUSTIN RETURNS
+ CHAPTER XLII. NATURE SPEAKS
+ CHAPTER XLIII. AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+ CHAPTER XLIV. THE LAST SCENE
+ CHAPTER XLV. LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH
+
+
+
+
+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
+little, though Sir Austin was ever expecting much of him.
+
+A languishing, inexperienced woman, whose husband in mental and in
+moral stature is more than the ordinary height above her, and who, now
+that her first romantic admiration of his lofty bearing has worn off,
+and her fretful little refinements of taste and sentiment are not
+instinctively responded to, is thrown into no wholesome household
+collision with a fluent man, fluent in prose and rhyme. Lady Feverel,
+when she first entered on her duties at Raynham, was jealous of her
+husband’s friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In time he touched his
+guitar in her chamber, and they played Rizzio and Mary together.
+
+“For I am not the first who found
+The name of Mary fatal!”
+
+
+says a subsequent sentimental alliterative love-poem of Diaper’s.
+
+Such was the outline of the story. But the baronet could fill it up. He
+had opened his soul to these two. He had been noble Love to the one,
+and to the other perfect Friendship. He had bid them be brother and
+sister whom he loved, and live a Golden Age with him at Raynham. In
+fact, he had been prodigal of the excellences of his nature, which it
+is not good to be, and, like Timon, he became bankrupt, and fell upon
+bitterness.
+
+The faithless lady was of no particular family; an orphan daughter of
+an admiral who educated her on his half-pay, and her conduct struck but
+at the man whose name she bore.
+
+After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship, Sir Austin was
+left to his loneliness with nothing to ease his heart of love upon save
+a little baby boy in a cradle. He forgave the man: he put him aside as
+poor for his wrath. The woman he could not forgive; she had sinned
+every way. Simple ingratitude to a benefactor was a pardonable
+transgression, for he was not one to recount and crush the culprit
+under the heap of his good deeds. But her he had raised to be his
+equal, and he judged her as his equal. She had blackened the world’s
+fair aspect for him.
+
+In the presence of that world, so different to him now, he preserved
+his wonted 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 living laurel from
+each other’s brows, like manly Britons. The whole park was beginning to
+be astir and resound with holiday cries. Sir Austin Feverel, a thorough
+good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be popular whenever he
+chose, which Sir 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, on 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 hospitably cheerful, and requested them to dance. If he had
+desired them to laugh he would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a
+manner.
+
+“How triste!” said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne’s curate, as that most
+enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with professional
+stiffness.
+
+“One who does not suffer can hardly assent,” the curate answered,
+basking in her beams.
+
+“Ah, you are good!” exclaimed the lady. “Look at my Clare. She will not
+dance on her cousin’s birthday with 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 an ordinary newspaper
+incident; only when the report particularized the garments damaged, and
+the unwonted distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his
+bed, an indecorous fit of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton Thompson,
+and Richard bit his lip and burst into loud laughter, Ripton joining
+him, lost to consequences.
+
+“I trust you feel for this poor man,” said Sir Austin to his son,
+somewhat sternly. He saw no sign of feeling.
+
+It was a difficult task for Sir Austin to keep his old countenance
+toward the hope of Raynham, knowing him the accomplice-incendiary, and
+believing the deed to have been unprovoked and wanton. But he must do
+so, he knew, to let the boy have a fair trial against himself. Be it
+said, moreover, that the baronet’s possession of his son’s secret
+flattered him. It allowed him to act, and in a measure to feel, like
+Providence; enabled him to observe and provide for the movements of
+creatures in the dark. He therefore treated the boy as he commonly did,
+and Richard saw no change in his father to make him think he was
+suspected.
+
+The youngster’s game was not so easy against Adrian. Adrian did not
+shoot or fish. Voluntarily he did nothing to work off the destructive
+nervous fluid, or whatever it may be, which is in man’s nature; so that
+two culprit boys once in his power were not likely to taste the gentle
+hand of mercy; and Richard and Ripton paid for many a trout and
+partridge spared. At every minute of the day Ripton was thrown into
+sweats of suspicion that discovery was imminent, by some stray remark
+or message from Adrian. He was as a fish with the hook in his gills,
+mysteriously caught without having nibbled; and dive into what depths
+he would he was sensible of a summoning force that compelled him
+perpetually towards the gasping surface, which he seemed inevitably
+approaching when the dinner-bell sounded. There the talk was all of
+Farmer Blaize. If it dropped, Adrian revived it, and his caressing way
+with Ripton was just such as a keen sportsman feels toward the creature
+that 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. Look at these
+two! Think of the shifts they are put to all day long! They know I know
+all about it, and yet their serenity of innocence is all but unruffled
+in my presence. You’re sorry to think about the end of the business,
+Austin? So am I! I dread the idea of the curtain going down. Besides,
+it will do Ricky a world of good. A practical lesson is the best
+lesson.”
+
+“Sinks deepest,” said Austin, “but whether he learns good or evil from
+it is the question at stake.”
+
+Adrian stretched his length at ease.
+
+“This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time’s fruit, hateful
+to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment!
+Experience! You know Coleridge’s capital simile?—Mournful you call it?
+Well! all wisdom is mournful. ’Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do
+love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall
+find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad
+grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because
+all’s dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That’s how
+it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little minds, my
+dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of Work—you,
+and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all of you,
+base materialists! What does Diaper Sandoe sing of your Age of Work?
+Listen!
+
+‘An Age of petty tit for tat,
+    An Age of busy gabble:
+An Age that’s like a brewer’s vat,
+    Fermenting for the rabble!
+
+‘An Age that’s chaste in Love, but lax
+    To virtuous abuses:
+Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
+    Too dainty for their uses.
+
+‘An Age that drives an Iron Horse,
+    Of Time and Space defiant;
+Exulting in a Giant’s Force,
+    And trembling at the Giant.
+
+‘An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
+    By Mammon misbegotten;
+See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
+    And mark the Kings of Cotton!
+
+‘From this unrest, lo, early wreck’d,
+    A Future staggers crazy,
+Ophelia of the Ages, deck’d
+    With woeful weed and daisy!’”
+
+
+Murmuring, “Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!” Adrian changed
+the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The Age was an old battle-field
+between him and Austin.
+
+“My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it,” said Austin,
+“not by hoping his best, which would probably leave the Age to go mad
+to your satisfaction, but by doing it. And he has and will answer your
+Diaper Sandoe in better verse, as he confutes him in a better life.”
+
+“You don’t see Sandoe’s depth,” Adrian replied. “Consider that phrase,
+‘Ophelia of the Ages’! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other leading
+spirits—I think that’s your term—just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive
+her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my
+lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, and rants to the
+Impalpable.”
+
+Austin laughed. “Marriage and smiling babes she would have in
+abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you know him. He will be
+over at Poer Hall shortly, and you will see what a Man of the Age
+means. But now, pray, consult with me about these boys.”
+
+“Oh, those boys!” Adrian tossed a hand. “Are there boys of the Age as
+well as men? Not? Then boys are better than men: boys are for all Ages.
+What do you think, Austin? They’ve been studying Latude’s Escape. I
+found the book open in Ricky’s room, on the top of Jonathan Wild.
+Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and taught them
+nothing. So they’re going to make a Latude of Mr. Tom Bakewell. He’s to
+be Bastille Bakewell, whether he will or no. Let them. Let the wild
+colt run free! We can’t help them. We can only look on. We should spoil
+the play.”
+
+Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast Impatience with
+pleasantries—a not congenial diet; and Austin, the most patient of
+human beings, began to lose his self-control.
+
+“You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have but a few hours
+left us. Work first, and joke afterwards. The boy’s fate is being
+decided now.”
+
+“So is everybody’s, my dear Austin!” yawned the epicurean.
+
+“Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship—under yours
+especially.”
+
+“Not yet! not yet!” Adrian interjected languidly. “No getting into
+scrapes when I have him. The leash, young hound! the collar, young
+colt! I’m perfectly irresponsible at present.”
+
+“You may have something different to deal with when you are
+responsible, if you think that.”
+
+“I take my young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a Caracalla: a
+Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play the fiddle to a
+conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must be a disputatious
+apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and men, and have the
+habit of saying his prayers.”
+
+“Then you leave me to act alone?” said Austin, rising.
+
+“Without a single curb!” Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced withdrawal.
+“I’m sure you would not, still more certain you cannot, do harm. And be
+mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever’s done, old Blaize will have to
+be bought off. There’s the affair settled at once. I suppose I must go
+to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can’t see this poor
+devil condemned, though it’s nonsense to talk of a boy being the prime
+instigator.”
+
+Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of the wise youth, his
+cousin, and the little that he knew of his fellows told him he might
+talk 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 be a feint,
+and back to the destruction of his serried ranks! You understand. Not?
+Well, ’tis as well. Only, let none say that I sleep. If I must see him
+to-night, I go down knowing he has not got us in his power.” The wise
+youth yawned, and stretched out a hand for any book that might be
+within his reach. Austin left him to look about the grounds for
+Richard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+A little laurel-shaded temple of white marble looked out on the river
+from a knoll bordering the Raynham beechwoods, and was dubbed by Adrian
+Daphne’s Bower. To this spot Richard had retired, and there Austin
+found him with his head buried in his hands, a picture of desperation,
+whose last shift has been defeated. He allowed Austin to greet him and
+sit by him without lifting his head. Perhaps his eyes were not
+presentable.
+
+“Where’s your friend?” Austin began.
+
+“Gone!” was the answer, sounding cavernous from behind hair and
+fingers. An explanation presently followed, that a summons had come for
+him in the morning from Mr. Thompson; and that Mr. Ripton had departed
+against his will.
+
+In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent and remain
+by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the post of danger. Sir
+Austin signified his opinion that a boy should obey his parent, by
+giving orders to Benson for Ripton’s box to be packed and ready before
+noon; and Ripton’s alacrity in taking the baronet’s view of filial duty
+was as little feigned as his offer to Richard to throw filial duty to
+the winds. He rejoiced that the Fates had agreed to remove him from the
+very hot neighbourhood of Lobourne, while he grieved, like an honest
+lad, to see his comrade left to face calamity alone. The boys parted
+amicably, as they could hardly fail to do, when Ripton had sworn fealty
+to the Feverels with a warmth that made him declare himself bond, and
+due to appear at any stated hour and at any stated place to fight all
+the farmers in England, on a mandate from the heir of the house.
+
+“So you’re left alone,” said Austin, contemplating the boy’s shapely
+head. “I’m glad of it. We never know what’s in us till we stand by
+ourselves.”
+
+There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity, however, replied at
+last, “He wasn’t much support.”
+
+“Remember his good points now he’s gone, Ricky.”
+
+“Oh! he was staunch,” the boy grumbled.
+
+“And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried
+your own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?”
+
+“I have done everything.”
+
+“And failed!”
+
+There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion—
+
+“Tom Bakewell’s a coward!”
+
+“I suppose, poor fellow,” said Austin, in his kind way, “he doesn’t
+want to get into a deeper mess. I don’t think he’s a coward.”
+
+“He is a coward,” cried Richard. “Do you think if I had a file I would
+stay in prison? I’d be out the first night! And he might have had the
+rope, too—a rope thick enough for a couple of men his size and weight.
+Ripton and I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour, and it didn’t
+give way. He’s a coward, and deserves his fate. I’ve no compassion for
+a coward.”
+
+“Nor I much,” said Austin.
+
+Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation of poor
+Tom. He would have hidden it had he known the thought in Austin’s clear
+eyes while he faced them.
+
+“I never met a coward myself,” Austin continued. “I have heard of one
+or two. One let an innocent man die for him.”
+
+“How base!” exclaimed the boy.
+
+“Yes, it was bad,” Austin acquiesced.
+
+“Bad!” Richard scorned the poor contempt. “How I would have spurned
+him! He was a coward!”
+
+“I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his excuse, and
+tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the
+confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed
+some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own
+theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her guilty
+accuser.”
+
+“What a coward!” shouted Richard. “And he confessed it publicly?”
+
+“You may read it yourself.”
+
+“He actually wrote it down, and printed it?”
+
+“You have the book in your father’s library. Would you have done so
+much?”
+
+Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told people.
+
+“Then who is to call that man a coward?” said Austin. “He expiated his
+cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not
+cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think ‘God does not see. I
+shall escape.’ He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that
+God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make his
+heart bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to know myself an
+impostor when men praised me.”
+
+Young Richard’s eyes were wandering on Austin’s gravely cheerful face.
+A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.
+
+“So I think you’re wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward
+because he refuses to try your means of escape,” Austin resumed. “A
+coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice. And, where the person
+involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor
+plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a coward.”
+
+Richard was dumb. Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a
+fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he had
+spent on those two saving instruments. If he avowed Tom’s manly
+behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position. Whereas, by
+keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem
+injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys
+or men.
+
+In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long. He had but a
+blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young Richard.
+Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher. A single instance, a
+cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing
+ancient or latent opposition. The born preacher we feel instinctively
+to be our foe. He may do some good to the wretches that have been
+struck down and lie gasping on the battlefield: he rouses antagonism in
+the strong. Richard’s nature, left to itself, wanted little more than
+an indication of the proper track, and when he said, “Tell me what I
+can do, Austin?” he had fought the best half of the battle. His voice
+was subdued. Austin put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
+
+“You must go down to Farmer Blaize.”
+
+“Well!” said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.
+
+“You’ll know what to say to him when you’re there.”
+
+The boy bit his lip and frowned. “Ask a favour of that big brute,
+Austin? I can’t!”
+
+“Just tell him the whole case, and that you don’t intend to stand by
+and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of his
+scrape.”
+
+“But, Austin,” the boy pleaded, “I shall have to ask him to help off
+Tom Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I hate him?”
+
+Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences till he got
+there.
+
+Richard groaned in soul.
+
+“You’ve no pride, Austin.”
+
+“Perhaps not.”
+
+“You don’t know what it is to ask a favour of a brute you hate.”
+
+Richard stuck to that view of the case, and stuck to it the faster the
+more imperatively the urgency of a movement dawned upon him.
+
+“Why,” continued the boy, “I shall hardly be able to keep my fists off
+him!”
+
+“Surely you’ve punished him enough, boy?” said Austin.
+
+“He struck me!” Richard’s lip quivered. “He dared not come at me with
+his hands. He struck me with a whip. He’ll be telling everybody that he
+horsewhipped me, and that I went down and begged his pardon. Begged his
+pardon! A Feverel beg his pardon! Oh, if I had my will!”
+
+“The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his grounds. He turned
+you off, and you fired his rick.”
+
+“And I’ll pay him for his loss. And I won’t do any more.”
+
+“Because you won’t ask a favour of him?”
+
+“No! I will not ask a favour of him.”
+
+Austin looked at the boy steadily. “You prefer to receive a favour from
+poor Tom Bakewell?”
+
+At Austin’s enunciation of this obverse view of the matter Richard
+raised his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon him. “Favour from Tom
+Bakewell, the ploughman? How do you mean, Austin?”
+
+“To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country lad to
+sacrifice himself for you? I confess I should not have so much pride.”
+
+“Pride!” shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his sight hard at
+the blue ridges of the hills.
+
+Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew a picture of
+Tom in prison, and repeated Tom’s volunteer statement. The picture,
+though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard,
+whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon
+smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear,
+unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with
+the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity
+and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom; 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 in considerable elation. He had brought these great people to
+a pretty low pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably, as a British
+yeoman should; but not budged a foot in his demands: not to the
+baronet: not to the Captain: not to good young Mr. Wentworth. For
+Farmer Blaize was a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the baronet
+a frank confession of the hold he had on the family, he determined to
+tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for tangible
+advantages—compensation to his pocket, his wounded person, and his
+still more wounded sentiments: the total indemnity being, in round
+figures, three hundred pounds, and a spoken apology from the prime
+offender, young Mister Richard. Even then there was a reservation.
+Provided, the farmer said, nobody had been tampering with any of his
+witnesses. In that 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 guess,” said the farmer.
+“We an’t good friends, Sir Austin, me and your son, just now—not to say
+cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I’m a man as don’t like young gentlemen
+a-poachin’ on his grounds without his permission,—in special when birds
+is plentiful on their own. It appear he do like it. Consequently I has
+to flick this whip—as them fellers at the races: All in this ’ere
+Ring’s mine! as much as to say; and who’s been hit, he’s had fair
+warnin’. I’m sorry for’t, but that’s just the case.”
+
+Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he should find
+him.
+
+Algernon’s interview passed off in ale and promises. He also assured
+Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected by his proviso.
+
+No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.
+
+“Money’s safe, I know,” said he; “now for the ’pology!” and Farmer
+Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his head further back.
+
+The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate visits had been
+conspired together. Still the baronet’s frankness, and the baronet’s
+not having reserved himself for the third and final charge, puzzled
+him. He was considering whether they were a deep, or a shallow lot,
+when young Richard was announced.
+
+A pretty little girl with the roses of thirteen springs in her cheeks,
+and abundant beautiful bright tresses, tripped before the boy, and
+loitered shyly by the farmer’s 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 bloodthirsty steel-crop, which he might have taken at
+first had he looked narrowly; and there he was.
+
+Hippias’s brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly said they wished
+he had remained there. Sir Austin, however, drew forth his note-book,
+and jotted down a reflection. A composer of aphorisms can pluck
+blossoms even from a razor-crop. Was not Hippias’s dream the very
+counterpart of Richard’s position? He, had he looked narrowly, might
+have taken the clear path: he, too, had been making dainty steps till
+he was surrounded by the grinning blades. And from that text Sir Austin
+preached to his son when they were alone. Little Clare was still too
+unwell to be permitted to attend the dessert, and father and son were
+soon closeted together.
+
+It was a strange meeting. They seemed to have been separated so long.
+The father took his son’s hand; they sat without a word passing between
+them. Silence said most. The boy did not understand his father: his
+father frequently thwarted him: at times he thought his father foolish:
+but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent to him of how
+warmly he was beloved. He tried once or twice to steal his hand away,
+conscious it was melting him. The spirit of his pride, and old
+rebellion, whispered him to be hard, unbending, resolute. Hard he had
+entered his father’s study: hard he had met his father’s eyes. He could
+not meet them now. His father sat beside him gently; with a manner that
+was almost meekness, so he loved this boy. The poor gentleman’s lips
+moved. He was praying internally to God for him.
+
+By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy’s bosom. Love is that blessed
+wand which wins the waters from the hardness of the heart. Richard
+fought against it, for the dignity of old rebellion. The tears would
+come; hot and struggling over the dams of pride. Shamefully fast they
+began to fall. He could no longer conceal them, or check the sobs. Sir
+Austin drew him nearer and nearer, till the beloved head was on his
+breast.
+
+An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth, and Algernon
+Feverel were summoned to the baronet’s study.
+
+Adrian came last. There was a style of affable omnipotence about the
+wise youth as he slung himself into a chair, and made an arch of the
+points of his fingers, through which to gaze on his blundering kinsmen.
+Careless as one may be whose sagacity has foreseen, and whose
+benevolent efforts have forestalled, the point of danger at the
+threshold, Adrian crossed his legs, and only intruded on their
+introductory remarks so far as to hum half audibly at intervals,
+
+“Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,”
+
+
+in parody of the old ballad. Young Richard’s red eyes, and the
+baronet’s ruffled demeanour, told him that an explanation had taken
+place, and a reconciliation. That was well. The baronet would now pay
+cheerfully. Adrian summed and considered these matters, and barely
+listened when the baronet called attention to what he had to say: which
+was elaborately to inform all present, what all present very well knew,
+that a rick had been fired, that his son was implicated as an accessory
+to the fact, that the perpetrator was now imprisoned, and that
+Richard’s family were, as it seemed to him, bound in honour to do their
+utmost to effect the man’s release.
+
+Then the baronet stated that he had himself been down to Belthorpe, his
+son likewise: and that he had found every disposition in Blaize to meet
+his wishes.
+
+The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to illumine the acts
+of this secretive race began slowly to dispread its rays; and, as
+statement followed statement, they saw that all had known of the
+business: that all had been down to Belthorpe: all save the wise youth
+Adrian, who, with due deference and a sarcastic shrug, objected to the
+proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man Blaize. His wisdom
+shone forth in an oration so persuasive and aphoristic that had it not
+been based on a plea against honour, it would have made Sir Austin
+waver. But its basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better
+aphorism of his own to confute him with.
+
+“Expediency is man’s wisdom, Adrian Harley. Doing right is God’s.”
+
+Adrian curbed his desire to ask Sir Austin whether an attempt to
+counteract the just working of the law was doing right. The direct
+application of an aphorism was unpopular at Raynham.
+
+“I am to understand then,” said he, “that Blaize consents not to press
+the prosecution.”
+
+“Of course he won’t,” Algernon remarked. “Confound him! he’ll have his
+money, and what does he want besides?”
+
+“These agricultural 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the
+apparition that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the
+stage of events at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go
+behind the scenes a moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet was,
+the character of his mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency
+in the affairs of men, and, when the matter was made clear to him, it
+shook off a weight of weakness and restored his mental balance; so that
+from this time he went about more like the man he had once been,
+grasping more thoroughly the great truth, that This World is well
+designed. Nay, he could laugh on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the
+ill luck of one of the family members at its first manifestation, call
+the uneasy spirit, Algernon’s Leg.
+
+Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen ——. Not
+to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property. After
+satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin, moved
+by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost could
+write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady who had
+given Richard birth,—brief cold lines, simply telling him his house
+would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what
+heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of soul!
+Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a man
+fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will act
+when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
+for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart’s yearning by
+stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the
+family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
+sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to
+this boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and
+father. A few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love
+her. “Let this be her penance, not inflicted by me!” Mrs. Doria bowed
+to the System for another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow
+for herself.
+
+Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
+disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,—he with gouty fingers on a
+greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small
+hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What
+he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
+juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot
+be performed without it. Returning from her wretched journey to her
+wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from
+easy-going Diaper,—a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse:
+for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a
+fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her
+interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to
+elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told
+her that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle
+nurture, and that he had reason to believe—could assure her—that an
+annuity was on the point of being granted her by her husband. And
+Diaper broke his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered this
+information. She learnt that he had applied to her husband for money.
+It is hard to have one’s prop of self-respect cut away just when we are
+suffering a martyr’s agony at the stake. There was a five minutes’
+tragic colloquy in the recesses behind the scenes,—totally tragic to
+Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in the warm sun of that annuity,
+and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then wrote the letter
+Sir Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere behind the scenes is
+not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost, we will return and face the
+curtain.
+
+That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had
+furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect
+was considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the
+time quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second
+invitation to Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own
+age to rub his excessive vitality against, and wanted none. His hands
+were full enough with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father and he were
+heart in heart. The boy’s mind was opening, and turned to his father
+affectionately reverent. At this period, when the young savage grows
+into higher influences, the faculty of worship is foremost in him. At
+this period Jesuits will stamp the future of their chargeling flocks;
+and all who bring up youth by a System, and watch it, know that it is
+the malleable moment. Boys possessing any mental or moral force to give
+them a tendency, then predestinate their careers; or, if under
+supervision, take the impress that is given them: not often to cast it
+off, and seldom to cast it off altogether.
+
+In Sir Austin’s Note-book was written: “Between Simple Boyhood and
+Adolescence—The Blossoming Season—on the threshold of Puberty, there is
+one Unselfish Hour—say, Spiritual Seed-time.”
+
+He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the
+most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to
+germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.
+
+“I am only striving to make my son a Christian,” he said, answering
+them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these
+instructions he gave an aim: “First be virtuous,” he told his son, “and
+then serve your country with heart and soul.” The youth was instructed
+to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read
+history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one
+day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his
+chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating
+the hero of our Parliament, his eyes streaming with tears.
+
+People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he
+only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order
+to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life
+of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This
+was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to
+disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and
+did not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in
+proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into
+penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.
+
+The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
+
+“How is it, sir,” he said one night, “I can’t get Tom Bakewell to
+pray?”
+
+“Does he refuse?” Sir Austin asked.
+
+“He seems to be ashamed to,” Richard replied. “He wants to know what is
+the good? and I don’t know what to tell him.”
+
+“I’m afraid it has gone too far with him,” said Sir Austin, “and until
+he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of
+Prayer. Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for
+their education. He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable
+rind. Culture is half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever
+be brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his
+prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim’s Scrip):
+
+“‘Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.’”
+
+“I will, sir,” said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
+
+Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was
+beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known
+to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this
+side, now on that.
+
+The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary
+developments in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin’s
+interdict not to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by
+the sight of a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave
+affectations of sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not
+widely-distant dates of his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase
+lasted a fortnight: the Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin),
+little better than a month: the religious, somewhat longer: the
+religious-propagandist (when he was for converting the heathen of
+Lobourne and Burnley, and the domestics of the Abbey, including Tom
+Bakewell), longer still, and hard to bear;—he tried to convert Adrian!
+All the while Tom was being exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a
+drill-sergeant from the nearest barracks down for him, to give him a
+proper pride in himself, and marched him to and fro with immense
+satisfaction, and nearly broke his heart trying to get the
+round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments of letters: for the
+boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.
+
+Richard’s pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
+thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to
+him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of
+them.
+
+“I an animal!” cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled
+by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin
+had him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his
+self-respect.
+
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
+Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was
+growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother
+seemed absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel
+tree, and Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.
+
+Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: “If I had
+been a girl, I would have had you for my husband.” And he with the
+frankness of his years would reply: “And how do you know I would have
+had you?” causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not
+heard her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then
+the meaning of!
+
+“You don’t read your father’s Book,” she said. Her own copy was bound
+in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier
+books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
+remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed
+at him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her
+brother would not be on his guard.
+
+“See here,” said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one
+of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must
+clay-enclose us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any
+human creature in our path. “Can you understand it, child?”
+
+Richard informed her that when she read he could.
+
+“Well, then, my squire,” she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
+through his hair, “learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and
+yon with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise
+man to guide me.”
+
+“Is my father very wise?” Richard asked.
+
+“I think so,” the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
+
+“Do you—” Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his
+heart.
+
+“Do I—what?” she calmly queried.
+
+“I was going to say, do you—I mean, I love him so much.”
+
+Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
+
+They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
+always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
+sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
+disturb him.
+
+Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
+Austin’s principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly
+joyous and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of
+his pupil’s advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were
+planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard
+was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his
+studies. The System flourished. Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he
+took the lead of his companions on land and water, and had more than
+one bondsman in his service besides Ripton Thompson—the boy without a
+Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle too
+conscious of it. His generosity to his occasional companions was
+princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a
+prince; and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would
+overlook that more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded
+an utter servility when it had once been rendered susceptible. If
+Richard had his followers he had also his feuds. The Papworths were as
+subservient as Ripton, but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr.
+Morton, and a match for Richard in numerous promising qualities,
+comprising the noble science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind
+too openly, and moreover would not be snubbed. There was no middle
+course for Richard’s comrades between high friendship or absolute
+slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite habits and feelings
+which enable boys and men to hold together without caring much for each
+other; and, like every insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency,
+of which he was quite aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior
+nature. Young Ralph was a lively talker: therefore, argued Richard’s
+vanity, he had no intellect. He was affable: therefore he was
+frivolous. The women liked him: therefore he was a butterfly. In fine,
+young Ralph was popular, and our superb prince, denied the privilege of
+despising, ended by detesting him.
+
+Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the
+absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton boy, and
+hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer and a
+cricketer is nowhere to be scorned in youth’s republic. Finding that
+manoeuvre would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to entrench
+himself behind his greater wealth and his position; but he soon
+abandoned that also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him
+he was exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous.
+And so he was dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck
+of champions. For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt:
+Richard’s middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom
+pick up more than three eggs underwater to Ralph’s half-dozen. He was
+beaten, too, in jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to
+the painful pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached
+them, not have the magnanimity and circumspection to retire into
+private life immediately? Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his
+dependent Papworths to Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop
+Morton; matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once,
+twice, or thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton,
+would require for the undertaking. It was accepted, and a reply
+returned, equally formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein
+Ralph Barthrop Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria
+Feverel, and was his man. The match came off on a midsummer morning,
+under the direction of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a spectator
+from the cover of a plantation by the river-side, unknown to his son,
+and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the baronet.
+He had invited her attendance, and she, obeying her frank nature, and
+knowing what The Pilgrim’s Scrip said about prudes, at once agreed to
+view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not here a woman worthy
+the Golden Ages of the world? one who could look upon man as a creature
+divinely made, and look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted, by
+the Serpent! Such a woman was rare. Sir Austin did not discompose her
+by uttering his praises. She was conscious of his approval only in an
+increased gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and
+communications, as if he were speaking to a familiar, a very high
+compliment from him. While the lads were standing ready for the signal
+to plunge from the steep decline of greensward into the shining waters,
+Sir Austin called upon her to admire their beauty, and she did, and
+even advanced her head above his shoulder delicately. In so doing, and
+just as the start was given, a bonnet became visible to Richard. Young
+Ralph was heels in air before he moved, and then he dropped like lead.
+He was beaten by several lengths.
+
+The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard’s
+friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start. But though the
+youth, with full confidence in his better style and equal strength, had
+backed himself heavily against his rival, and had lost his little
+river-yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort. It was the
+Bonnet had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet, typical of the mystery
+that caused his heart those violent palpitations, was his dear,
+detestable enemy.
+
+And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned
+towards a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet
+was etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress. A check to the pride
+of a boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest
+powers. Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he
+relinquished the material world to young Ralph, and retired into
+himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was
+his handmaid, and History his minister and Time his ancient harper, and
+sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in a realm vaster and more
+gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been.
+For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal
+this early one that is made bountifully common to so many, when the
+ripening blood has put a spark to the imagination, and the earth is
+seen through rosy mists of a thousand fresh-awakened nameless and
+aimless desires; panting for bliss and taking it as it comes; making of
+any sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment they carry with them, a
+key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The passions then are
+gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow to. They have
+their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor bite. They are
+in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and brain. The whole
+sweet system moves to music.
+
+Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,
+which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due
+to his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to
+solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were
+matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. “For it comes,” said
+he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the
+youth’s behalf and being assured of his soundness, “it comes of a
+thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:
+neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward
+the flower of manhood. If he reach that pure—in the untainted fulness
+and perfection of his natural powers—I am indeed a happy father! But
+one thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew
+paradise, and could read God’s handwriting on the earth! Now those
+abominations whom you call precocious boys—your little pet monsters,
+doctor!—and who can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is
+full of them—as they will have no divine time to look back upon in
+their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or be
+other than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my boy,” and the
+baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear, “my boy,
+if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity. He dare not be a
+sceptic as to that. Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding
+light of a memory behind him. So much is secure.”
+
+To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of
+profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received
+opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual
+insight, is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first
+persuaded themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and
+through them to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or
+for ill. Sir Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw the truth,
+and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited by those who did not
+understand him, and silenced them that did.
+
+“We shall see,” was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
+unbelievers.
+
+So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, bracer,
+better boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The
+vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved
+by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good
+trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the
+Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be hopefuller.
+The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark,
+that could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was, the
+baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He said to his
+intimates: “Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every
+thought, in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future. The
+living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness.” And, acting up to his
+light, Sir Austin did watch. The youth submitted to an examination
+every night before he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of
+his studies, but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of the
+day. He could do so, for he was pure. Any wildness in him that his
+father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions,
+was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing
+like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch
+and ward, knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And
+he was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him
+that the youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise hinted at
+his mooning propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the
+System had foreseen it, he said. But when he came to hear that the
+youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for being
+much disturbed.
+
+“Surely,” said Lady Blandish, “you knew he scribbled?”
+
+“A very different thing from writing poetry,” said the baronet. “No
+Feverel has ever written poetry.”
+
+“I don’t think it’s a sign of degeneracy,” the lady remarked. “He
+rhymes very prettily to me.”
+
+A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry,
+quieted Sir Austin’s fears.
+
+The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative
+faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and
+instanced several consoling false quantities in the few effusions
+submitted to him. Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that
+Richard had, at his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be
+capable of doing: he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood,
+committed his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish
+sigh forth, “Poor boy!”
+
+Killing one’s darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in his
+Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to
+destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason
+cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of
+abhorrent despotism, and Richard’s blossoms withered under it. A
+strange man had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his
+skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an
+infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was: making him feel such
+an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw in
+its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man
+having departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner,
+stated that it would give him pleasure to see those same precocious,
+utterly valueless, scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining
+mental blossoms spontaneously fell away. Richard’s spirit stood bare.
+He protested not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a
+minute in doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a
+drawer in his room, and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by
+Sir Austin, the secretive youth drew out bundle after bundle: each
+neatly tied, named, and numbered: and pitched them into flames. And so
+Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence
+between Father and Son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the
+Age of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is dangerous,
+and to see it, a communication of the disease. People at Raynham were
+put on their guard by the baronet, and his reputation for wisdom was
+severely criticized in consequence of the injunctions he thought fit to
+issue through butler and housekeeper down to the lower household, for
+the preservation of his son from any visible symptom of the passion. A
+footman and two housemaids are believed to have been dismissed on the
+report of heavy Benson that they were in or inclining to the state;
+upon which an undercook and a dairymaid voluntarily threw up their
+places, averring that “they did not want no young men, but to have
+their sex spied after by an old wretch like that,” indicating the
+ponderous butler, “was a little too much for a Christian woman,” and
+then they were ungenerous enough to glance at Benson’s well-known
+marital calamity, hinting that some men met their deserts. So
+intolerable did heavy Benson’s espionage become, that Raynham would
+have grown depopulated of its womankind had not Adrian interfered, who
+pointed out to the baronet what a fearful arm his butler was wielding.
+Sir Austin acknowledged it despondently. “It only shows,” said he, with
+a fine spirit of justice, “how all but impossible it is to legislate
+where there are women!”
+
+“I do not object,” he added; “I hope I am too just to object to the
+exercise of their natural inclinations. All I ask from them is
+discreetness.”
+
+“Ay,” said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
+
+“No gadding about in couples,” continued the baronet, “no kissing in
+public. Such occurrences no boy should witness. Whenever people of both
+sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they are
+high-fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for as a
+matter of course. Let it be known that I only require discreetness.”
+
+Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under
+Adrian’s able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that
+virtue.
+
+Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household. Sir Austin, who
+had not previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne’s hopeless
+curate, now desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least discourage,
+his visits, for the appearance of the man was that of an embodied sigh
+and groan.
+
+“Really, Austin!” said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother more
+awake than she had supposed, “I have never allowed him to hope.”
+
+“Let him see it, then,” replied the baronet; “let him see it.”
+
+“The man amuses me,” said Mrs. Doria. “You know, we have few amusements
+here, we inferior creatures. I confess I should like a barrel-organ
+better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and besides, it plays
+more than one tune. However, since you think my society bad for him,
+let him stop away.”
+
+With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the moment
+her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view.
+Mrs. Doria’s maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins, Richard and
+Clare; had already beheld them espoused and fruitful. For this she
+yielded the pleasures of town; for this she immured herself at Raynham;
+for this she bore with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences,
+things abhorrent to her, and heaven knows what forms of torture and
+self-denial, which are smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary
+martyrs—a mother with a daughter to marry. Mrs. Doria, an amiable
+widow, had surely married but for her daughter Clare. The lady’s hair
+no woman could possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily
+theme of her lady’s-maid,—a natural aureole to her head. She was gay,
+witty, still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she
+sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter’s! sacrificed, as with heroic
+scissors, hair, wit, gaiety—let us not attempt to enumerate how much!
+more than may be said. And she was only one of thousands; thousands who
+have no portion of the hero’s reward; for he may reckon on applause,
+and condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they, poor slaves! must look
+for nothing but the opposition of their own sex and the sneers of ours.
+O, Sir Austin! had you not been so blinded, what an Aphorism might have
+sprung from this point of observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told,
+between sister and brother, that during the Magnetic Age her daughter’s
+presence at Raynham was undesirable. Instead of nursing offence, her
+sole thought was the mountain of prejudice she had to contend against.
+She bowed, and said, Clare wanted sea-air—she had never quite recovered
+the shock of that dreadful night. How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know,
+might the Peculiar Period be expected to last?
+
+“That,” said Sir Austin, “depends. A year, perhaps. He is entering on
+it. I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen. Clare is now—how old?”
+
+“Seventeen.”
+
+“She is marriageable.”
+
+“Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don’t name such a thing. My child
+shall not be robbed of her youth.”
+
+“Our women marry early, Helen.”
+
+“My child shall not!”
+
+The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose his sister.
+
+“As you are of that opinion, Helen,” said he, “perhaps we may still
+make arrangements to retain you with us. Would you think it advisable
+to send Clare—she should know discipline—to some establishment for a
+few months?”
+
+“To an asylum, Austin?” cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her indignation
+as well as she could.
+
+“To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are such to be found.”
+
+“Austin!” Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in her
+eyes. “Unjust! absurd!” she murmured. The baronet thought it a natural
+proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
+
+“I cannot leave my child.” Mrs. Doria trembled. “Where she goes, I go.
+I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no value
+to the world, but she is my child. I will see, poor dear, that you have
+no cause to complain of her.”
+
+“I thought,” Sir Austin remarked, “that you acquiesced in my views with
+regard to my son.”
+
+“Yes—generally,” said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had not
+before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol
+in his house—an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than
+wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol too long—she had
+too entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency. She
+had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics,
+in teaching her daughter to bow to the Idol also. Love of that kind
+Richard took for tribute. He was indifferent to Clare’s soft eyes. The
+parting kiss he gave her was ready and cold as his father could desire.
+Sir Austin now grew eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but
+Richard thought his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship
+awkward, and all manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and
+worthless. To what end? sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud,
+as soon as he was relieved of his father’s society, what was the good
+of anything? Whatever he did—whichever path he selected, led back to
+Raynham. And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed
+himself, only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his
+previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the youth’s groom, had to give the
+baronet a report of his young master’s proceedings, in common with
+Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out. “He do ride
+like fire every day to Pig’s Snout,” naming the highest hill in the
+neighbourhood, “and stand there and stare, never movin’, like a mad
+’un. And then hoam agin all slack as if he’d been beaten in a race by
+somebody.”
+
+“There is no woman in that!” mused the baronet. “He would have ridden
+back as hard as he went,” reflected this profound scientific humanist,
+“had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast expanses, and seek
+shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for distances betokens
+emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an
+image we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty.”
+
+Adrian’s report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of
+cynicism.
+
+“Exactly,” said the baronet. “As I foresaw. At this period an insatiate
+appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing but the
+quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will
+satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied! Hence his
+bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and
+purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and
+roam through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs
+earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to low ones
+debauchery. ’Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to none of
+the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to keep him clear of them!”
+
+The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As yet, however, it
+could not be said that Sir Austin’s System had failed. On the contrary,
+it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed
+the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they asked, was such
+another young man to be found?
+
+“Oh!” said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, “if men could give their hands
+to women unsoiled—how different would many a marriage be! She will be a
+happy girl who calls Richard husband.”
+
+“Happy, indeed!” was the baronet’s caustic ejaculation. “But where
+shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?”
+
+“I was innocent when I was a girl,” said the lady.
+
+Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
+
+“Do you think no girls innocent?”
+
+Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
+
+“No, that you know they are not,” said the lady, stamping. “But they
+are more innocent than boys, I am sure.”
+
+“Because of their education, madam. You see now what a youth can be.
+Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather—to speak more
+humbly—when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall
+have virtuous young men.”
+
+“It’s too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them,”
+said the lady, pouting and laughing.
+
+“It is never too late for beauty to waken love,” returned the baronet,
+and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne’s Bower, which
+they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending
+midsummer day.
+
+The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
+serious converse.
+
+“I shall believe again in Arthur’s knights,” she said. “When I was a
+girl I dreamed of one.”
+
+“And he was in quest of the San Greal?”
+
+“If you like.”
+
+“And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San
+Blandish?”
+
+“Of course you consider it would have been so,” sighed the lady,
+ruffling.
+
+“I can only judge by our generation,” said Sir Austin, with a bend of
+homage.
+
+The lady gathered her mouth. “Either we are very mighty or you are very
+weak.”
+
+“Both, madam.”
+
+“But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and
+truth, and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in
+them, we are constant, and would die for them—die for them. Ah! you
+know men but not women.”
+
+“The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?”
+said Sir Austin.
+
+“Old, or young!”
+
+“But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?”
+
+“They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+“Yes—ah!” said the lady. “Intellect may subdue women—make slaves of
+them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they only
+love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature.”
+
+Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
+
+“And did you encounter the knight of your dream?”
+
+“Not then.” She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.
+
+“And how did you bear the disappointment?”
+
+“My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a gown
+I stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made a woman
+in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight.”
+
+“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Austin, “women have much to bear.”
+
+Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the baronet
+grew earnest.
+
+“You know it is our lot,” she said. “And we are allowed many
+amusements. If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like our
+virtue, is its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful
+privileges.”
+
+“To preserve which, you remain a widow?”
+
+“Certainly,” she responded. “I have no trouble now in patching and
+piecing that rag the world calls—a character. I can sit at your feet
+every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are
+female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether.”
+
+Sir Austin drew nearer to her. “You would have made an admirable
+mother, madam.”
+
+This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
+
+“It is,” he continued, “ten thousand pities that you are not one.”
+
+“Do you think so?” She spoke with humility.
+
+“I would,” he went on, “that heaven had given you a daughter.”
+
+“Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?”
+
+“Our blood, madam, should have been one!”
+
+The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. “But I am a mother,” she
+said. “Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy,” she reiterated.
+
+Sir Austin most graciously appended, “Call him ours, madam,” and held
+his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she
+chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point
+for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:
+
+“As you will not say ‘ours,’ let me. And, as you have therefore an
+equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately
+conceived.”
+
+The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but
+for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a
+declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed
+smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project. It
+concerned Richard’s nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to
+marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years
+his junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be
+every way fitted by education, instincts, and blood—on each of which
+qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged—to espouse so perfect a
+youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation
+of the Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he proposed to set
+forth immediately, and devote a couple of months, to the first essay in
+his Coelebite search.
+
+“I fear,” said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully unfolded,
+“you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You must not be too
+exacting.”
+
+“I know it.” The baronet’s shake of the head was piteous.
+
+“Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class. If
+I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood. I
+believe many of the middle classes are frequently more careful—more
+pure-blooded—than our aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing
+family who educate their children—I should prefer a girl without
+brothers and sisters—as a Christian damsel should be educated—say, on
+the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to
+Richard Feverel.”
+
+Lady Blandish bit her lip. “And what do you do with Richard while you
+are absent on this expedition?”
+
+“Oh!” said the baronet, “he accompanies his father.”
+
+“Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
+bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and
+pudding. How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old
+women like me. He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy your
+plan, believe me, Sir Austin.”
+
+“Ay? ay? do you think that?” said the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
+
+“Ay! true,” he muttered. “Adrian said the same. He must not see her.
+How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise
+her. Naturally!”
+
+“Naturally!” echoed the lady.
+
+“Then, madam,” and the baronet rose, “there is one thing for me to
+determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him.”
+
+“Will you, indeed?” said the lady.
+
+“It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly
+mated,—not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so
+delicately trained might be; more easily than another! Betrothed, he
+will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a
+term. My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his
+season.”
+
+“And under whose charge will you leave him?” Lady Blandish inquired.
+
+She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the
+upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.
+
+“Madam!” he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, “under
+whose but yours?”
+
+As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She
+did not withdraw her hand. The baronet’s salute was flatteringly
+reverent. He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave
+ceremony. And he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage!
+Lady Blandish forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it.
+She received the exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet:
+for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is
+gone.
+
+The lady’s hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
+from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring
+beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime. They
+turned their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback
+surveying the scene. The next moment he had galloped away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter,
+and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and
+the great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.
+Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering,
+sighing, knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer.
+He had the key now. His own father had given it to him. His heart was a
+lightning steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed
+in superhuman beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned
+whispering upon close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a
+splendour upon savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in
+golden courts lit to a glorious day by ladies’ eyes, one pair of which,
+dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him through the
+boskage and dwelt upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a
+hand glittering white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May
+night.
+
+Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act
+of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small
+white hand. Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth: to
+fling the Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off! He was
+intoxicated by anticipation. For that he was born. There was, then,
+some end in existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman’s hand,
+and die! He would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to
+relieve his swarming sensations. Scarce was he seated when the pen was
+dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the exclamation, “Have I not
+sworn I would never write again?” Sir Austin had shut that
+safety-valve. The nonsense that was in the youth might have poured
+harmlessly out, and its urgency for ebullition was so great that he was
+repeatedly oblivious of his oath, and found himself seated under the
+lamp in the act of composition before pride could speak a word.
+Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had been swamped if the act
+of composition were easy at such a time, and a single idea could stand
+clearly foremost; but myriads were demanding the first place; chaotic
+hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed impetuously for
+expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite as much as
+pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the
+powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length and
+another headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.
+
+Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went
+forth into the air. A lamp was still burning in his father’s room, and
+Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on
+the watch. Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold
+against the hues of dawn.
+
+Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of
+fever. Richard took to it instinctively. The clear fresh water,
+burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep
+shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel. Overhead solitary
+morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower;
+still, delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he
+was heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of
+river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant
+of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was
+rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here
+and there. It was not a dream, now he knew. There was a secret abroad.
+The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds.
+Oh, why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which
+should draw down ladies’ eyes from their heaven, as in the days of
+Arthur! To such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth,
+when he had pulled through his first feverish energy.
+
+He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude
+which follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a hail and his own name
+called. It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption
+of miserable masculine prose. Heartily wishing him abed with the rest
+of mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped ashore. Ralph immediately
+seized his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a talk with
+him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth from his water-dreams, up and down
+the wet mown grass. That he had to say seemed to be difficult of
+utterance, and Richard, though he barely listened, soon had enough of
+his old rival’s gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of
+impatience; whereat Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat
+foreign to his mind, but of great human interest and importance, put
+the question to him:
+
+“I say, what woman’s name do you like best?”
+
+“I don’t know any,” quoth Richard, indifferently. “Why are you out so
+early?”
+
+In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be
+considered a pretty name.
+
+Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half the
+women cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name of Mary
+was equivalent for women at home.
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Ralph. “We have lots of Marys. It’s so common. Oh!
+I don’t like Mary best. What do you think?”
+
+Richard thought it just like another.
+
+“Do you know,” Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging into
+the subject, “I’d do anything on earth for some names—one or two. It’s
+not Mary, nor Lucy. Clarinda’s pretty, but it’s like a novel. Claribel,
+I like. Names beginning with ‘Cl’ I prefer. The ‘Cl’s’ are always
+gentle and lovely girls you would die for! Don’t you think so?”
+
+Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to inspire that
+emotion. Indeed these urgent appeals to his fancy in feminine names at
+five o’clock in the morning slightly surprised him, though he was but
+half awake to the outer world. By degrees he perceived that Ralph was
+changed. Instead of the lusty boisterous boy, his rival in manly
+sciences, who spoke straightforwardly and acted up to his speech, here
+was an abashed and blush-persecuted youth, who sued piteously for a
+friendly ear wherein to pour the one idea possessing him. Gradually,
+too, Richard apprehended that Ralph likewise was on the frontiers of
+the Realm of Mystery, perhaps further toward it than he himself was;
+and then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was revealed to him the wonderful
+beauty and depth of meaning in feminine names. The theme appeared novel
+and delicious, fitted to the season and the hour. But the hardship was,
+that Richard could choose none from the number; all were the same to
+him; he loved them all.
+
+“Don’t you really prefer the ‘Cl’s’?” said Ralph, persuasively.
+
+“Not better than the names ending in ‘a’ and ‘y,’ Richard replied,
+wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently ahead of him.
+
+“Come under these trees,” said Ralph. And under the trees Ralph
+unbosomed. His name was down for the army: Eton was quitted for ever.
+In a few months he would have to join his regiment, and before he left
+he must say goodbye to his friends.... Would Richard tell him Mrs.
+Forey’s address? he had heard she was somewhere by the sea. Richard did
+not remember the address, but said he would willingly take charge of
+any letter and forward it.
+
+Ralph dived his hand into his pocket. “Here it is. But don’t let
+anybody see it.”
+
+“My aunt’s name is not Clare,” said Richard, perusing what was composed
+of the exterior formula. “You’ve addressed it to Clare herself.”
+
+That was plain to see.
+
+“Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish,” Richard
+continued in a low tone, transferring the names, and playing on the
+musical strings they were to him. Then he said: “Names of ladies! How
+they sweeten their names!”
+
+He fixed his eyes on Ralph. If he discovered anything further he said
+nothing, but bade the good fellow good-bye, jumped into his boat, and
+pulled down the tide. The moment Ralph was hidden by an abutment of the
+banks, Richard perused the address. For the first time it struck him
+that his cousin Clare was a very charming creature: he remembered the
+look of her eyes, and especially the last reproachful glance she gave
+him at parting. What business had Ralph to write to her? Did she not
+belong to Richard Feverel? He read the words again and again: Clare
+Doria Forey. Why, Clare was the name he liked best—nay, he loved it.
+Doria, too—she shared his own name with him. Away went his heart, not
+at a canter now, at a gallop, as one who sights the quarry. He felt too
+weak to pull. Clare Doria Forey—oh, perfect melody! Sliding with the
+tide, he heard it fluting in the bosom of the hills.
+
+When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the Fates
+are behindhand in furnishing a temple for the flame.
+
+Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder
+below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the
+reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing
+bramble, and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded
+by a broad straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin
+in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising
+eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown
+in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was simply
+dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you
+might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was
+regaling on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water.
+Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty
+progress to her mouth. Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman
+plumping her exquisite proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we
+must suppose) joyfully have her scraggy to have her poetical, can
+hardly object to dewberries. Indeed the act of eating them is dainty
+and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an
+innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the
+undrugged mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt
+there. The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth
+southern cloud lying along the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her
+nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow
+note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged
+heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat slipped toward her,
+containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit, and ate,
+and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as
+if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the
+green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall’s
+thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a
+bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The
+Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir-piles,
+and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the
+meeting of two electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful, that
+though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a scull.
+Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was floating by
+unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather
+what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The
+damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the
+brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand
+beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides
+of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, and
+gain safe earth, whither he followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world lay
+wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to the
+vivid reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither away
+thousands of leagues in an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang overhead!
+What splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty about his
+enchanted brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the
+glories of being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda! Prince
+Ferdinand is at your feet.
+
+Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
+transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
+
+The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First Woman
+to him.
+
+And she—mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
+
+So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood
+together; he pale, and she blushing.
+
+She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival
+damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung
+like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly
+fast and far with her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of
+her eyes, bore witness to the body’s virtue; and health and happy blood
+were in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival
+damsels, that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System,
+would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide
+summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with
+the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only
+half-curls, waves of hair call them, rippling at the ends, went like a
+sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious
+vision to the youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read
+not a feature. There were curious features of colour in her face for
+him to have read. Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin
+showing the action of the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to
+the temples long and level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse
+the sights of earth, and by the pliability of her brows that the
+wonderful creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue
+to the gazer. Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot out,
+giving a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of
+meaning—more than brain was ever meant to fathom: richer, henceforth,
+than all mortal wisdom to Prince Ferdinand. For when nature turns
+artist, and produces contrasts of colour on a fair face, where is the
+Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the depth of its lightest look?
+
+Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire his figure
+looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his
+forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell
+away slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible
+upward curve of his brows there—felt more than seen, so slight it
+was—and gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful,
+breathless air was a flattering charm. An arrow drawn to the head,
+capable of flying fast and far with her! He leaned a little forward,
+drinking her in with all his eyes, and young Love has a thousand. Then
+truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
+Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head, and let it fly,
+when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said to
+the world, “Match him!” Such keen bliss as the youth had in the sight
+of her, an innocent youth alone has powers of soul in him to
+experience.
+
+“O Women!” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts,
+“Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not
+to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
+putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!”
+
+If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero,
+and was not present, or their fates might have been different.
+
+So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they
+came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
+
+She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words;
+and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
+she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
+was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too
+foolish to be chronicled.
+
+The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of
+anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely
+face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, “My book! my book!” and ran to
+the bank.
+
+Prince Ferdinand was at her side. “What have you lost?” he said.
+
+“My book!” she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
+shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, “Oh, no, no! let me
+entreat you not to,” she said; “I do not so very much mind losing it.”
+And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle
+hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
+
+“Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,” she continued,
+withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. “Pray, do not!”
+
+The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell
+of contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and
+discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his
+head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of
+paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if
+fire had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to
+the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land
+disconsolately, to hear Miranda’s murmured mixing of thanks and pretty
+expostulations.
+
+“Let me try again,” he said.
+
+“No, indeed!” she replied, and used the awful threat: “I will run away
+if you do,” which effectually restrained him.
+
+Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she
+cried, “There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care
+for the book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it me.”
+
+Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard
+had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two
+Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below—O wonderment immense! his
+own handwriting!
+
+He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
+
+Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls,
+Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
+reserved for such a starry fate—passing beatitude!
+
+As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember
+the hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable
+production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to
+tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was
+complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet—
+
+“Through sunset’s amber see me shining fair,
+As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair.”
+
+
+And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes
+and golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the
+working of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the
+prophecy, she that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with
+emotion to speak. Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had
+some trifling burden on her conscience, for she seemed to grow
+embarrassed. At last she drew up her chin to look at her companion
+under the nodding brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly
+freakish air), crying, “But where are you going to? You are wet
+through. Let me thank you again; and, pray, leave me, and go home and
+change instantly.”
+
+“Wet?” replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest;
+“not more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your
+stockings in the sun.”
+
+At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
+
+“Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and you
+are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?”
+
+In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
+
+“And you really do not feel that you are wet?”
+
+He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
+
+She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue
+eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
+
+“I cannot help it,” she said, her mouth opening, and sounding
+harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. “Pardon me, won’t you?”
+
+His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
+
+“Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!”
+she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
+
+“It’s true,” he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a
+duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the
+work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the
+breast to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a
+corner here and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion
+propitious, O British young! and laugh and treat love as an honest God,
+and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the
+souls of each cried out to other, “It is I it is I.”
+
+They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried
+his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird’s
+copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the
+many-coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from it.
+
+Richard’s boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
+swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid
+backwater.
+
+“Will you let it go?” said the damsel, eying it curiously.
+
+“It can’t be stopped,” he replied, and could have added: “What do I
+care for it now!”
+
+His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was
+with her, alive, divine.
+
+She flapped low the brim of her hat. “You must really not come any
+farther,” she softly said.
+
+“And will you go, and not tell me who you are?” he asked, growing bold
+as the fears of losing her came across him. “And will you not tell me
+before you go”—his face burned—“how you came by that—that paper?”
+
+She chose to select the easier question for answer: “You ought to know
+me; we have been introduced.” Sweet was her winning off-hand
+affability.
+
+“Then who, in heaven’s name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
+forgotten you.”
+
+“You have, I think,” she said.
+
+“Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!”
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+“Do you remember Belthorpe?”
+
+“Belthorpe! Belthorpe!” quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain
+to recollect there was such a place. “Do you mean old Blaize’s farm?”
+
+“Then I am old Blaize’s niece.” She tripped him a soft curtsey.
+
+The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this
+divine sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
+
+“Then what—what is your name?” said his mouth, while his eyes added, “O
+wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?”
+
+“Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?” she peered at him
+from a side-bend of the flapping brim.
+
+“The Desboroughs of Dorset?” A light broke in on him. “And have you
+grown to this? That little girl I saw there!”
+
+He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She
+could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her
+volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither
+voice was high, and they were mutually constrained.
+
+“You see,” she murmured, “we are old acquaintances.”
+
+Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, “You are
+very beautiful!”
+
+The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
+Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that
+is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
+
+Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness;
+but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned
+away from them, her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately
+spoken, and by one who has been a damsel’s first dream, dreamed of
+nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her
+thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
+would. She quickened her steps.
+
+“I have offended you!” said a mortally wounded voice across her
+shoulder.
+
+That he should think so were too dreadful.
+
+“Oh no, no! you would never offend me.” She gave him her whole sweet
+face.
+
+“Then why—why do you leave me?”
+
+“Because,” she hesitated, “I must go.”
+
+“No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go.”
+
+“Indeed I must,” she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her
+hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
+resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said,
+“Good-bye,” as if it were a natural thing to say.
+
+The hand was pure white—white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a
+Maynight. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night
+bent his head reverentially above, and kissed—resigning himself
+thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such
+daring—by such bliss well rewarded.
+
+He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
+
+“Good-bye,” she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same
+time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It was
+a signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
+
+“You will not go?”
+
+“Pray, let me,” she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
+
+“You will not go?” Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
+thumping heart.
+
+“I must,” she faltered piteously.
+
+“You will not go?”
+
+“Oh yes! yes!”
+
+“Tell me. Do you wish to go?”
+
+The question was a subtle one. A moment or two she did not answer, and
+then forswore herself, and said, Yes.
+
+“Do you—you wish to go?” He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.
+
+A fainter Yes responded.
+
+“You wish—wish to leave me?” His breath went with the words.
+
+“Indeed I must.”
+
+Her hand became a closer prisoner.
+
+All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame. From
+him to her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and back
+love’s electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each,
+till it surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out
+for its mate. They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under
+these fair heavens of the morning.
+
+When he could get his voice it said, “Will you go?”
+
+But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her
+gentle wrist.
+
+“Then, farewell!” he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair
+hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for
+death.
+
+Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him. Strange,
+that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and
+timid tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, “You are not angry
+with me?”
+
+“With you, O Beloved!” cried his soul. “And you forgive me, fair
+charity!”
+
+“I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again,” she said,
+and again proffered her hand.
+
+The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
+glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his
+eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell,
+passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of
+the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.
+
+And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren air.
+But it was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous splendours
+had sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in
+his bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape,
+makes them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings—ghosts
+of the vanished sun.
+
+There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and
+declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft
+flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire!
+how could his ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how
+could he let you go? And he seriously asked himself that question.
+
+To-morrow this place will have a memory—the river and the meadow, and
+the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
+skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its
+glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of
+dewberries. To-day the grass is grass: his heart is chased by phantoms
+and finds rest nowhere. Only when the most tender freshness of his
+flower comes across him does he taste a moment’s calm; and no sooner
+does it come than it gives place to keen pangs of fear that she may not
+be his for ever.
+
+Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and
+discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph
+and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical
+discussions on ladies’ hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
+those of Cleopatra to the Borgia’s. “Fair! fair! all of them fair!”
+sighs the melancholy curate, “as are those women formed for our
+perdition! I think we have in this country what will match the Italian
+or the Greek.” His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before
+the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine’s hair is a dark
+luxuriance, dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men
+for dark-haired Wonders. They have no mutual confidences, but they are
+singularly kind to each other, these three children of instinct.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
+future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of
+families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not
+degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an open
+leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis,
+distantly dropped his eye. There were names historic and names
+mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called in his
+muster-roll; names that had been, clearly, tossed into the upper
+stratum of civilized lifer by a millwheel or a merchant-stool. Against
+them the baronet had written M. or Po. or Pr.—signifying, Money,
+Position, Principles, favouring the latter with special brackets. The
+wisdom of a worldly man, which he could now and then adopt, determined
+him, before he commenced his round of visits, to consult and sound his
+solicitor and his physician thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the
+rats who know best the merits of a house, and on what sort of
+foundation it may be standing.
+
+Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his
+misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it
+were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no
+wife and his son no mother. He wandered on foot through the streets the
+first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows
+and bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as
+destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost forgotten how to find
+his way about, and came across his old mansion in his efforts to regain
+his hotel. The windows were alight—signs of merry life within. He
+stared at it from the shadow of the opposite side. It seemed to him he
+was a ghost gazing upon his living past. And then the phantom which had
+stood there mocking while he felt as other men—the phantom, now flesh
+and blood reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its
+unforgiving crevices with bitter ironic venom. He remembered by the
+time reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house
+at his disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something of the
+sort. In the morning, too, he remembered that he had divorced the world
+to wed a System, and must be faithful to that exacting Spouse, who, now
+alone of things on earth, could fortify and recompense him.
+
+Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to
+such a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour. He was a thin
+stately man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops,
+and carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment
+skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase
+his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain. After congratulating
+Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two or three suits, and being
+assured that the baronet’s business in town had no concern therewith,
+Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all his father
+could desire him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a
+pattern to the youth of the Age.
+
+“A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!” said the old lawyer, shaking
+his head. “We must keep our eyes on them—keep awake! The mischief is
+done in a minute.”
+
+“We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root was
+sound, or the mischief will do itself in spite of, or under the very
+spectacles of, supervision,” said the baronet.
+
+His legal adviser murmured “Exactly,” as if that were his own idea,
+adding, “It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an
+introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young
+friend, whom he does not forget. Ripton follows the Law. He is articled
+to me, and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence. I
+bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at night. I think I
+may say that I am quite content with him.”
+
+“Do you think,” said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, “that you can trace
+every act of his to its motive?”
+
+The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be
+repeated.
+
+“Do you”—Sir Austin held the same searching expression—“do you
+establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition: do you base your
+watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with his character, so
+perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements—even the
+eccentric ones—are anticipated by you, and provided for?”
+
+The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat
+another repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man,
+Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was
+afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to
+say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at school.
+
+“I find,” Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his
+inspecting pose and mien, “there are fathers who are content to be
+simply obeyed. Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would
+have him guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes—feeling me in
+him stronger than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where
+my responsibility ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting machine.
+He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose
+the powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities
+hurry him to perdition. Young, he is an organism ripening to the set
+mechanic diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold
+watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what
+machinal duties he may have to perform”...
+
+Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was utterly lost. He
+respected Sir Austin’s estates too much to believe for a moment he was
+listening to downright folly. Yet how otherwise explain the fact of his
+excellent client being incomprehensible to him? For a middle-aged
+gentleman, and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing,
+will rarely have a notion of accusing his understanding; and Mr.
+Thompson had not the slightest notion of accusing his. But the
+baronet’s condescension in coming thus to him, and speaking on the
+subject nearest his heart, might well affect him, and he quickly
+settled the case in favour of both parties, pronouncing mentally that
+his honoured client had a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that
+no wonder he experienced difficulty in giving it fitly significant
+words.
+
+Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism, for
+his lawyer’s edification. At a recurrence of the word “healthy” Mr.
+Thompson caught him up:
+
+“I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely! Allow
+me to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if you condescend to examine
+him, you will say that regular habits, and a diet of nothing but
+law-reading—for other forms of literature I strictly interdict—have
+made him all that you instance.”
+
+Mr. Thompson’s hand was on the bell. Sir Austin arrested him.
+
+“Permit me to see the lad at his occupation,” said he.
+
+Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential clerk,
+Mr. Beazley, a veteran of law, now little better than a document,
+looking already signed and sealed, and shortly to be delivered, who
+enjoined nothing from his pupil and companion save absolute silence,
+and sounded his praises to his father at the close of days when it had
+been rigidly observed—not caring, or considering, the finished dry old
+document that he was, under what kind of spell a turbulent commonplace
+youth could be charmed into stillness for six hours of the day. Ripton
+was supposed to be devoted to the study of Blackstone. A tome of the
+classic legal commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the
+partially lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student’s head—law
+being thus brought into direct contact with his brain-pan. The
+office-door opened, and he heard not; his name was called, and he
+remained equally moveless. His method of taking in Blackstone seemed
+absorbing as it was novel.
+
+“Comparing notes, I daresay,” whispered Mr. Thompson to Sir Austin. “I
+call that study!”
+
+The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.
+
+“Is it like this every day, Beazley?” Mr. Thompson asked with parental
+pride.
+
+“Ahem!” the old clerk replied, “he is like this every day, sir. I could
+not ask more of a mouse.”
+
+Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity roused one of
+Ripton’s senses, which blew a pall to the others. Down went the lid of
+the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in
+Ripton’s face. He slouched from his perch with the air of one who means
+rather to defend his position than welcome a superior, the right hand
+in his waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching at his vacant
+stool.
+
+Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth’s shoulder, and said, leaning
+his head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, “I am glad to
+find my son’s old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study
+is myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must
+not be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread
+again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the visits of your
+client.”
+
+So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson,
+that, seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and
+sneaking defiance, he thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and
+desired him to inform the baronet what particular part of Blackstone he
+was absorbed in mastering at that moment.
+
+Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious
+articulation, “The Law of Gravelkind.”
+
+“What Law?” said Sir Austin, perplexed.
+
+“Gravelkind,” again rumbled Ripton’s voice.
+
+Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation. The old lawyer
+was shaking his law-box.
+
+“Singular!” he exclaimed. “He will make that mistake! What law, sir?”
+
+Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father’s
+face, and corrected himself. “Gavelkind, sir.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief. “Gravelkind, indeed!
+Gavelkind! An old Kentish”—He was going to expound, but Sir Austin
+assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, “I should
+like to look at your son’s notes, or remarks on the judiciousness of
+that family arrangement, if he had any.”
+
+“You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered,” said Mr.
+Thompson to the sucking lawyer; “a very good plan, which I have always
+enjoined on you. Were you not?”
+
+Ripton stammered that he was afraid he hid not any notes to show, worth
+seeing.
+
+“What were you doing then, sir?”
+
+“Making notes,” muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.
+
+“Exhibit!”
+
+Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and
+at the confidential clerk. He took out his key. It would not fit the
+hole.
+
+“Exhibit!” was peremptorily called again.
+
+In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton
+discovered that the desk was already unlocked. Mr. Thompson marched to
+it, and held the lid aloft. A book was lying open within, which Ripton
+immediately hustled among a mass of papers and tossed into a dark
+corner, not before the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by
+Sir Austin’s eye.
+
+The baronet smiled, and said, “You study Heraldry, too? Are you fond of
+the science?”
+
+Ripton replied that he was very fond of it—extremely attached, and
+threw a further pile of papers into the dark corner.
+
+The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them
+was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were
+found, that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of his
+son’s exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of
+Gavelkind.
+
+Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those scraps
+he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner. Ripton, though he
+consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.
+
+“What have we here?” said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded paper
+addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them
+forth, one by one. Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read
+aloud:
+
+“To the Editor of the ‘Jurist.’
+
+
+“Sir,—In your recent observations on the great case of Crim”—
+
+Mr. Thompson hem’d! and stopped short, like a man who comes
+unexpectedly upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley’s feet shuffled. Sir
+Austin changed the position of an arm.
+
+“It’s on the other side, I think,” gasped Ripton.
+
+Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.
+
+“To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond Court,
+Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U Five pounds,
+when I can pay.
+
+“Signed: RIPTON THOMPSON.”
+
+
+Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly appended:
+
+“(Mem. Document not binding.)”
+
+There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment and
+reproach passed round the office. Sir Austin assumed an attitude. Mr.
+Thompson shed a glance of severity on his confidential clerk, who
+parried by throwing up his hands.
+
+Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his father’s
+nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked
+“Legal Considerations.” Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or
+shielding his son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by
+their offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up
+to a certain point, for the good of both. He therefore opened the
+paper, expecting something worse than what he had hitherto seen,
+despite its formal heading, and he was not disappointed.
+
+The “Legal Considerations” related to the Case regarding, which Ripton
+had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to the Editor
+of the “Jurist,” and was indeed a great case, and an ancient; revived
+apparently for the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities
+of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr. Ripton Thompson, whose
+assistance the Attorney-General, in his opening statement,
+congratulated himself on securing; a rather unusual thing, due probably
+to the eminence and renown of that youthful gentleman at the Bar of his
+country. So much was seen from the copy of a report purporting to be
+extracted from a newspaper, and prefixed to the Junior Counsel’s
+remarks, or Legal Considerations, on the conduct of the Case, the
+admissibility and non-admissibility of certain evidence, and the
+ultimate decision of the judges.
+
+Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of one
+prepared to do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a
+town-crier, varied by a bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song tone,
+deliberately read:
+
+“VULCAN _v_. MARS.
+
+
+“The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on
+behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital
+Opportunity, for the Defendant.”
+
+“Oh!” snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate
+Ripton over his spectacles, “your notes are on that issue, sir! Thus
+you employ your time, sir!”
+
+With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired
+immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was
+pushed by the devil of his rancour to continue reading:
+
+“This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of
+particulars”...
+
+“Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial,” said Mr.
+Thompson. “Ah!—what do you mean here, sir,—but enough! I think we may
+be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case. This is how you
+employ your law-studies, sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr.
+Beazley! you will henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man
+under my own eye. Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for
+subjecting you to a scene so disagreeable. It was a father’s duty not
+to spare him.”
+
+Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutus might have done after
+passing judgment on the scion of his house.
+
+“These papers,” he went on, fluttering Ripton’s precious lucubrations
+in a waving judicial hand, “I shall retain. The day will come when he
+will regard them with shame. And it shall be his penance, his
+punishment, to do so! Stop!” he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly
+shutting his desk, “have you more of them, sir; of a similar
+description? Rout them out! Let us know you at your worst. What have
+you there—in that corner?”
+
+Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on
+important cases.
+
+Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and
+turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much
+remarking it, for his suspicions had not risen to print.
+
+“A Manual of Heraldry?” the baronet politely, and it may be ironically,
+inquired, before it could well escape.
+
+“I like it very much,” said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful
+torment.
+
+“Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct.” The baronet
+proffered a hand for the book.
+
+“A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves,” cried Ripton, still clutching it
+nervously.
+
+Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book
+from Ripton’s hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads
+together over the title-page. It set forth in attractive characters
+beside a coloured frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed
+there, the entrancing adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.
+
+Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to
+consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his
+sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them. As it was, he
+contented himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the detected
+youth, who sat on his perch insensible to what might happen next,
+collapsed.
+
+Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a “Pah!” He, however,
+took her up again, and strode away with her. Sir Austin gave Ripton a
+forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying, “Good-bye, boy! At
+some future date Richard will be happy to see you at Raynham.”
+
+Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.
+
+“Is it possible,” quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had ushered his
+client into his private room, “that you will consent, Sir Austin, to
+see him and receive him again?”
+
+“Certainly,” the baronet replied. “Why not? This by no means astonishes
+me. When there is no longer danger to my son he will be welcome as he
+was before. He is a schoolboy. I knew it. I expected it. The results of
+your principle, Thompson!”
+
+“One of the very worst books of that abominable class!” exclaimed the
+old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which brazen
+Miss Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt of
+captivating Time and all his veterans on a fair field. “Pah!” he shut
+her to with the energy he would have given to the office of publicly
+slapping her face; “from this day I diet him on bread and water—rescind
+his pocket-money!—How he could have got hold of such a book! How he—!
+And what ideas! Concealing them from me as he has done so cunningly! He
+trifles with vice! His mind is in a putrid state! I might have
+believed—I did believe—I might have gone on believing—my son Ripton to
+be a moral young man!” The old lawyer interjected on the delusion of
+fathers, and sat down in a lamentable abstraction.
+
+“The lad has come out!” said Sir Austin. “His adoption of the legal
+form is amusing. He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated are
+as hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner’s amusements will
+resemble those of a confirmed debauchee. The satiated, and the
+insatiate, appetite alike appeal to extremes. You are astonished at
+this revelation of your son’s condition. I expected it; though
+assuredly, believe me, not this sudden and indisputable proof of it.
+But I knew that the seed was in him, and therefore I have not latterly
+invited him to Raynham. School, and the corruption there, will bear its
+fruits sooner or later. I could advise you, Thompson, what to do with
+him: it would be my plan.”
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he should esteem it
+an honour to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel’s advice: secretly
+resolute, like a true Briton, to follow his own.
+
+“Let him, then,” continued the baronet, “see vice in its nakedness.
+While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him! Vice, taken little by
+little, usurps gradually the whole creature. My counsel to you,
+Thompson, would be, to drag him through the sinks of town.”
+
+Mr. Thompson began to blink again.
+
+“Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin! Do not fear me, sir. I have no
+tenderness for vice.”
+
+“That is not what is wanted, Thompson. You mistake me. He should be
+dealt with gently. Heavens! do you hope to make him hate vice by making
+him a martyr for its sake? You must descend from the pedestal of age to
+become his Mentor: cause him to see how certainly and pitilessly vice
+itself punishes: accompany him into its haunts”—
+
+“Over town?” broke forth Mr. Thompson.
+
+“Over town,” said the baronet.
+
+“And depend upon it,” he added, “that, until fathers act thoroughly up
+to their duty, we shall see the sights we see in great cities, and hear
+the tales we hear in little villages, with death and calamity in our
+homes, and a legacy of sorrow and shame to the generations to come. I
+do aver,” he exclaimed, becoming excited, “that, if it were not for the
+duty to my son, and the hope I cherish in him, I, seeing the
+accumulation of misery we are handing down to an innocent posterity—to
+whom, through our sin, the fresh breath of life will be foul—I—yes! I
+would hide my name! For whither are we tending? What home is pure
+absolutely? What cannot our doctors and lawyers tell us?”
+
+Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.
+
+“And what is to come of this?” Sir Austin continued. “When the sins of
+the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is not perdition the final sum
+of things? And is not life, the boon of heaven, growing to be the
+devil’s game utterly? But for my son, I would hide my name. I would not
+bequeath it to be cursed by them that walk above my grave!”
+
+This was indeed a terrible view of existence. Mr. Thompson felt uneasy.
+There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his speech,
+that silenced remonstrating reason and the cry of long years of
+comfortable respectability. Mr. Thompson went to church regularly; paid
+his rates and dues without overmuch, or at least more than common,
+grumbling. On the surface he was a good citizen, fond of his children,
+faithful to his wife, devoutly marching to a fair seat in heaven on a
+path paved by something better than a thousand a year. But here was a
+man sighting him from below the surface, and though it was an unfair,
+unaccustomed, not to say un-English, method of regarding one’s
+fellow-man, Mr. Thompson was troubled by it. What though his client
+exaggerated? Facts were at the bottom of what he said. And he was
+acute—he had unmasked Ripton! Since Ripton’s exposure he winced at a
+personal application in the text his client preached from. Possibly
+this was the secret source of part of his anger against that peccant
+youth.
+
+Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered visage and a
+pitiable contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly up from his chair.
+Apparently he was about to speak, but he straightway turned and went
+meditatively to a side-recess in the room, whereof he opened a door,
+drew forth a tray and a decanter labelled Port, filled a glass for his
+client, deferentially invited him to partake of it; filled another
+glass for himself, and drank.
+
+That was his reply.
+
+Sir Austin never took wine before dinner. Thompson had looked as if he
+meant to speak: he waited for Thompson’s words.
+
+Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in his glass, the
+eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his client.
+
+Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this precious draught,
+and turned its flavour over and over with an aspect of potent Judicial
+wisdom (one might have thought that he was weighing mankind in the
+balance), the old lawyer heaved, and said, sharpening his lips over the
+admirable vintage, “The world is in a very sad state, I fear, Sir
+Austin!”
+
+His client gazed at him queerly.
+
+“But that,” Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing by his gaze
+the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him, “that is, I
+think you would say, Sir Austin—if I could but prevail upon you—a
+tolerably good character wine!”
+
+“There’s virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!” Sir Austin murmured,
+without disturbing his legal adviser’s dimples.
+
+The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that such a wine
+was not to be had everywhere.
+
+They were then outwardly silent for a apace. Inwardly one of them was
+full of riot and jubilant uproar: as if the solemn fields of law were
+suddenly to be invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals: and to
+preserve a decently wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on terms
+with his companion, he had to grimace like a melancholy clown in a
+pantomime.
+
+Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair. The baronet was still expectant.
+Mr. Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied his glass. He combated the
+change that had come over him. He tried not to see Ruby. He tried to
+feel miserable, and it was not in him. He spoke, drawing what
+appropriate inspirations he could from his client’s countenance, to
+show that they had views in common: “Degenerating sadly, I fear!”
+
+The baronet nodded.
+
+“According to what my wine-merchants say,” continued Mr. Thompson,
+“there can be no doubt about it.”
+
+Sir Austin stared.
+
+“It’s the grape, or the ground, or something,” Mr. Thompson went on.
+“All I can say is, our youngsters will have a bad look-out! In my
+opinion Government should be compelled to send out a Commission to
+inquire into the cause. To Englishmen it would be a public calamity. It
+surprises me—I hear men sit and talk despondently of this extraordinary
+disease of the vine, and not one of them seems to think it incumbent on
+him to act, and do his best to stop it.” He fronted his client like a
+man who accuses an enormous public delinquency. “Nobody makes a stir!
+The apathy of Englishmen will become proverbial. Pray, try it, Sir
+Austin! Pray, allow me. Such a wine cannot disagree at any hour. Do! I
+am allowanced two glasses three hours before dinner. Stomachic. I find
+it agree with me surprisingly: quite a new man. I suppose it will last
+our time. It must! What should we do? There’s no Law possible without
+it. Not a lawyer of us could live. Ours is an occupation which dries
+the blood.”
+
+The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine had renovated, and
+gratitude to the wine inspired his tongue. He thought that his client,
+of the whimsical mind, though undoubtedly correct moral views, had need
+of a glass.
+
+“Now that very wine—Sir Austin—I think I do not err in saying, that
+very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher Feverel, used to taste
+whenever he came to consult my father, when I was a boy. And I remember
+one day being called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me out a glass.
+I wish I could call in Ripton now, and do the same. No! Leniency in
+such a case as that!—The wine would not hurt him—I doubt if there be
+much left for him to welcome his guests with. Ha! ha! Now if I could
+persuade you, Sir Austin, as you do not take wine before dinner, some
+day to favour me with your company at my little country cottage I have
+a wine there—the fellow to that—I think you would, I do think you
+would”—Mr. Thompson meant to say, he thought his client would arrive at
+something of a similar jocund contemplation of his fellows in their
+degeneracy that inspirited lawyers after potation, but condensed the
+sensual promise into “highly approve.”
+
+Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour mouth comically
+compressed.
+
+It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and Thompson
+after, were two different men. To indoctrinate him now was too late: it
+was perhaps the time to make the positive use of him he wanted.
+
+He pencilled on a handy slip of paper: “Two prongs of a fork; the World
+stuck between them—Port and the Palate: ’Tis one which fails first—Down
+goes World;” and again the hieroglyph—“Port-spectacles.” He said, “I
+shall gladly accompany you this evening, Thompson,” words that
+transfigured the delighted lawyer, and ensigned the skeleton of a great
+Aphorism to his pocket, there to gather flesh and form, with numberless
+others in a like condition.
+
+“I came to visit my lawyer,” he said to himself. “I think I have been
+dealing with The World in epitome!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of Raynham,
+the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking out a bride
+for his only son and uncorrupted heir. Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the
+excellent authority. Doctor Bairam had safely delivered Mrs. Deborah
+Gossip of this interesting bantling, which was forthwith dandled in
+dozens of feminine laps. Doctor Bairam could boast the first interview
+with the famous recluse. He had it from his own lips that the object of
+the baronet was to look out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted
+heir; “and,” added the doctor, “she’ll be lucky who gets him.” Which
+was interpreted to mean, that he would be a catch; the doctor probably
+intending to allude to certain extraordinary difficulties in the way of
+a choice.
+
+A demand was made on the publisher of The Pilgrim’s Scrip for all his
+outstanding copies. Conventionalities were defied. A summer-shower of
+cards fell on the baronet’s table.
+
+He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal. The
+cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband,
+if there was a husband, evidently dragged in for propriety’s sake. He
+perused the cards and smiled. He knew their purpose. What terrible
+light Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them! Heavens! in what
+a state was the blood of this Empire.
+
+Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates, Lord
+Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of
+Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine
+crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that
+they did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found one with an
+imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters. “So much,” he
+wrote in the Note-book, “for the Wild Oats theory!”
+
+Darley was proud of his daughters’ white and pink skins. “Beautiful
+complexions,” he called them. The eldest was in the market, immensely
+admired. Sir Austin was introduced to her. She talked fluently and
+sweetly. A youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even a
+man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair.
+There was something poetic about her. And she was quite well, she said,
+the baronet frequently questioning her on that point. She intimated
+that she was robust; but towards the close of their conversation her
+hand would now and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully
+an instant, saying, “Isn’t it odd? Dora, Adela, and myself, we all feel
+the same queer sensation—about the heart, I think it is—after talking
+much.”
+
+Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, “Wild
+oats! wild oats!”
+
+He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.
+
+Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.
+
+“It’s all nonsense, Feverel,” he said, “about bringing up a lad out of
+the common way. He’s all the better for a little racketing when he’s
+green—feels his bone and muscle—learns to know the world. He’ll never
+be a man if he hasn’t played at the old game one time in his life, and
+the earlier the better. I’ve always found the best fellows were wildish
+once. I don’t care what he does when he’s a green-horn; besides, he’s
+got an excuse for it then. You can’t expect to have a man, if he
+doesn’t take a man’s food. You’ll have a milksop. And, depend upon it,
+when he does break out he’ll go to the devil, and nobody pities him.
+Look what those fellows the grocers, do when they get hold of a
+young—what d’ye call ’em?—apprentice. They know the scoundrel was born
+with a sweet tooth. Well! they give him the run of the shop, and in a
+very short time he soberly deals out the goods, a devilish deal too
+wise to abstract a morsel even for the pleasure of stealing. I know you
+have contrary theories. You hold that the young grocer should have a
+soul above sugar. It won’t do! Take my word for it, Feverel, it’s a
+dangerous experiment, that of bringing up flesh and blood in harness.
+No colt will bear it, or he’s a tame beast. And look you: take it on
+medical grounds. Early excesses the frame will recover from: late ones
+break the constitution. There’s the case in a nutshell. How’s your
+son?”
+
+“Sound and well!” replied Sir Austin. “And yours?”
+
+“Oh, Lipscombe’s always the same!” Lord Heddon sighed peevishly. “He’s
+quiet—that’s one good thing; but there’s no getting the country to take
+him, so I must give up hopes of that.”
+
+Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin surveyed him,
+and was not astonished at the refusal of the country to take him.
+
+“Wild oats!” he thought, as he contemplated the headless, degenerate,
+weedy issue and result.
+
+Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the marriage of their
+offspring as a matter of course. “And if I were not a coward,” Sir
+Austin confessed to himself, “I should stand forth and forbid the
+banns! This universal ignorance of the inevitable consequence of sin is
+frightful! The wild oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have struck
+the world, and rendered it morally insensible.” However, they silenced
+him. He was obliged to spare their feelings on a subject to him so
+deeply sacred. The healthful image of his noble boy rose before him, a
+triumphant living rejoinder to any hostile argument.
+
+He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought the third
+generation of wild oats would be a pretty thin crop!
+
+Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor Bairam physician
+could recollect a progenitorial blot, either on the male or female
+side, were not numerous. “Only,” said the doctors “you really must not
+be too exacting in these days, my dear Sir Austin. It is impossible to
+contest your principle, and you are doing mankind incalculable service
+in calling its attention to this the gravest of its duties: but as the
+stream of civilization progresses we must be a little taken in the
+lump, as it were. The world is, I can assure you—and I do not look only
+above the surface, you can believe—the world is awakening to the vital
+importance of the question.”
+
+“Doctor,” replied Sir Austin, “if you had a pure-blood Arab barb would
+you cross him with a screw?”
+
+“Decidedly not,” said the doctor.
+
+“Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to match my son
+according to his merits,” Sir Austin returned. “I trust the world is
+awakening, as you observe. I have been to my publisher, since my
+arrival in town, with a manuscript ‘Proposal for a New System of
+Education of our British Youth,’ which may come in opportunely. I think
+I am entitled to speak on that subject.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the doctor. “You will admit, Sir Austin, that,
+compared with continental nations—our neighbours, for instance—we shine
+to advantage, in morals, as in everything else. I hope you admit that?”
+
+“I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower standard,”
+said the baronet. “If I compare the enlightenment of your views—for you
+admit my principle—with the obstinate incredulity of a country
+doctor’s, who sees nothing of the world, you are hardly flattered, I
+presume?”
+
+Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison,
+assuredly, he interjected.
+
+“Besides,” added the baronet, “the French make no pretences, and
+thereby escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy. Whereas we!—but
+I am not their advocate, credit me. It is better, perhaps, to pay our
+homage to virtue. At least it delays the spread of entire corruptness.”
+
+Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured to
+assist his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by putting
+several mamas, whom he visited, on the alert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air of
+the Enchanted Island.
+
+Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the
+pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and
+the waters.
+
+The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to
+him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch
+the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the
+pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon
+thickly-weeded banks, where the foxglove’s last upper-bells incline,
+and bramble-shoots wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the
+woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, ’tis a race with
+the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths and up the hills,
+till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of
+the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
+
+Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly
+there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple
+shade fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The
+little brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is
+startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things
+move.
+
+Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious
+full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their
+glories through voluminous leafage. But these are bowers where deep
+bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in
+which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend,
+great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and pass from
+us! You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to you, and all heavenly
+pageants, are the ministers and the slaves of the throbbing content
+within.
+
+For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed
+shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling
+nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless
+ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
+
+Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in a
+calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
+exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
+
+He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great
+boldness, has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the
+key-notes of the wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
+
+“Lucy! my beloved!”
+
+“O Richard!”
+
+Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy
+pipes to meditative eye on a penny-whistle.
+
+Love’s musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops;
+and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!
+
+Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of
+feeling, and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping
+volume is too wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness
+spoken.
+
+Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had
+unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural
+food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly;
+or blows into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the
+trumpet; or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them. And they
+are pleased. He is still the cunning musician. They languish, and taste
+ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an earthly concert. For them the
+spheres move not to two notes. They have lost, or forfeited and never
+known, the first super-sensual spring of the ripe senses into passion;
+when they carry the soul with them, and have the privileges of spirits
+to walk disembodied, boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other
+is a dead body. Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a
+couple to whom Love’s simple bread and water is a finer feast.
+
+Pipe, happy sheep-bop, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings and
+lift your voices!
+
+They have out-flown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the ken
+of science. They were made for their Eden.
+
+“And this divine gift was in store for me!”
+
+So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their
+recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone by
+and suffused the living Future!
+
+“You for me: I for you!”
+
+“We are born for each other!”
+
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their
+cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them
+together. And, O victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and
+difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
+
+“Here we two sit who are written above as one!”
+
+Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
+
+The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea of
+sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and
+retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud
+from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys
+heaven.
+
+“Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?”
+
+“O Richard! yes; for I remembered you.”
+
+“Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?”
+
+“I did!”
+
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal
+journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full
+half the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the
+two.
+
+“My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!”
+
+He hears the delicious music.
+
+“And you are mine?”
+
+A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they
+sit, and for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly
+fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her
+eyes her soul is naked to him.
+
+“Lucy! my bride! my life!”
+
+The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The
+soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips
+are locked.
+
+Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express
+their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it
+nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of
+Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one,
+from her you may hear it.
+
+So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the
+woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent
+squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish
+correspondingly awry, he also marches into silence, hailed by supper.
+The woods are still. There is heard but the night-jar spinning on the
+pine-branch, circled by moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of dragons.
+Wherever there is romance, these monsters come by inimical attraction.
+Because the heavens are certainly propitious to true lovers, the beasts
+of the abysses are banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable
+sad victories; and every love-tale is an Epic Par of the upper and
+lower powers. I wish good fairies were a little more active. They seem
+to be cajoled into security by the happiness of their favourites;
+whereas the wicked are always alert, and circumspect. They let the
+little ones shut their eyes to fancy they are not seen, and then
+commence.
+
+These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the
+dinner-table at the hour of contemplative digestion and prime claret;
+the hour when the wise youth Adrian delighted to talk at his ease—to
+recline in dreamy consciousness that a work of good was going on inside
+him; these abstractions from his studies, excesses of gaiety, and
+glumness, heavings of the chest, and other odd signs, but mainly the
+disgusting behaviour of his pupil at the dinner-table, taught Adrian to
+understand, though the young gentleman was clever in excuses, that he
+had somehow learnt there was another half to the divided Apple of
+Creation, and had embarked upon the great voyage of discovery of the
+difference between the two halves. With his usual coolness Adrian
+debated whether he might be in the observatory or the practical stage
+of the voyage. For himself, as a man and a philosopher, Adrian had no
+objection to its being either; and he had only to consider which was
+temporarily most threatening to the ridiculous System he had to
+support. Richard’s absence annoyed him. The youth was vivacious, and
+his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when he left table, Adrian had to
+sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth Century, from both of whom he
+had extracted all the amusement that could be got, and he saw his
+digestion menaced by the society of two ruined stomachs, who bored him
+just when he loved himself most. Poor Hippias was now so reduced that
+he had profoundly to calculate whether a particular dish, or an
+extra-glass of wine, would have a bitter effect on him and be felt
+through the remainder of his years. He was in the habit of uttering his
+calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic doubts of experience,
+and the succulent insinuations of appetite, contended hotly. It was
+horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian for tempting him to a
+decision in favour of the moment.
+
+“Happy to take wine with you,” Adrian would say, and Hippias would
+regard the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.
+
+“Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!” the
+Eighteenth Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends her
+own practice.
+
+“It’s this literary work!” interjects Hippias, handling his glass of
+remorse. “I don’t know what else it can be. You have no idea how
+anxious I feel. I have frightful dreams. I’m perpetually anxious.”
+
+“No wonder,” says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to which
+an absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought poor
+Hippias. “No wonder. Ten years of Fairy Mythology! Could anyone hope to
+sleep in peace after that? As to your digestion, no one has a digestion
+who is in the doctor’s hands. They prescribe from dogmas, and don’t
+count on the system. They have cut you down from two bottles to two
+glasses. It’s absurd. You can’t sleep, because your system is crying
+out for what it’s accustomed to.”
+
+Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggardly confidence, but assures
+Adrian that he really should not like to venture on a bottle now: it
+would be rank madness to venture on a bottle now, he thinks. Last night
+only, after partaking, under protest, of that rich French dish, or was
+it the duck?—Adrian advised him to throw the blame on that vulgar
+bird.—Say the duck, then. Last night, he was no sooner stretched in
+bed, than he seemed to be of an enormous size all his limbs—his nose,
+his mouth, his toes—were elephantine! An elephant was a pigmy to him.
+And his hugeousness seemed to increase the instant he shut his eyes. He
+turned on this side; he turned on that. He lay on his back; he tried
+putting his face to the pillow; and he continued to swell. He wondered
+the room could hold him—he thought he must burst it—and absolutely lit
+a candle, and went to the looking-glass to see whether he was bearable.
+
+By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably. He had,
+however, a genial auditor in the Eighteenth Century, who declared it to
+be a new disease, not known in her day, and deserving investigation.
+She was happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of the
+complex order, and a potion soon righted her. In fact, her system
+appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment and medicine, on which
+the battle was fought, and, when over, she was none the worse, as she
+joyfully told Hippias. Never looked ploughman on prince, or village
+belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century
+Hippias expended in his gaze on the Eighteenth. He was too serious to
+note much the laughter of the young men.
+
+This ‘Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus,’ as Adrian designated the malady
+of Hippias, was repeated regularly ever evening. It was natural for any
+youth to escape as quick as he could from such a table of stomachs.
+
+Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter from the
+baronet, describing the house and maternal System of a Mrs. Caroline
+Grandison, and the rough grain of hopefulness in her youngest daughter,
+spurred him to think of his duties, and see what was going on. He gave
+Richard half-an-hour’s start, and then put on his hat to follow his own
+keen scent, leaving Hippias and the Eighteenth Century to piquet.
+
+In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not unknown to
+him, one Molly Davenport by name, a buxom lass, who, on seeing him,
+invoked her Good Gracious, the generic maid’s familiar, and was
+instructed by reminiscences vivid, if ancient, to giggle.
+
+“Are you looking for your young gentleman?” Molly presently asked.
+
+Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see if the coast
+was clear, and replied to her, “I am, miss. I want you to tell me about
+him.”
+
+“Dear!” said the buxom lass, “was you coming for me to-night to know?”
+
+Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.
+
+“’Cause I can’t stop out long to-night,” Molly explained, taking the
+rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.
+
+“You may go in when you please, miss. Is that any one coming? Come here
+in the shade.”
+
+“Now, get along!” said Miss Molly.
+
+Adrian spoke with resolution. “Listen to me, Molly Davenport!” He put a
+coin in her hand, which had a medical effect in calming her to
+attention. “I want to know whether you have seen him at all?”
+
+“Who? Your young gentleman? I sh’d think I did. I seen him to-night
+only. Ain’t he grooved handsome. He’s al’ays about Beltharp now. It
+ain’t to fire no more ricks. He’s afire ’unself. Ain’t you seen ’em
+together? He’s after the missis”—
+
+Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine herself
+to particulars. This buxom lass then told him that her young missis and
+Adrian’s young gentleman were a pretty couple, and met one another
+every night. The girl swore for their innocence.
+
+“As for Miss Lucy, she haven’t a bit of art in her, nor have he.”
+
+“They’re all nature, I suppose,” said Adrian. “How is it I don’t see
+her at church?”
+
+“She’s Catholic, or some think,” said Molly. “Her father was, and a
+leftenant. She’ve a Cross in her bedroom. She don’t go to church. I see
+you there last Sunday a-lookin’ so solemn,” and Molly stroked her hand
+down her chin to give it length.
+
+Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts. It was dark, and in the dark
+he was indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested by the lass, but
+he wanted to hear facts, and he again bribed her to impart nothing but
+facts. Upon which she told him further, that her young lady was an
+innocent artless creature who had been to school upwards of three years
+with the nuns, and had a little money of her own, and was beautiful
+enough to be a lord’s lady, and had been in love with Master Richard
+ever since she was a little girl. Molly had got from a friend of hers
+up at the Abbey, Mary Garner, the housemaid who cleaned Master
+Richard’s room, a bit of paper once with the young gentleman’s
+handwriting, and had given it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy had given
+her a gold sovereign for it—just for his handwriting! Miss Lucy did not
+seem happy at the farm, because of that young Tom, who was always
+leering at her, and to be sure she was quite a lady, and could play,
+and sing, and dress with the best.
+
+“She looks like angels in her nightgown!” Molly wound up.
+
+The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the first time as if
+there were a distinction of position between them, petitioned: “Mr.
+Harley! you won’t go for doin’ any harm to ’em ’cause of what I said,
+will you now? Do say you won’t now, Mr. Harley! She is good, though
+she’s a Catholic. She was kind to me when I was ill, and I wouldn’t
+have her crossed—I’d rather be showed up myself, I would!”
+
+The wise youth gave no positive promise to Molly, and she had to read
+his consent in a relaxation of his austerity. The noise of a lumbering
+foot plodding down the lane caused her to be abruptly dismissed. Molly
+took to flight, the lumbering foot accelerated its pace, and the
+pastoral appeal to her flying skirts was heard—“Moll! you theyre! It be
+I—Bantam!” But the sprightly Silvia would not stop to his wooing, and
+Adrian turned away laughing at these Arcadians.
+
+Adrian was a lazy dragon. All he did for the present was to hint and
+tease. “It’s the Inevitable!” he said, and asked himself why he should
+seek to arrest it. He had no faith in the System. Heavy Benson had.
+Benson of the slow thick-lidded antediluvian eye and loose-crumpled
+skin; Benson, the Saurian, the woman-hater; Benson was wide awake. A
+sort of rivalry existed between the wise youth and heavy Benson. The
+fidelity of the latter dependant had moved the baronet to commit to him
+a portion of the management of the Raynham estate, and this Adrian did
+not like. No one who aspires to the honourable office of leading
+another by the nose can tolerate a party in his ambition. Benson’s
+surly instinct told him he was in the wise youth’s way, and he resolved
+to give his master a striking proof of his superior faithfulness. For
+some weeks the Saurian eye had been on the two secret creatures. Heavy
+Benson saw letters come and go in the day, and now the young gentleman
+was off and out every night, and seemed to be on wings. Benson knew
+whither he went, and the object he went for. It was a woman—that was
+enough. The Saurian eye had actually seen the sinful thing lure the
+hope of Raynham into the shades. He composed several epistles of
+warning to the baronet of the work that was going on; but before
+sending one he wished to record a little of their guilty conversation;
+and for this purpose the faithful fellow trotted over the dews to
+eavesdrop, and thereby aroused the good fairy, in the person of Tom
+Bakewell, the sole confidant of Richard’s state.
+
+Tom said to his young master, “Do you know what, sir? You be watched!”
+
+Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom hung his arms,
+and aped the respectable protrusion of the butler’s head.
+
+“It’s he, is it?” cried Richard. “He shall rue it, Tom. If I find him
+near me when we’re together he shall never forget it.”
+
+“Don’t hit too hard, sir,” Tom suggested. “You hit mortal hard when
+you’re in earnest, you know.”
+
+Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and told Tom to be
+within hail to-morrow night—he knew where. By the hour of the
+appointment it was out of the lover’s mind.
+
+Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian’s pointed
+invitation. According to custom, Richard started up and off, with few
+excuses. The lady exhibited no surprise. She and Adrian likewise
+strolled forth to enjoy the air of the Summer night. They had no
+intention of spying. Still they may have thought, by meeting Richard
+and his inamorata, there was a chance of laying a foundation of
+ridicule to sap the passion. They may have thought so—they were on no
+spoken understanding.
+
+“I have seen the little girl,” said Lady Blandish. “She is pretty—she
+would be telling if she were well set up. She speaks well. How absurd
+it is of that class to educate their women above their station! The
+child is really too good for a farmer. I noticed her before I knew of
+this; she has enviable hair. I suppose she doesn’t paint her eyelids.
+Just the sort of person to take a young man. I thought there was
+something wrong. I received, the day before yesterday, an impassioned
+poem evidently not intended for me. My hair was gold. My meeting him
+was foretold. My eyes were homes of light fringed with night. I sent it
+back, correcting the colours.”
+
+“Which was death to the rhymes,” said Adrian. “I saw her this morning.
+The boy hasn’t bad taste. As you say, she is too good for a farmer.
+Such a spark would explode any System. She slightly affected mine. The
+Huron is stark mad about her.”
+
+“But we must positively write and tell his father,” said Lady Blandish.
+
+The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a trifle. The
+lady said she would have an interview with Richard, and then write, as
+it was her duty to do. Adrian shrugged, and was for going into the
+scientific explanation of Richard’s conduct, in which the lady had to
+discourage him.
+
+“Poor boy!” she sighed. “I am really sorry for him. I hope he will not
+feel it too strongly. They feel strongly, father and son.”
+
+“And select wisely,” Adrian added.
+
+“That’s another thing,” said Lady Blandish.
+
+Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county people, about
+whom, it seemed, there was little or no scandal afloat: of the lady’s
+loss of the season in town, which she professed not to regret, though
+she complained of her general weariness: of whether Mr. Morton of Poer
+Hall would propose to Mrs. Doria, and of the probable despair of the
+hapless curate of Lobourne; and other gossip, partly in French.
+
+They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through the park to
+Lobourne. The moon had risen. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant.
+
+“Quite a lover’s night,” said Lady Blandish.
+
+“And I, who have none to love—pity me!” The wise youth attempted a
+sigh.
+
+“And never will have,” said Lady Blandish, curtly. “You buy your
+loves.”
+
+Adrian protested. However, he did not plead verbally against the
+impeachment, though the lady’s decisive insight astonished him. He
+began to respect her, relishing her exquisite contempt, and he
+reflected that widows could be terrible creatures.
+
+He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing her
+romantic. This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air of “I
+know you men,” with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise
+youth more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses would have
+done. He looked at the lady. Her face was raised to the moon. She knew
+nothing—she had simply spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge,
+and had forgotten her words. Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or
+whatever feeling it was, for the baronet, was sincere, and really the
+longing for a virtuous man. Perhaps she had tried the opposite set
+pretty much. Adrian shrugged. Whenever the wise youth encountered a
+mental difficulty he instinctively lifted his shoulders to equal
+altitudes, to show that he had no doubt there was a balance in the
+case—plenty to be said on both sides, which was the same to him as a
+definite solution.
+
+At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park, wrapped in
+themselves, piped to by tireless Love, Richard and Lucy sat, toying
+with eternal moments. How they seem as if they would never end! What
+mere sparks they are when they have died out! And how in the distance
+of time they revive, and extend, and glow, and make us think them full
+the half, and the best of the fire, of our lives!
+
+With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so
+shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that
+was not pure gold of emotion.
+
+Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham.
+Whoever had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the
+history of, and he for a kiss will do her bidding.
+
+Thus goes the tender duet:
+
+“You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.—Darling! Beloved!”
+
+“My own! Richard!”
+
+“You should know my cousin Austin. You shall know him. He would take to
+you best of them all, and you to him. He is in the tropics now, looking
+out a place—it’s a secret—for poor English working-men to emigrate to
+and found a colony in that part of the world:—my white angel!”
+
+“Dear love!”
+
+“He is such a noble fellow! Nobody here understands him but me. Isn’t
+it strange? Since I met you I love him better! That’s because I love
+all that’s good and noble better now—Beautiful! I love—I love you!”
+
+“My Richard!”
+
+“What do you think I’ve determined, Lucy? If my father—but no! my
+father does love me.—No! he will not; and we will be happy together
+here. And I will win my way with you. And whatever I win will be yours;
+for it will be owing to you. I feel as if I had no strength but
+yours—none! and you make me—O Lucy!”
+
+His voice ebbs. Presently Lucy murmurs—
+
+“Your father, Richard.”
+
+“Yes, my father?”
+
+“Dearest Richard! I feel so afraid of him.”
+
+“He loves me, and will love you, Lucy.”
+
+“But I am so poor and humble, Richard.”
+
+“No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy.”
+
+“You think so, because you”—
+
+“What?”
+
+“Love me,” comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to dumb
+variations, performed equally in concert.
+
+It is resumed.
+
+“You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave as any of
+them.—My own bride! Oh, how I adore you! When you are gone, I could
+fall upon the grass you tread upon, and kiss it. My breast feels empty
+of my heart—Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a
+knight, and have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do nothing
+now. My lady-love! My lady-love!—A tear?—Lucy?”
+
+“Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady.”
+
+“Who dares say that? Not a lady—the angel I love!”
+
+“Think, Richard, who I am.”
+
+“My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has given you to me.”
+
+Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank
+her God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant in
+her pure beauty that the limbs of the young man tremble.
+
+“Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!”
+
+Tenderly her lips part—“I do not weep for sorrow.”
+
+The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul.
+
+They lean together—shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their
+thrilled cheeks and brows.
+
+He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it. She has seen little of
+mankind, but her soul tells her this one is different from others, and
+at the thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart
+will break—tears of boundless thanksgiving. And he, gazing on those
+soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace of her loose
+falling tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire streaming through
+his members.
+
+It is long ere they speak in open tones.
+
+“O happy day when we met!”
+
+What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.
+
+“O glorious heaven looking down on us!”
+
+Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending
+benediction.
+
+“O eternity of bliss!”
+
+Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.
+
+“Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some
+day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what
+you said in your letter that you dreamt?—that we were floating over the
+shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the
+cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best
+omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And you write such
+lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love the nuns for having
+taught you.”
+
+“Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!” she lifts up her face pleadingly, as
+to plead against herself, “even if your father forgives my birth, he
+will not my religion. And, dearest, though I would die for you I cannot
+change it. It would seem that I was denying God; and—oh! it would make
+me ashamed of my love.”
+
+“Fear nothing!” He winds her about with his arm. “Come! He will love us
+both, and love you the more for being faithful to your father’s creed.
+You don’t know him, Lucy. He seems harsh and stern—he is full of
+kindness and love. He isn’t at all a bigot. And besides, when he hears
+what the nuns have done for you, won’t he thank them, as I do? And—oh!
+I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared to see him soon, for
+I cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like a jewel in a sty. Mind!
+I’m not saying a word against your uncle. I declare I love everybody
+and everything that sees you and touches you. Stay! it is a wonder how
+you could have grown there. But you were not born there, and your
+father had good blood. Desborough!—here was a Colonel Desborough—never
+mind! Come!”
+
+She dreads to. She begs not to. She is drawn away.
+
+The woods are silent, and then—
+
+“What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?” says a very different
+voice.
+
+Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert. Lady
+Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through a
+vista of the lower greenwood which opened out upon the moon-lighted
+valley, her hands clasped round one knee, her features almost stern in
+their set hard expression.
+
+They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be
+heard in such positions, a luminous word or two.
+
+The lady did not answer. A movement among the ferns attracted Adrian,
+and he stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to behold heavy
+Benson below; shaking fern-seed and spidery substances off his crumpled
+skin.
+
+“Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?” called Benson, starting, as he puffed, and
+exercised his handkerchief.
+
+“Is it you, Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon these
+Mysteries?” Adrian called back, and coming close to him, added, “You
+look as if you had just been well thrashed.”
+
+“Isn’t it dreadful, sir?” snuffled Benson. “And his father in
+ignorance, Mr. Hadrian!”
+
+“He shall know, Benson! He shall know how, you have endangered your
+valuable skin in his service. If Mr. Richard had found you there just
+now I wouldn’t answer for the consequences.”
+
+“Ha!” Benson spitefully retorted. “This won’t go on; Mr. Hadrian. It
+shan’t, sir. It will be put a stop to tomorrow, sir. I call it
+corruption of a young gentleman like him, and harlotry, sir, I call it.
+I’d have every jade flogged that made a young innocent gentleman go on
+like that, sir.”
+
+“Then, why didn’t you stop it yourself, Benson? Ah, I see! you
+waited—what? This is not the first time you have been attendant on
+Apollo and Miss Dryope? You have written to headquarters?”
+
+“I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian.”
+
+The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed her of Benson’s
+zeal. The lady’s eyes flashed. “I hope Richard will treat him as he
+deserves,” she said.
+
+“Shall we home?” Adrian inquired.
+
+“Do me a favour;” the lady replied. “Get my carriage sent round to meet
+me at the park-gates.”
+
+“Won’t you?”—
+
+“I want to be alone.”
+
+Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her hands clasped
+round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley.
+
+“An odd creature!” muttered the wise youth. “She’s as odd as any of
+them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose she’s graduating for it.
+Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has had the impudence to
+steal a march on me!”
+
+The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was
+climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy, sang to him softly. She
+sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she
+had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. “Did
+I live?” he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic
+old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear them, seem to build
+up cathedral walls about you. The young man dropped the sculls. The
+strange solemn notes gave a religious tone to his love, and wafted him
+into the knightly ages and the reverential heart of chivalry.
+
+Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the
+moon stepping over and through white shoals of soft high clouds above
+and below: floating to her void—no other breath abroad! His soul went
+out of his body as he listened.
+
+They must part. He rows her gently shoreward.
+
+“I never was so happy as to-night,” she murmurs.
+
+“Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the lake. Look where
+you are to live.”
+
+“Which is your room, Richard?”
+
+He points it out to her.
+
+“O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you! I should ask
+nothing more. How happy she must be!”
+
+“My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all shall wait on you,
+and I foremost, Lucy.”
+
+“Dearest! may I hope for a letter?”
+
+“By eleven to-morrow. And I?”
+
+“Oh! you will have mine, Richard.”
+
+“Tom shall wait for it. A long one, mind! Did you like my last song?”
+
+She pats her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it
+rests. O love! O heaven!
+
+They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against
+the shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her ashore.
+
+“See!” she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides—“See!” and
+prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little, “the cypress does point
+towards us. O Richard! it does!”
+
+And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her
+arch grave ways—
+
+“Why, there’s hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She mustn’t dream, my
+darling! or dream only of me.”
+
+“Dearest! but I do.”
+
+“To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you at night. O happy
+to-morrow!”
+
+“You will be sure to be there, Richard?”
+
+“If I am not dead, Lucy.”
+
+“O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not survive you.”
+
+“Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die. Death or life,
+with you! Who is it yonder? I see some one—is it Tom? It’s Adrian!”
+
+“Is it Mr. Harley?” The fair girl shivered.
+
+“How dares he come here!” cried Richard.
+
+The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly circled the
+lake. They were stealing away when he called. His call was repeated.
+Lucy entreated Richard to go to him; but the young man preferred to
+summon his attendant, Tom, from within hail, and send him to know what
+was wanted.
+
+“Will he have seen me? Will he have known me?” whispered Lucy,
+tremulously.
+
+“And if he does, love?” said Richard.
+
+“Oh! if he does, dearest—I don’t know, but I feel such a presentiment.
+You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard. Is he good?”
+
+“Good?” Richard clutched her hand for the innocent maiden phrase. “He’s
+very fond of eating; that’s all I know of Adrian.”
+
+Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.
+
+“Well, Tom?”
+
+“Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir,” said Tom.
+
+“Do go to him, dearest! Do go!” Lucy begs him.
+
+“Oh, how I hate Adrian!” The young man grinds his teeth.
+
+“Do go!” Lucy urges him. “Tom—good Tom—will see me home. To-morrow,
+dear love! To-morrow!”
+
+“You wish to part from me?”
+
+“Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now. It may be news of
+importance, dearest. Think, Richard!”
+
+“Tom! go back!”
+
+At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off a dozen
+paces, and sees nothing. Then the precious charge is confided to him. A
+heart is cut in twain.
+
+Richard made his way to Adrian. “What is it you want with me, Adrian?”
+
+“Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?” was Adrian’s answer. “I
+want nothing with you, except to know whether you have seen Benson.”
+
+“Where should I see Benson? What do I know of Benson’s doings?”
+
+“Of course not—such a secret old fist as he is! I want some one to tell
+him to order Lady Blandish’s carriage to be sent round to the
+park-gates. I thought he might be round your way over there—I came upon
+him accidentally just now in Abbey-wood. What’s the matter, boy?”
+
+“You saw him there?”
+
+“Hunting Diana, I suppose. He thinks she’s not so chaste as they say,”
+continued Adrian. “Are you going to knock down that tree?”
+
+Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the tough wood.
+He left it and went to an ash.
+
+“You’ll spoil that weeper,” Adrian cried. “Down she comes! But
+good-night, Ricky. If you see Benson mind you tell him.”
+
+Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight on the white
+road while Adrian spoke. The wise youth chuckled and strolled round the
+lake, glancing over his shoulder every now and then.
+
+It was not long before he heard a bellow for help—the roar of a dragon
+in his throes. Adrian placidly sat down on the grass, and fixed his
+eyes on the water. There, as the roar was being repeated amid horrid
+resounding echoes, the wise youth mused in this wise—
+
+“‘The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,’ says The
+Pilgrim’s Scrip, or words to that effect. The heavens evidently love
+Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot. Master Ricky is
+a peppery young man. He gets it from the apt Gruffudh. I rather believe
+in race. What a noise that old ruffian makes! He’ll require poulticing
+with The Pilgrim’s Scrip. We shall have a message to-morrow, and a
+hubbub, and perhaps all go to town, which won’t be bad for one who’s
+been a prey to all the desires born of dulness. Benson howls: there’s
+life in the old dog yet! He bays the moon. Look at her. She doesn’t
+care. It’s the same to her whether we coo like turtle-doves or roar
+like twenty lions. How complacent she looks! And yet she has just as
+much sympathy for Benson as for Cupid. She would smile on if both were
+being birched. Was that a raven or Benson? He howls no more. It sounds
+guttural: frog-like—something between the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse
+raven’s croak. The fellow’ll be killing him. It’s time to go to the
+rescue. A deliverer gets more honour by coming in at the last gasp than
+if he forestalled catastrophe.—Ho, there, what’s the matter?”
+
+So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the scene of
+battle, where stood St. George puffing over the prostrate Dragon.
+
+“Holloa, Ricky! is it you?” said Adrian. “What’s this? Whom have we
+here?—Benson, as I live!”
+
+“Make this beast get up,” Richard returned, breathing hard, and shaking
+his great ash-branch.
+
+“He seems incapable, my dear boy. What have you been up to?—Benson!
+Benson!—I say, Ricky, this looks bad.”
+
+“He’s shamming!” Richard clamoured like a savage. “Spy upon me, will
+he? I tell you, he’s shamming. He hasn’t had half enough. Nothing’s too
+bad for a spy. Let him getup!”
+
+“Insatiate youth! do throw away that enormous weapon.”
+
+“He has written to my father,” Richard shouted. “The miserable spy! Let
+him get up!”
+
+“Ooogh? I won’t!” huskily groaned Benson. “Mr. Hadrian, you’re a
+witness—he’s my back!”—Cavernous noises took up the tale of his
+maltreatment.
+
+“I daresay you love your back better than any part of your body now,”
+Adrian muttered. “Come, Benson! be a man. Mr. Richard has thrown away
+the stick. Come, and get off home, and let’s see the extent of the
+damage.”
+
+“Ooogh! he’s a devil! Mr. Hadrian, sir, he’s a devil!” groaned Benson,
+turning half over in the road to ease his aches.
+
+Adrian caught hold of Benson’s collar and lifted him to a sitting
+posture. He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful pupil’s hand could
+do in wrath. The wretched butler’s coat was slit and welted; his hat
+knocked in; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and trembled if
+his pitiless executioner stirred a foot. Richard stood over him,
+grasping his great stick; no dawn of mercy for Benson in any corner of
+his features.
+
+Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and immediately
+gasped, “I won’t get up! I won’t! He’s ready to murder me again!—Mr.
+Hadrian! if you stand by and see it, you’re liable to the law, sir—I
+won’t get up while he’s near.” No persuasion could induce Benson to try
+his legs while his executioner stood by.
+
+Adrian took Richard aside: “You’ve almost killed the poor devil, Ricky.
+You must be satisfied with that. Look at his face.”
+
+“The coward bobbed while I struck” said Richard. “I marked his back. He
+ducked. I told him he was getting it worse.”
+
+At so civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his mouth wide.
+
+“Did you really? I admire that. You told him he was getting it worse?”
+
+Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of laughter out.
+
+“Come,” he said, “Excalibur has done his word. Pitch him into the lake.
+And see—here comes the Blandish. You can’t be at it again before a
+woman. Go and meet her, and tell her the noise was an ox being
+slaughtered. Or say Argus.”
+
+With a whirr that made all Benson’s bruises moan and quiver, the great
+ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung off to intercept Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Adrian got Benson on his feet. The heavy butler was disposed to summon
+all the commiseration he could feel for his bruised flesh. Every
+half-step he attempted was like a dislocation. His groans and grunts
+were frightful.
+
+“How much did that hat cost, Benson?” said Adrian, as he put it on his
+head.
+
+“A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!” Benson caressed its
+injuries.
+
+“The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have heard of!” said
+Adrian.
+
+Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter.
+
+“He’s a devil, Mr. Hadrian! He’s a devil, sir, I do believe, sir.
+Ooogh! he’s a devil!—I can’t move, Mr. Hadrian. I must be fetched. And
+Dr. Clifford must be sent for, sir. I shall never be fit for work
+again. I haven’t a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian.”
+
+“You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon Venus. I hope
+the maids will nurse you properly. Let me see: you are friends with the
+housekeeper, aren’t you? All depends upon that.”
+
+“I’m only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian,” the miserable butler
+snarled.
+
+“Then you’ve got no friend but your bed. Get to it as quick as
+possible, Benson.”
+
+“I can’t move.” Benson made a resolute halt. “I must be fetched,” he
+whinnied. “It’s a shame to ask me to move, Mr. Hadrian.”
+
+“You will admit that you are heavy, Benson,” said Adrian, “so I can’t
+carry you. However, I see Mr. Richard is very kindly returning to help
+me.”
+
+At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and shambled on.
+
+Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.
+
+“I have been horribly frightened,” she said. “Tell me, what was the
+meaning of those cries I heard?”
+
+“Only some one doing justice on a spy,” said Richard, and the lady
+smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand through his hair.
+
+“Was that all? I should have done it myself if I had been a man. Kiss
+me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+By twelve o’clock at noon next day the inhabitants of Raynham Abbey
+knew that Berry, the baronet’s man, had arrived post-haste from town,
+with orders to conduct Mr. Richard thither, and that Mr. Richard had
+refused to go, had sworn he would not, defied his father, and
+despatched Berry to the Shades. Berry was all that Benson was not.
+Whereas Benson hated woman, Berry admired her warmly. Second to his own
+stately person, woman occupied his reflections, and commanded his
+homage. Berry was of majestic port, and used dictionary words. Among
+the maids of Raynham his conscious calves produced all the discord and
+the frenzy those adornments seem destined to create in tender bosoms.
+He had, moreover, the reputation of having suffered for the sex; which
+assisted his object in inducing the sex to suffer for him. What with
+his calves, and his dictionary words, and the attractive halo of the
+mysterious vindictiveness of Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the
+lower household was a mighty man below, and he moved as one.
+
+On hearing the tumult that followed Berry’s arrival, Adrian sent for
+him, and was informed of the nature of his mission, and its result.
+
+“You should come to me first,” said Adrian. “I should have imagined you
+were shrewd enough for that, Berry?”
+
+“Pardon me, Mr. Adrian,” Berry doubled his elbow to explain. “Pardon
+me, sir. Acting recipient of special injunctions I was not a free
+agent.”
+
+“Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be a little confusion if he
+holds back. Perhaps you had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy.
+A slight hint will do. And here—Berry! when you return to town, you had
+better not mention anything—to quote Johnson—of Benson’s spiflication.”
+
+“Certainly not, sir.”
+
+The wise youth’s hint had the desired effect on Richard.
+
+He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and, mounting his
+horse, galloped to the Bellingham station.
+
+Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his hotel, when
+the Hope of Raynham burst into his room.
+
+The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary, for he was
+singularly just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he
+had been thinking all day after the receipt of Benson’s letter that he
+was deficient in cordiality, and did not, by reason of his excessive
+anxiety, make himself sufficiently his son’s companion: was not enough,
+as he strove to be, mother and father to him; preceptor and friend;
+previsor and associate. He had not to ask his conscience where he had
+lately been to blame towards the System. He had slunk away from Raynham
+in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this young woman of the
+parish (as Benson had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was the
+consequence.
+
+Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample
+on them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any
+time—doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it
+were. It gave him a strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth
+seemed to answer to it; he was excited. Was his love, then, beginning
+to correspond with his father’s as in those intimate days before the
+Blossoming Season?
+
+But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, “My
+dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared—You are better, sir? Thank
+God!” Sir Austin stood away from him.
+
+“Safe?” he said. “What has alarmed you?”
+
+Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand
+and kissed it.
+
+Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.
+
+“Those doctors are such fools!” Richard broke out. “I was sure they
+were wrong. They don’t know headache from apoplexy. It’s worth the
+ride, sir, to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.—But you are well!
+It was not an attack of real apoplexy?”
+
+His father’s brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard
+pursued:
+
+“If you were ill, I couldn’t come too soon, though, if coroners’
+inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of
+mare-slaughter. Cassandra’ll be knocked up. I was too early for the
+train at Bellingham, and I wouldn’t wait. She did the distance in four
+hours and three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn’t it?”
+
+“It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope,” said the baronet, not
+so well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had
+brought the youth to him in such haste.
+
+“I’m ready,” replied Richard. “I shall be in time to return by the last
+train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest.”
+
+His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with
+an eagerness that might pass for appetite.
+
+“All well at Raynham?” said the baronet.
+
+“Quite, sir.”
+
+“Nothing new?”
+
+“Nothing, sir.”
+
+“The same as when I left?”
+
+“No change whatever!”
+
+“I shall be glad to get back to the old place,” said the baronet. “My
+stay in town has certainly been profitable. I have made some pleasant
+acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late
+autumn—people you may be pleased to know. They are very anxious to see
+Raynham.”
+
+“I love the old place,” cried Richard. “I never wish to leave it.”
+
+“Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town.”
+
+“Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don’t want to remain here. I’ve seen
+enough of it.”
+
+“How did you find your way to me?”
+
+Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick,
+and the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, “There’s no place
+like home!”
+
+The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him
+with a double-dealing sentence—
+
+“To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the
+world, is youth’s foolishness, my son. Reverence time! A better maxim
+that than your Horatian.”
+
+“He knows all!” thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues from
+his father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.
+
+Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much
+briskness, “I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you come
+with me to the station?”
+
+The baronet did not answer.
+
+Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father’s eyes
+fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty
+glass.
+
+“I think we will have a little more claret,” said the baronet.
+
+Claret was brought, and they were left alone.
+
+The baronet then drew within arm’s-reach of his son, and began:
+
+“I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
+years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry
+to be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I
+should not have complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you
+thank me. Perhaps, as it is, I never may. Everything, save selfishness,
+has its recompense. I shall be content if you prosper.”
+
+He fetched a breath and continued: “You had in your infancy a great
+loss.” Father and son coloured simultaneously. “To make that good to
+you I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself
+entirely to your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me
+now that the son I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God’s
+creatures. But for that very reason you are open to be tempted the
+most, and to sink the deepest. It was the first of the angels who made
+the road to hell.”
+
+He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.
+
+“In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck very
+easily. It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried as
+most men are not. I see it in us all. And you, my son, are compounded
+of two races. Your passions are violent. You have had a taste of
+revenge. You have seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws
+rivers of blood. But there is now in you another power. You are
+mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic battles are changed to
+real ones. And you come upon it laden equally with force to create and
+to destroy.” He deliberated to announce the intelligence, with deep
+meaning: “There are women in the world, my son!”
+
+The young man’s heart galloped back to Raynham.
+
+“It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial. It is
+when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some
+find it, a gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of any human
+object is the soul’s ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not.”
+
+The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw the moon-lighted
+wood, and the vision of his beloved. He could barely hold himself down
+and listen.
+
+“I believe,” the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of
+belief, “good women exist.”
+
+Oh, if he knew Lucy!
+
+“But,” and he gazed on Richard intently, “it is given to very few to
+meet them on the threshold—I may say, to none. We find them after hard
+buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness
+has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are not the end,
+but the means, of life. In youth we think them the former, and
+thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select a mate—or
+worse—with that sole view. I believe women punish us for so perverting
+their uses. They punish Society.”
+
+The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into
+consequences.
+
+‘Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,’
+says The Pilgrim’s Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak
+with moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side
+of the case.
+
+Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.
+
+Cold Blood said, “It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the
+ripe fruit of our animal being.”
+
+Hot Blood felt: “It is a divinity! All that is worth living for in the
+world.”
+
+Cold Blood said: “It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often
+leads to perdition.”
+
+Hot Blood felt: “Lead whither it will, I follow it.”
+
+Cold Blood said: “It is a name men and women are much in the habit of
+employing to sanctify their appetites.”
+
+Hot Blood felt: “It is worship; religion; life!”
+
+And so the two parallel lines ran on.
+
+The baronet became more personal:
+
+“You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you cannot know;
+but you must know that it is something very deep, and—I do not wish to
+speak of it—but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude, since
+the only true expression of it is his son’s moral good. If you care for
+my love, or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep
+you what I have made you, and guard you from the snares besetting you.
+It was in my hands once. It is ceasing to be so. Remember, my son, what
+my love is. It is different, I fear, with most fathers: but I am bound
+up in your welfare: what you do affects me vitally. You will take no
+step that is not intimate with my happiness, or my misery. And I have
+had great disappointments, my son.”
+
+So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in his frenzied
+state he could not without emotion hear him thus speak.
+
+Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he
+was winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the
+dryness of his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young
+men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green,
+absolutely wanting to be—that most awful thing, which the wisest and
+strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification
+and penance—married! He sketched the Foolish Young Fellow—the object of
+general ridicule and covert contempt. He sketched the Woman—the strange
+thing made in our image, and with all our faculties—passing to the rule
+of one who in taking her proved that he could not rule himself, and had
+no knowledge of her save as a choice morsel which he would burn the
+whole world, and himself in the bargain, to possess. He harped upon the
+Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin
+tingle and was half suffocated with shame and rage.
+
+After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite
+undone his work. He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might
+accord to her her due position, and paint her fair: he might be shrewd,
+jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.
+
+Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: “Have you
+anything to tell me, Richard?” and hoping for a confession, and a
+thorough re-establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him
+cold: “I have not.”
+
+The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.
+
+Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window. In
+the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining
+faintly, feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods were lifting
+up to her: his star of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set
+about flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the
+woodland keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.
+
+A succession of hard sighs brought his father’s hand on his shoulder.
+
+“You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard!
+Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
+untruth!”
+
+“Nothing at all, sir,” the young man replied, meeting him with the full
+orbs of his eyes.
+
+The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.
+
+At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and
+he said: “Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return to
+Raynham at all to-night?”
+
+His father was again falsely jocular:
+
+“What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes’ start?”
+
+“Cassandra will take me,” said the young man earnestly. “I needn’t ride
+her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried? I should
+be down with him in little better than three hours.”
+
+“Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked.”
+
+“Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse, and
+would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?”
+
+The cloud cleared off Richard’s face as he asked. At least, if he
+missed his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same
+air, marking what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed
+night-talk of the trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances
+that were like hope half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as
+Hesper, since he knew her. There were two swallows under the eaves
+shadowing Lucy’s chamber-windows: two swallows, mates in one nest,
+blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-cheeped to the sole-lying
+beauty in her bed. Around these birds the lover’s heart revolved, he
+knew not why. He associated them with all his close-veiled dreams of
+happiness. Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave the
+nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness of dawn. It
+seemed to him now that if he could be at Raynham to see them in
+to-morrow’s dawn he would be compensated for his incalculable loss of
+to-night: he would forgive and love his father, London, the life, the
+world. Just to see those purple backs and white breasts flash out into
+the quiet morning air! He wanted no more.
+
+The baronet’s trifling had placed this enormous boon within the young
+man’s visionary grasp.
+
+He still went on trying the boy’s temper.
+
+“You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham. It is unfair
+to disturb the maids.”
+
+Richard overrode every objection.
+
+“Well, then, my son,” said the baronet, preserving his half-jocular
+air, “I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in town.”
+
+“Then you have not been ill at all, sir!” cried Richard, as in his
+despair he seized the whole plot.
+
+“I have been as well as you could have desired me to be,” said his
+father.
+
+“Why did they lie to me?” the young man wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+“I think, Richard, you can best answer that,” rejoined Sir Austin,
+kindly severe.
+
+Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented Richard
+from expostulating further. Sir Austin saw him grinding his passion
+into powder for future explosion, and thought it best to leave him for
+awhile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the teachings
+of the System in a new atmosphere. He had to sit and listen to men of
+science who came to renew their intimacy with his father, and whom of
+all men his father wished him to respect and study; practically
+scientific men being, in the baronet’s estimation, the only minds
+thoroughly mated and enviable. He had to endure an introduction to the
+Grandisons, and meet the eyes of his kind, haunted as he was by the
+Foolish Young Fellow. The idea that he might by any chance be
+identified with him held the poor youth in silent subjection. And it
+was horrible. For it was a continued outrage on the fair image he had
+in his heart. The notion of the world laughing at him because he loved
+sweet Lucy stung him to momentary frenzies, and developed premature
+misanthropy in his spirit. Also the System desired to show him whither
+young women of the parish lead us, and he was dragged about at
+nighttime to see the sons and daughters of darkness, after the fashion
+prescribed to Mr. Thompson; how they danced and ogled down the high
+road to perdition. But from this sight possibly the teacher learnt more
+than his pupil, since we find him seriously asking his meditative
+hours, in the Note-book: “Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one gender?”
+a question certainly not suggested to him at Raynham; and
+again—“Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an
+importance?”...to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for he gives
+it no other in the Note-book. But, as I apprehend, he had come to plead
+in behalf of women here, and had deduced something from positive
+observation. To Richard the scenes he witnessed were strange wild
+pictures, likely if anything to have increased his misanthropy, but for
+his love.
+
+Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the
+first two weeks of exile. They ceased; and now Richard fell into such
+despondency that his father in alarm had to take measures to hasten
+their return to Raynham. At the close of the third week Berry laid a
+pair of letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the breakfast-table,
+and, after reading one attentively, the baronet asked his son if he was
+inclined to quit the metropolis.
+
+“For Raynham, air?” cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, “As you will!”
+aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young Fellow.
+
+Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their
+instant return to Raynham.
+
+The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son’s wishes
+was a composition of the wise youth Adrian’s, and ran thus:
+
+“Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities. Happy
+when a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household! I quite agree
+with you that our faithful fool is the best servant of great schemes.
+Benson is now a piece of history. I tell him that this is indemnity
+enough, and that the sweet Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being
+half-flayed before she will condescend to notice them; but Benson, I
+regret to say, rejects the comfort so fine a reflection should offer,
+and had rather keep his skin and live opaque. Heroism seems partly a
+matter of training. Faithful folly is Benson’s nature: the rest has
+been thrust upon.
+
+“The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I had an interview
+with the fair Papist myself, and also with the man Blaize. They were
+both sensible, though one swore and the other sighed. She is pretty. I
+hope she does not paint. I can affirm that her legs are strong, for she
+walks to Bellingham twice a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having
+confessed and been made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back the
+brisker, of which my Protestant muscular system is yet aware. It was on
+the road to Bellingham I engaged her. She is well in the matter of
+hair. Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a fair match. Has
+it never struck you that Woman is nearer the vegetable than Man?—Mr.
+Blaize intends her for his son a junction that every lover of fairy
+mythology must desire to see consummated. Young Tom is heir to all the
+agremens of the Beast. The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a
+very Proculus among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the
+maids. Beauty does not speak bad grammar—and altogether she is better
+out of the way.”
+
+The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady’s letter, and said:
+
+“I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability, and
+heartily sad it has made me. She is indeed very much above her
+station—pity that it is so! She is almost beautiful—quite beautiful at
+times, and not in any way what you have been led to fancy. The poor
+child had no story to tell. I have again seen her, and talked with her
+for an hour as kindly as I could. I could gather nothing more than we
+know. It is just a woman’s history as it invariably commences. Richard
+is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce him, and sacrifice
+herself for his sake. Are we so bad? She asked me what she was to do.
+She would do whatever was imposed upon her—all but pretend to love
+another, and that she never would, and, I believe, never will. You know
+I am sentimental, and I confess we dropped a few tears together. Her
+uncle has sent her for the Winter to the institution where it appears
+she was educated, and where they are very fond of her and want to keep
+her, which it would be a good thing if they were to do. The man is a
+good sort of man. She was entrusted to him by her father, and he never
+interferes with her religion, and is very scrupulous about all that
+pertains to it, though, as he says, he is a Christian himself. In the
+Spring (but the poor child does not know this) she is to come back, and
+be married to his lout of a son. I am determined to prevent that. May I
+not reckon on your promise to aid me? When you see her, I am sure you
+will. It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing. You
+know, they are cousins. She asked me, where in the world there was one
+like Richard? What could I answer? They were your own words, and spoken
+with a depth of conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to
+think of him when he comes, and discovers what I have been doing. I
+hope I have been really doing right! A good deed, you say, never dies;
+but we cannot always know—I must rely on you. Yes, it is; I should
+think, easy to suffer martyrdom when one is sure of one’s cause! but
+then one must be sure of it. I have done nothing lately but to repeat
+to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C. 7, P.S.; and it has consoled
+me, I cannot say why, except that all wisdom consoles, whether it
+applies directly or not:
+
+“‘For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to Him; that
+they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength.’
+
+
+“I like to know of what you are thinking when you composed this or that
+saying—what suggested it. May not one be admitted to inspect the
+machinery of wisdom? I feel curious to know how thoughts—real
+thoughts—are born. Not that I hope to win the secret. Here is the
+beginning of one (but we poor women can never put together even two of
+the three ideas which you say go to form a thought): ‘When a wise man
+makes a false step, will he not go farther than a fool?’ It has just
+flitted through me.
+
+“I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence the
+readings. I dislike the sneering essence of his writings. I keep
+referring to his face, until the dislike seems to become personal. How
+different is it with Wordsworth! And yet I cannot escape from the
+thought that he is always solemnly thinking of himself (but I do
+reverence him). But this is curious; Byron was a greater egoist, and
+yet I do not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a beast of the
+desert, savage and beautiful; and the former is what one would imagine
+a superior donkey reclaimed from the heathen to be—a very superior
+donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great natural
+complacency, and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his
+mission. The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a
+superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I
+love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater power over me. How
+is that?”
+
+(“Because,” Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil, “women are
+cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their
+hearts to Excellence and Nature’s Inspiration.”)
+
+The letter pursued:
+
+“I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter offends
+me. I suppose we women do not really care for humour. You are right in
+saying we have none ourselves, and ‘cackle’ instead of laugh. It is
+true (of me, at least) that ‘Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat
+man.’ I want to know what he illustrates. And Don Quixote—what end can
+be served in making a noble mind ridiculous?—I hear you say—practical.
+So it is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like wit—practical again!
+Or in your words (when I really think they generally come to my
+aid—perhaps it is that it is often all your thought); we ‘prefer the
+rapier thrust, to the broad embrace, of Intelligence.’”
+
+
+He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as
+he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There
+are ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which
+come to us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot
+fasten on the filmy things and make them visible and distinct to
+ourselves, much less to others. Why did he twice throw a look into the
+glass in the act of passing it? He stood for a moment with head erect
+facing it. His eyes for the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer
+features; the grey gathered brows, and the wrinkles much action of them
+had traced over the circles half up his high straight forehead; the
+iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell away in the fashion
+of Richard’s plume. His general appearance showed the tints of years;
+but none of their weight, and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was
+gone. It was so far satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who
+looks at his essential self through the mask we wear.
+
+Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he
+presented to the lady’s discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had
+not a suspicion. But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women
+can, when it pleases them, and when their feelings are not quite
+boiling under the noonday sun, seize all the sides of a character, and
+put their fingers on its weak point. He was cognizant of the total
+absence of the humorous in himself (the want that most shut him out
+from his fellows), and perhaps the clear-thoughted, intensely
+self-examining gentleman filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the
+poet, she gazes on as one of the superior—grey beasts!
+
+He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that
+great-mindedness, and could snatch at times very luminous glances at
+the broad reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow
+compass holds up for us to see ourselves in when we will. Unhappily,
+the faculty of laughter, which is due to this gift, was denied him; and
+having seen, he, like the companion of friend Balsam, could go no
+farther. For a good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the
+blight of self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had given a
+healthier view of our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
+
+Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain and
+brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to feel
+infallible, as a man with a System should feel; and because he could
+not do so, after much mental conflict, he descended to entertain a
+personal antagonism to the young woman who had stepped in between his
+experiment and success. He did not think kindly of her. Lady Blandish’s
+encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed him. Forgetful that
+he had in a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common
+ground of fathers, and demanded, “Why he was not justified in doing all
+that lay in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon
+the first creature with a pretty face he encountered?” Deliberating
+thus, he lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment—the
+living, burning youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took
+a rigorous tone. It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that
+the uncle of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent
+scheme of marrying her to his son, should not only not be thwarted in
+his object but encouraged and even assisted. At least, not thwarted.
+Sir Austin had no glass before him while these ideas hardened in his
+mind, and he had rather forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.
+
+Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too
+preoccupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling
+the hollows of the country. Over the pine-hills beyond the station a
+last rosy streak lingered across a green sky. Richard eyed it while
+they flew along. It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of
+his love, and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids. The sad
+beauty of that one spot in the heavens seemed to call out to his soul
+to swear to his Lucy’s truth to him: was like the sorrowful visage of
+his fleur-de-luce as he called her, appealing to him for faith. That
+tremulous tender way she had of half-closing and catching light on the
+nether-lids, when sometimes she looked up in her lover’s face—a look so
+mystic-sweet that it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he saw
+it yonder, and his blood thrilled.
+
+Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our
+grosser being melts; and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking,
+stand etherealized, trembling with new joy? They come but rarely;
+rarely even in love, when we fondly think them revelations. Mere
+sensations they are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the
+spiritual scale than so many translucent glorious polypi that quiver on
+the shores, the hues of heaven running through them. Yet in the harvest
+of our days it is something for the animal to have had such mere
+fleshly polypian experiences to look back upon, and they give him an
+horizon—pale seas of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they
+do not bound him) may find the Isles of Bliss sooner than another.
+Sensual faith in the upper glories is something. “Let us remember,”
+says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, “that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at
+her best to the footstool of the Highest. She is not all dust, but a
+living portion of the spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise
+her, forgetting that through Nature only can we ascend. Cherished,
+trained, and purified, she is then partly worthy the divine mate who is
+to make her wholly so. St. Simeon saw the Hog in Nature, and took
+Nature for the Hog.”
+
+It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young
+man, he knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings vanished.
+The soft wand touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken
+openly, Richard might have fallen upon his heart. He could not.
+
+He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue
+his System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the
+creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and
+vindictive as jealousy of woman.
+
+Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about
+the Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the
+train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the
+chest. Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master,
+he went into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had
+received private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his
+young master’s mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of firs
+unenclosed on the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his
+retainer’s zest for conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the
+part most favoured with shelter and concealment, found him furtively
+whiffing tobacco.
+
+“What news, Tom? Is there an illness?”
+
+Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
+agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract
+thought or sudden difficulty.
+
+“No, I don’t want the rake, Mr. Richard,” he whinnied with a false
+grin, as he beheld his master’s eye vacantly following the action.
+
+“Speak out!” he was commanded. “I haven’t had a letter for a week!”
+
+Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only
+getting a little closer to Cassandra’s neck, and looking very hard at
+Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of
+making him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once
+rather than fix him in that owl-like way.
+
+“Go on!” said Richard, huskily. “Yes? She’s gone! Well?”
+
+Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
+recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the
+name of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never
+slept a wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her
+bed till morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained.
+Hereat the tears unconsciously streamed down Richard’s cheeks. Tom said
+he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at
+a terrible sum—that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please
+his young master on his return. “Likewise something in Lat’n,” added
+Tom. “Nom’tive Mouser!—’nough to make ye mad, sir!” he exclaimed with
+pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.
+
+Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
+sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
+along with young Tom Blaize. “She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,”
+said Tom, “and cryin’ don’t spoil them.” For which his hand was
+wrenched.
+
+Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young
+lady had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as
+much as to say, Good-bye, Tom! “And though she couldn’t see me,” said
+Tom, “I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a
+chap like me.” He was at high-pressure sentiment—what with his
+education for a hero and his master’s love-stricken state.
+
+“You saw no more of her, Tom?”
+
+“No, sir. That was the last!”
+
+“That was the last you saw of her, Tom?”
+
+“Well, sir, I saw nothin’ more.”
+
+“And so she went out of sight!”
+
+“Clean gone, that she were, sir.”
+
+“Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have
+they taken her to?”
+
+These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven
+rather than to Tom.
+
+“Why didn’t she write?” they were resumed. “Why did she leave? She’s
+mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her away? Why did she leave
+without writing?—Tom!”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to the
+word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the change
+of tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again,
+“Where have they taken her to?” and this was even more perplexing to
+Tom than his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down
+the corners of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
+
+“She had been crying—you saw that, Tom?”
+
+“No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin’ all night and all day, I
+sh’d say.”
+
+“And she was crying when you saw her?”
+
+“She look’d as if she’d just done for a moment, sir.”
+
+“But her face was white?”
+
+“White as a sheet.”
+
+Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view
+from these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the same
+bars, fly as he might. Her tears were the stars in his black night. He
+clung to them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were at
+least pledges of love.
+
+The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the
+steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn. He mounted
+Cassandra, saying: “Tell them something, Tom. I shan’t be home to
+dinner,” and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe,
+whereat he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as
+he advanced. His jewel was stolen,—he must gaze upon the empty box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded, grass-bordered
+lane leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe. The pale eye of twilight
+was shut. The wind had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was
+now flying broad and unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy—the
+charioted South-west at full charge behind his panting coursers. As he
+neared the farm his heart fluttered and leapt up. He was sure she must
+be there. She must have returned. Why should she have left for good
+without writing? He caught suspicion by the throat, making it
+voiceless, if it lived: he silenced reason. Her not writing was now a
+proof that she had returned. He listened to nothing but his imperious
+passion, and murmured sweet words for her, as if she were by: tender
+cherishing epithets of love in the nest. She was there—she moved
+somewhere about like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her
+sweet household duties. His blood began to sing: O happy those within,
+to see her, and be about her! By some extraordinary process he
+contrived to cast a sort of glory round the burly person of Farmer
+Blaize himself. And oh! to have companionship with a seraph one must
+know a seraph’s bliss, and was not young Tom to be envied? The smell of
+late clematis brought on the wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain,
+and threw a light over the old red-brick house, for he remembered where
+it grew, and the winter rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the
+passion-flower: the garden in front with the standard roses tended by
+her hands; the long wall to the left striped by the branches of the
+cherry, the peep of a further garden through the wall, and then the
+orchard, and the fields beyond—the happy circle of her dwelling! it
+flashed before his eyes while he looked on the darkness. And yet it was
+the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired the momentary
+calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully
+building up on a groundless basis. “For the tenacity of true passion is
+terrible,” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip: “it will stand against the hosts
+of heaven, God’s great array of Facts, rather than surrender its aim,
+and must be crushed before it will succumb—sent to the lowest pit!” He
+knew she was not there; she was gone. But the power of a will strained
+to madness fought at it, kept it down, conjured forth her ghost, and
+would have it as he dictated. Poor youth! the great array of facts was
+in due order of march.
+
+He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud; almost a cry
+for her escaped him. He had not noticed the opening of a door and the
+noise of a foot along the gravel walk. He was leaning over Cassandra’s
+uneasy neck watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed
+him out of the darkness.
+
+“Be that you, young gentleman?—Mr. Fev’rel?”
+
+Richard’s trance was broken. “Mr. Blaize!” he said; recognizing the
+farmer’s voice.
+
+“Good even’n t’ you, sir,” returned the farmer. “I knew the mare though
+I didn’t know you. Rather bluff to-night it be. Will ye step in, Mr.
+Fev’rel? it’s beginning’ to spit,—going to be a wildish night, I
+reckon.”
+
+Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare,
+and ushered the young man in. Once there, Richard’s conjurations
+ceased. There was a deadness about the rooms and passages that told of
+her absence. The walls he touched—these were the vacant shells of her.
+He had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what strange
+sweetness, and what pangs!
+
+Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in
+open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a
+summer month which had elapsed during his mother’s minority. Young Tom
+was respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of the
+polite work. He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of
+wonder.
+
+“What, Tom!” the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door;
+“there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye? What good’ll them fashens do
+to you, I’d like t’know? Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr. Fev’rel’s
+mare. He’s al’ays at that ther’ Folly now. I say there never were a
+better name for a book than that ther’ Folly! Talk about attitudes!”
+
+The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor
+to do likewise.
+
+“It’s a comfort they’re most on ’em females,” he pursued, sounding a
+thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat. “It
+don’t matter much what they does, except pinchin’ in—waspin’ it at the
+waist. Give me nature, I say—woman as she’s made! eh, young gentleman?”
+
+“You seem very lonely here,” said Richard, glancing round, and at the
+ceiling.
+
+“Lonely?” quoth the farmer. “Well, for the matter o’ that, we be!—jest
+now, so’t happens; I’ve got my pipe, and Tom’ve got his Folly. He’s on
+one side the table, and I’m on t’other. He gapes, and I gazes. We are a
+bit lonesome. But there—it’s for the best!”
+
+Richard resumed, “I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr. Blaize.”
+
+“Y’acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour
+for it!” said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.
+
+The thing implied by the farmer’s words caused Richard to take a quick
+breath. They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer
+thrumming on the arm of his chair.
+
+Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures
+of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation, trying
+their best not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an
+encouraging smile through plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably
+executed half-figure of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a
+telescope under his left arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their
+kith and kin. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his bearing that of a
+man who knows how to carry his head and shoulders. The artist, while
+giving him an epaulette to indicate his rank, had also recorded the
+juvenility which a lieutenant in the naval service can retain after
+arriving at that position, by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh
+ruddy lips. To this portrait Richard’s eyes were directed. Farmer
+Blaize observed it, and said—
+
+“Her father, sir!”
+
+Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.
+
+“Yes,” said the farmer, “pretty well. Next best to havin’ her, though
+it’s a long way off that!”
+
+“An old family, Mr. Blaize—is it not?” Richard asked in as careless a
+tone as he could assume.
+
+“Gentlefolks—what’s left of ’em,” replied the farmer with an equally
+affected indifference.
+
+“And that’s her father?” said Richard, growing bolder to speak of her.
+
+“That’s her father, young gentleman!”
+
+“Mr. Blaize,” Richard turned to face him, and burst out, “where is
+she?”
+
+“Gone, sir! packed off!—Can’t have her here now.” The farmer thrummed a
+step brisker, and eyed the young man’s wild face resolutely.
+
+“Mr. Blaize,” Richard leaned forward to get closer to him. He was
+stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: “Where has
+she gone? Why did she leave?”
+
+“You needn’t to ask, sir—ye know,” said the farmer, with a side shot of
+his head.
+
+“But she did not—it was not her wish to go?”
+
+“No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes’t too well!”
+
+“Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?”
+
+The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her unhappy.
+“Nobody can’t accuse me. Tell ye what, sir. I wunt have the busybodies
+set to work about her, and there’s all the matter. So let you and I
+come to an understandin’.”
+
+A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright. He forgot
+it the next minute, and said humbly: “Am I the cause of her going?”
+
+“Well!” returned the farmer, “to speak straight—ye be!”
+
+“What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again” the young
+hypocrite asked.
+
+“Now,” said the farmer, “you’re coming to business. Glad to hear ye
+talk in that sensible way, Mr. Feverel. You may guess I wants her bad
+enough. The house ain’t itself now she’s away, and I ain’t myself.
+Well, sir! This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not to meddle
+with her at all—I can’t mak’ out how you come to be acquainted; not to
+try to get her to be meetin’ you—and if you’d ’a seen her when she
+left, you would—when did ye meet?—last grass, wasn’t it?—your word as a
+gentleman not to be writing letters, and spyin’ after her—I’ll have her
+back at once. Back she shall come!”
+
+“Give her up!” cried Richard.
+
+“Ay, that’s it!” said the farmer. “Give her up.”
+
+The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.
+
+“You sent her away to protect her from me, then?” he said savagely.
+
+“That’s not quite it, but that’ll do,” rejoined the farmer.
+
+“Do you think I shall harm her, sir?”
+
+“People seem to think she’ll harm you, young gentleman,” the farmer
+said with some irony.
+
+“Harm me—she? What people?”
+
+“People pretty intimate with you, sir.”
+
+“What people? Who spoke of us?” Richard began to scent a plot, and
+would not be balked.
+
+“Well, sir, look here,” said the farmer. “It ain’t no secret, and if it
+be, I don’t see why I’m to keep it. It appears your education’s
+peculiar!” The farmer drawled out the word as if he were describing the
+figure of a snake. “You ain’t to be as other young gentlemen. All the
+better! You’re a fine bold young gentleman, and your father’s a right
+to be proud of ye. Well, sir—I’m sure I thank him for’t he comes to
+hear of you and Luce, and of course he don’t want nothin’ o’ that—more
+do I. I meets him there! What’s more I won’t have nothin’ of it. She be
+my gal. She were left to my protection. And she’s a lady, sir. Let me
+tell ye, ye won’t find many on ’em so well looked to as she be—my Luce!
+Well, Mr. Fev’rel, it’s you, or it’s her—one of ye must be out o’ the
+way. So we’re told. And Luce—I do believe she’s just as anxious about
+yer education as yer father—she says she’ll go, and wouldn’t write,
+and’d break it off for the sake o’ your education. And she’ve kep’ her
+word, haven’t she?—She’s a true’n. What she says she’ll do!—True blue
+she be, my Luce! So now, sir, you do the same, and I’ll thank ye.”
+
+Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it
+gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the mind
+of the lover as he listened to this speech.
+
+His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep. “Mr.
+Blaize,” he said, “this is very kind of the people you allude to, but I
+am of an age now to think and act for myself—I love her, sir!” His
+whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face quivered.
+
+“Well!” said the farmer, appeasingly, “we all do at your age—somebody
+or other. It’s natural!”
+
+“I love her!” the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by his
+passion to have a sense of shame in the confession. “Farmer!” his voice
+fell to supplication, “will you bring her back?”
+
+Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked—what for? and where was the
+promise required?—But was not the lover’s argument conclusive? He said
+he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not in
+consequence immediately send for her, that they might be together. All
+very well, quoth the farmer, but what’s to come of it?—What was to come
+of it? Why, love, and more love! And a bit too much! the farmer added
+grimly.
+
+“Then you refuse me, farmer,” said Richard. “I must look to you for
+keeping her away from me, not to—to—these people. You will not have her
+back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?”
+
+Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an
+objection of his own. And it was, that her character was at stake, and
+God knew whether she herself might not be in danger. He spoke with a
+kindly candour, not without dignity. He complimented Richard
+personally, but young people were young people; baronets’ sons were not
+in the habit of marrying farmers’ nieces.
+
+At first the son of a System did not comprehend him. When he did, he
+said: “Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for heaven,
+to marry her when I am of age, will you have her back?”
+
+He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head
+doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly.
+Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these
+signs, and observed: “It’s not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?”
+
+The farmer signified it was not that.
+
+“It’s because my father is against me,” Richard went on, and undertook
+to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely
+and for ever resist his son’s inclinations. Argument being a cool field
+where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the
+tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He drew pictures of Lucy, of
+her truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death, from death to
+life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent. Perhaps he did move
+the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so
+visible a sacrifice of his pride.
+
+Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he
+must have.
+
+The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth
+botheration. “May smoke heer now,” he said. “Not when—somebody’s
+present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don’t mind smell?”
+
+Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and
+lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
+
+“Who’d a’ thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin’ to
+this?” ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco.
+“You didn’t think much of her that day, young gentleman! I introduced
+ye. Well! things comes about. Can’t you wait till she returns in due
+course, now?”
+
+This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another
+torrent.
+
+“It’s queer,” said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his
+wrinkled-up temples.
+
+Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as
+no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and
+staring at Richard an instant:
+
+“Look, young gentleman! My word’s gone. I’ve spoke it. I’ve given ’em
+the ’surance she shan’t be back till the Spring, and then I’ll have
+her, and then—well! I do hope, for more reasons than one, ye’ll both be
+wiser—I’ve got my own notions about her. But I an’t the man to force a
+gal to marry ’gainst her inclines. Depend upon it I’m not your enemy,
+Mr. Fev’rel. You’re jest the one to mak’ a young gal proud. So
+wait,—and see. That’s my ’dvice. Jest tak’ and wait. I’ve no more to
+say.”
+
+Richard’s impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his
+notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they
+were serious.
+
+The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with “Wait
+till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!” dinning despair in his ears,
+stood up to depart. Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly
+way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions
+to his Folly, did not appear. A maid rushed by Richard in the passage,
+and slipped something into his grasp, which fixed on it without further
+consciousness than that of touch. The mare was led forth by the Bantam.
+A light rain was falling down strong warm gusts, and the trees were
+noisy in the night. Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give
+him his hand, and say all was well. He liked the young man for his
+earnestness and honest outspeaking. Richard could not say all was well,
+but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer’s in a sharp
+squeeze, when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
+
+A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing
+grey image on the waters of the Abbey-lake. Before sunrise Tom Bakewell
+was abroad, and met the missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra
+leisurely along the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at.
+Cassandra’s flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped: all that was
+in her had been taken out by that wild night. On what heaths and heavy
+fallows had she not spent her noble strength, recklessly fretting
+through the darkness!
+
+“Take the mare,” said Richard, dismounting and patting her between the
+eyes. “She’s done up, poor old gal! Look to her, Tom, and then come to
+me in my room.”
+
+Tom asked no questions.
+
+Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard’s birth, and though
+Tom was close, the condition of the mare, and the young gentleman’s
+strange freak in riding her out all night becoming known, prepared
+everybody at Raynham for the usual bad-luck birthday, the prophets of
+which were full of sad gratification. Sir Austin had an unpleasant
+office to require of his son; no other than that of humbly begging
+Benson’s pardon, and washing out the undue blood he had spilt in taking
+his Pound of Flesh. Heavy Benson was told to anticipate the demand for
+pardon, and practised in his mind the most melancholy Christian
+deportment he could assume on the occasion. But while his son was in
+this state, Sir Austin considered that he would hardly be brought to
+see the virtues of the act, and did not make the requisition of him,
+and heavy Benson remained drawn up solemnly expectant at doorways, and
+at the foot of the staircase, a Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get
+a step in advance of the young man, while Richard heedlessly passed
+him, as he passed everybody else, his head bent to the ground, and his
+legs bearing him like random instruments of whose service he was
+unconscious. It was a shock to Benson’s implicit belief in his patron;
+and he was not consoled by the philosophic explanation, “That Good in a
+strong many-compounded nature is of slower growth than any other mortal
+thing, and must not be forced.” Damnatory doctrines best pleased
+Benson. He was ready to pardon, as a Christian should, but he did want
+his enemy before him on his knees. And now, though the Saurian Eye saw
+more than all the other eyes in the house, and saw that there was
+matter in hand between Tom and his master to breed exceeding
+discomposure to the System, Benson, as he had not received his
+indemnity, and did not wish to encounter fresh perils for nothing, held
+his peace.
+
+Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast of his son,
+without conceiving the depths of distrust his son cherished or quite
+measuring the intensity of the passion that consumed him. He was very
+kind and tender with him. Like a cunning physician who has,
+nevertheless, overlooked the change in the disease superinduced by one
+false dose, he meditated his prescriptions carefully and confidently,
+sure that he knew the case, and was a match for it. He decreed that
+Richard’s erratic behaviour should pass unnoticed. Two days before the
+birthday, he asked him whether he would object to having company? To
+which Richard said: “Have whom you will, sir.” The preparation for
+festivity commenced accordingly.
+
+On the birthday eve he dined with the rest. Lady Blandish was there,
+and sat penitently at his right. Hippias prognosticated certain
+indigestion for himself on the morrow. The Eighteenth Century wondered
+whether she should live to see another birthday. Adrian drank the
+two-years’ distant term of his tutorship, and Algernon went over the
+list of the Lobourne men who would cope with Bursley on the morrow. Sir
+Austin gave ear and a word to all, keeping his mental eye for his son.
+To please Lady Blandish also, Adrian ventured to make trifling jokes
+about London’s Mrs. Grandison; jokes delicately not decent, but so
+delicately so, that it was not decent to perceive it.
+
+After dinner Richard left them. Nothing more than commonly peculiar was
+observed about him, beyond the excessive glitter of his eyes, but the
+baronet said, “Yes, yes! that will pass.” He and Adrian, and Lady
+Blandish, took tea in the library, and sat till a late hour discussing
+casuistries relating mostly to the Apple-disease. Converse very amusing
+to the wise youth, who could suggest to the two chaste minds situations
+of the shadiest character, with the air of a seeker after truth, and
+lead them, unsuspecting, where they dared not look about them. The
+Aphorist had elated the heart of his constant fair worshipper with a
+newly rounded if not newly conceived sentence, when they became aware
+that they were four. Heavy Benson stood among them. He said he had
+knocked, but received no answer. There was, however, a vestige of
+surprise and dissatisfaction on his face beholding Adrian of the
+company, which had not quite worn away, and gave place, when it did
+vanish, to an aspect of flabby severity.
+
+“Well, Benson? well?” said the baronet.
+
+The unmoving man replied: “If you please, Sir Austin—Mr. Richard!”
+
+“Well!”
+
+“He’s out!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“With Bakewell!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And a carpet-bag!”
+
+The carpet-bag might be supposed to contain that funny thing called a
+young hero’s romance in the making.
+
+Out Richard was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell carried. He
+was on the road to Bellingham, under heavy rain, hasting like an
+escaped captive, wild with joy, while Tom shook his skin, and grunted
+at his discomforts. The mail train was to be caught at Bellingham. He
+knew where to find her now, through the intervention of Miss Davenport,
+and thither he was flying, an arrow loosed from the bow: thither, in
+spite of fathers and friends and plotters, to claim her, and take her,
+and stand with her against the world.
+
+They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham, and Tom’s
+visions were of hot drinks. He hinted the necessity for inward
+consolation to his master, who could answer nothing but “Tom! Tom! I
+shall see her tomorrow!” It was bad—travelling in the wet, Tom hinted
+again, to provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and
+furiously shaken into the bargain. Passing the principal inn of the
+place, Tom spoke plainly for brandy.
+
+“No!” cried Richard, “there’s not a moment to be lost!” and as he said
+it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering indistinctly of
+faintness, and that there was no time to lose. Tom lifted him in his
+arms, and got admission to the inn. Brandy, the country’s specific, was
+advised by host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving him
+sufficiently to cry out, “Tom! the bell’s ringing: we shall be late,”
+after which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they had
+stretched him. Excitement of blood and brain had done its work upon
+him. The youth suffered them to undress him and put him to bed, and
+there he lay, forgetful even of love; a drowned weed borne onward by
+the tide of the hours. There his father found him.
+
+Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful? He had looked forward to such a
+crisis as that point in the disease his son was the victim of, when the
+body would fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing
+very well that the seeds of the evil were not of the spirit. Moreover,
+to see him and have him was a repose after the alarm Benson had
+sounded. “Mark!” he said to Lady Blandish, “when he recovers he will
+not care for her.”
+
+The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of
+Richard’s seizure.
+
+“What an iron man you can be,” she exclaimed, smothering her
+intuitions. She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at
+least, if he would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he
+once was.
+
+“Can you look on him,” she pleaded, “can you look on him and
+persevere?”
+
+It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply. The youth
+lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his
+cheeks, and altered eyes.
+
+Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with
+head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient
+arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The
+old doctor did admit that Richard’s constitution was admirable, and
+answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. “But,” he
+said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood
+with the young man, “drugs are not much in cases of this sort. Change!
+That’s what’s wanted, and as soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to
+see the world, and know what he is made of. It’s no use my talking, I
+know,” added the doctor.
+
+“On the contrary,” said Sir Austin, “I am quite of your persuasion. And
+the world he shall see—now.”
+
+“We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor,” Adrian remarked.
+
+“But, doctor,” said Lady Blandish, “have you known a case of this sort
+before.”
+
+“Never, my lady,” said the doctor, “they’re not common in these parts.
+Country people are tolerably healthy-minded.”
+
+“But people—and country people—have died for love, doctor?”
+
+The doctor had not met any of them.
+
+“Men, or women?” inquired the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish believed mostly women.
+
+“Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded women,” said the
+baronet. “No! you are both looking at the wrong end. Between a
+highly-cultured being, and an emotionless animal, there is all the
+difference in the world. But of the two, the doctor is nearer the
+truth. The healthy nature is pretty safe. If he allowed for
+organization he would be right altogether. To feel, but not to feel to
+excess, that is the problem.”
+
+“If I can’t have the one I chose,
+To some fresh maid I will propose,”
+
+
+Adrian hummed a country ballad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+When the young Experiment again knew the hours that rolled him onward,
+he was in his own room at Raynham. Nothing had changed: only a strong
+fist had knocked him down and stunned him, and he opened his eyes to a
+grey world: he had forgotten what he lived for. He was weak and thin,
+and with a pale memory of things. His functions were the same,
+everything surrounding him was the same: he looked upon the old blue
+hills, the far-lying fallows, the river, and the woods: he knew them,
+they seemed to have lost recollection of him. Nor could he find in
+familiar human faces the secret of intimacy of heretofore. They were
+the same faces: they nodded and smiled to him. What was lost he could
+not tell. Something had been knocked out of him! He was sensible of his
+father’s sweetness of manner, and he was grieved that he could not
+reply to it, for every sense of shame and reproach had strangely gone.
+He felt very useless. In place of the fiery love for one, he now bore
+about a cold charity to all.
+
+Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose, and while
+it died another heart was pushing forth the Primrose of Autumn.
+
+The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her admirer, now
+positively proved, were exciting matters to Lady Blandish. She was
+rebuked for certain little rebellious fancies concerning him that had
+come across her enslaved mind from time to time. For was he not almost
+a prophet? It distressed the sentimental lady that a love like
+Richard’s could pass off in mere smoke, and words such as she had heard
+him speak in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness. Nay, it humiliated her
+personally, and the baronet’s shrewd prognostication humiliated her.
+For how should he know, and dare to say, that love was a thing of the
+dust that could be trodden out under the heel of science? But he had
+said so; and he had proved himself right. She heard with wonderment
+that Richard of his own accord had spoken to his father of the folly he
+had been guilty of, and had begged his pardon. The baronet told her
+this, adding that the youth had done it in a cold unwavering way,
+without a movement of his features: had evidently done it to throw off
+the burden of the duty, he had conceived. He had thought himself bound
+to acknowledge that he had been the Foolish Young Fellow, wishing,
+possibly, to abjure the fact by an set of penance. He had also given
+satisfaction to Benson, and was become a renovated peaceful spirit,
+whose main object appeared to be to get up his physical strength by
+exercise and no expenditure of speech.
+
+In her company he was composed and courteous; even when they were alone
+together, he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy. Sober he seemed, as
+one who has recovered from a drunkenness and has determined to drink no
+more. The idea struck her that he might be playing a part, but Tom
+Bakewell, in a private conversation they had, informed her that he had
+received an order from his young master, one day while boxing with him,
+not to mention the young lady’s name to him as long as he lived; and
+Tom could only suppose that she had offended him. Theoretically wise
+Lady Blandish had always thought the baronet; she was unprepared to
+find him thus practically sagacious. She fell many degrees; she wanted
+something to cling to; so she clung to the man who struck her low.
+Love, then, was earthly; its depth could be probed by science! A man
+lived who could measure it from end to end; foretell its term; handle
+the young cherub as were he a shot owl! We who have flown into
+cousinship with the empyrean, and disported among immortal hosts, our
+base birth as a child of Time is made bare to us!—our wings are cut!
+Oh, then, if science is this victorious enemy of love, let us love
+science! was the logic of the lady’s heart; and secretly cherishing the
+assurance that she should confute him yet, and prove him utterly wrong,
+she gave him the fruits of present success, as it is a habit of women
+to do; involuntarily partly. The fires took hold of her. She felt soft
+emotions such as a girl feels, and they flattered her. It was like
+youth coming back. Pure women have a second youth. The Autumn primrose
+flourished.
+
+We are advised by The Pilgrim’s Scrip that—
+
+“The ways of women, which are Involution, and their practices, which
+are Opposition, are generally best hit upon by guess work, and a bold
+word;”—it being impossible to track them and hunt them down in the
+ordinary style.
+
+So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed, let us each
+of us venture a guess and say a bold word as to how it came that the
+lady, who trusted love to be eternal, grovelled to him that shattered
+her tender faith, and loved him.
+
+Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and gossips had
+maligned the lady. Just when the gossips grew tired of their slander,
+and inclined to look upon her charitably, she set about to deserve
+every word they had said of her; which may instruct us, if you please,
+that gossips have only to persist in lying to be crowned with verity,
+or that one has only to endure evil mouths for a period to gain
+impunity. She was always at the Abbey now. She was much closeted with
+the baronet. It seemed to be understood that she had taken Mrs. Doria’s
+place. Benson in his misogynic soul perceived that she was taking Lady
+Feverel’s: but any report circulated by Benson was sure to meet
+discredit, and drew the gossips upon himself; which made his
+meditations tragic. No sooner was one woman defeated than another took
+the field! The object of the System was no sooner safe than its great
+author was in danger!
+
+“I can’t think what has come to Benson” he said to Adrian.
+
+“He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of lead,”
+returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford’s manner. “Change
+is what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a month, sir, and
+let Richard go with him. The two victims of woman may do each other
+good.”
+
+“Unfortunately I can’t do without him,” said the baronet.
+
+“Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on our
+chests all night!” Adrian ejaculated.
+
+“I think while he preserves this aspect we won’t have him at the
+dinner-table,” said the baronet.
+
+Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and added:
+“You know, sir, what he says?”
+
+Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that Benson’s
+excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety for the safety
+of his master.
+
+“You must pardon a faithful fool, sir,” he continued, for the baronet
+became red, and exclaimed:
+
+“His stupidity is past belief! I have absolutely to bolt my study-door
+against him.”
+
+Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study,
+not unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary
+prophet, Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of the
+future, had a care to spy upon the present: warned haply by The
+Pilgrim’s Scrip, of which he was a diligent reader, and which says,
+rather emphatically: “Could we see Time’s full face, we were wise of
+him.” Now to see Time’s full face, it is sometimes necessary to look
+through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on
+one cheek and grimacing confusion on the other behind the curtain.
+Decency and a sense of honour restrain most of us from being thus wise
+and miserable for ever. Benson’s excuse was that he believed in his
+master, who was menaced. And moreover, notwithstanding his previous
+tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was sweet to him. So he peeped, and he
+saw a sight. He saw Time’s full face; or, in other words, he saw the
+wiles of woman and the weakness of man: which is our history, as Benson
+would have written it, and a great many poets and philosophers have
+written it.
+
+Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had
+seen: a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring
+one: very innocent! Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has,
+or thinks she has, a reason or two about the roots. She is not all
+instinct. “For this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him
+to be the flower of men, I give myself to him!” She makes that lofty
+inward exclamation while the hand is detaching her from the roots. Even
+so strong a self-justification she requires. She has not that blind
+glory in excess which her younger sister can gild the longest leap
+with. And if, moth-like, she desires the star, she is nervously
+cautious of candles. Hence her circles about the dangerous human flame
+are wide and shy. She must be drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh
+reason. She loves to sentimentalize. Lady Blandish had been
+sentimentalizing for ten years. She would have preferred to pursue the
+game. The dark-eyed dame was pleased with her smooth life and the soft
+excitement that did not ruffle it. Not willingly did she let herself be
+won.
+
+“Sentimentalists,” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, “are they who seek to
+enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done.”
+
+“It is,” the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, “a happy pastime
+and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but
+a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit.”
+
+However, one who could set down the dying for love, as a
+sentimentalism, can hardly be accepted as a clear authority. Assuredly
+he was not one to avoid the incurring of the immense debtorship in any
+way: but he was a bondsman still to the woman who had forsaken him, and
+a spoken word would have made it seem his duty to face that public
+scandal which was the last evil to him. What had so horrified the
+virtuous Benson, Richard had already beheld in Daphne’s Bower; a simple
+kissing of the fair white hand! Doubtless the keyhole somehow added to
+Benson’s horror. The two similar performances, so very innocent, had
+wondrous opposite consequences. The first kindled Richard to adore
+Woman; the second destroyed Benson’s faith in Man. But Lady Blandish
+knew the difference between the two. She understood why the baronet did
+not speak; excused, and respected him for it. She was content, since
+she must love, to love humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his
+sorrows to comfort her. A hundred fresh reasons for loving him arose
+and multiplied every day. He read to her the secret book in his own
+handwriting, composed for Richard’s Marriage Guide: containing Advice
+and Directions to a Young Husband, full of the most tender wisdom and
+delicacy; so she thought; nay, not wanting in poetry, though neither
+rhymed nor measured. He expounded to her the distinctive character of
+the divers ages of love, giving the palm to the flower she put forth,
+over that of Spring, or the Summer rose. And while they sat and talked;
+“My wound has healed,” he said. “How?” she asked. “At the fountain of
+your eyes,” he replied, and drew the joy of new life from her blushes,
+without incurring further debtorship for a thing done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero, and
+a consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at his
+chariot-wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he has made
+an actual start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us,
+albeit the head of our fates. By this you perceive the true hero,
+whether he be a prince or a pot-boy, that he does not plot; Fortune
+does all for him. He may be compared to one to whom, in an electric
+circle, it is given to carry the battery.
+
+We caper and grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the
+power. ’Tis all Fortune’s, whose puppet he is. She deals her
+dispensations through him. Yea, though our capers be never so comical,
+he laughs not. Intent upon his own business, the true hero asks little
+services of us here and there; thinks it quite natural that they should
+be acceded to, and sees nothing ridiculous in the lamentable
+contortions we must go through to fulfil them. Probably he is the elect
+of Fortune, because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his
+own business: “Which is,” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip, “with men to be
+valued equal to that force which in water makes a stream.” This prelude
+was necessary to the present chapter of Richard’s history.
+
+It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was busy
+with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang, and
+Hippias Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move within him.
+He communicated his delightful new sensations to the baronet, his
+brother, whose constant exclamation with regard to him, was: “Poor
+Hippias! All his machinery is bare!” and had no hope that he would ever
+be in a condition to defend it from view. Nevertheless Hippias had that
+hope, and so he told his brother, making great exposure of his
+machinery to effect the explanation. He spoke of all his physical
+experiences exultingly, and with wonder. The achievement of common
+efforts, not usually blazoned, he celebrated as triumphs, and, of
+course, had Adrian on his back very quickly. But he could bear him, or
+anything, now. It was such ineffable relief to find himself looking out
+upon the world of mortals instead of into the black phantasmal abysses
+of his own complicated frightful structure. “My mind doesn’t so much
+seem to haunt itself, now,” said Hippias, nodding shortly and peering
+out of intense puckers to convey a glimpse of what hellish sufferings
+his had been: “I feel as if I had come aboveground.”
+
+A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never gets
+sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it is he whose groaning
+petitions for charity do at last rout that Christian virtue. Lady
+Blandish, a charitable soul, could not listen to Hippias, though she
+had a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir Austin had also small
+patience with his brother’s gleam of health, which was just enough to
+make his disease visible. He remembered his early follies and excesses,
+and bent his ear to him as one man does to another who complains of
+having to pay a debt legally incurred.
+
+“I think,” said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias were
+received, “that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach, it’s
+best to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent.”
+
+Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or
+real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He
+advised his uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated
+cheerful impressions in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made
+Hippias visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village, who
+bewailed the loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and did his best to
+waken him up, and give the outer world a stronger hold on him. He
+succeeded in nothing but in winning his uncle’s gratitude. The season
+bloomed scarce longer than a week for Hippias, and then began to
+languish. The poor Dyspepsy’s eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he
+went underground again. He announced that he felt “spongy things”—one
+of the more constant throes of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he
+chewed the cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he must give
+up going about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so
+uncomfortable—the birds were so noisy, pairing—the rude bare soil
+sickened him.
+
+Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father’s. He asked what
+the doctors said.
+
+“Oh! the doctors!” cried Hippias with vehement scepticism. “No man of
+sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder. Do you happen to have
+heard of any new remedy then, Richard? No? They advertise a great many
+cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder whether one
+can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures? I see no reason why
+there should be no cure for such a disease?—Eh? And it’s just one of
+the things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one
+who is in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I’ve
+often thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some
+of the extraordinary digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his
+gastric juices, there is really no manner of reason why we should not
+comfortably dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and
+one might eat French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what’s
+to follow. And this makes me think that those fellows may, after all,
+have got some truth in them: some secret that, of course, they require
+to be paid for. We distrust each other in this world too much, Richard.
+I’ve felt inclined once or twice—but it’s absurd!—If it only alleviated
+a few of my sufferings I should be satisfied. I’ve no hesitation in
+saying that I should be quite satisfied if it only did away with one or
+two, and left me free to eat and drink as other people do. Not that I
+mean to try them. It’s only a fancy—Eh? What a thing health is, my dear
+boy! Ah! if I were like you! I was in love once!”
+
+“Were you!” said Richard, coolly regarding him.
+
+“I’ve forgotten what I felt!” Hippias sighed. “You’ve very much
+improved, my dear boy.”
+
+“So people say,” quoth Richard.
+
+Hippias looked at him anxiously: “If I go to town and get the doctor’s
+opinion about trying a new course—Eh, Richard? will you come with me? I
+should like your company. We could see London together, you know. Enjoy
+ourselves,” and Hippias rubbed his hands.
+
+Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his
+uncle’s eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where they
+were—an answer that might mean anything. Hippias immediately became
+possessed by the beguiling project. He went to the baronet, and put the
+matter before him, instancing doctors as the object of his journey, not
+quacks, of course; and requesting leave to take Richard. Sir Austin was
+getting uneasy about his son’s manner. It was not natural. His heart
+seemed to be frozen: he had no confidences: he appeared to have no
+ambition—to have lost the virtues of youth with the poison that had
+passed out of him. He was disposed to try what effect a little
+travelling might have on him, and had himself once or twice hinted to
+Richard that it would be good for him to move about, the young man
+quietly replying that he did not wish to quit Raynham at all, which was
+too strict a fulfilment of his father’s original views in educating him
+there entirely. On the day that Hippias made his proposal, Adrian,
+seconded by Lady Blandish, also made one. The sweet Spring season
+stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not to pastoral measures: to
+the joys of the operatic world and bravura glories. He also suggested
+that it would be advisable to carry Richard to town for a term, and let
+him know his position, and some freedom. Sir Austin weighed the two
+proposals. He was pretty certain that Richard’s passion was consumed,
+and that the youth was now only under the burden of its ashes. He had
+found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn: a great lock of golden
+hair. He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling about for it with
+faint hands, never asked for it. This precious lock (Miss Davenport had
+thrust it into his hand at Belthorpe as Lucy’s last gift), what sighs
+and tears it had weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard’s sight one
+day, and beheld him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down again
+calmly, as if he were handling any common curiosity. It pacified him on
+that score. The young man’s love was dead. Dr. Clifford said rightly:
+he wanted distractions. The baronet determined that Richard should go.
+Hippias and Adrian then pressed their several suits as to which should
+have him. Hippias, when he could forget himself, did not lack sense. He
+observed that Adrian was not at present a proper companion for Richard,
+and would teach him to look on life from the false point.
+
+“You don’t understand a young philosopher,” said the baronet.
+
+“A young philosopher’s an old fool!” returned Hippias, not thinking
+that his growl had begotten a phrase.
+
+His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
+“Excellent! worthy of your best days! You’re wrong, though, in applying
+it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done has been to
+bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and sees. I think,
+however,” the baronet added, “he may want faith in the better qualities
+of men.” And this reflection inclined him not to let his son be alone
+with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his father’s
+wishes tended, and decided so to please him. Naturally it annoyed
+Adrian extremely. He said to his chief:
+
+“I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don’t see that we derive
+any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty
+years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our
+constitutional tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately
+encountered Quackem’s Pill. My uncle’s tortures have been huge, but I
+would rather society were not intimate with them under their several
+headings.” Adrian enumerated some of the most abhorrent. “You know him,
+sir. If he conceives a duty, he will do it in the face of every
+decency—all the more obstinate because the conception is rare. If he
+feels a little brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter
+that makes us famous! We go down to posterity with heightened
+characteristics, to say nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing
+less than our being turned inside-out to the rabble. I confess I don’t
+desire to have my machinery made bare to them.”
+
+Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to
+Dr. Bairam. He softened Adrian’s chagrin by telling him that in about
+two weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective
+Summer campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day
+came. Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put
+into his hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his
+pocket-expenses. He did not want it, he said, but she told him he was a
+young man, and would soon make that fly when he stood on his own feet.
+The old lady did not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she
+gave her grandnephew to understand that, should he require more, he
+knew where to apply, and secrets would be kept. His father presented
+him with a hundred pounds—which also Richard said he did not want—he
+did not care for money. “Spend it or not,” said the baronet, perfectly
+secure in him.
+
+Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up quarters
+at the hotel, Algernon’s general run of company at the house not being
+altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of
+the imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man’s movements, and
+letting him imagine he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as
+it were, pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom
+again, in complete independence, as far as he could feel. So did the
+sage decree; and we may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his
+previsions, and how successful they must have been, had not Fortune,
+the great foe to human cleverness, turned against him, or he against
+himself.
+
+The departure took place on a fine March morning. The bird of Winter
+sang from the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of Summer.
+Adrian rode between Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham station, and
+vented his disgust on them after his own humorous fashion, because it
+did not rain and damp their ardour. In the rear came Lady Blandish and
+the baronet, conversing on the calm summit of success.
+
+“You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself,” she said, pointing
+with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure of the young man.
+
+“Outwardly, perhaps,” he answered, and led to a discussion on Purity
+and Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.
+
+“But you do not,” said the baronet. “And there I admire the always true
+instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form, and
+seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a
+characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted—how soon! For there are
+questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when,
+hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest
+soul becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do
+battle. Strength indicates a boundless nature—like the Maker. Strength
+is a God to you—Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of
+playing with it,” he added, with unaccustomed slyness.
+
+The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that the
+constraint on his mind had left him. It was for women to fight their
+fight now; she only took part in it for amusement. This is how the
+ranks of our enemies are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a
+champion in their midst than she betrays them.
+
+“I see,” she said archly, “we are the lovelier vessels; you claim the
+more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women—slips! Nay, you have said
+so,” she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.
+
+“But I never printed it.”
+
+“Oh! what you speak answers for print with me.”
+
+Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love her.
+
+“Tell me what are your plans?” she asked. “May a woman know?”
+
+He replied, “I have none or you would share them. I shall study him in
+the world. This indifference must wear off. I shall mark his
+inclinations now, and he shall be what he inclines to. Occupation will
+be his prime safety. His cousin Austin’s plan of life appears most to
+his taste, and he can serve the people that way as well as in
+Parliament, should he have no stronger ambition. The clear duty of a
+man of any wealth is to serve the people as he best can. He shall go
+among Austin’s set, if he wishes it, though personally I find no
+pleasure in rash imaginations, and undigested schemes built upon the
+mere instinct of principles.”
+
+“Look at him now,” said the lady. “He seems to care for nothing; not
+even for the beauty of the day.”
+
+“Or Adrian’s jokes,” added the baronet.
+
+Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a
+confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his chin
+to one, and to the other, with audible asides. Richard he treated as a
+new instrument of destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering
+metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting condition; and he got so
+much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the
+mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal
+insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth’s dull life at
+Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional
+joker.
+
+“Oh! the Spring! the Spring!” he cried, as in scorn of his sallies they
+exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him. “You
+seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles, rooks,
+and daws. Why can’t you let them alone?”
+
+‘Wind bloweth,
+Cock croweth,
+        Doodle-doo;
+Hippy verteth,
+Ricky sterteth,
+        Sing Cuckoo!’
+
+
+There’s an old native pastoral!—Why don’t you write a Spring sonnet,
+Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the
+strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for. What kind of
+berry was that I saw some verses of yours about once?—amatory verses to
+some kind of berry—yewberry, blueberry, glueberry! Pretty verses,
+decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom, legs—legs? I don’t think you gave
+her any legs. No legs and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste
+of the day. It shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for
+a chaste people.
+
+‘O might I lie where leans her lute!’
+
+
+and offend no moral community. That’s not a bad image of yours, my dear
+boy:
+
+‘Her shape is like an antelope
+Upon the Eastern hills.’
+
+
+But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be
+considered correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the
+ballet that you are in error about women at present, Richard. That
+admirable institution which our venerable elders have imported from
+Gallia for the instruction of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish
+you. I assure you I used, from reading The Pilgrim’s Scrip, to imagine
+all sorts of things about them, till I was taken there, and learnt that
+they are very like us after all, and then they ceased to trouble me.
+Mystery is the great danger to youth, my son! Mystery is woman’s
+redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the Ordeal! I’m aware that you’ve had
+your lessons in anatomy, but nothing will persuade you that an
+anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You can’t realize the fact. Do
+you intend to publish when you’re in town? It’ll be better not to put
+your name. Having one’s name to a volume of poems is as bad as to an
+advertising pill.”
+
+“I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish,” quoth Richard.
+“Hark at that old blackbird, uncle.”
+
+“Yes!” Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his
+contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, “fine old
+fellow!”
+
+“What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July
+nightingales. You know that bird I told you of—the blackbird that had
+its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell’s bird
+from the tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day before
+yesterday, and the dame says her bird hasn’t sung a note since.”
+
+“Extraordinary!” Hippias muttered abstractedly. “I remember the
+verses.”
+
+“But where’s your moral?” interposed the wrathful Adrian. “Where’s
+constancy rewarded?
+
+‘The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
+    With orange-tawny bill;
+The rascal with his aim so true;
+    The Poet’s little quill!’
+
+
+Where’s the moral of that? except that all’s game to the poet!
+Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who
+for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a
+defunct male. I suppose that’s what Ricky dwells on.”
+
+“As you please, my dear Adrian,” says Richard, and points out
+larch-buds to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.
+
+The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil’s
+heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not
+believe in. “Hark at this old blackbird!” he cried, in his turn, and
+pretending to interpret his fits of song:
+
+“Oh, what a pretty comedy!—Don’t we wear the mask well, my
+Fiesco?—Genoa will be our own to-morrow!—Only wait until the train has
+started—jolly! jolly! jolly! We’ll be winners yet!
+
+“Not a bad verse—eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!”
+
+“You do the blackbird well,” said Richard, and looked at him in a
+manner mildly affable.
+
+Adrian shrugged. “You’re a young man of wonderful powers,” he
+emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for
+which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into
+Bellingham.
+
+There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and
+gala waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who
+had preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound
+for London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the
+baronet: “The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;” but he
+paid no heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard them or not,
+Adrian’s look took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into
+obscurity, where the nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors
+of Bellingham could supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was
+not stiffened by the eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival. The
+baronet, Lady Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received
+Richard’s adieux across the palings. He shook hands with each of them
+in the same kindly cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium
+on his style of doing it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after
+his uncle into one of the carriages.
+
+Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at
+war with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern
+life; and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant
+watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active forties,
+cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he but
+sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this, and smile
+wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System incarnate, wave a
+serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor morbidly unwilling to
+try his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At present, I am aware, an
+audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting
+on incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will
+come to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work:
+who, as it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the
+winds of March when they do not blow. To them will nothing be trivial,
+seeing that they will have in their eyes the invisible conflict going
+on around us, whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours
+perpetually changes. And they will perceive, moreover, that in real
+life all hangs together: the train is laid in the lifting of an
+eyebrow, that bursts upon the field of thousands. They will see the
+links of things as they pass, and wonder not, as foolish people now do,
+that this great matter came out of that small one.
+
+Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet’s gratification
+at his son’s demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience
+not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some
+excited apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the
+train went sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold,
+self-possessed young man throw himself back in the carriage violently
+laughing. Science was at a loss to account for that. Sir Austin checked
+his mind from inquiring, that he might keep suspicion at a distance,
+but he thought it odd, and the jarring sensation that ran along his
+nerves at the sight, remained with him as he rode home.
+
+Lady Blandish’s tender womanly intuition bade her say: “You see it was
+the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already.”
+
+“It was,” Adrian put in his word, “the exact thing he wanted. His
+spirits have returned miraculously.”
+
+“Something amused him,” said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing
+train.
+
+“Probably something his uncle said or did,” Lady Blandish suggested,
+and led off at a gallop.
+
+Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard’s
+laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door
+closed on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which
+dwells in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to
+express his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous
+prospect, the Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his
+legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian’s pastoral,
+
+“Hippy verteth,
+Sing cuckoo!”
+
+
+in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized
+him.
+
+“Hippy verteth!”
+
+
+Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed
+so immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
+
+“Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy,” said Hippias,
+and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest “ha! ha!”
+
+“Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?” cried Richard.
+
+“I really don’t know,” Hippias chuckled.
+
+“Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!”
+
+They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias
+not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting
+like any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes,
+and anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at
+him—he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at
+his own transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his
+eyes, now and then, that it might not last, and that he must go
+underground again, lent him a look of pathos and humour which tickled
+his youthful companion irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.
+
+“I tell you what, uncle,” said Richard, “I think travelling’s a capital
+thing.”
+
+“The best thing in the world, my dear boy,” Hippias returned. “It makes
+me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before, instead
+of chaining myself to a task. We’re quite different beings in a minute.
+I am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?”
+
+“Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend to
+make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride on a
+railway every day.”
+
+Hippias remarked: “They say it rather injures the digestion.”
+
+“Nonsense! see how you’ll digest to-night and to-morrow.”
+
+“Perhaps I shall do something yet,” sighed Hippias, alluding to the
+vast literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. “I hope I shall have a
+good night to-night.”
+
+“Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?”
+
+“Ugh!” Hippias grunted, “I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment you
+get into bed!”
+
+“The instant my head’s on my pillow, and up the moment I wake. Health’s
+everything!”
+
+“Health’s everything!” echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.
+
+“And if you’ll put yourself in my hands,” Richard continued, “you shall
+do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing ‘Jolly!’ like
+Adrian’s blackbird. You shall, upon my honour, uncle!”
+
+He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle’s recovery—no less than
+twelve a day—that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness
+almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his
+own.
+
+“Mind,” quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, “mind your dishes are
+not too savoury!”
+
+“Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart to
+all, but give it to none!” exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters,
+“Yes! yes!” and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his not
+following that maxim earlier.
+
+“Love ruins us, my dear boy,” he said, thinking to preach Richard a
+lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:
+
+“The love of Monsieur Francatelli,
+It was the ruin of—et coetera.”
+
+
+Hippias blinked, exclaiming, “Really, my dear boy! I never saw you so
+excited.”
+
+“It’s the railway! It’s the fun, uncle!”
+
+“Ah!” Hippias wagged a melancholy head, “you’ve got the Golden Bride!
+Keep her if you can. That’s a pretty fable of your father’s. I gave him
+the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my ideas!”
+
+“Here’s the idea in verse, uncle:
+
+‘O sunless walkers by the tide!
+O have you seen the Golden Bride!
+They say that she is fair beyond
+All women; faithful, and more fond!
+
+
+You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by
+the brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:
+
+Faithful she is, but she forsakes:
+And fond, yet endless woe she makes:
+And fair! but with this curse she’s cross’d;
+To know her not till she is lost!’
+
+
+“Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the
+fabulist pursues:
+
+‘She hath a palace in the West:
+Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:
+And him the Morning Star awakes
+Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
+
+So lives he till he sees, alas!
+The maids of baser metal pass.’
+
+
+And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with
+one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy
+Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and
+finds her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with
+Copperina, till he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the
+less obscure become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her
+radiance shines forth, my uncle.”
+
+“Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you’ve got her,”
+says Hippias.
+
+“We will, uncle!—Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in the
+fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!
+
+‘She claims the whole, and not the part—
+The coin of an unused heart!
+To gain his Golden Bride again,
+He hunts with melancholy men,’
+
+
+—and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!”
+
+“Not if he doesn’t sleep till an hour before it rises!” Hippias
+interjected. “You don’t rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry’s a
+Base-metal maid. I’m not sure that any writing’s good for the
+digestion. I’m afraid it has spoilt mine.”
+
+“Fear nothing, uncle!” laughed Richard. “You shall ride in the park
+with me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden Bride.
+You know that little poem of Sandoe’s?
+
+‘She rides in the park on a prancing bay,
+    She and her squires together;
+Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,
+    And toss with the tossing feather.
+
+‘Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
+    Is the beautiful face as it passes;
+The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+    The coxcombs lift their glasses.
+
+‘And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
+    The ice-wall that guards her securely;
+You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
+    As the heart that can image her purely.’
+
+
+Wasn’t Sandoe once a friend of my father’s? I suppose they quarrelled.
+He understands the heart. What does he make his ‘Humble Lover’ say?
+
+‘True, Madam, you may think to part
+    Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
+But Beauty’s for the largest heart,
+    And all abysses Love can bridge!’”
+
+
+Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.
+
+“Largest heart!” he sneered. “What’s a ‘glacier-ridge’? I’ve never seen
+one. I can’t deny it rhymes with ‘bridge.’ But don’t go parading your
+admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on
+the subject when he thinks fit.”
+
+“I thought they had quarrelled,” said Richard. “What a pity!” and he
+murmured to a pleased ear:
+
+“Beauty’s for the largest heart!”
+
+
+The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of
+passengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure.
+All faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him
+and his Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before
+them, he looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape,
+projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing
+hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great
+service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his
+reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage
+door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something curious on
+his mind; and he gave Tom the word to speak out. Tom edged his master
+out of hearing, and began sputtering a laugh.
+
+“Dash’d if I can help it, sir!” he said. “That young Tom! He’ve come to
+town dressed that spicy! and he don’t know his way about no more than a
+stag. He’s come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don’t know
+how to get there, and he ain’t sure about which rail ’tis. Look at him,
+Mr. Richard! There he goes.”
+
+Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.
+
+“Who has he come for?” Richard asked.
+
+“Don’t you know, sir? You don’t like me to mention the name,” mumbled
+Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.
+
+“Is it for her, Tom?”
+
+“Miss Lucy, sir.”
+
+Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get
+out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear
+him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or
+left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was
+manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in the
+conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to drive off. He made the
+excuse that he did not wish to start till there was a clear road. At
+last young Tom cast anchor by a policeman, and, doubtless at the
+official’s suggestion, bashfully took seat in a cab, and was shot into
+the whirlpool of London. Richard then angrily asked his driver what he
+was waiting for.
+
+“Are you ill, my boy?” said Hippias. “Where’s your colour?”
+
+He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow
+would drive fast.
+
+“I hate slow motion after being in the railway,” he said.
+
+Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.
+
+“Nothing, uncle! nothing!” said Richard, looking fiercely candid.
+
+They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch
+from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such
+pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the
+heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart—the struggle of life and
+death in him—grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries
+out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the
+dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by
+the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight
+clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such
+pain it is, the old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the
+charm of his passion filing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one
+woman to Richard. He had forbidden her name but from an instinct of
+self-defence. Must the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in
+Lucy’s shape. Thinking of her now so near him—his darling! all her
+graces, her sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her,
+he knew her true—swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions
+pathetic, and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated
+it. As well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the
+violent emotion that began to rage in his breast. “I shall not see
+her!” he said to himself exultingly, and at the same instant thought,
+how black was every corner of the earth but that one spot where Lucy
+stood! how utterly cheerless the place he was going to! Then he
+determined to bear it; to live in darkness; there was a refuge in the
+idea of a voluntary martyrdom. “For if I chose I could see her—this day
+within an hour!—I could see her, and touch her hand, and, oh,
+heaven!—But I do not choose.” And a great wave swelled through him, and
+was crushed down only to swell again more stormily.
+
+Then Tom Bakewell’s words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was
+uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this
+Babylon alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that they
+had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out
+of the way—they had been miserably plotting against him once more.
+“They shall see what right they have to fear me. I’ll shame them!” was
+the first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go,
+and see her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely
+believed not to be one of the conspirators. Nevertheless, after forming
+that resolve, he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the
+wheels that bore him away from it—perhaps because he knew, as some do
+when passion is lord, that his intelligence juggled with him; though
+none the less keenly did he feel his wrongs and suspicions. His Golden
+Bride was waning fast. But when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: “We
+shall soon be there!” the spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying
+he wanted to speak to Tom, and would ride with him the rest of the
+journey. He knew well enough which line of railway his Lucy must come
+by. He had studied every town and station on the line. Before his uncle
+could express more than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed
+Tom Bakewell, who came behind with the boxes and baggage in a companion
+cab, his head a yard beyond the window to make sure of his ark of
+safety, the vehicle preceding.
+
+“What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is,” said Hippias. “We’re in
+the very street!”
+
+Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to
+arrange everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his
+bow.
+
+“Mr. Richard, sir?—evaporated?” was Berry’s modulated inquiry.
+
+“Behind—among the boxes, fool!” Hippias growled, as he received Berry’s
+muscular assistance to alight. “Lunch ready—eh!”
+
+“Luncheon was ordered precise at two o’clock, sir—been in attendance
+one quarter of an hour. Heah!” Berry sang out to the second cab, which,
+with its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces
+distant. At his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on
+them, and went off in a contrary direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+
+On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to
+consult his gold watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and
+the forthcoming dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk’s office
+where he sat, and a man of a scowling countenance, who looked a
+villain, and whom he was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his hands,
+nodding that it would be prudent for him to read, and be silent. Ripton
+obeyed in alarm. Apparently the contents of the letter relieved his
+conscience; for he reached down his hat, and told Mr. Beazley to inform
+his father that he had business of pressing importance in the West, and
+should meet him at the station. Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the
+paternal Thompson without delay, and together making their observations
+from the window, they beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton
+darted and was followed by one in groom’s dress. It was Saturday, the
+day when Ripton gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow
+himself upon his family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son’s arm
+as he walked down to the station; but that third glass of Port which
+always stood for his second, and the groom’s suggestion of aristocratic
+acquaintances, prevented Mr. Thompson from interfering: so Ripton was
+permitted to depart.
+
+In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It had the
+preciseness of an imperial mandate.
+
+“Dear Ripton,—You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately. Not a
+word to a soul. Then come along with Tom.
+
+
+R.D.F.”
+
+
+“Lodgings for a lady!” Ripton meditated aloud: “What sort of lodgings?
+Where am I to get lodgings? Who’s the lady?—I say!” he addressed the
+mysterious messenger. “So you’re Tom Bakewell, are you, Tom?”
+
+Tom grinned his identity.
+
+“Do you remember the rick, Tom? Ha! ha! We got out of that neatly. We
+might all have been transported, though. I could have convicted you,
+Tom, safe! It’s no use coming across a practised lawyer. Now tell me.”
+Ripton having flourished his powers, commenced his examination: “Who’s
+this lady?”
+
+“Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir,” Tom resumed his scowl to
+reply.
+
+“Ah!” Ripton acquiesced. “Is she young, Tom?”
+
+Tom said she was not old.
+
+“Handsome, Tom?”
+
+“Some might think one thing, some another,” Tom said.
+
+“And where does she come from now?” asked Ripton, with the friendly
+cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.
+
+“Comes from the country, sir.”
+
+“A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?”
+
+Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look. Tom’s face
+was a dead blank.
+
+“Ah!” Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him. “Why,
+you’re quite a scholar, Tom! Mr. Richard is well. All right at home?”
+
+“Come to town this mornin’ with his uncle,” said Tom. “All well, thank
+ye, sir.”
+
+“Ha!” cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, “now I see. You all came to
+town to-day, and these are your boxes outside. So, so! But Mr. Richard
+writes for me to get lodgings for a lady. There must be some mistake—he
+wrote in a hurry. He wants lodgings for you all—eh?”
+
+“’M sure I d’n know what he wants,” said Tom. “You’d better go by the
+letter, sir.”
+
+Ripton re-consulted that document. “‘Lodgings for a lady, and then come
+along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.’ I say! that looks like—but he
+never cared for them. You don’t mean to say, Tom, he’s been running
+away with anybody?”
+
+Tom fell back upon his first reply: “Better wait till ye see Mr.
+Richard, sir,” and Ripton exclaimed: “Hanged if you ain’t the tightest
+witness I ever saw! I shouldn’t like to have you in a box. Some of you
+country fellows beat any number of cockneys. You do!”
+
+Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as
+nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform
+his friend’s injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the
+country ought to lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the
+cabman to drive. Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the
+hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.
+
+It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have
+beneficent omens to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in
+full career, so that they really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and to
+check him in his course, had they that signal courage. For instance,
+Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, a ripe and wholesome landlady of advertised
+lodgings, on the borders of Kensington, noted, as she sat rocking her
+contemplative person before the parlour fire this very March afternoon,
+a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which
+signifies that a wedding approaches the house. Why—who shall say? Omens
+are as impassable as heroes. It may be because in these affairs the
+fire is thought to be all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and
+spoke its solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her
+circle, was known as a certificated lecturer against the snares of
+matrimony. Still that was no reason why she should not like a wedding.
+Expectant, therefore, she watched the one glowing cheek of Hymen, and
+with pleasing tremours beheld a cab of many boxes draw up by her bit of
+garden, and a gentleman emerge from it in the set of consulting an
+advertisement paper. The gentleman required lodgings for a lady.
+Lodgings for a lady Mrs. Berry could produce, and a very roseate smile
+for a gentleman; so much so that Ripton forgot to ask about the terms,
+which made the landlady in Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as the
+happy man. But her experienced woman’s eye checked her enthusiasm. He
+had not the air of a bridegroom: he did not seem to have a weight on
+his chest, or an itch to twiddle everything with his fingers. At any
+rate, he was not the bridegroom for whom omens fly abroad. Promising to
+have all ready for the lady within an hour, Mrs. Berry fortified him
+with her card, curtsied him back to his cab, and floated him off on her
+smiles.
+
+The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of intrigue through
+London streets, now proceeded sedately to finish its operations. Ripton
+was landed at a hotel in Westminster. Ere he was halfway up the stairs,
+a door opened, and his old comrade in adventure rushed down. Richard
+allowed no time for salutations. “Have you done it?” was all he asked.
+For answer Ripton handed him Mrs. Berry’s card. Richard took it, and
+left him standing there. Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard
+the gracious rustle of feminine garments above. Richard came a little
+in advance, leading and half-supporting a figure in a black-silk mantle
+and small black straw bonnet; young—that was certain, though she held
+her veil so close he could hardly catch the outlines of her face;
+girlishly slender, and sweet and simple in appearance. The hush that
+came with her, and her soft manner of moving, stirred the silly youth
+to some of those ardours that awaken the Knight of Dames in our bosoms.
+He felt that he would have given considerable sums for her to lift her
+veil. He could see that she was trembling—perhaps weeping. It was the
+master of her fate she clung to. They passed him without speaking. As
+she went by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a glimpse of noble
+tresses and a lovely neck; great golden curls hung loosely behind,
+pouring from under her bonnet. She looked a captive borne to the
+sacrifice. What Ripton, after a sight of those curls, would have given
+for her just to lift her veil an instant and strike him blind with
+beauty, was, fortunately for his exchequer, never demanded of him. And
+he had absolutely been composing speeches as he came along in the cab!
+gallant speeches for the lady, and sly congratulatory ones for his
+friend, to be delivered as occasion should serve, that both might know
+him a man of the world, and be at their ease. He forgot the smirking
+immoralities he had revelled in. This was clearly serious. Ripton did
+not require to be told that his friend was in love, and meant that life
+and death business called marriage, parents and guardians consenting or
+not.
+
+Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly, “I want you now
+to go to my uncle at our hotel. Keep him quiet till I come. Say I had
+to see you—say anything. I shall be there by the dinner hour. Rip! I
+must talk to you alone after dinner.”
+
+Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home. He was very
+curious to hear the plot of the New Comedy; and besides, there was
+Richard’s face questioning him sternly and confidently for signs of
+unhesitating obedience. He finished his grimaces by asking the name and
+direction of the hotel. Richard pressed his hand. It is much to obtain
+even that recognition of our devotion from the hero.
+
+Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by his chuckles
+and grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work cut out for him. In a few
+minutes they had driven to their separate destinations; Ripton was left
+to the unusual exercise of his fancy. Such is the nature of youth and
+its thirst for romance, that only to act as a subordinate is pleasant.
+When one unfurls the standard of defiance to parents and guardians, he
+may be sure of raising a lawless troop of adolescent ruffians, born
+rebels, to any amount. The beardless crew know that they have not a
+chance of pay; but what of that when the rosy prospect of thwarting
+their elders is in view? Though it is to see another eat the Forbidden
+Fruit, they will run all his risks with him. Gaily Ripton took rank as
+lieutenant in the enterprise, and the moment his heart had sworn the
+oaths, he was rewarded by an exquisite sense of the charms of
+existence. London streets wore a sly laugh to him. He walked with a
+dandified heel. The generous youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and
+glanced intimately at the ladies, overflowingly happy. The
+crossing-sweepers blessed him. He hummed lively tunes, he turned over
+old jokes in his mouth unctuously, he hugged himself, he had a mind to
+dance down Piccadilly, and all because a friend of his was running away
+with a pretty girl, and he was in the secret.
+
+It was only when he stood on the doorstep of Richard’s hotel, that his
+jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering that he had then to
+commence the duties of his office, and must fabricate a plausible story
+to account for what he knew nothing about—a part that the greatest of
+sages would find it difficult to perform. The young, however, whom
+sages well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties
+to the level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias’s angry
+complaints against the friend he serenely inquired for, gave Ripton his
+cue.
+
+“We’re in the very street—within a stone’s-throw of the house, and he
+jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be mad—that
+boy’s got madness in him!—and carries off all the boxes—my
+dinner-pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day, though he
+promised to go to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me,”
+said Hippias, venting an enraged snarl to sum up his grievances.
+
+Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.
+
+“Why, you don’t mean to say he’s been to the doctor?” Hippias cried
+out.
+
+“He has called on him twice, sir,” said Ripton, expressively. “On
+leaving me he was going a third time. I shouldn’t wonder that’s what
+detains him—he’s so determined.”
+
+By fine degrees Ripton ventured to grow circumstantial, saying that
+Richard’s case was urgent and required immediate medical advice; and
+that both he and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose an
+hour in obtaining it.
+
+“He’s alarmed about himself,” said Ripton, and tapped his chest.
+
+Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his nephew of any
+physical affliction.
+
+“He was afraid of making you anxious, I think, sir.”
+
+Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering at the
+alphabet to recollect the first letter of the doctor’s name. They had
+met in the hall below, and were laughing heartily as they entered the
+room. Ripton jumped up to get the initiative.
+
+“Have you seen the doctor?” he asked, significantly plucking at
+Richard’s fingers.
+
+Richard was all abroad at the question.
+
+Algernon clapped him on the back. “What the deuce do you want with
+doctor, boy?”
+
+The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they were. “Oh, ay! the
+doctor!” he said, smiling frankly at his lieutenant. “Why, he tells me
+he’d back me to do Milo’s trick in a week from the present day.—Uncle,”
+he came forward to Hippias, “I hope you’ll excuse me for running off as
+I did. I was in a hurry. I left something at the railway. This stupid
+Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself. The fact was, I wanted to
+fetch the doctor to see you here—so that you might have no trouble, you
+know. You can’t bear the sight of his instruments and skeletons—I’ve
+heard you say so. You said it set all your marrow in revolt—‘fried your
+marrow,’ I think were the words, and made you see twenty thousand
+different ways of sliding down to the chambers of the Grim King. Don’t
+you remember?”
+
+Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not believe the
+story. Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him
+incredulous. As he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he could
+do safely to express his disbelief in him, was to utter petulant
+remarks on his powerlessness to appear at the dinner-table that day:
+upon which—Berry just then trumpeting dinner—Algernon seized one arm of
+the Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the laughing couple bore him
+into the room where dinner was laid, Ripton sniggering in the rear, the
+really happy man of the party.
+
+They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have it; and his
+gaiety, his by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic
+promise of overriding all our laws, his handsome face, the lord and
+possessor of beauty that he looked, as it were a star shining on his
+forehead, gained the old complete mastery over Ripton, who had been,
+mentally at least, half patronizing him till then, because he knew more
+of London and life, and was aware that his friend now depended upon him
+almost entirely.
+
+After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his lieutenant’s
+eye across the table, and said:
+
+“We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go. Do
+you think the old lady has any chance?”
+
+“Not a bit!” said Ripton, authoritatively.
+
+“But it’s worth fighting—eh, Rip?”
+
+“Oh, certainly!” was Ripton’s mature opinion.
+
+Richard observed that Ripton’s father seemed doubtful. Ripton cited his
+father’s habitual caution. Richard made a playful remark on the
+necessity of sometimes acting in opposition to fathers. Ripton agreed
+to it—in certain cases.
+
+“Yes, yes! in certain cases,” said Richard.
+
+“Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!” Algernon interjected; Hippias
+adding: “And lay, too!”
+
+The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious dialogue, well
+kept up on both sides, and in the end desired a statement of the old
+lady’s garrulous case; Hippias offering to decide what her chances were
+in law, and Algernon to give a common-sense judgment.
+
+“Rip will tell you,” said Richard, deferentially signalling the lawyer.
+“I’m a bad hand at these matters. Tell them how it stands, Rip.”
+
+Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours to right his
+position on his chair, and, inwardly praying speed to the claret jug to
+come and strengthen his wits, began with a careless aspect: “Oh,
+nothing! She—very curious old character! She—a—wears a wig. She—a—very
+curious old character indeed! She—a—quite the old style. There’s no
+doing anything with her!” and Ripton took a long breath to relieve
+himself after his elaborate fiction.
+
+“So it appears,” Hippias commented, and Algernon asked: “Well? and
+about her wig? Somebody stole it?” while Richard, whose features were
+grim with suppressed laughter, bade the narrator continue.
+
+Ripton lunged for the claret jug. He had got an old lady like an
+oppressive bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless as she was. In
+the pangs of ineffectual authorship his ideas shot at her wig, and then
+at her one characteristic of extreme obstinacy, and tore back again at
+her wig, but she would not be animated. The obstinate old thing would
+remain a bundle. Law studies seemed light in comparison with this
+tremendous task of changing an old lady from a doll to a human
+creature. He flung off some claret, perspired freely, and, with a
+mental tribute to the cleverness of those author fellows, recommenced:
+“Oh, nothing! She—Richard knows her better than I do—an old
+lady—somewhere down in Suffolk. I think we had better advise her not to
+proceed. The expenses of litigation are enormous! She—I think we had
+better advise her to stop short, and not make any scandal.”
+
+“And not make any scandal!” Algernon took him up. “Come, come! there’s
+something more than a wig, then?”
+
+Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no. The luckless
+fictionist looked straight at his pitiless leader, and blurted out
+dubiously, “She—there’s a daughter.”
+
+“Born with effort!” ejaculated Hippias. “Must give her pause after
+that! and I’ll take the opportunity to stretch my length on the sofa.
+Heigho! that’s true what Austin says: ‘The general prayer should be for
+a full stomach, and the individual for one that works well; for on that
+basis only are we a match for temporal matters, and able to contemplate
+eternal.’ Sententious, but true. I gave him the idea, though! Take care
+of your stomachs, boys! and if ever you hear of a monument proposed to
+a scientific cook or gastronomic doctor, send in your subscriptions. Or
+say to him while he lives, Go forth, and be a Knight! Ha! They have a
+good cook at this house. He suits me better than ours at Raynham. I
+almost wish I had brought my manuscript to town, I feel so much better.
+Aha! I didn’t expect to digest at all without my regular incentive. I
+think I shall give it up.—What do you say to the theatre to-night,
+boys!”
+
+Richard shouted, “Bravo, uncle!”
+
+“Let Mr. Thompson finish first,” said Algernon. “I want to hear the
+conclusion of the story. The old girl has a wig and a daughter. I’ll
+swear somebody runs away with one of the two! Fill your glass, Mr.
+Thompson, and forward!”
+
+“So somebody does,” Ripton received his impetus. “And they’re found in
+town together,” he made a fresh jerk. “She—a—that is, the old
+lady—found them in company.”
+
+“She finds him with her wig on in company!” said Algernon. “Capital!
+Here’s matter for the lawyers!”
+
+“And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances of
+aggravation?” Hippias observed, humorously twinkling with his stomachic
+contentment.
+
+“It’s the daughter,” Ripton sighed, and surrendering to pressure,
+hurried on recklessly, “A runaway match—beautiful girl!—the only son of
+a baronet—married by special licence. A—the point is,” he now
+brightened and spoke from his own element, “the point is whether the
+marriage can be annulled, as she’s of the Catholic persuasion and he’s
+a Protestant, and they’re both married under age. That’s the point.”
+
+Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and saw things
+more distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader’s horrified face.
+
+The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when Richard sent
+his chair to the floor, crying, “What a muddle you’re in, Rip! You’re
+mixing half-a-dozen stories together. The old lady I told you about was
+old Dame Bakewell, and the dispute was concerning a neighbour of hers
+who encroached on her garden, and I said I’d pay the money to see her
+righted!”
+
+“Ah,” said Ripton, humbly, “I was thinking of the other. Her garden!
+Cabbages don’t interest me”—
+
+“Here, come along,” Richard beckoned to him savagely. “I’ll be back in
+five minutes, uncle,” he nodded coolly to either.
+
+The young men left the room. In the hall-passage they met Berry,
+dressed to return to Raynham. Richard dropped a helper to the
+intelligence into his hand, and warned him not to gossip much of
+London. Berry bowed perfect discreetness.
+
+“What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and Catholics
+marrying, Rip?” said Richard, as soon as they were in the street.
+
+“Why,” Ripton answered, “I was so hard pushed for it, ’pon my honour, I
+didn’t know what to say. I ain’t an author, you know; I can’t make a
+story. I was trying to invent a point, and I couldn’t think of any
+other, and I thought that was just the point likely to make a jolly
+good dispute. Capital dinners they give at those crack hotels. Why did
+you throw it all upon me? I didn’t begin on the old lady.”
+
+The hero mused, “It’s odd! It’s impossible you could have known! I’ll
+tell you why, Rip! I wanted to try you. You fib well at long range, but
+you don’t do at close quarters and single combat. You’re good behind
+walls, but not worth a shot in the open. I just see what you’re fit
+for. You’re staunch—that I am certain of. You always were. Lead the way
+to one of the parks—down in that direction. You know?—where she is!”
+
+Ripton led the way. His dinner had prepared this young Englishman to
+defy the whole artillery of established morals. With the muffled roar
+of London around them, alone in a dark slope of green, the hero,
+leaning on his henchman, and speaking in a harsh clear undertone,
+delivered his explanations. Doubtless the true heroic insignia and
+point of view will be discerned, albeit in common private’s uniform.
+
+“They’ve been plotting against me for a year, Rip! When you see her,
+you’ll know what it was to have such a creature taken away from you. It
+nearly killed me. Never mind what she is. She’s the most perfect and
+noble creature God ever made! It’s not only her beauty—I don’t care so
+much about that!—but when you’ve once seen her, she seems to draw music
+from all the nerves of your body; but she’s such an angel. I worship
+her. And her mind’s like her face. She’s pure gold. There, you’ll see
+her to-night.
+
+“Well,” he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous
+prospect, “they got her away, and I recovered. It was Mister Adrian’s
+work. What’s my father’s objection to her? Because of her birth? She’s
+educated; her manners are beautiful—full of refinement—quick and soft!
+Can they show me one of their ladies like her?—she’s the daughter of a
+naval lieutenant! Because she’s a Catholic? What has religion to do
+with”—he pronounced “Love!” a little modestly—as it were a blush in his
+voice.
+
+“Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her. It shows how
+we know ourselves! And I cared for nothing. I felt as if I had no
+blood. I tried to imitate my dear Austin. I wish to God he were here. I
+love Austin. He would understand her. He’s coming back this year, and
+then—but it’ll be too late then.—Well, my father’s always scheming to
+make me perfect—he has never spoken to me a word about her, but I can
+see her in his eyes—he wanted to give me a change, he said, and asked
+me to come to town with my uncle Hippy, and I consented. It was another
+plot to get me out of the way! As I live, I had no more idea of meeting
+her than of flying to heaven!”
+
+He lifted his face. “Look at those old elm branches! How they seem to
+mix among the stars!—glittering fruits of Winter!”
+
+Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty bound to say,
+Yes! though he observed no connection between them and the narrative.
+
+“Well,” the hero went on, “I came to town. There I heard she was
+coming, too—coming home. It must have been fate, Ripton! Heaven forgive
+me! I was angry with her, and I thought I should like to see her
+once—only once—and reproach her for being false—for she never wrote to
+me. And, oh, the dear angel! what she must have suffered!—I gave my
+uncle the slip, and got to the railway she was coming by. There was a
+fellow going to meet her—a farmer’s son—and, good God! they were going
+to try and make her marry him! I remembered it all then. A servant of
+the farm had told me. That fellow went to the wrong station, I suppose,
+for we saw nothing of him. There she was—not changed a bit!—looking
+lovelier than ever! And when she saw me, I knew in a minute that she
+must love me till death!—You don’t know what it is yet, Rip!—Will you
+believe, it?—Though I was as sure she loved me and had been true as
+steel, as that I shall see her to-night, I spoke bitterly to her. And
+she bore it meekly—she looked like a saint. I told her there was but
+one hope of life for me—she must prove she was true, and as I give up
+all, so must she. I don’t know what I said. The thought of losing her
+made me mad. She tried to plead with me to wait—it was for my sake, I
+know. I pretended, like a miserable hypocrite, that she did not love me
+at all. I think I said shameful things. Oh what noble creatures women
+are! She hardly had strength to move. I took her to that place where
+you found us, Rip! she went down on her knees to me, I never dreamed of
+anything in life so lovely as she looked then. Her eyes were thrown up,
+bright with a crowd of tears—her dark brows bent together, like Pain
+and Beauty meeting in one; and her glorious golden hair swept off her
+shoulders as she hung forward to my hands.—Could I lose such a
+prize.—If anything could have persuaded me, would not that?—I thought
+of Dante’s Madonna—Guido’s Magdalen.—Is there sin in it? I see none!
+And if there is, it’s all mine! I swear she’s spotless of a thought of
+sin. I see her very soul? Cease to love her? Who dares ask me? Cease to
+love her? Why, I live on her!—To see her little chin straining up from
+her throat, as she knelt to me!—there was one curl that fell across her
+throat”....
+
+Ripton listened for more. Richard had gone off in a muse at the
+picture.
+
+“Well?” said Ripton, “and how about that young farmer fellow?”
+
+The hero’s head was again contemplating the starry branches. His
+lieutenant’s question came to him after an interval.
+
+“Young Tom? Why, it’s young Tom Blaize—son of our old enemy, Rip! I
+like the old man now. Oh! I saw nothing of the fellow.”
+
+“Lord!” cried Ripton, “are we going to get into a mess with Blaizes
+again? I don’t like that!”
+
+His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.
+
+“But when he goes to the train, and finds she’s not there?” Ripton
+suggested.
+
+“I’ve provided for that. The fool went to the South-east instead of the
+South-west. All warmth, all sweetness, comes with the South-west!—I’ve
+provided for that, friend Rip. My trusty Tom awaits him there, as if by
+accident. He tells him he has not seen her, and advises him to remain
+in town, and go for her there to-morrow, and the day following. Tom has
+money for the work. Young Tom ought to see London, you know, Rip!—like
+you. We shall gain some good clear days. And when old Blaize hears of
+it—what then? I have her! she’s mine!—Besides, he won’t hear for a
+week. This Tom beats that Tom in cunning, I’ll wager. Ha! ha!” the hero
+burst out at a recollection. “What do you think, Rip? My father has
+some sort of System with me, it appears, and when I came to town the
+time before, he took me to some people—the Grandisons—and what do you
+think? one of the daughters is a little girl—a nice little thing enough
+very funny—and he wants me to wait for her! He hasn’t said so, but I
+know it. I know what he means. Nobody understands him but me. I know he
+loves me, and is one of the best of men—but just consider!—a little
+girl who just comes up to my elbow. Isn’t it ridiculous? Did you ever
+hear such nonsense?”
+
+Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was foolish.
+
+“No, no! The die’s cast!” said Richard. “They’ve been plotting for a
+year up to this day, and this is what comes of it! If my father loves
+me, he will love her. And if he loves me, he’ll forgive my acting
+against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done. Come!
+step out! what a time we’ve been!” and away he went, compelling Ripton
+to the sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a column of
+grenadiers.
+
+Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man with
+wind so that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a tremendous
+pace, and experience no sensation of fatigue. The hero was communing
+with the elements, his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he
+pleased. Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the discrepancy
+between the pedestrian powers of the two, aimed their wit at Mr.
+Thompson junior’s expense. The pace, and nothing but the pace, induced
+Ripton to proclaim that they had gone too far, when they discovered
+that they had over shot the mark by half a mile. In the street over
+which stood love’s star, the hero thundered his presence at a door, and
+evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs. Berry. The hero attached
+significance to the fact that his instincts should have betrayed him,
+for he could have sworn to that house. The door being shut he stood in
+dead silence.
+
+“Haven’t you got her card?” Ripton inquired, and heard that it was in
+the custody of the cabman. Neither of them could positively bring to
+mind the number of the house.
+
+“You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty Thieves,”
+Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.
+
+Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love! The hero heavily
+descended the steps.
+
+Ripton murmured that they were done for. His commander turned on him,
+and said: “Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after another.
+I’ll take these.” With a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether
+subdued by Richard’s native superiority to adverse circumstances.
+
+Then were families aroused. Then did mortals dimly guess that something
+portentous was abroad. Then were labourers all day in the vineyard,
+harshly wakened from their evening’s nap. Hope and Fear stalked the
+street, as again and again the loud companion summonses resounded.
+Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully. He had Mrs. Berry before him,
+profuse of mellow curtsies.
+
+Richard ran to her and caught her hands: “She’s well?—upstairs?”
+
+“Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and
+fluttering-like,” Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone. The lover had
+flown aloft.
+
+The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour,
+there to wait till he was wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+
+“In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one of
+the two lightly,” is the dictum of The Pilgrim’s’s Scrip.
+
+It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action, and
+occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses that are
+ever fretting to gallop off with them. But when they have given the
+reins and the whip to another, what are they to do? They may go down on
+their knees, and beg and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or
+moderate his pace. Alas! each fresh thing they do redoubles his ardour:
+There is a power in their troubled beauty women learn the use of, and
+what wonder? They have seen it kindle Ilium to flames so often! But ere
+they grow matronly in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore,
+and do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of
+loveliness. They resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy;
+pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive love. And so
+the very sensible things which they can and do say, are vain.
+
+I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest. Are not those
+their own horses in yonder team? Certainly, if they were quite in
+earnest, they might soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter. A
+hundred different ways of disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will
+point you out one or two that shall be instantly efficacious. For Love,
+the charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love keeps his
+legs to the end. Granted dear women are not quite in earnest, still the
+mere words they utter should be put to their good account. They do mean
+them, though their hearts are set the wrong way. ’Tis a despairing,
+pathetic homage to the judgment of the majority, in whose faces they
+are flying. Punish Helen, very young, lightly. After a certain age you
+may select her for special chastisement. An innocent with Theseus, with
+Paris she is an advanced incendiary.
+
+The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to
+recall her stunned senses. Her bonnet was un-removed, her hands clasped
+on her knees; dry tears in her eyes. Like a dutiful slave, she rose to
+him. And first he claimed her mouth. There was a speech, made up of all
+the pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love could gather,
+awaiting him there; but his kiss scattered it to fragments. She dropped
+to her seat weeping, and hiding her shamed cheeks.
+
+By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew it
+to her lips.
+
+He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.
+
+“Keep your eyes so.”
+
+She could not.
+
+“Do you fear me, Lucy?”
+
+A throbbing pressure answered him.
+
+“Do you love me, darling?”
+
+She trembled from head to foot.
+
+“Then why do you turn from me?”
+
+She wept: “O Richard, take me home! take me home!”
+
+“Look at me, Lucy!”
+
+Her head shrank timidly round.
+
+“Keep your eyes on me, darling! Now speak!”
+
+But she could not look and speak too. The lover knew his mastery when
+he had her eyes.
+
+“You wish me to take you home?”
+
+She faltered: “O Richard? it is not too late.”
+
+“You regret what you have done for me?”
+
+“Dearest! it is ruin.”
+
+“You weep because you have consented to be mine?”
+
+“Not for me! O Richard!”
+
+“For me you weep? Look at me! For me?”
+
+“How will it end! O Richard!”
+
+“You weep for me?”
+
+“Dearest! I would die for you!”
+
+“Would you see me indifferent to everything in the world? Would you
+have me lost? Do you think I will live another day in England without
+you? I have staked all I have on you, Lucy. You have nearly killed me
+once. A second time, and the earth will not be troubled by me. You ask
+me to wait, when they are plotting against us on all sides? Darling
+Lucy! look on me. Fix—your fond eyes on me. You ask me to wait when
+here you are given to me when you have proved my faith—when we know we
+love as none have loved. Give me your eyes! Let them tell me I have
+your heart!”
+
+Where was her wise little speech? How could she match such mighty
+eloquence? She sought to collect a few more of the scattered fragments.
+
+“Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and by, and then—oh!
+if you take me home now”—
+
+The lover stood up. “He who has been arranging that fine scheme to
+disgrace and martyrize you? True, as I live! that’s the reason of their
+having you back. Your old servant heard him and your uncle discussing
+it. He!—Lucy! he’s a good man, but he must not step in between you and
+me. I say God has given you to me.”
+
+He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
+
+She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning, and she was
+weaker and softer.
+
+Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first law to her?
+Why should she not believe that she would wreck him by resisting? And
+if she suffered, oh sweet to think it was for his sake! Sweet to shut
+out wisdom; accept total blindness, and be led by him!
+
+The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further. She rustled her garments
+ominously, and vanished.
+
+“Oh, my own Richard!” the fair girl just breathed.
+
+He whispered, “Call me that name.”
+
+She blushed deeply.
+
+“Call me that name,” he repeated. “You said it once today.”
+
+“Dearest!”
+
+“Not that.”
+
+“O darling!”
+
+“Not that.”
+
+“Husband!”
+
+She was won. The rosy gate from which the word had issued was closed
+with a seal.
+
+Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of beauty that
+night. He received a lesson in the art of pumping from the worthy
+landlady below, up to an hour when she yawned, and he blinked, and
+their common candle wore with dignity the brigand’s hat of midnight,
+and cocked a drunken eye at them from under it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+
+Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not always he
+on whom beauty works its most conquering influence. It is the dull
+commonplace man into whose slow brain she drops like a celestial light,
+and burns lastingly. The poet, for instance, is a connoisseur of
+beauty: to the artist she is a model. These gentlemen by much
+contemplation of her charms wax critical. The days when they had hearts
+being gone, they are haply divided between the blonde and the brunette;
+the aquiline nose and the Proserpine; this shaped eye and that. But go
+about among simple unprofessional fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here
+and there you shall find some barbarous intelligence which has had just
+strength enough to conceive, and has taken Beauty as its Goddess, and
+knows but one form to worship, in its poor stupid fashion, and would
+perish for her. Nay, more: the man would devote all his days to her,
+though he is dumb as a dog. And, indeed, he is Beauty’s Dog. Almost
+every Beauty has her Dog. The hero possesses her; the poet proclaims
+her; the painter puts her upon canvas; and the faithful Old Dog follows
+her: and the end of it all is that the faithful Old Dog is her single
+attendant. Sir Hero is revelling in the wars, or in Armida’s bowers;
+Mr. Poet has spied a wrinkle; the brush is for the rose in its season.
+She turns to her Old Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has subsisted
+on a bone and a pat till there he squats decrepit, he turns his
+grateful old eyes up to her, and has not a notion that she is hugging
+sad memories in him: Hero, Poet, Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is
+she buried, and the village hears languid howls, and there is a
+paragraph in the newspapers concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an
+Old Dog.
+
+Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair Persian,
+and the change in the obscure monotony of his life by his having
+quarters in a crack hotel, and living familiarly with West-End
+people—living on the fat of the land (which forms a stout portion of an
+honest youth’s romance), Ripton Thompson breakfasted next morning with
+his chief at half-past eight. The meal had been fixed overnight for
+seven, but Ripton slept a great deal more than the nightingale, and (to
+chronicle his exact state) even half-past eight rather afflicted his
+new aristocratic senses and reminded him too keenly of law and bondage.
+He had preferred to breakfast at Algernon’s hour, who had left word for
+eleven. Him, however, it was Richard’s object to avoid, so they fell
+to, and Ripton no longer envied Hippias in bed. Breakfast done, they
+bequeathed the consoling information for Algernon that they were off to
+hear a popular preacher, and departed.
+
+“How happy everybody looks!” said Richard, in the quiet Sunday streets.
+
+“Yes—jolly!” said Ripton.
+
+“When I’m—when this is over, I’ll see that they are, too—as many as I
+can make happy,” said the hero; adding softly: “Her blind was down at a
+quarter to six. I think she slept well!”
+
+“You’ve been there this morning?” Ripton exclaimed; and an idea of what
+love was dawned upon his dull brain.
+
+“Will she see me, Ricky?”
+
+“Yes. She’ll see you to-day. She was tired last night.”
+
+“Positively?”
+
+Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.
+
+“Here,” he said, coming under some trees in the park, “here’s where I
+talked to you last night. What a time it seems! How I hate the night!”
+
+On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him, Ripton
+hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious acquaintance
+with the sex. Headings of certain random adventures he gave.
+
+“Well!” said his chief, “why not marry her?”
+
+Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, “Oh!” and had a taste of the
+feeling of superiority, destined that day to be crushed utterly.
+
+He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry’s charge for a term that caused
+him dismal fears that the Fair Persian still refused to show her face,
+but Richard called out to him, and up Ripton went, unaware of the
+transformation he was to undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together to
+receive him. From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously
+agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the room his
+cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained beyond their
+exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover, welcomed him
+kindly. He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely silly. They sat
+down, and tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little
+master of his tongue as he was of his eyes. After an interval, the Fair
+Persian having done duty by showing herself, was glad to quit the room.
+Her lord and possessor then turned inquiringly to Ripton.
+
+“You don’t wonder now, Rip?” he said.
+
+“No, Richard!” Ripton waited to reply with sufficient solemnity,
+“indeed I don’t!”
+
+He spoke differently; he looked differently. He had the Old Dog’s eyes
+in his head. They watched the door she had passed through; they
+listened for her, as dogs’ eyes do. When she came in, bonneted for a
+walk, his agitation was dog-like. When she hung on her lover timidly,
+and went forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or anything save
+the secret raptures the sight of her gave him, which are the Old Dog’s
+own. For beneficent Nature requites him: His sensations cannot be
+heroic, but they have a fulness and a wagging delight as good in their
+way. And this capacity for humble unaspiring worship has its peculiar
+guerdon. When Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what will he
+think of himself? Let no one despise the Old Dog. Through him doth
+Beauty vindicate her sex.
+
+It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of beholding
+her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her
+offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged
+comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he had
+to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of
+Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round
+the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their
+hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked up his ears. She, too, made the
+remark that everybody seemed to look happy, and he heard it with
+thrills of joy. “So everybody is, where you are!” he would have wished
+to say, if he dared, but was restrained by fears that his burning
+eloquence would commit him. Ripton knew the people he met twice. It
+would have been difficult to persuade him they were the creatures of
+accident.
+
+From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton’s frowned protest, Richard
+boldly struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning to
+perform the circuit. Here Ripton had some justification for his jealous
+pangs. The young girl’s golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily
+sad, face; her gentle graceful figure in the black straight dress she
+wore; a sort of half-conventual air she had—a mark of something not of
+class, that was partly beauty’s, partly maiden innocence growing
+conscious, partly remorse at her weakness and dim fear of the future it
+was sowing—did attract the eye-glasses. Ripton had to learn that eyes
+are bearable, but eye-glasses an abomination. They fixed a spell upon
+his courage; for somehow the youth had always ranked them as emblems of
+our nobility, and hearing two exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to
+front and rear several times, drawl in gibberish generally imputed to
+lords, that his heroine was a charming little creature, just the size,
+but had no style,—he was abashed; he did not fly at them and tear them.
+He became dejected. Beauty’s dog is affected by the eye-glass in a
+manner not unlike the common animal’s terror of the human eye.
+
+Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that he heard. He
+repeated to Lucy Diaper Sandoe’s verses—
+
+“The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+The coxcombs lift their glasses,”
+
+
+and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the park, and
+shine among the highest.
+
+They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering through the
+bare trees across the water, and the bright-edged rack. The lover, his
+imagination just then occupied in clothing earthly glories in
+celestial, felt where his senses were sharpest the hand of his darling
+falter, and instinctively looked ahead. His uncle Algernon was
+leisurely jolting towards them on his one sound leg. The dismembered
+Guardsman talked to a friend whose arm supported him, and speculated
+from time to time on the fair ladies driving by. The two white faces
+passed him unobserved. Unfortunately Ripton, coming behind, went plump
+upon the Captain’s live toe—or so he pretended, crying, “Confound it,
+Mr. Thompson! you might have chosen the other.”
+
+The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered that it was
+extraordinary.
+
+“Not at all,” said Algernon. “Everybody makes up to that fellow.
+Instinct, I suppose!”
+
+He had not to ask for his nephew. Richard turned to face the matter.
+
+“Sorry I couldn’t wait for you this morning, uncle,” he said, with the
+coolness of relationship. “I thought you never walked so far.”
+
+His voice was in perfect tone—the heroic mask admirable.
+
+Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and contrived to
+allude to the popular preacher. He was instantly introduced to Ripton’s
+sister, Miss Thompson.
+
+The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his nephew’s choice
+of a minister. After a few stray remarks, and an affable salute to Miss
+Thompson, he hobbled away, and then the three sealed volcanoes
+breathed, and Lucy’s arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to the
+heroic pitch.
+
+This incident quickened their steps homeward to the sheltering wings of
+Mrs. Berry. All that passed between them on the subject comprised a
+stammered excuse from Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured
+rejoinder from Richard, that he had gained a sister by it: at which
+Ripton ventured to wish aloud Miss Desborough would only think so, and
+a faint smile twitched poor Lucy’s lips to please him. She hardly had
+strength to reach her cage. She had none to eat of Mrs. Berry’s nice
+little dinner. To be alone, that she might cry and ease her heart of
+its accusing weight of tears, was all she prayed for. Kind Mrs. Berry,
+slipping into her bedroom to take off her things, found the fair body
+in a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing her completely and
+putting her to bed.
+
+“Just an hour’s sleep, or so,” the mellifluous woman explained the case
+to the two anxious gentlemen. “A quiet sleep and a cup of warm tea goes
+for more than twenty doctors, it do—when there’s the flutters,” she
+pursued. “I know it by myself. And a good cry beforehand’s better than
+the best of medicine.”
+
+She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired to her
+softer charge and sweeter babe, reflecting, “Lord! Lord! the three of
+’em don’t make fifty! I’m as old as two and a half of ’em, to say the
+least.” Mrs. Berry used her apron, and by virtue of their tender years
+took them all three into her heart.
+
+Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a morsel.
+
+“Did you see the change come over her?” Richard whispered.
+
+Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.
+
+The lover flung down his knife and fork: “What could I do? If I had
+said nothing, we should have been suspected. I was obliged to speak.
+And she hates a lie! See! it has struck her down. God forgive me!”
+
+Ripton affected a serene mind: “It was a fright, Richard,” he said.
+“That’s what Mrs. Berry means by flutters. Those old women talk in that
+way. You heard what she said. And these old women know. I’ll tell you
+what it is. It’s this, Richard!—it’s because you’ve got a fool for your
+friend!”
+
+“She regrets it,” muttered the lover. “Good God! I think she fears me.”
+He dropped his face in his hands.
+
+Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort:
+“It’s because you’ve got a fool for your friend!”
+
+Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused. The sun was buried
+alive in cloud. Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window. He
+watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement. His
+aristocratic visions had gone like his breakfast. Beauty had been
+struck down by his egregious folly, and there he stood—a wretch!
+
+Richard came to him: “Don’t mumble on like that, Rip!” he said. “Nobody
+blames you.”
+
+“Ah! you’re very kind, Richard,” interposed the wretch, moved at the
+face of misery he beheld.
+
+“Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night. Yes! If she’s
+happier away from me!—do you think me a brute, Ripton? Rather than have
+her shed a tear, I’d!—I’ll take her home to-night!”
+
+Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience,
+people perhaps might talk.
+
+The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he
+said: “If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue? If no one
+sees or hears of me, what can they say? O Rip! I’ll give her up. I’m
+wrecked for ever! What of that? Yes—let them take her! The world in
+arms should never have torn her from me, but when she cries—Yes! all’s
+over. I’ll find him at once.”
+
+He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve. Ripton
+looked on, wretcheder than ever.
+
+The idea struck him:—“Suppose, Richard, she doesn’t want to go?”
+
+It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians
+and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their
+righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack and sent
+him home to his naughty Mother. Alas! (it is The Pilgrim’s Scrip
+interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief! In bustles
+Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the two knights
+helmed, and sees, though ’tis dusk, that they wear doubtful brows, and
+guesses bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.
+
+“Dear! dear!” she exclaimed, “and neither of you eaten a scrap! And
+there’s my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever see!”
+
+“Ha?” cried the lover, illuminated.
+
+“Soft as a baby!” Mrs. Berry averred. “I went to look at her this very
+moment, and there’s not a bit of trouble in her breath. It come and it
+go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made. The Black Ox haven’t
+trod on her foot yet! Most like it was the air of London. But only
+fancy, if you had called in a doctor! Why, I shouldn’t have let her
+take any of his quackery. Now, there!”
+
+Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with a
+curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs.
+Berry’s speech, he drew forth a little glove—dropped there by some
+freak of chance.
+
+“Keep me, keep me, now you have me!” sang the little glove, and amused
+the lover with a thousand conceits.
+
+“When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?” he asked.
+
+“Oh! we mustn’t go for disturbing her,” said the guileful good
+creature. “Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you young gentlemen
+was to take my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a
+appetite—everybody should eat! it’s their sacred duty, no matter what
+their feelings be! and I say it who’m no chicken!—I’ll frickashee
+this—which is a chicken—against your return. I’m a cook, I can assure
+ye!”
+
+The lover seized her two hands. “You’re the best old soul in the
+world!” he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him. “We won’t
+disturb her. Let her sleep. Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you? And
+we’ll call to inquire after her this evening, and come and see her
+to-morrow. I’m sure you’ll be kind to her. There! there!” Mrs. Berry
+was preparing to whimper. “I trust her to you, you see. Good-bye, you
+dear old soul.”
+
+He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with
+his uncles, happy and hungry.
+
+Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry into
+their confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save their
+names, so that they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of that
+trump of a woman, and yet have nothing to fear from her. Lucy was to
+receive the name of Letitia, Ripton’s youngest and best-looking sister.
+The heartless fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of
+hers.
+
+“Letitia!” mused Richard. “I like the name. Both begin with L. There’s
+something soft—womanlike—in the L.’s.”
+
+Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper. The
+lover roamed through his golden groves. “Lucy Feverel! that sounds
+better! I wonder where Ralph is. I should like to help him. He’s in
+love with my cousin Clare. He’ll never do anything till he marries. No
+man can. I’m going to do a hundred things when it’s over. We shall
+travel first. I want to see the Alps. One doesn’t know what the earth
+is till one has seen the Alps. What a delight it will be to her! I
+fancy I see her eyes gazing up at them.
+
+‘And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
+    With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
+    Past weeping for mortality’s distress—
+Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.
+        And fills, but does not fall;
+        Softly I hear it call
+At heaven’s gate, till Sister Seraphs press
+To look on you their old love from the skies:
+Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!
+
+
+Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a
+friend of my father’s. I intend to find him and make them friends
+again. You don’t care for poetry. It’s no use your trying to swallow
+it, Rip!”
+
+“It sounds very nice,” said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.
+
+“The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East,” the hero
+continued. “She’s ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave heart!
+Oh, the glorious golden East! I dream of the desert. I dream I’m chief
+of an Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our mares,
+and hurry to the rescue of my darling! And we push the spears, and we
+scatter them, and I come to the tent where she crouches, and catch her
+to my saddle, and away!—Rip! what a life!”
+
+Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.
+
+“And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin’s life, with her
+to help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country heart
+and soul. A wise man told me that. I think I shall do something.”
+
+Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover. Now life
+was a narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged, flew
+illimitably. An hour ago and food was hateful. Now he manfully
+refreshed his nature, and joined in Algernon’s encomiums on Miss
+Letitia Thompson.
+
+Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the hero’s
+band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the reality which
+was a dream. She awoke calling for some friend, “Margaret!” and heard
+one say, “My name is Bessy Berry, my love! not Margaret.” Then she
+asked piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her dear friend,
+and Mrs. Berry whispered, “Sure you’ve got a dearer!”
+
+“Ah!” sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the
+strangeness of her state.
+
+Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the
+bedclothes quietly.
+
+Her name was breathed.
+
+“Yes, my love?” she said.
+
+“Is he here?”
+
+“He’s gone, my dear.”
+
+“Gone?—Oh, where?” The young girl started up in disorder.
+
+“Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!” Mrs. Berry
+chanted: “Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!”
+
+“O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?” Lucy wept for the
+famine-struck hero, who was just then feeding mightily.
+
+Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of
+his heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of
+women; and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the
+candle. She wanted one to pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand
+from under the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry’s, and kissed it. The
+good creature required no further avowal of her secret, but forthwith
+leaned her consummate bosom to the pillow, and petitioned heaven to
+bless them both!—Then the little bride was alarmed, and wondered how
+Mrs. Berry could have guessed it.
+
+“Why,” said Mrs. Berry, “your love is out of your eyes, and out of
+everything ye do.” And the little bride wondered more. She thought she
+had been so very cautious not to betray it. The common woman in them
+made cheer together after their own April fashion. Following which Mrs.
+Berry probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match;
+but the little bride’s lips were locked. She only said her lover was
+above her in station.
+
+“And you’re a Catholic, my dear!”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Berry!”
+
+“And him a Protestant.”
+
+“Yes, Mrs. Berry!”
+
+“Dear, dear!—And why shouldn’t ye be?” she ejaculated, seeing sadness
+return to the bridal babe. “So as you was born, so shall ye be! But
+you’ll have to make your arrangements about the children. The girls to
+worship with you, the boys with him. It’s the same God, my dear! You
+mustn’t blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If my young
+gentleman could see you now!”
+
+“Please, Mrs. Berry!” Lucy murmured.
+
+“Why, he will, you know, my dear!”
+
+“Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!”
+
+“And you that can’t bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do wish there was
+fathers and mothers on both sides and dock-ments signed, and
+bridesmaids, and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in
+spite of them.”
+
+She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she
+drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for. The one
+fact that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her;
+she would not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and history,
+however sadly she yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother
+Confessor.
+
+Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of
+matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.
+
+“And when you see your ticket,” said Mrs. Berry, “you shan’t know
+whether it’s a prize or a blank. And, Lord knows! some go on thinking
+it’s a prize when it turns on ’em and tears ’em. I’m one of the blanks,
+my dear! I drew a blank in Berry. He was a black Berry to me, my dear!
+Smile away! he truly was, and I a-prizin’ him as proud as you can
+conceive! My dear!” Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron. “We
+hadn’t been a three months man and wife, when that man—it wasn’t the
+honeymoon, which some can’t say—that man—Yes! he kicked me. His wedded
+wife he kicked! Ah!” she sighed to Lucy’s large eyes, “I could have
+borne that. A blow don’t touch the heart,” the poor creature tapped her
+sensitive side. “I went on loving of him, for I’m a soft one. Tall as a
+Grenadier he is, and when out of service grows his moustache. I used to
+call him my body-guardsman like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools
+we women are. For, take my word for it, my dear, there’s nothing here
+below so vain as a man! That I know. But I didn’t deserve it.... I’m a
+superior cook.... I did not deserve that noways.” Mrs. Berry thumped
+her knee, and accentuated up her climax: “I mended his linen. I saw to
+his adornments—he called his clothes, the bad man! I was a servant to
+him, my dear! and there—it was nine months—nine months from the day he
+swear to protect and cherish and that—nine calendar months, and my
+gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!—pish!” exclaimed
+Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly. “Here’s my ring. A
+pretty ornament! What do it mean? I’m for tearin’ it off my finger a
+dozen times in the day. It’s a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the
+dead-alive to wear it, that’s a widow and not a widow, and haven’t got
+a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I’ve looked, my dear, and”—she
+spread out her arms—“Johnson haven’t got a name for me!”
+
+At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry’s voice quavered into sobs. Lucy
+spoke gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of
+Autumn have no warning for April. The little bride, for all her tender
+pity, felt happier when she had heard her landlady’s moving tale of the
+wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one
+hero who was hers. Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she
+fell, shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.
+
+“O Mrs. Berry! I’m so young! Think of me—only just seventeen!”
+
+Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. “Young, my dear!
+Nonsense! There’s no so much harm in being young, here and there. I
+knew an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married close
+over fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man
+began, she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore. They’d
+stare! Bless you! the grandmother could have married over and over
+again. It was her daughter’s fault, not hers, you know.”
+
+“She was three years younger,” mused Lucy.
+
+“She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her father’s bailiff’s
+son. ‘Ah, Berry!’ she’d say, ‘if I hadn’t been foolish, I should be my
+lady now—not Granny!’ Her father never forgave her—left all his estates
+out of the family.”
+
+“Did her husband always love her?” Lucy preferred to know.
+
+“In his way, my dear, he did,” said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
+matrimonial wisdom. “He couldn’t help himself. If he left off, he began
+again. She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable. Cook! there
+wasn’t such another cook out of a Alderman’s kitchen; no, indeed! And
+she a born lady! That tells ye it’s the duty of all women! She had her
+saying ‘When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen fire!’
+and a good saying it is to treasure. Such is man! no use in havin’
+their hearts if ye don’t have their stomachs.”
+
+Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: “You know
+nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don’t
+neglect your cookery. Kissing don’t last: cookery do!”
+
+Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim’s Scrip, she broke
+off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well; very
+eager to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come.
+Mrs. Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little bride,
+positively commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be
+nursed and cherished. For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten minutes alone
+with the hero could only be had while the little bride was in that
+unattainable position.
+
+Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained. The
+night did not pass before she learnt, from the hero’s own mouth, that
+Mr. Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse
+to his union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward of his,
+heiress to an immense property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and
+because his darling Letitia was a Catholic—Letitia, the sole daughter
+of a brave naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a savage uncle,
+who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son. Mrs. Berry
+listened credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect
+that the wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of
+young ones. The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and
+devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero’s band, which now numbered
+three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are
+no conspirators like women. Ripton’s lieutenancy became a sinecure, his
+rank merely titular. He had never been married—he knew nothing about
+licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult—he
+had not an idea that so many days’ warning must be given to the
+clergyman of the parish where one of the parties was resident. How
+should he? All his forethought was comprised in the ring, and whenever
+the discussion of arrangements for the great event grew particularly
+hot and important, he would say, with a shrewd nod: “We mustn’t forget
+the ring, you know, Mrs. Berry!” and the new member was only prevented
+by natural complacence from shouting: “Oh, drat ye! and your ring too.”
+Mrs. Berry had acted conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns, and
+by licence, and to have such an obvious requisite dinned in her ears
+was exasperating. They could not have contracted alliance with an
+auxiliary more invaluable, an authority so profound; and they
+acknowledged it to themselves. The hero marched like an automaton at
+her bidding; Lieutenant Thompson was rejoiced to perform services as
+errand-boy in the enterprise.
+
+“It’s in hopes you’ll be happier than me, I do it,” said the devout and
+charitable Berry. “Marriages is made in heaven, they say; and if that’s
+the case, I say they don’t take much account of us below!”
+
+Her own woeful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for
+his story of cruel parents.
+
+Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt
+out the wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and
+suppliant.
+
+“Oh, he’ll come!” said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic wrinkles: “he’ll
+come of his own accord. Never anywhere will he meet such a cook as
+Bessy Berry! And he know her value in his heart of hearts. And I do
+believe, when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to him again,
+and not slapping his impidence in the face—I’m that soft! I always
+was—in matrimony, Mr. Richards!”
+
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and arsenals
+hammer night and day, and busy contractors measure time by inches, and
+the air hums around for leagues as it were myriads of bees, so the
+house and neighbourhood of the matrimonial soft one resounded in the
+heroic style, and knew little of the changes of light decreed by
+Creation. Mrs. Berry was the general of the hour. Down to Doctors’
+Commons she expedited the hero, instructing him how boldly to face the
+Law, and fib: for that the Law never could mist a fib and a bold face.
+Down the hero went, and proclaimed his presence. And lo! the Law danced
+to him its sedatest lovely bear’s-dance. Think ye the Law less
+susceptible to him than flesh and blood? With a beautiful confidence it
+put the few familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then
+stamped the bond, and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart
+that can permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For
+only mark him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what
+he does so easily! That small archway of Doctors’ Commons seems the eye
+of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of
+slipping more readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels
+alike, the lean purse an especially big camel. Dispensing tremendous
+marriage as it does, the Law can have no conscience.
+
+“I hadn’t the slightest difficulty,” said the exulting hero.
+
+“Of course not!” returns Mrs. Berry. “It’s as easy, if ye’re in
+earnest, as buying a plum bun.”
+
+Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
+Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and
+there hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its
+forces: which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously
+engaged to do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.
+
+Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry,
+were toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,—the
+former soundly; and one day was as another to them. Regularly every
+morning a letter arrived from Richard to his father, containing
+observations on the phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on
+the speeches and acts of Parliament; and reasons for not having yet
+been able to call on the Grandisons. They were certainly rather
+monotonous and spiritless. The baronet did not complain. That cold
+dutiful tone assured him there was no internal trouble or distraction.
+“The letters of a healthful physique!” he said to Lady Blandish, with
+sure insight. Complacently he sat and smiled, little witting that his
+son’s ordeal was imminent, and that his son’s ordeal was to be his own.
+Hippias wrote that his nephew was killing him by making appointments
+which he never kept, and altogether neglecting him in the most
+shameless way, so that his ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse
+state than when he left Raynham. He wrote very bitterly, but it was
+hard to feel compassion for his offended stomach.
+
+On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
+despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening
+after evening, vastly disturbed. London was a large place—young Tom
+might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses. A
+wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels
+have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost
+sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not
+his pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into
+a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of,
+unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had
+behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while
+he had the chance. It was a long guess. Still it was the only
+reasonable way of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and
+therefore the farmer held to it that he had done the deed. He argued as
+modern men do who think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary
+calculations, is gone from us. So, after despatching a letter to a
+friend in town to be on the outlook for son Tom, he continued awhile to
+smoke his pipe, rather elated than not, and mused on the shrewd manner
+he should adopt when Master Honeymoon did appear.
+
+Toward the middle of the second week of Richard’s absence, Tom Bakewell
+came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the
+Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum.
+The Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter
+in return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep
+the heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace. Tom went back, and
+Raynham and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow. The System,
+wedded to Time, slept, and knew not how he had been
+outraged—anticipated by seven pregnant seasons. For Time had heard the
+hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had also registered an
+oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is unforgiving. Half the
+confusion and fever of the world comes of this vendetta he declares
+against the hapless innocents who have once done him a wrong. They
+cannot escape him. They will never outlive it. The father of jokes, he
+is himself no joke; which it seems the business of men to discover.
+
+The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs. Berry has a new
+satin gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves,
+presented to her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the
+altar to-morrow; and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much
+a chicken as any of the party, such has been the magic of these
+articles. Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced for them by
+their children; a world content to be carved out as it pleases the
+hero.
+
+At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor. The
+final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry
+lights the little bride to her bed. Lucy stops on the landing where
+there is an old clock eccentrically correct that night. ’Tis the
+palpitating pause before the gates of her transfiguration. Mrs. Berry
+sees her put her rosy finger on the One about to strike, and touch all
+the hours successively till she comes to the Twelve that shall sound
+“Wife” in her ears on the morrow, moving her lips the while, and
+looking round archly solemn when she has done; and that sight so
+catches at Mrs. Berry’s heart that, not guessing Time to be the poor
+child’s enemy, she endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in her
+arms, whimpering; “Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb! You
+shall be happy! You shall!”
+
+Old Time gazes grimly ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of
+that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his
+fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls
+with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they
+stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken.
+The shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness.
+There they have dreamed: here they must act. There lie youth and
+irresolution: here manhood and purpose. They are veritably in another
+land: a moral Acheron divides their life. Their memories scarce seem
+their own! The Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes
+that each man has, one time or other, a little Rubicon—a clear or a
+foul water to cross. It is asked him: “Wilt thou wed this Fate, and
+give up all behind thee?” And “I will,” firmly pronounced, speeds him
+over. The above-named manuscript authority informs us, that by far the
+greater number of carcasses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister
+stream below, are those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and
+have tried to swim back to the bank they have blotted out. For though
+every man of us may be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so
+after a day’s march even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant,
+and wears the features of the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail
+before her, either in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves
+in her visage wither and sicken to what it is modelled on! Be your
+Rubicon big or small, clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not
+return. On—or to Acheron!—I subscribe to that saying of The Pilgrim’s
+Scrip:
+
+“The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware
+the little knowledge of one’s self!”
+
+Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already the
+mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in two,
+and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His father, his
+father’s love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy. His poetic
+dreams had taken a living attainable shape. He had a distincter
+impression of the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at
+Raynham. And yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I
+daresay Caesar loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he
+killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is
+scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he
+was made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion has an
+instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn
+to the head, flying from the bow. His audacious mendacities and
+subterfuges did not strike him as in any way criminal; for he was
+perfectly sure that the winning and securing of Lucy would in the end
+be boisterously approved of, and in that case, were not the means
+justified? Not that he took trouble to argue thus, as older heroes and
+self-convicting villains are in the habit of doing; to deduce a clear
+conscience. Conscience and Lucy went together.
+
+It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One of
+those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops
+forth all its babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early
+alive with the cries of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and
+organ boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined
+in tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing
+procession of omnibuses, freighted with business men, Cityward, where a
+column of reddish brown smoke,—blown aloft by the South-west, marked
+the scene of conflict to which these persistent warriors repaired.
+Richard had seen much of early London that morning. His plans were
+laid. He had taken care to ensure his personal liberty against
+accidents, by leaving his hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at
+sunrise. To-day or to-morrow his father was to arrive. Farmer Blaize,
+Tom Bakewell reported to him, was raging in town. Another day and she
+might be torn from him: but to-day this miracle of creation would be
+his, and then from those glittering banks yonder, let them summon him
+to surrender her who dared! The position of things looked so propitious
+that he naturally thought the powers waiting on love conspired in his
+behalf. And she, too—since she must cross this river, she had sworn to
+him to be brave, and do him honour, and wear the true gladness of her
+heart in her face. Without a suspicion of folly in his acts, or fear of
+results, Richard strolled into Kensington Gardens, breakfasting on the
+foreshadow of his great joy, now with a vision of his bride, now of the
+new life opening to him. Mountain masses of clouds, rounded in
+sunlight, swung up the blue. The flowering chestnut pavilions overhead
+rustled and hummed. A sound in his ears as of a banner unfolding in the
+joyful distance lulled him.
+
+He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven. His
+watch said a quarter to ten. He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed
+trees toward the well dedicated to a saint obscure. Some people were
+drinking at the well. A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had a
+little silver mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised
+dislike to the liquor of the salutary saint.
+
+“Drink, child!” said the maturer lady. “That is only your second mug. I
+insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning we’re in town.
+Your constitution positively requires iron!”
+
+“But, mama,” the other expostulated, “it’s so nasty. I shall be sick.”
+
+“Drink!” was the harsh injunction. “Nothing to the German waters, my
+dear. Here, let me taste.” She took the mug and gave it a flying kiss.
+“I declare I think it almost nice—not at all objectionable. Pray, taste
+it,” she said to a gentleman standing below them to act as cup-bearer.
+
+An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: “Certainly, if it’s good
+fellowship; though I confess I don’t think mutual sickness a very
+engaging ceremony.”
+
+Can one never escape from one’s relatives? Richard ejaculated inwardly.
+
+Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian. He had
+them under his eyes.
+
+Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man was
+near to see the possible consequence of it, was the first to perceive
+him. Her hand dropped.
+
+“Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!” said Mrs. Doria.
+
+“Mama!” Clare gasped.
+
+Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was out
+of the question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: “My own boy! My dear
+Richard!” profuse of exclamations. Clare shyly greeted him. Adrian kept
+in the background.
+
+“Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard,” said Mrs. Doria, smiling
+effusion; and rattled on, “We want another cavalier. This is
+delightful! My dear nephew! You have grown from a boy to a man. And
+there’s down on his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in
+the morning? Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child.—Clare! finish
+that mug and thank your cousin for sparing you the third. I always
+bring her, when we are by a chalybeate, to take the waters before
+breakfast. We have to get up at unearthly hours. Think, my dear boy!
+Mothers are sacrifices! And so you’ve been alone a fortnight with your
+agreeable uncle! A charming time of it you must have had! Poor Hippias!
+what may be his last nostrum?”
+
+“Nephew!” Adrian stretched his head round to the couple. “Doses of
+nephew taken morning and night fourteen days! And he guarantees that it
+shall destroy an iron constitution in a month.”
+
+Richard mechanically shook Adrian’s hand as he spoke.
+
+“Quite well, Ricky?”
+
+“Yes: well enough,” Richard answered.
+
+“Well?” resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare and
+Adrian followed. “I really never saw you looking so handsome. There’s
+something about your face—look at me—you needn’t blush. You’ve grown to
+an Apollo. That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes you admirably—and
+those gloves, and that easy neck-tie. Your style is irreproachable,
+quite a style of your own! And nothing eccentric. You have the instinct
+of dress. Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as much as anything else.
+Boy!—you see, I can’t forget old habits. You were a boy when I left,
+and now!—Do you see any change in him, Clare?” she turned half round to
+her daughter.
+
+“Richard is looking very well, mama,” said Clare, glancing at him under
+her eyelids.
+
+“I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.—Take my arm, Richard. Are
+you afraid of your aunt? I want to get used to you. Won’t it be
+pleasant, our being all in town together in the season? How fresh the
+Opera will be to you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come to the
+Forey’s box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys close by
+here. I think it’s a little too far out, you know; but they like the
+neighbourhood. This is what I have always said: Give him more liberty!
+Austin has seen it at last. How do you think Clare looking?”
+
+The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his cousin hastily,
+and praised her looks.
+
+“Pale!” Mrs. Doria sighed.
+
+“Rather pale, aunt.”
+
+“Grown very much—don’t you think, Richard?”
+
+“Very tall girl indeed, aunt.”
+
+“If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard! I’m sure I give
+her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues. I
+think she does not prosper away from her old companion. She was
+accustomed to look up to you, Richard”—
+
+“Did you get Ralph’s letter, aunt?” Richard interrupted her.
+
+“Absurd!” Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. “The nonsense of a boy! Why did
+you undertake to forward such stuff?”
+
+“I’m certain he loves her,” said Richard, in a serious way.
+
+The maternal eyes narrowed on him. “Life, my dear Richard, is a game of
+cross-purposes,” she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather
+angered to hear him laugh. He excused himself by saying that she spoke
+so like his father.
+
+“You breakfast with us,” she freshened off again. “The Foreys wish to
+see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have a
+reputation on account of that”—she crushed an intruding
+adjective—“System you were brought up on. You mustn’t mind it. For my
+part, I think you look a credit to it. Don’t be bashful with young
+women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know how to
+behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! I’m sure I
+shall be proud of you. Am I not?”
+
+Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.
+
+A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to
+spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along,
+he pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes he could
+dedicate to this charitable office.
+
+“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Doria. “You want manners, my dear boy. I think
+it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my
+presence.”
+
+Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour,
+up to which he was her servant.
+
+“Fiddlededee!” the vivacious lady sang. “Now I’ve got you, I mean to
+keep you. Oh! I’ve heard all about you. This ridiculous indifference
+that your father makes so much of! Why, of course, you wanted to see
+the world! A strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely
+house—no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics! Of
+course you were indifferent! Your intelligence and superior mind alone
+saved you from becoming a dissipated country boor.—Where are the
+others?”
+
+Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.
+
+“My damozel dropped something,” Adrian explained.
+
+Her mother asked what it was.
+
+“Nothing, mama,” said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.
+
+Overborne by his aunt’s fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute
+calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he
+edged in a word for Ralph. When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him
+immediately.
+
+“I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank idiotcy.”
+
+“It’s nothing of the kind, aunt.”
+
+“The fancy of a boy.”
+
+“He’s not a boy. He’s half-a-year older than I am!”
+
+“You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all think yourselves
+men.”
+
+“On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly.”
+
+“Did he tell you so, child?”
+
+“Men don’t speak openly of those things,” said Richard.
+
+“Boys do,” said Mrs. Doria.
+
+“But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind to Ralph.
+Don’t drive him to—You maybe sorry for it. Let him—do let him write to
+her, and see her. I believe women are as cruel as men in these things.”
+
+“I never encourage absurdity, Richard.”
+
+“What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?”
+
+“Oh, they’re both good families. It’s not that absurdity, Richard. It
+will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn’t a
+dairymaid.” Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly. It did not touch
+her nephew.
+
+“Don’t you want Clare ever to marry?” He put the last point of reason
+to her.
+
+Mrs. Doria laughed. “I hope so, child. We must find some comfortable
+old gentleman for her.”
+
+“What infamy!” mutters Richard.
+
+“And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a
+hearty breakfast—We don’t dance at weddings now, and very properly.
+It’s a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.—Is that his
+regiment?” she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled
+gardens. “Tush, tush, child! Master Ralph will recover, as—hem! others
+have done. A little headache—you call it heartache—and up you rise
+again, looking better than ever. No doubt, to have a grain of sense
+forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be painful..
+Girls suffer as much as boys, I assure you. More, for their heads are
+weaker, and their appetites less constant. Do I talk like your father
+now? Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?”
+
+Richard stopped short. Time spoke urgently.
+
+“I must go,” he said.
+
+His face did not seem good for trifling. Mrs. Doria would trifle in
+spite.
+
+“Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an engagement. What
+possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o’clock in the
+morning?—unless it’s to be married!” Mrs. Doria laughed at the
+ingenuity of her suggestion.
+
+“Is the church handy, Ricky?” said Adrian. “You can still give us
+half-an-hour if it is. The celibate hours strike at Twelve.” And he
+also laughed in his fashion.
+
+“Won’t you stay with us, Richard?” Clare asked. She blushed timidly,
+and her voice shook.
+
+Something indefinite—a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the burning
+bridegroom speak gently to her.
+
+“Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a most
+imperative appointment—that is, I promised—I must go. I shall see you
+again”—
+
+Mrs. Doria, took forcible possession of him. “Now, do come, and don’t
+waste words. I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and then,
+if you really must go, you shall. Look! there’s the house. At least you
+will accompany your aunt to the door.”
+
+Richard conceded this. She little imagined what she required of him.
+Two of his golden minutes melted into nothingness. They were growing to
+be jewels of price, one by one more and more precious as they ran, and
+now so costly-rare—rich as his blood! not to kindest relations, dearest
+friends, could he give another. The die is cast! Ferryman! push off.
+
+“Good-bye!” he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and fled.
+
+They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the
+house. He looked like resolution on the march. Mrs. Doria, as usual
+with her out of her brother’s hearing, began rating the System.
+
+“See what becomes of that nonsensical education! The boy really does
+not know how to behave like a common mortal. He has some paltry
+appointment, or is mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and
+everything must be sacrificed to it! That’s what Austin calls
+concentration of the faculties. I think it’s more likely to lead to
+downright insanity than to greatness of any kind. And so I shall tell
+Austin. It’s time he should be spoken to seriously about him.”
+
+“He’s an engine, my dear aunt,” said Adrian. “He isn’t a boy, or a man,
+but an engine. And he appears to have been at high pressure since he
+came to town—out all day and half the night.”
+
+“He’s mad!” Mrs. Doria interjected.
+
+“Not at all. Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and carries as open an
+eye ahead of him as the ships before Troy. He’s more than a match for
+any of us. He is for me, I confess.”
+
+“Then,” said Mrs. Doria, “he does astonish me!”
+
+Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right season,
+which would not be long arriving.
+
+Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the Foreys of their
+hopeful relative’s ungracious behaviour. Clare had left them. When Mrs.
+Doria went to her room her daughter was there, gazing down at something
+in her hand, which she guiltily closed.
+
+In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off her things,
+Clare said she was not hungry. Mrs. Doria lamented the obstinacy of a
+constitution that no quantity of iron could affect, and eclipsed the
+looking-glass, saying: “Take them off here, child, and learn to assist
+yourself.”
+
+She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading hair,
+talking of Richard, and his handsome appearance, and extraordinary
+conduct. Clare kept opening and shutting her hand, in an attitude
+half-pensive, half-listless. She did not stir to undress. A joyless
+dimple hung in one pale cheek, and she drew long even breaths.
+
+Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to show, came to
+her daughter.
+
+“Now, really,” she said, “you are too helpless, my dear. You cannot do
+a thing without a dozen women at your elbow. What will become of you?
+You will have to marry a millionaire.—What’s the matter with you,
+child?”
+
+Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction of her
+eyes, and displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of a green glove.
+
+“A wedding-ring!” exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the curiosity most
+daintily.
+
+There on Clare’s pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!
+
+Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found, beset Clare, who
+replied: “In the Gardens, mama. This morning. When I was walking behind
+Richard.”
+
+“Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?”
+
+“Oh no, mama! he did not give it me.”
+
+“Of course not! only he does such absurd things! I thought,
+perhaps—these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous!” Mrs. Doria had an
+idea that it might have been concerted between the two young gentlemen,
+Richard and Ralph, that the former should present this token of
+hymeneal devotion from the latter to the young lady of his love; but a
+moment’s reflection exonerated boys even from such preposterous
+behaviour.
+
+“Now, I wonder,” she speculated on Clare’s cold face, “I do wonder
+whether it’s lucky to find a wedding-ring. What very quick eyes you
+have, my darling!” Mrs. Doria kissed her. She thought it must be lucky,
+and the circumstance made her feel tender to her child. Her child did
+not move to the kiss.
+
+“Let’s see whether it fits,” said Mrs. Doria, almost infantine with
+surprise and pleasure.
+
+Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off. The ring slid down her long
+thin finger, and settled comfortably.
+
+“It does!” Mrs. Doria whispered. To find a wedding ring is open to any
+woman; but to find a wedding-ring that fits may well cause a
+superstitious emotion. Moreover, that it should be found while walking
+in the neighbourhood of the identical youth whom a mother has destined
+for her daughter, gives significance to the gentle perturbation of
+ideas consequent on such a hint from Fortune.
+
+“It really fits!” she pursued. “Now I never pay any attention to the
+nonsense of omens and that kind of thing” (had the ring been a
+horseshoe Mrs. Doria would have pinked it up and dragged it obediently
+home), “but this, I must say, is odd—to find a ring that
+fits!—singular! It never happened to me. Sixpence is the most I ever
+discovered, and I have it now. Mind you keep it, Clare—this ring: And,”
+she laughed, “offer it to Richard when he comes; say, you think he must
+have dropped it.”
+
+The dimple in Clare’s cheek quivered.
+
+Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard. Mrs. Doria,
+by exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one side
+there would be no obstacle to her project of general happiness,
+without, as she thought, compromising her daughter’s feelings
+unnecessarily. It could do no harm to an obedient young girl to hear
+that there was no youth in the world like a certain youth. He the
+prince of his generation, she might softly consent, when requested, to
+be his princess; and if never requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged
+failure), she might easily transfer her softness to squires of lower
+degree. Clare had always been blindly obedient to her mother (Adrian
+called them Mrs. Doria Battledoria and the fair Shuttlecockiana), and
+her mother accepted in this blind obedience the text of her entire
+character. It is difficult for those who think very earnestly for their
+children to know when their children are thinking on their own account.
+The exercise of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not
+like to be invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think
+yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank
+offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the kinder of
+the two, though sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at these
+unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now,
+excess of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as
+insurrection. Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter’s manner
+save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in
+her face, exhibited an imperious requirement of the mineral.
+
+“The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
+disappointing,” we learn from The Pilgrim’s Scrip, “is, that we will
+read them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading
+ourselves from theirs.”
+
+Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she
+laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined
+in his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal
+auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and
+must, whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to
+him (for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine, as no woman
+would drop a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the
+world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed.
+Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of
+Clare’s fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang.
+Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her
+grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected
+from grandpapas.
+
+This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe.
+The finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the
+palpitating accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous
+instrument. In the midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her
+deplorable want of iron by bursting into tears.
+
+Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then enacting?
+Perhaps, dimly, as we say: that is, without eyes.
+
+At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths.
+They are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so. If there
+is hesitation at the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly. She
+conceives as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over
+them hangs a cool young curate in his raiment of office. Behind are two
+apparently lucid people, distinguished from each other by sex and age:
+the foremost a bunch of simmering black satin; under her shadow a
+cock-robin in the dress of a gentleman, big joy swelling out his chest,
+and pert satisfaction cocking his head. These be they who stand here in
+place of parents to the young couple. All is well. The service
+proceeds.
+
+Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour of the
+complacent giant at least is his, and that he means to hold him bound
+through the eternities, men may hear. Clearly, and with brave modesty,
+speaks she: no less firmly, though her body trembles: her voice just
+vibrating while the tone travels on, like a smitten vase.
+
+Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands bind his huge
+limbs and lock the chains. He is used to it: he lets them do as they
+will.
+
+Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each other.
+The Man with his right hand takes the Woman by her right hand: the
+Woman with her right hand takes the Man by his right hand.—Devils dare
+not laugh at whom Angels crowd to contemplate.
+
+Their hands are joined; their blood flows as one stream. Adam and fair
+Eve front the generations. Are they not lovely? Purer fountains of life
+were never in two bosoms.
+
+And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the Man
+to put a ring on the Woman’s fourth finger, counting thumb. And the Man
+thrusts his hand into one pocket, and into another, forward and back
+many times into all his pockets. He remembers that he felt for it, and
+felt it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the Gardens. And his hand
+comes forth empty. And the Man is ghastly to look at!
+
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh! The curate
+deliberates. The black satin bunch ceases to simmer. He in her shadow
+changes from a beaming cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow. Eyes
+multiply questions: lips have no reply. Time ominously shakes his
+chain, and in the pause a sound of mockery stings their ears.
+
+Think ye a hero is one to be defeated in his first battle? Look at the
+clock! there are but seven minutes to the stroke of the celibate hours:
+the veteran is surely lifting his two hands to deliver fire, and his
+shot will sunder them in twain so nearly united. All the jewellers of
+London speeding down with sacks full of the nuptial circlet cannot save
+them!
+
+The battle must be won on the field, and what does the hero now? It is
+an inspiration! For who else would dream of such a reserve in the rear?
+None see what he does; only that the black-satin bunch is
+remonstratingly agitated, stormily shaken, and subdued: and as though
+the menacing cloud had opened, and dropped the dear token from the
+skies at his demand, he produces the symbol of their consent, and the
+service proceeds: “With this ring I thee wed.”
+
+They are prayed over and blest. For good, or for ill, this deed is
+done. The names are registered; fees fly right and left: they thank,
+and salute, the curate, whose official coolness melts into a smile of
+monastic gallantry: the beadle on the steps waves off a gaping world as
+they issue forth bridegroom and bridesman recklessly scatter gold on
+him: carriage doors are banged to: the coachmen drive off, and the
+scene closes, everybody happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+
+And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would dissolve to
+one of Dian’s Virgin Fountains from the clasp of the Sun-God. She has
+nobly preserved the mask imposed by comedies, till the curtain has
+fallen, and now she weeps, streams with tears. Have patience, O
+impetuous young man! It is your profession to be a hero. This poor
+heart is new to it, and her duties involve such wild acts, such
+brigandage, such terrors and tasks, she is quite unnerved. She did you
+honour till now. Bear with her now. She does not cry the cry of
+ordinary maidens in like cases. While the struggle went on her tender
+face was brave; but, alas! Omens are against her: she holds an
+ever-present dreadful one on that fatal fourth finger of hers, which
+has coiled itself round her dream of delight, and takes her in its
+clutch like a horrid serpent. And yet she must love it. She dares not
+part from it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its strange honey,
+and all the bliss it gives her casts all the deeper shadow on what is
+to come.
+
+Say: Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension, for a woman to be
+married in another woman’s ring?
+
+You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand citadels—wherever
+there is strife, and Time is to be taken by the throat. Then shall few
+men match your sublime fury. But what if you see a vulture, visible
+only to yourselves, hovering over the house you are gaily led by the
+torch to inhabit? Will you not crouch and be cowards?
+
+As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to omens. He
+does his best to win his darling to confidence by caresses. Is she not
+his? Is he not hers? And why, when the battle is won, does she weep?
+Does she regret what she has done?
+
+Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast love seen
+swimming on clear depths of faith in them, through the shower.
+
+He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed waiting for
+the shower to pass.
+
+Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue to her
+distress, and a second character in the comedy changed her face.
+
+“O Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what has happened!”
+
+“My darlin’ child!” The bridal Berry gazed at the finger of doleful
+joy. “I’d forgot all about it! And that’s what’ve made me feel so queer
+ever since, then! I’ve been seemin’ as if I wasn’t myself somehow,
+without my ring. Dear! dear! what a wilful young gentleman! We ain’t a
+match for men in that state—Lord help us!”
+
+Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge of the bed.
+
+“What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry? Is it not terrible?”
+
+“I can’t say I should ’a liked it myself, my dear,” Mrs. Berry candidly
+responded.
+
+“Oh! why, why, why did it happen!” the young bride bent to a flood of
+fresh tears, murmuring that she felt already old—forsaken.
+
+“Haven’t you got a comfort in your religion for all accidents?” Mrs.
+Berry inquired.
+
+“None for this. I know it’s wrong to cry when I am so happy. I hope he
+will forgive me.”
+
+Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest, beautifulest
+thing in life.
+
+“I’ll cry no more,” said Lucy. “Leave me, Mrs. Berry, and come back
+when I ring.”
+
+She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees to the
+bed. Mrs. Berry left the room tiptoe.
+
+When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless, and smiled
+kindly to her.
+
+“It’s over now,” she said.
+
+Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.
+
+“He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have prepared, Mrs.
+Berry. I begged to be excused. I cannot eat.”
+
+Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a superior
+nuptial breakfast, but with her mind on her ring she nodded
+assentingly.
+
+“We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry.”
+
+“No, my dear. It’s pretty well all done.”
+
+“We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry.”
+
+“And a very suitable spot ye’ve chose, my dear!”
+
+“He loves the sea. He wishes to be near it.”
+
+“Don’t ye cross to-night, if it’s anyways rough, my dear. It isn’t
+advisable.” Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say, “Don’t ye be soft and
+give way to him there, or you’ll both be repenting it.”
+
+Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had to speak. She
+saw Mrs. Berry’s eyes pursuing her ring, and screwed up her courage at
+last.
+
+“Mrs. Berry.”
+
+“Yes, my dear.”
+
+“Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring.”
+
+“Another, my dear?” Berry did not comprehend. “One’s quite enough for
+the objeck,” she remarked.
+
+“I mean,” Lucy touched her fourth finger, “I cannot part with this.”
+She looked straight at Mrs. Berry.
+
+That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring, till she had
+thoroughly exhausted the meaning of the words, and then exclaimed,
+horror-struck: “Deary me, now! you don’t say that? You’re to be married
+again in your own religion.”
+
+The young wife repeated: “I can never part with it.”
+
+“But, my dear!” the wretched Berry wrung her hands, divided between
+compassion and a sense of injury. “My dear!” she kept expostulating
+like a mute.
+
+“I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry. I am very grieved to pain
+you. It is mine now, and must be mine. I cannot give it back.”
+
+There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible little heroine
+in the three Kingdoms.
+
+From her first perception of the meaning of the young bride’s words,
+Mrs. Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew that her case was hopeless,
+unless she treated her as she herself had been treated, and seized the
+ring by force of arms; and that she had not heart for.
+
+“What!” she gasped faintly, “one’s own lawful wedding-ring you wouldn’t
+give back to a body?”
+
+“Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry. It was yours, but it is mine now. You
+shall have whatever you ask for but that. Pray, forgive me! It must be
+so.”
+
+Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands together. It
+amazed her that this soft little creature could be thus firm. She tried
+argument.
+
+“Don’t ye know, my dear, it’s the fatalest thing you’re inflictin’ upon
+me, reelly! Don’t ye know that bein’ bereft of one’s own lawful
+wedding-ring’s the fatalest thing in life, and there’s no prosperity
+after it! For what stands in place o’ that, when that’s gone, my dear?
+And what could ye give me to compensate a body for the loss o’ that?
+Don’t ye know—Oh, deary me!” The little bride’s face was so set that
+poor Berry wailed off in despair.
+
+“I know it,” said Lucy. “I know it all. I know what I do to you. Dear,
+dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me! If I parted with my ring I know it would
+be fatal.”
+
+So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument as well
+as her ring.
+
+Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.
+
+“But, my child,” she counter-argued, “you don’t understand. It ain’t as
+you think. It ain’t a hurt to you now. Not a bit, it ain’t. It makes no
+difference now! Any ring does while the wearer’s a maid. And your Mr.
+Richard will find the very ring he intended for ye. And, of course,
+that’s the one you’ll wear as his wife. It’s all the same now, my dear.
+It’s no shame to a maid. Now do—now do—there’s a darlin’!”
+
+Wheedling availed as little as argument.
+
+“Mrs. Berry,” said Lucy, “you know what my—he spoke: ‘With this ring I
+thee wed.’ It was with this ring. Then how could it be with another?”
+
+Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that was logic.
+
+She hit upon an artful conjecture:
+
+“Won’t it be unlucky your wearin’ of the ring which served me so? Think
+o’ that!”
+
+“It may! it may! it may!” cried Lucy.
+
+“And arn’t you rushin’ into it, my dear?”
+
+“Mrs. Berry,” Lucy said again, “it was this ring. It cannot—it never
+can be another. It was this. What it brings me I must bear. I shall
+wear it till I die!”
+
+“Then what am I to do?” the ill-used woman groaned. “What shall I tell
+my husband when he come back to me, and see I’ve got a new ring waitin’
+for him? Won’t that be a welcome?”
+
+Quoth Lucy: “How can he know it is not the same; in a plain gold ring?”
+
+“You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my Berry!” returned his
+solitary spouse. “Not know, my dear? Why, any one would know that’ve
+got eyes in his head. There’s as much difference in wedding-rings as
+there’s in wedding people! Now, do pray be reasonable, my own sweet!”
+
+“Pray, do not ask me,” pleads Lucy.
+
+“Pray, do think better of it,” urges Berry.
+
+“Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!” pleads Lucy.
+
+“—And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when you’re so happy!”
+
+“Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!” Lucy faltered.
+
+Mrs. Berry thought she had her.
+
+“Just when you’re going to be the happiest wife on earth—all you want
+yours!” she pursued the tender strain. “A handsome young gentleman!
+Love and Fortune smilin’ on ye!”—
+
+Lucy rose up.
+
+“Mrs. Berry,” she said, “I think we must not lose time in getting
+ready, or he will be impatient.”
+
+Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge of her chair.
+Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto folded
+under her wing. In an hour the heroine had risen to the measure of the
+hero. Without being exactly aware what creature she was dealing with,
+Berry acknowledged to herself it was not one of the common run, and
+sighed, and submitted.
+
+“It’s like a divorce, that it is!” she sobbed.
+
+After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry bustled
+humbly about the packing. Then Lucy, whose heart was full to her, came
+and kissed her, and Berry bumped down and regularly cried. This over,
+she had recourse to fatalism.
+
+“I suppose it was to be, my dear! It’s my punishment for meddlin’ wi’
+such matters. No, I’m not sorry. Bless ye both. Who’d ’a thought you
+was so wilful?—you that any one might have taken for one of the
+silly-softs! You’re a pair, my dear! indeed you are! You was made to
+meet! But we mustn’t show him we’ve been crying.—Men don’t like it when
+they’re happy. Let’s wash our faces and try to bear our lot.”
+
+So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge. She
+deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another
+person’s ring, how much sadder to have one’s own old accustomed lawful
+ring violently torn off one’s finger and eternally severed from one!
+But where you have heroes and heroines, these terrible complications
+ensue.
+
+They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal
+honour and success.
+
+In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last
+directions. Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared a
+sumptuous breakfast. Chickens offered their breasts: pies hinted
+savoury secrets: things mystic, in a mash, with Gallic appellatives,
+jellies, creams, fruits, strewed the table: as a tower in the midst,
+the cake colossal: the priestly vesture of its nuptial white relieved
+by hymeneal splendours.
+
+Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended
+upon this breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts that
+have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are
+careful to provide against: who will speak, and whose hateful voice
+must somehow be silenced while the feast is going on. This personage is
+The Philosopher. Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he would come. She
+provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious: that
+is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due
+and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers
+collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family
+lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her
+return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have
+stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work. The Philosopher
+would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names.
+Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry
+defied him. In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a
+whisper. And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think of
+protesting; fiery wines, and cool: claret sent purposely by the
+bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.
+
+For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb.
+Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the
+world as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with
+delight. He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly
+flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to
+do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would not allow him to shout
+Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil
+poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom,
+the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of
+suppressed emotion. At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell
+vacuously into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty,
+severely-worded instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms,
+yawned, and in short behaved so singularly that Richard observed it,
+and said: “On my soul, I don’t think you know a word I’m saying.”
+
+“Every word, Ricky!” Ripton spirted through the opening. “I’m going
+down to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin! Here’s your only
+chance of being a happy father—no, no!—Oh! don’t you fear me, Ricky! I
+shall talk the old gentleman over.”
+
+His chief said:
+
+“Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first
+thing to-morrow, by the six o’clock train. Give him my letter. Listen
+to me—give him my letter, and don’t speak a word till he speaks. His
+eyebrows will go up and down, he won’t say much. I know him. If he asks
+you about her, don’t be a fool, but say what you think of her
+sensibly”—
+
+No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to. He shouted:
+“She’s an angel!”
+
+Richard checked him: “Speak sensibly, I say—quietly. You can say how
+gentle and good she is—my fleur-de-luce! And say, this was not her
+doing. If any one’s to blame, it’s I. I made her marry me. Then go to
+Lady Blandish, if you don’t find her at the house. You may say whatever
+you please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want to hear from
+her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know what she thinks of her.
+You will then go to Farmer Blaize. I told you Lucy happens to be his
+niece—she has not lived long there. She lived with her aunt Desborough
+in France while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to
+the farmer—there’s not a point of likeness between them. Poor darling!
+she never knew her mother. Go to Mr. Blaize, and tell him. You will
+treat him just as you would treat any other gentleman. If you are
+civil, he is sure to be. And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you
+will still treat him with respect. You hear? And then write me a full
+account of all that has been said and done. You will have my address
+the day after to-morrow. By the way, Tom will be here this afternoon.
+Write out for him where to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case
+you have heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know at
+once, as Tom will join me that night. Don’t mention to anybody about my
+losing the ring, Ripton. I wouldn’t have Adrian get hold of that for a
+thousand pounds. How on earth I came to lose it! How well she bore it,
+Rip! How beautifully she behaved!”
+
+Ripton again shouted: “An angel!” Throwing up the heels of his second
+bottle, he said:
+
+“You may trust your friend, Richard. Aha! when you pulled at old Mrs.
+Berry I didn’t know what was up. I do wish you’d let me drink her
+health?”
+
+“Here’s to Penelope!” said Richard, just wetting his mouth. The
+carriage was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the
+same tune, and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the
+secretest veiled wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in the
+production of discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state made
+him begin to fume and send in messages for his bride by the maid.
+
+By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her
+journey, and smiling from stained eyes.
+
+Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out
+for her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
+
+The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom,
+on the plea of her softness. Lucy gave Ripton her hand, with a musical
+“Good-bye, Mr. Thompson,” and her extreme graciousness made him just
+sensible enough to sit down before he murmured his fervent hopes for
+her happiness.
+
+“I shall take good care of him,” said Mrs. Berry, focussing her eyes to
+the comprehension of the company.
+
+“Farewell, Penelope!” cried Richard. “I shall tell the police
+everywhere to look out for your lord.”
+
+“Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!”
+
+Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching
+loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up
+the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an
+old shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry’s enthusiastic female domestic.
+
+White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they
+were off. Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that
+she telegraphed, hand in air, awakening Ripton’s lungs, for the
+coachman to stop, and ran back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone,
+but at his bride’s intercession he consented to wait. Presently they
+beheld the old black-satin bunch stream through the street-door, down
+the bit of garden, and up the astonished street; halting, panting,
+capless at the carriage door, a book in her hand,—a much-used,
+dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book, which; at the same time calling out in
+breathless jerks, “There! never ye mind looks! I ain’t got a new one.
+Read it, and don’t ye forget it!” she discharged into Lucy’s lap, and
+retreated to the railings, a signal for the coachman to drive away for
+good.
+
+How Richard laughed at the Berry’s bridal gift! Lucy, too, lost the
+omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume. It was Dr.
+Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+
+General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs
+and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry’s
+abode, proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of
+fresh regions. With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton’s arm to regulate
+his steps, and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In
+the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from
+which altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty woman. She
+smoothed her excited apron, sighing. Let no one imagine that she
+regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must
+be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense
+of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the
+more—such is the born Pagan’s tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him
+back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said
+he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she
+had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist’s reply. He
+sounded a bogey’s alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated to
+the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make.
+
+“It’s done!” she exclaimed. How could she regret what she felt comfort
+to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on
+such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched
+silent on the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton’s incision
+there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
+
+The eloquent indication was understood. “Dear! dear!” cried Mrs. Berry,
+“what a heap o’ cake, and no one to send it to!”
+
+Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret.
+Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling
+geysir of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and waggled, and
+nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without
+effort, preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the
+nymph, Gravitation, who was on the look-out for his whole length
+shortly.
+
+“Ha! ha!” he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken, and
+almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry’s words
+had just reached his wits.
+
+“Why do you laugh, young man?” she inquired, familiar and motherly on
+account of his condition.
+
+Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table
+and his nose on a chicken. “That’s goo’!” he said, recovering, and
+rocking under Mrs. Berry’s eyes. “No friend!”
+
+“I did not say, no friend,” she remarked. “I said, no one; meanin’, I
+know not where for to send it to.”
+
+Ripton’s response to this was: “You put a Griffin on that cake.
+Wheatsheaves each side.”
+
+“His crest?” Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
+
+“Oldest baronetcy ’n England!” waved Ripton.
+
+“Yes?” Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
+
+“You think he’s Richards. We’re oblige’ be very close. And she’s the
+most lovely!—If I hear man say thing ’gainst her.”
+
+“You needn’t for to cry over her, young man,” said Mrs. Berry. “I
+wanted for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then
+go about my day’s work, and I do hope you won’t keep me.”
+
+Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
+
+“You do?” he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
+articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and
+Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an
+expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he
+drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight
+of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there
+stretched.
+
+Some minutes subsequent to Ripton’s signalization of his devotion to
+the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry’s maid entered the room to say that a
+gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had
+departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her
+hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth
+gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated
+with horrible exultation that she had been and done it, as her
+disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable,
+access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing
+words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing
+fit without delay; and she had already given the preluding demoniac
+ironic outburst, when the maid called heaven to witness that the
+gentleman would hear her; upon which Mrs. Berry violently controlled
+her bosom, and ordered that he should be shown upstairs instantly to
+see her the wretch she was. She repeated the injunction.
+
+The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see
+herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to
+look a very little better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was
+settled, smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.
+
+The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had put
+him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its
+white-vestured cake, made him whistle.
+
+Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
+
+“A fine morning, ma’am,” said Adrian.
+
+“It have been!” Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the
+window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
+
+“A very fine Spring,” pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her
+countenance.
+
+Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to “weather” on a deep sigh. Her
+wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful
+and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some
+strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat
+compressing hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his
+element than when he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject
+sinner in hand, his affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry.
+
+“I presume these are Mr. Thompson’s lodgings?” he remarked, with a look
+at the table.
+
+Mrs. Berry’s head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they
+were not Mr. Thompson’s lodgings.
+
+“No?” said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.
+“Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?”
+
+A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on
+her knees, formed Mrs. Berry’s reply.
+
+“Mr. Feverel’s man,” continued Adrian, “told me I should be certain to
+find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson. I’m
+too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I fancy you have
+been having a party of them here, ma’am?—a bachelors’ breakfast!”
+
+In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony
+so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She felt she
+must speak. Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could,
+she began:
+
+“Sir, may I beg for to know your name?”
+
+Mr. Harley accorded her request.
+
+Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
+
+“And you are Mr. Harley, that was—oh! and you’ve come for Mr.?”—
+
+Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
+
+“Oh! and it’s no mistake, and he’s of Raynham Abbey?” Mrs. Berry
+inquired.
+
+Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.
+
+“His father’s Sir Austin?” wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her
+handkerchief.
+
+Adrian verified Richard’s descent.
+
+“Oh, then, what have I been and done!” she cried, and stared blankly at
+her visitor. “I been and married my baby! I been and married the bread
+out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you was
+a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it’s my softness
+that’s my ruin, for I never can resist a man’s asking. Look at that
+cake, Mr. Harley!”
+
+Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. “Wedding-cake, ma’am!” he
+said.
+
+“Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!”
+
+“Did you make it yourself, ma’am?”
+
+The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that
+train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him
+guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.
+
+“I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley,” she replied. “It’s a bought
+cake, and I’m a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms
+a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house! I
+little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don’t you remember his
+old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no
+fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin’ after the night you got
+into Mr. Benson’s cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary—I remember it
+as clear as yesterday!—and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to
+use the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed. I’m that very woman.”
+
+Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful
+life.
+
+“Well, ma’am! well?” he said. He would bring her to the furnace.
+
+“Won’t you see it all, kind sir?” Mrs. Berry appealed to him in
+pathetic dumb show.
+
+Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing
+at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked
+uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his
+comfortable full-bodied posture was the same. “Well, ma’am?” he spurred
+her on.
+
+Mrs. Berry burst forth: “It were done this mornin’, Mr. Harley, in the
+church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence.”
+
+Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. “Oh!” he
+said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved:
+“Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr.
+Feverel?”
+
+Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him,
+saying: “Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?”
+
+Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
+
+“This young gentleman was at church this morning?” he asked.
+
+“Oh! quite reasonable and proper then,” Mrs. Berry begged him to
+understand.
+
+“Of course, ma’am.” Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate
+limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. “You were all
+reasonable and proper, ma’am. The principal male performer, then, is my
+cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by licence at
+your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left
+intoxicated.”
+
+Mrs. Berry flew out. “He never drink a drop, sir. A more moderate young
+gentleman you never see. Oh! don’t ye think that now, Mr. Harley. He
+was as upright and master of his mind as you be.”
+
+“Ay!” the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, “I mean
+the other form of intoxication.”
+
+Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.
+
+Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him
+circumstantially what had been done.
+
+She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
+
+Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical
+woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his
+mask, and had ever since lived in exile from the Raynham world on a
+little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She was that
+woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse Providence for the
+betraying excess of softness it had endowed her with. How was she to
+recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a feigned name; not a word
+of the family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal, though
+she felt something more than ordinary to him—she knew she did. He came
+bringing a beautiful young lady, and on what grounds could she turn her
+back on them? Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, why should she
+interfere to make them unhappy—so few the chances of happiness in this
+world! Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring.
+
+“One wrench,” said the sobbing culprit, “one, and my ring was off!”
+
+She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the
+vestry-book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other
+signatures.
+
+“I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done,” said
+Adrian.
+
+“Indeed, sir,” moaned Berry, “I were, and am.”
+
+“And would do your best to rectify the mischief—eh, ma’am?”
+
+“Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would,” she protested solemnly.
+
+“—As, of course, you should—knowing the family. Where may these
+lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?”
+
+Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: “To the Isle—I don’t quite know, sir!”
+she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit she had
+fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be
+pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss! “To-morrow, if you
+please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!”
+
+“A pleasant spot,” Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
+
+By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought
+his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this was
+enough to satisfy Adrian’s mind that there had been concoction and
+chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance
+certainly had not brought him to the young one.
+
+“Very well, ma’am,” he said, in answer to her petitions for his
+favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and
+the bridal pair, “I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the
+affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the
+consummation. He will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two
+must see him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will set our
+friend here on his legs. A bath and a clean shirt, and he might go. I
+don’t see why your name should appear at all. Brush him up, and send
+him to Bellingham by the seven o’clock train. He will find his way to
+Raynham; he knows the neighbourhood best in the dark. Let him go and
+state the case. Remember, one of you must go.”
+
+With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the
+couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtues
+over, Adrian said, “Good morning.”
+
+Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. “You won’t refuse a piece of his
+cake, Mr. Harley?”
+
+“Oh, dear, no, ma’am,” Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. “I
+shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who
+will rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs.
+Berry. Put it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it
+to them, and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees
+of relationship.”
+
+Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the
+sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and
+she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she
+regretted her conduct. She vowed that they seemed made for each other;
+that both, were beautiful; both had spirit; both were innocent; and to
+part them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs. Berry wrought herself
+to cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
+
+Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion. He
+took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and left
+Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.
+
+“So dies the System!” was Adrian’s comment in the street. “And now let
+prophets roar! He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which is more
+than I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime,” he gave the cake
+a dramatic tap, “I’ll go sow nightmares.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+
+Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
+disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
+dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point
+of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive
+objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at
+them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their
+frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise
+youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early
+period. Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of
+greater heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his stronghold,
+for he saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped
+him, and air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came
+precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the
+winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground,
+fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his
+comfort to his conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from
+his fellows: on the contrary, his sole amusement was their society.
+Alone he was rather dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must
+naturally be. Study of the animated varieties of that one thing excited
+him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play; and the faculties he
+had forfeited to hold his elevated position he could serenely enjoy by
+contemplation of them in others. Thus:—wonder at Master Richard’s
+madness: though he himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark
+the effect on his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive
+hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze,
+bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the prospect.
+For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with Paris,
+culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to
+show Richard the highways of History and tear him from the risk of
+further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether
+bathed in freshness and revived. This had been planned during Richard’s
+absence to surprise him.
+
+Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the
+race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance,
+as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the
+airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere,
+hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse,
+and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never
+travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had
+discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by
+his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious
+landlord in the foreground: he must recline on Mammon’s imperial
+cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient world. The
+search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo
+their mistresses to partake the shelter of a but and batten on a crust,
+Adrian deemed the bitterness of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be
+given him in the pomp and splendour due to his superior emotions, or
+not at all. Consequently the wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual
+passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that at the moment when
+his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with such slight touches
+of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian cookery and
+Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very
+few even of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly to
+meaner delights the moment after.
+
+Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
+
+He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He had fought down
+his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to
+his dinner at the Foreys’ with less than usual timidity.
+
+“Ah! glad you’ve come, Adrian,” he said, and expanded his chest. “I was
+afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you. We’ll walk down
+together through the park. It’s absolutely dangerous to walk alone in
+these streets. My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the
+year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it. I give you my
+word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in
+Piccadilly, and I thought I was down! I saved myself by a miracle.”
+
+“You have an appetite, I hope?” asked Adrian.
+
+“I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk,” chirped Hippias.
+“Yes. I think I feel hungry now.”
+
+“Charmed to hear it,” said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on
+his knees. “How should you define Folly?” he checked the process to
+inquire.
+
+“Hm!” Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when such
+questions were addressed to him. “I think I should define it to be a
+slide.”
+
+“Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on
+it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle.
+You must present that to the Pilgrim. And the monument of folly, what
+would that be?”
+
+Hippias meditated anew. “All the human race on one another’s
+shoulders.” He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
+
+“Very good,” Adrian applauded, “or in default of that, some symbol of
+the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a chip.”
+
+Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
+
+“This is the monument made portable—eh?”
+
+“Cake!” cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense
+disgust. “You’re right of them that eat it. If I—if I don’t mistake,”
+he peered at it, “the noxious composition bedizened in that way is what
+they call wedding-cake. It’s arrant poison! Who is it you want to kill?
+What are you carrying such stuff about for?”
+
+Adrian rang the bell for a knife. “To present you with your due and
+proper portion. You will have friends and relatives, and can’t be saved
+from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps,
+the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who
+consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to
+distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with the object
+probably” (he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to
+slice the cake) “of enabling those friends (these edifices require very
+delicate incision—each particular currant and subtle condiment hangs to
+its neighbour—a wedding-cake is evidently the most highly civilized of
+cakes, and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of
+civilization!)—I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt
+(we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair
+share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing
+some hours in purgatory. This, as far as I can apportion it without
+weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!”
+
+He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
+
+“Get away!” Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.
+“I’ll have none of it, I tell you! It’s death! It’s fifty times worse
+than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What fool has been doing
+this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It’s an insult.”
+
+“You are not compelled to eat any before dinner,” said Adrian, pointing
+the corner of the table after him, “but your share you must take, and
+appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the marriage
+cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I
+hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
+therefrom—said to be of a lighter class, taken that way. It’s a capital
+cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it—you have indeed!
+So here it is.”
+
+The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung
+himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: “There!... My appetite’s gone for
+to-day!”
+
+“Then shall I tell Richard that you won’t touch a morsel of his cake?”
+said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking at his
+uncle.
+
+“Richard?”
+
+“Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you’ve been
+in town. He’s married, you know. Married this morning at Kensington
+parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty
+to. Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight, a
+very delectable place for a month’s residence. I have to announce to
+you that, thanks to your assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!”
+
+“Richard married!”
+
+There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the
+wits of poor Hippias were softened by the shock. His hand travelled
+half-way to his forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that seat
+of reason, and then fell.
+
+“Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in town
+under your charge....”
+
+“Married?” Hippias jumped up—he had it. “Why, he’s under age! he’s an
+infant.”
+
+“So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib like a man and
+pay your fee—what does it matter? Any one who is breeched can obtain a
+licence in our noble country. And the interests of morality demand that
+it should not be difficult. Is it true—can you persuade anybody that
+you have known nothing about it?”
+
+“Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on somebody
+else,” said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa. “You’ve done
+me up for the day, I can assure you.”
+
+Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic
+finish to the work. He had the gratification of passing his uncle
+through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in
+conviction, and exclaimed, “This accounts for his conduct to me. That
+boy must have a cunning nothing short of infernal! I feel. . . I feel
+it just here,” he drew a hand along his midriff.
+
+“I’m not equal to this world of fools,” he added faintly, and shut his
+eyes. “No, I can’t dine. Eat? ha!... no. Go without me!”
+
+Shortly after, Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed,
+“See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!” and as the pillow
+swelled over his ears, “I’m not sure that a day’s fast won’t do me
+good.” The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had
+a right to use it.
+
+Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
+
+He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the
+Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged. The
+Captain did not pass with out querying the ungainly parcel.
+
+“I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?” said Adrian. “Enclosed is
+wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the maids and wives
+of Merry England sleep secure. I had half a mind to fix it on a pole,
+and engage a band to parade it. This is our dear Richard’s
+wedding-cake. Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at
+the Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed the
+ring of his beautiful bride’s lachrymose land-lady, she standing
+adjacent by the altar. His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers as a
+maid, you can claim on the spot if you think proper, and digest
+according to your powers.”
+
+Algernon let off steam in a whistle. “Thompson, the solicitor’s
+daughter!” he said. “I met them the other day, somewhere about here. He
+introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage.
+
+“No.” Adrian set him right. “’Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman Catholic
+dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the
+Plantagenets! He’s quite equal to introducing her as Thompson’s
+daughter, and himself as Beelzebub’s son. However, the wild animal is
+in Hymen’s chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?”
+
+“Oh, by all means!—not now.” Algernon had an unwonted air of
+reflection.—“Father know it?”
+
+“Not yet. He will to-night by nine o’clock.”
+
+“Then I must see him by seven. Don’t say you met me.” He nodded, and
+pricked his horse.
+
+“Wants money!” said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once
+more in motion.
+
+The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had
+reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures!
+Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest
+check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate.
+Well might The Pilgrim’s Scrip say of her that, “She is always at
+Nature’s breast”; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve
+throughout the ages; whereas the Pilgrim would have us believe that the
+Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has
+learnt a lesson from time. Probably the Pilgrim’s meaning may be taken
+to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
+
+At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the
+nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria’s maternal
+predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form
+of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his
+Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty,
+and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and
+womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and
+other females of the family assembly were expected to develop the finer
+shades and tapering edges of an agitation to which no woman could be
+cold.
+
+All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in a
+conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to dinner.
+Much of the conversation adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria asked him if
+he had seen the youth, or heard of him.
+
+“Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!” said Adrian. “I have heard of him. I
+heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a breakfast that
+dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake and”—
+
+“Cake at breakfast!” they all interjected.
+
+“That seems to be his fancy just now.”
+
+“What an extraordinary taste!”
+
+“You know, he is educated on a System.”
+
+One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable
+pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent,
+as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young
+gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished by
+his own spark.
+
+Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, “Oh! fish-cake, I suppose! I wish he
+understood a little better the obligations of relationship.”
+
+“Whether he understands them, I can’t say,” observed Adrian, “but I
+assure you he is very energetic in extending them.”
+
+The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that
+his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by
+at the aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly
+mysterious and deep.
+
+“Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?” Mrs.
+Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
+
+Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, “Do they keep a
+beadle at the door?”
+
+Mrs. Doria’s animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece
+of satirical ingenuousness. “I daresay they do,” she said.
+
+“And a curate on hand?”
+
+“Oh, I should think a dozen!”
+
+Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house
+a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment’s
+notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
+
+The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent
+old fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon
+as they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the
+flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful
+accord, and the gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and
+settled to the business of the table, sure that an hour for unbosoming
+and imbibing was their own. Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a
+barrister of standing.
+
+“I want to ask you,” he said, “whether an infant in law can legally
+bind himself.”
+
+“If he’s old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I suppose
+he can,” yawned Brandon.
+
+“Is he responsible for his acts?”
+
+“I’ve no doubt we could hang him.”
+
+“Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?”
+
+“Not quite so much; pretty near.”
+
+“For instance, he can marry?”
+
+“That’s not a criminal case, you know.”
+
+“And the marriage is valid?”
+
+“You can dispute it.”
+
+“Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds then?”
+
+“Both water and fire!”
+
+The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the
+vigorous circulation of the claret.
+
+“Dear me, sir!” said Adrian, “I beg pardon. The circumstances must
+excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid
+this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law.”
+
+It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement
+was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than, “Deuce he has!” and,
+“A dairymaid!”
+
+“I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace,” Adrian
+continued. “I wanted to be able to console my aunt”—
+
+“Well, but—well, but,” the old gentleman, much the most excited,
+puffed—“eh, Brandon? He’s a boy, this young ass! Do you mean to tell me
+a boy can go and marry when he pleases, and any troll he pleases, and
+the marriage is good? If I thought that I’d turn every woman off my
+premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid. I’d have
+no woman near him till—till”—
+
+“Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?” suggested Brandon.
+
+“Till he knew what women are made of, sir!” the old gentleman finished
+his sentence vehemently. “What, d’ye think, will Feverel say to it, Mr.
+Adrian?”
+
+“He has been trying the very System you have proposed sir—one that does
+not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile
+intelligence. I’m afraid it’s the very worst way of solving the
+problem.”
+
+“Of course it is,” said Clarence. “None but a fool!”—
+
+“At your age,” Adrian relieved his embarrassment, “it is natural, my
+dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or
+imprisoned manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to see
+what amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme, and we the
+other. I don’t say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind
+shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably
+resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting.
+The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his
+naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little
+man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself from naughtiness?”
+
+A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at Mr.
+Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian,
+in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with
+him. Adrian preferred not to go in alone. “Very well,” he said, and
+sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of law in
+Brandon Forey, and receiving nought but hollow echoes from that
+profound cavity. He would not affirm that the marriage was invalid: he
+would not affirm that it could not be annulled. He thought not: still
+he thought it would be worth trying. A consummated and a
+non-consummated union were two different things....
+
+“Dear me!” said Adrian, “does the Law recognize that? Why, that’s
+almost human!”
+
+Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Forey very
+particularly wished to speak with him.
+
+“What can be the matter?” he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in
+woman strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt.
+
+So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society. All the
+younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood displayed,
+gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision, and intrude
+the comments and speculations continually arising from fresh shocks of
+wonder at the unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty
+air of men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the
+gallant males also ranged themselves round the common object of
+curiosity.
+
+“Here! Adrian!” Mrs. Doria cried. “Where is Adrian? Pray, come here.
+Tell me! Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do
+here? You know all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring it
+into the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer. Now do
+not make me impatient, Adrian.”
+
+Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated rapidity
+and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled.
+
+“I was really bound to bring it,” Adrian protested.
+
+“Answer me!”
+
+The wise youth bowed: “Categorically. This cake came from the house of
+a person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you partly,
+partly to me, partly to Clare, and to the rest of our family, on the
+principle of equal division for which purpose it is present....”
+
+“Yes! Speak!”
+
+“It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean.”
+
+“This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian! where is Richard?”
+
+Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
+
+But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling
+hope sank. “The wretched boy has ruined himself!” she said, and sat
+down trembling.
+
+Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead
+of oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that System. She hesitated not to say
+that her brother had got what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak,
+justice had overtaken him. Now he would see! but at what a price! at
+what a sacrifice!
+
+Mrs. Doria, commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
+
+Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry’s words. “He was married this
+morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve, by
+licence, at the Kensington parish church.”
+
+“Then that was his appointment!” Mrs. Doria murmured.
+
+“That was the cake for breakfast!” breathed a second of her sex.
+
+“And it was his ring!” exclaimed a third.
+
+The men were silent, and made long faces.
+
+Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other’s
+eyes.
+
+“Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?”
+
+“The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid,” said
+Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
+
+Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried,
+“Brandon!” She was a woman of energy. Her thoughts resolved to action
+spontaneously.
+
+“Brandon,” she drew the barrister a little aside, “can they not be
+followed, and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate them? A
+boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the
+toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not,
+Brandon?”
+
+The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her
+entreaties: “From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the
+office perilous.”
+
+“I’m speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one of
+your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?”
+
+“This evening?”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
+
+“You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon.”
+
+Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to a
+man slept heavily after dinner.
+
+“Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you
+promise me to do so, Brandon?—Or a magistrate! A magistrate would send
+a policeman after them. My dear Brandon! I beg—I beg you to assist us
+in this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I
+believe he would forgive anything but this. You have no idea what his
+notions are of blood.”
+
+Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
+
+“What is it, aunt?” asked the wise youth. “You want them followed and
+torn asunder by wild policemen?”
+
+“To-morrow!” Brandon queerly interposed.
+
+“Won’t that be—just too late?” Adrian suggested.
+
+Mrs. Doria, sighed out her last spark of hope.
+
+“You see,” said Adrian....
+
+“Yes! yes!” Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations. “Pray
+be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be! it’s quite
+impossible! Can you stand there and tell me that boy is legally
+married? I never will believe it! The law cannot be so shamefully bad
+as to permit a boy—a mere child—to do such absurd things. Grandpapa!”
+she beckoned to the old gentleman. “Grandpapa! pray do make Brandon
+speak. These lawyers never will. He might stop it, if he would. If I
+were a man, do you think I would stand here?”
+
+“Well, my dear,” the old gentleman toddled to compose her, “I’m quite
+of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or I. My belief is
+they none of them know anything till they join issue and go into Court.
+I want to see a few female lawyers.”
+
+“To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?” said Adrian. “They would
+have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand.”
+
+“And you can jest, Adrian!” his aunt reproached him. “But I will not be
+beaten. I know—I am firmly convinced that no law would ever allow a boy
+to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and nothing shall
+persuade me that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak in
+answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealing with a
+woman. Can my nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly? Is
+what he has done legitimate? Is he bound for life by what he has done
+while a boy?
+
+“Well—a,” Brandon breathed through his teeth. “A—hm! the matter’s so
+very delicate, you see, Helen.”
+
+“You’re to forget that,” Adrian remarked.
+
+“A—hm! well!” pursued Brandon. “Perhaps if you could arrest and divide
+them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain facts”...
+
+“Yes?” the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
+
+“Well...hm! a...in that case...a... Or if a lunatic, you could prove
+him to have been of unsound mind.”...
+
+“Oh! there’s no doubt of his madness on my mind, Brandon.”
+
+“Yes! well! in that case... Or if of different religious
+persuasions”...
+
+“She is a Catholic!” Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
+
+“Yes! well! in that case...objections might be taken to the form of the
+marriage... Might be proved fictitious... Or if he’s under, say,
+eighteen years”...
+
+“He can’t be much more,” cried Mrs. Doria. “I think,” she appeared to
+reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, “What is Richard’s
+age?”
+
+The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the
+phantom straw she caught at.
+
+“Oh! about that, I should fancy,” he muttered; and found it necessary
+at the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment. Mrs. Doria
+surpassed his expectations.
+
+“Yes I well, then...” Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was
+meant to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare’s voice
+was heard from out the buzzing circle of her cousins: “Richard is
+nineteen years and six months old to-day, mama.”
+
+“Nonsense, child.”
+
+“He is, mama.” Clare’s voice was very steadfast.
+
+“Nonsense, I tell you. How can you know?”
+
+“Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama.”
+
+Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Clare was
+too strong for her.
+
+“Singular child!” she mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully
+rejected straws while drowning.
+
+“But there’s the religion still!” she comforted herself, and sat down
+to cogitate.
+
+The men smiled and looked vacuous.
+
+Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms;
+when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar’s dust and is taken
+to fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: “I’m
+a laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!” Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary
+Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people
+to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of
+the world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and
+very few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the
+glowing appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of
+the emptiness he addressed. Clare was asked to entertain the company.
+The singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over
+the appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger’s repertory.
+
+Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the
+piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters;
+but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling
+an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably
+pity herself—a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no
+juggler like that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so
+boldly. Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening
+scheme, rendered fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had
+almost reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She
+had enough of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.
+
+Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria’s energetic nature
+prevented her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer they
+were the harder she clutched them.
+
+She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow
+her.
+
+“Adrian,” she said, turning upon him in the passage, “you mentioned a
+house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning. I desire
+you to take me to that woman immediately.”
+
+The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped
+he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after
+enjoying the comedy of real life.
+
+“My dear aunt”...he was beginning to insinuate.
+
+“Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat,” said Mrs. Doria.
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the
+Pilgrim’s dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected
+on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation
+and a nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
+
+What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly
+know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or
+other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could
+use it in wrath. She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to
+abuse. She dared not abuse her brother to his face: him she would have
+to console. Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she
+was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly
+philosophic, ground by a discussion of the case. So she drove to Bessy
+Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had flown.
+
+When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a
+woman of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy.
+Bessy Berry’s creditor came to her in female form that night. She then
+beheld it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a
+male, a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male
+attributes, and the peculiar male characteristic of being moved, and
+ultimately silenced, by tears. As female, her creditor was terrible
+indeed. Still, had it not been a late hour, Bessy Berry would have died
+rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to make their nest in
+the Isle of Wight. They had a long start, they were out of the reach of
+pursuers, they were safe, and she told what she had to tell. She told
+more than was wise of her to tell. She made mention of her early
+service in the family, and of her little pension. Alas! her little
+pension! Her creditor had come expecting no payment—come; as creditors
+are wont in such moods, just to take it out of her—to employ the
+familiar term. At once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension.
+
+“That, of course, you know is at an end,” she said in the calmest
+manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her. She
+only asked a little consideration for her feelings.
+
+True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene.
+Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it.
+Mrs. Doria was not generous. The Pilgrim may be wrong about the sex not
+growing; but its fashion of conducting warfare we must allow to be
+barbarous, and according to what is deemed the pristine, or wild cat,
+method. Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor Berry to her bed
+that night, and her character bled till morning on her pillow.
+
+The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had
+been at the cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and
+gentlemen present put it on the greedy mice, who were accused of having
+gorged and gone to bed.
+
+“I’m sure they’re quite welcome,” said Mrs. Doria. “It’s a farce, this
+marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking. I would not
+touch an atom of it. Why, they were married in a married woman’s ring!
+Can that be legal, as you call it? Oh, I’m convinced! Don’t tell me.
+Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is true to his principles,
+he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from infamy. I want
+no legal advice. I go upon common sense, common decency. This marriage
+is false.”
+
+Mrs. Doria’s fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that
+she could not give it up. She took Clare to her bed, and caressed and
+wept over her, as she would not have done had she known the singular
+child, saying, “Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him,
+Clare! we must save him!” Of the two the mother showed the greater want
+of iron on this occasion. Clare lay in her arms rigid and emotionless,
+with one of her hands tight-locked. All she said was: “I knew it in the
+morning, mama.” She slept clasping Richard’s nuptial ring.
+
+By this time all specially concerned in the System knew it. The
+honeymoon was shoring placidly above them. Is not happiness like
+another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some
+poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have
+gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are
+sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later.
+Who knows the honeymoon that did not steal somebody’s sweetness?
+Richard Turpin went forth, singing “Money or life” to the world:
+Richard Feverel has done the same, substituting “Happiness” for
+“Money,” frequently synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have, and was
+just as much a highway robber as his fellow Dick, so that those who
+have failed to recognize him as a hero before, may now regard him in
+that light. Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks exceedingly
+patient and beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature
+and the order of things on earth have no warmer admirer than a jolly
+brigand or a young man made happy by the Jews.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+
+And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the
+lady who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous,
+those soft watchful woman’s eyes. If you are below the measure they
+have made of you, you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot
+but show you that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down a
+bit. You feel yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors,
+till at last they drop on you complacently level. But, oh beware, vain
+man, of ever waxing enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male
+creature you saw reflected in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of
+assisting to delude her! A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive
+your being but a man, if you are surely that: she will haply learn to
+acknowledge that no mortal tailor could have fitted that figure she
+made of you respectably, and that practically (though she sighs to
+think it) her ideal of you was on the pattern of an overgrown
+charity-boy in the regulation jacket and breech. For this she first
+scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor, and then smiles at herself.
+But shouldst thou, when the hour says plainly, Be thyself, and the
+woman is willing to take thee as thou art, shouldst thou still aspire
+to be that thing of shanks and wrests, wilt thou not seem contemptible
+as well as ridiculous? And when the fall comes, will it not be flat on
+thy face, instead of to the common height of men? You may fall miles
+below her measure of you, and be safe: nothing is damaged save an
+overgrown charity-boy; but if you fall below the common height of men,
+you must make up your mind to see her rustle her gown, spy at the
+looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance. The moral of which is, that
+if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for whose amusement the
+farce is performed, will find us out and punish us for it. And it is
+usually the end of a sentimental dalliance.
+
+Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he
+should feel, he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses, and, however
+much he lowered his reputation as a sage, Lady Blandish would have
+excused him: she would not have loved him less for seeing him closer.
+But the poor gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his muscles to act
+up to her conception of him. He, a man of science in life, who was
+bound to be surprised by nothing in nature, it was not for him to do
+more than lift his eyebrows and draw in his lips at the news delivered
+by Ripton Thompson, that ill bird at Raynham.
+
+All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his
+penitential headache to bed, was: “You see, Emmeline, it is useless to
+base any system on a human being.”
+
+A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work
+building for nearly twenty years. Too philosophical to seem genuine. It
+revealed where the blow struck sharpest. Richard was no longer the
+Richard of his creation—his pride and his joy—but simply a human being
+with the rest. The bright star had sunk among the mass.
+
+And yet, what had the young man done? And in what had the System
+failed?
+
+The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled with the
+offended father.
+
+“My friend,” she said, tenderly taking his hand before she retired, “I
+know how deeply you must be grieved. I know what your disappointment
+must be. I do not beg of you to forgive him now. You cannot doubt his
+love for this young person, and according to his light, has he not
+behaved honourably, and as you would have wished, rather than bring her
+to shame? You will think of that. It has been an accident—a
+misfortune—a terrible misfortune”...
+
+“The God of this world is in the machine—not out of it,” Sir Austin
+interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good-night over.
+
+At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the
+phrase; now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to
+turn the meaning that was in it against himself, much as she pitied
+him.
+
+“You know, Emmeline,” he added, “I believe very little in the fortune,
+or misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and reverses.
+They are useful impersonations to novelists; but my opinion is
+sufficiently high of flesh and blood to believe that we make our own
+history without intervention. Accidents?—Terrible misfortunes?—What are
+they?—Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night,” she said, looking sad and troubled. “When I said,
+‘misfortune,’ I meant, of course, that he is to blame; but—shall I
+leave you his letter to me?”
+
+“I think I have enough to meditate upon,” he replied, coldly bowing.
+
+“God bless you,” she whispered. “And—may I say it? do not shut your
+heart.”
+
+He assured her that he hoped not to do so and the moment she was gone
+he set about shutting it as tight as he could.
+
+If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said,
+Never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of
+his own case. He had experimented on humanity in the person of the son
+he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to have
+failed, all humanity’s failings fell on the shoulders of his son.
+Richard’s parting laugh in the train—it was explicable now: it sounded
+in his ears like the mockery of this base nature of ours at every
+endeavour to exalt and chasten it. The young man had plotted this. From
+step to step Sir Austin traced the plot. The curious mask he had worn
+since his illness; the selection of his incapable uncle Hippias for a
+companion in preference to Adrian; it was an evident, well-perfected
+plot. That hideous laugh would not be silenced: Base, like the rest,
+treacherous, a creature of passions using his abilities solely to
+gratify them—never surely had humanity such chances as in him! A
+Manichaean tendency, from which the sententious eulogist of nature had
+been struggling for years (and which was partly at the bottom of the
+System), now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat
+alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his library, he saw the devil.
+
+How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates of
+them we love?
+
+There by the springs of Richard’s future, his father sat: and the devil
+said to him: “Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely do nothing: your
+object now is to keep a brave face to the world, so that all may know
+you superior to this human nature that has deceived you. For it is the
+shameless deception, not the marriage, that has wounded you.”
+
+“Ay!” answered the baronet, “the shameless deception, not the marriage:
+wicked and ruinous as it must be; a destroyer of my tenderest hopes! my
+dearest schemes! Not the marriage—the shameless deception!” and he
+crumpled up his son’s letter to him, and tossed it into the fire.
+
+How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he
+talks our own thoughts to us?
+
+Further he whispered, “And your System:—if you would be brave to the
+world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you: relinquish an
+impossible project; see it as it is—dead: too good for men!”
+
+“Ay!” muttered the baronet: “all who would save them perish on the
+Cross!”
+
+And so he sat nursing the devil.
+
+By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and went
+to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth without a destiny
+slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and
+his helpless sunken chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made
+him look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered how often he had
+compared his boy with this one: his own bright boy! And where was the
+difference between them?
+
+“Mere outward gilding!” said his familiar.
+
+“Yes,” he responded, “I daresay this one never positively plotted to
+deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked, and is
+internally the sounder of the two.”
+
+Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the light of the
+lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however abject.
+
+“Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!”
+whispered the monitor.
+
+“Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the
+whole?” ejaculated Sir Austin. “And is no angel of avail till that is
+drawn off? And is that our conflict—to see whether we can escape the
+contagion of its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that?”
+
+“The world is wise in its way,” said the voice.
+
+“Though it look on itself through Port wine?” he suggested, remembering
+his lawyer Thompson.
+
+“Wise in not seeking to be too wise,” said the voice.
+
+“And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!”
+
+“Human nature is weak.”
+
+“And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an institution!”
+
+“It always has been so.”
+
+“And always will be?”
+
+“So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts.”
+
+“And leads—whither? And ends—where?”
+
+Richard’s laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it were through
+the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.
+
+This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin
+asking again if there were no actual difference between the flower of
+his hopes and yonder drunken weed, and receiving for answer that there
+was a decided dissimilarity in the smell of the couple; becoming
+cognizant of which he retreated.
+
+Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him into his bosom
+at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and received his suggestions
+and bowed to his dictates. Because he suffered, and decreed that he
+would suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that
+he was great-minded in his calamity. He had stood against the world.
+The world had beaten him. What then? He must shut his heart and mask
+his face; that was all. To be far in advance of the mass, is as
+fruitless to mankind, he reflected, as straggling in the rear. For how
+do we know that they move behind us at all, or move in our track? What
+we win for them is lost; and where we are overthrown we lie!
+
+It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a nature
+not great, chose to colour his retrogression and countenance his
+shortcoming; and it was thus that he set about ruining the work he had
+done. He might well say, as he once did, that there are hours when the
+clearest soul becomes a cunning fox. For a grief that was private and
+peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon humanity; just as he
+had accused it in the period of what he termed his own ordeal. How had
+he borne that? By masking his face. And he prepared the ordeal for his
+son by doing the same. This was by no means his idea of a man’s duty in
+tribulation, about which he could be strenuously eloquent.
+
+But it was his instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures
+alone are not at the mercy of their instincts. Moreover it would cost
+him pain to mask his face; pain worse than that he endured when there
+still remained an object for him to open his heart to in proportion;
+and he always reposed upon the Spartan comfort of bearing pain and
+being passive. “Do nothing,” said the devil he nursed; which meant in
+his case, “Take me into you and don’t cast me out.” Excellent and sane
+is the outburst of wrath to men, when it stops short of slaughter. For
+who that locks it up to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed?
+Sir Austin had as weak a digestion for wrath, as poor Hippias for a
+green duckling. Instead of eating it, it ate him. The wild beast in him
+was not the less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him
+not the less active because he resolved to do nothing.
+
+He sat at the springs of Richard’s future, in the forlorn dead-hush of
+his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished fire,
+and that humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears the
+midnight Fates busily stirring their embryos. The lamp glowed mildly on
+the bust of Chatham.
+
+Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady Blandish glided
+in. With hasty step she came straight to him, and took both his hands.
+
+“My friend,” she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling, “I feared I
+should find you here. I could not sleep. How is it with you?”
+
+“Well! Emmeline, well!” he replied, torturing his brows to fix the
+mask.
+
+He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He had an
+extraordinary longing for Adrian’s society. He knew that the wise youth
+would divine how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to just enough
+weakness to demand a certain kind of management. Besides, Adrian, he
+had not a doubt, would accept him entirely as he seemed, and not pester
+him in any way by trying to unlock his heart; whereas a woman, he
+feared, would be waxing too womanly, and swelling from tears and
+supplications to a scene, of all things abhorred by him the most. So he
+rapped the floor with his foot, and gave the lady no very welcome face
+when he said it was well with him.
+
+She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly
+detaining the other.
+
+“Oh, my friend! may I believe you? May I speak to you?” She leaned
+close to him. “You know my heart. I have no better ambition than to be
+your friend. Surely I divide your grief, and may I not claim your
+confidence? Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows? I
+would not have come to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared
+relieves the burden, and it is now that you may feel a woman’s aid, and
+something of what a woman could be to you....”
+
+“Be assured,” he gravely said, “I thank you, Emmeline, for your
+intentions.”
+
+“No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me. Think of
+him...think of your dear boy... Our Richard, as we have called him.—Oh!
+do not think it a foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a
+thought this night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak to
+you... Tell me first you have forgiven him.”
+
+“A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline.”
+
+“Your heart has forgiven him?”
+
+“My heart has taken what he gave.”
+
+“And quite forgiven him?”
+
+“You will hear no complaints of mine.”
+
+The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a wistful manner,
+saying with a sigh, “Yes! I know how noble you are, and different from
+others!”
+
+He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
+
+“You ought to be in bed, Emmeline.”
+
+“I cannot sleep.”
+
+“Go, and talk to me another time.”
+
+“No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a
+clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have
+had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless
+him...it will end miserably. My friend, have you done so?”
+
+He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of
+his mask.
+
+“Have you done so, Austin?”
+
+“This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
+their sons, Emmeline!”
+
+“No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before
+the day comes?”
+
+He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:—“And I must do
+this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him
+from the seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has
+repeated his cousin’s sin. You see the end of that.”
+
+“Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor
+Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And he—be
+just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person has
+great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she—indeed I
+think, had she been in another position, you would not have looked upon
+her unfavourably.”
+
+“She may be too good for my son!” The baronet spoke with sublime
+bitterness.
+
+“No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it.”
+
+“Pass her.”
+
+“Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We
+thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her,
+he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her
+for ever, and in the madness of an hour he did this....”
+
+“My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches.”
+
+“Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as young
+men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?”
+
+Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.
+
+“You mean,” he said, “that fathers must fold their arms, and either
+submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined.”
+
+“I do not mean that,” exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did
+mean, and how to express it. “I mean that he loved her. Is it not a
+madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is—save him from the
+consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride,
+his sensitiveness, his great wild nature—wild when he is set wrong:
+think how intense it is, set upon love; think, my friend, do not forget
+his love for you.”
+
+Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
+
+“That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking more
+than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is not in the
+disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the natural
+offspring of acts. My child, you are talking sentiment, which is the
+distraction of our modern age in everything—a phantasmal vapour
+distorting the image of the life we live. You ask me to give him a
+golden age in spite of himself. All that could be done, by keeping him
+in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He is become a man, and as a
+man he must reap his own sowing.”
+
+The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as if
+wisdom were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did love
+his son. Feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily,
+she reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had
+been quibbled with.
+
+“All I ask of you is to open your heart to him,” she said.
+
+He kept silent.
+
+“Call him a man,—he is, and must ever be the child of your education,
+my friend.”
+
+“You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins
+himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is something!”
+
+Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her
+eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show
+what he felt. Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his
+elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over
+offended love. Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then: a
+blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance.
+
+“Am I pardoned for coming to you?” she said, after a pause.
+
+“Surely I can read my Emmeline’s intentions,” he gently replied.
+
+“Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been
+thinking. Oh, if I could!”
+
+“You speak very well, Emmeline.”
+
+“At least, I am pardoned!”
+
+“Surely so.”
+
+“And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?—may I beg
+it?—will you bless him?”
+
+He was again silent.
+
+“Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over.”
+
+As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her
+bosom.
+
+The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him,
+he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
+
+“It’s day already!” he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the
+shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
+
+Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and
+glanced up silently at Richard’s moon standing in wane toward the West.
+She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so
+earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself
+more than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she had treated
+him as no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart
+was at present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however
+composed his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that
+moment she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol—a process
+dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the
+painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a
+foregone roughness, murmured: “God’s rarest blessing is, after all, a
+good woman! My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not
+shame the day.” He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
+
+“I could bear many, many!” she replied, meeting his eyes, “and you
+would see me look better and better, if... if only...” but she had no
+encouragement to end the sentence.
+
+Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome
+placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their
+Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the
+arm and talked of the morning.
+
+Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan
+behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady Blandish
+smiled, but the baronet’s discomposure was not to be concealed. By a
+strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to
+have a human beholder.
+
+“Oh, I’m sure I beg pardon,” Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a
+melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.
+
+“And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks,” said Lady
+Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
+
+The baronet then called in Benson.
+
+“Get me my breakfast as soon as you can,” he said, regardless of the
+aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. “I am
+going to town early. And, Benson,” he added, “you will also go to town
+this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with
+you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made
+for you. You can go.”
+
+The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
+baronet’s gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort which
+shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably. An impatient signal sent
+him out dumb,—and Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great
+Shaddock dogma.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+
+It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green waves before a
+full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and
+flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs. A crown of deep Summer blue
+topped the flying mountains of cloud.
+
+By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses, our
+young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of them.
+Had the Scientific Humanist observed them, he could not have contested
+the fact, that as a couple who had set up to be father and mother of
+Britons, they were doing their duty. Files of egg-cups with
+disintegrated shells bore witness to it, and they were still at work,
+hardly talking from rapidity of exercise. Both were dressed for an
+expedition. She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat. His sleeves
+were turned over at the wrists, and her gown showed its lining on her
+lap. At times a chance word might spring a laugh, but eating was the
+business of the hour, as I would have you to know it always will be
+where Cupid is in earnest. Tribute flowed in to them from the subject
+land. Neglected lies Love’s penny-whistle on which they played so
+prettily and charmed the spheres to hear them. What do they care for
+the spheres, who have one another? Come, eggs! come, bread and butter!
+come, tea with sugar in it and milk! and welcome, the jolly hours. That
+is a fair interpretation of the music in them just now. Yonder
+instrument was good only for the overture. After all, what finer
+aspiration can lovers have, than to be free man and woman in the heart
+of plenty? And is it not a glorious level to have attained? Ah,
+wretched Scientific Humanist! not to be by and mark the admirable sight
+of these young creatures feeding. It would have been a spell to
+exorcise the Manichee, methinks.
+
+The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a flourish of his
+table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who met him on the confident
+budding of her mouth. The poetry of mortals is their daily prose. Is it
+not a glorious level to have attained? A short, quick-blooded kiss,
+radiant, fresh, and honest as Aurora, and then Richard says without
+lack of cheer, “No letter to-day, my Lucy!” whereat her sweet eyes
+dwell on him a little seriously, but he cries, “Never mind! he’ll be
+coming down himself some morning. He has only to know her, and all’s
+well! eh?” and so saying he puts a hand beneath her chin, and seems to
+frame her fair face in fancy, she smiling up to be looked at.
+
+“But one thing I do want to ask my darling,” says Lucy, and dropped
+into his bosom with hands of petition. “Take me on board his yacht with
+him to-day—not leave me with those people! Will he? I’m a good sailor,
+he knows!”
+
+“The best afloat!” laughs Richard, hugging her, “but, you know, you
+darling bit of a sailor, they don’t allow more than a certain number on
+board for the race, and if they hear you’ve been with me, there’ll be
+cries of foul play! Besides, there’s Lady Judith to talk to you about
+Austin, and Lord Mountfalcon’s compliments for you to listen to, and
+Mr. Morton to take care of you.”
+
+Lucy’s eyes fixed sideways an instant.
+
+“I hope I don’t frown and blush as I did?” she said, screwing her
+pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers,
+and murmured something delicious.
+
+“And we shall be separated for—how many hours? one, two, three hours!”
+she pouted to his flatteries.
+
+“And then I shall come on board to receive my bride’s congratulations.”
+
+“And then my husband will talk all the time to Lady Judith.”
+
+“And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at Lord
+Mountfalcon.”
+
+“Am I so foolish, Richard?” she forgot her trifling to ask in an
+earnest way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on
+her lips, for answer.
+
+After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy sinners had
+wandered forth one day to look on men and marvel at them, and had
+chanced to meet Mr. Morton of Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth’s friend, and
+Ralph’s uncle. Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the baronet, but
+had given him up for many years as impracticable and hopeless, for
+which reason he was the more inclined to regard Richard’s misdemeanour
+charitably, and to lay the faults of the son on the father; and
+thinking society to be the one thing requisite to the young man, he had
+introduced him to the people he knew in the island; among others to the
+Lady Judith Felle, a fair young dame, who introduced him to Lord
+Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman; who introduced him to the yachtsmen
+beginning to congregate; so that in a few weeks he found himself in the
+centre of a brilliant company, and for the first time in his life
+tasted what it was to have free intercourse with his fellow-creatures
+of both sexes. The son of a System was, therefore, launched; not only
+through the surf, but in deep waters.
+
+Now the baronet had so far compromised between the recurrence of his
+softer feelings and the suggestions of his new familiar, that he had
+determined to act toward Richard with justness. The world called it
+magnanimity, and even Lady Blandish had some thoughts of the same kind
+when she heard that he had decreed to Richard a handsome allowance, and
+had scouted Mrs. Doria’s proposal for him to contest the legality of
+the marriage; but Sir Austin knew well he was simply just in not
+withholding money from a youth so situated. And here again the world
+deceived him by embellishing his conduct. For what is it to be just to
+whom we love! He knew it was not magnanimous, but the cry of the world
+somehow fortified him in the conceit that in dealing perfect justice to
+his son he was doing all that was possible, because so much more than
+common fathers would have done. He had shut his heart.
+
+Consequently Richard did not want money. What he wanted more, and did
+not get, was a word from his father, and though he said nothing to
+sadden his young bride, she felt how much it preyed upon him to be at
+variance with the man whom, now that he had offended him and gone
+against him, he would have fallen on his knees to; the man who was as
+no other man to him. She heard him of nights when she lay by his side,
+and the darkness, and the broken mutterings, of those nights clothed
+the figure of the strange stern man in her mind. Not that it affected
+the appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of Cupid
+enthroned and in condition; under the influence of sea-air, too. The
+files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still the worm did gnaw them.
+Judge, then, of their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they
+were issuing from the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea,
+they caught sight of Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a
+portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some distance behind him, discerned
+Adrian.
+
+“It’s all right!” shouted Richard, and ran off to meet him, and never
+left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing questions at him all
+the way, to where Lucy stood.
+
+“Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin.”—“Isn’t he an angel?” his eyes seemed
+to add; while Lucy’s clearly answered, “That he is!”
+
+The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and acted with
+reserved unction the benefactor he saw in their greetings. “I think we
+are not strangers,” he was good enough to remark, and very quickly let
+them know he had not breakfasted; on hearing which they hurried him
+into the house, and Lucy put herself in motion to have him served.
+
+“Dear old Rady,” said Richard, tugging at his hand again, “how glad I
+am you’ve come! I don’t mind telling you we’ve been horridly wretched.”
+
+“Six, seven, eight, nine eggs,” was Adrian’s comment on a survey of the
+breakfast-table.
+
+“Why wouldn’t he write? Why didn’t he answer one of my letters? But
+here you are, so I don’t mind now. He wants to see us, does he? We’ll
+go up to-night. I’ve a match on at eleven; my little yacht—I’ve called
+her the ‘Blandish’—against Fred Cuirie’s ‘Begum.’ I shall beat, but
+whether I do or not, we’ll go up to-night. What’s the news? What are
+they all doing?”
+
+“My dear boy!” Adrian returned, sitting comfortably down, “let me put
+myself a little more on an equal footing with you before I undertake to
+reply. Half that number of eggs will be sufficient for an unmarried
+man, and then we’ll talk. They’re all very well, as well as I can
+recollect after the shaking my total vacuity has had this morning. I
+came over by the first boat, and the sea, the sea has made me love
+mother earth, and desire of her fruits.”
+
+Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.
+
+“Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it? I want to know exactly
+what words he said.”
+
+“Well says the sage, my son! ‘Speech is the small change of Silence.’
+He said less than I do.”
+
+“That’s how he took it!” cried Richard, and plunged in meditation.
+
+Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy preceded the
+maid bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down unbonneted, and like a
+thorough-bred housewife, to pour out the tea for him.
+
+“Now we’ll commence,” said Adrian, tapping his egg with meditative
+cheerfulness; but his expression soon changed to one of pain, all the
+more alarming for his benevolent efforts to conceal it. Could it be
+possible the egg was bad? oh, horror! Lucy watched him, and waited in
+trepidation.
+
+“This egg has boiled three minutes and three-quarters,” he observed,
+ceasing to contemplate it.
+
+“Dear, dear!” said Lucy, “I boiled them myself exactly that time.
+Richard likes them so. And you like them hard, Mr. Harley?”
+
+“On the contrary, I like them soft. Two minutes and a half, or
+three-quarters at the outside. An egg should never rashly verge upon
+hardness—never. Three minutes is the excess of temerity.”
+
+“If Richard had told me! If I had only known!” the lovely little
+hostess interjected ruefully, biting her lip.
+
+“We mustn’t expect him to pay attention to such matters,” said Adrian,
+trying to smile.
+
+“Hang it! there are more eggs in the house,” cried Richard, and pulled
+savagely at the bell.
+
+Lucy jumped up, saying, “Oh, yes! I will go and boil some exactly the
+time you like. Pray let me go, Mr. Harley.”
+
+Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his hand. “No,” he
+said, “I will be ruled by Richard’s tastes, and heaven grant me his
+digestion!”
+
+Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a sofa, and left the
+burden of the entertainment entirely to her. The eggs were a melancholy
+beginning, but her ardour to please Adrian would not be damped, and she
+deeply admired his resignation. If she failed in pleasing this glorious
+herald of peace, no matter by what small misadventure, she apprehended
+calamity; so there sat this fair dove with brows at work above her
+serious smiling blue eyes, covertly studying every aspect of the
+plump-faced epicure, that she might learn to propitiate him. “He shall
+not think me timid and stupid,” thought this brave girl, and indeed
+Adrian was astonished to find that she could both chat and be useful,
+as well as look ornamental. When he had finished one egg, behold, two
+fresh ones came in, boiled according to his prescription. She had
+quietly given her orders to the maid, and he had them without fuss.
+Possibly his look of dismay at the offending eggs had not been
+altogether involuntary, and her woman’s instinct, inexperienced as she
+was, may have told her that he had come prepared to be not very well
+satisfied with anything in Love’s cottage. There was mental faculty in
+those pliable brows to see through, and combat, an unwitting wise
+youth.
+
+How much she had achieved already she partly divined when Adrian said:
+“I think now I’m in case to answer your questions, my dear boy—thanks
+to Mrs. Richard,” and he bowed to her his first direct acknowledgment
+of her position. Lucy thrilled with pleasure.
+
+“Ah!” cried Richard, and settled easily on his back.
+
+“To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been persuaded
+to offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder thereof in an
+asylum for life. Benson—superlative Benson—has turned his shoulders
+upon Raynham. None know whither he has departed. It is believed that
+the sole surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is
+under a total eclipse of Woman.”
+
+“Benson gone?” Richard exclaimed. “What a tremendous time it seems
+since I left Raynham!”
+
+“So it is, my dear boy. The honeymoon is Mahomet’s minute; or say, the
+Persian King’s water-pail that you read of in the story: You dip your
+head in it, and when you draw it out, you discover that you have lived
+a life. To resume your uncle Algernon still roams in pursuit of the
+lost one—I should say, hops. Your uncle Hippias has a new and most
+perplexing symptom; a determination of bride-cake to the nose. Ever
+since your generous present to him, though he declares he never
+consumed a morsel of it, he has been under the distressing illusion
+that his nose is enormous, and I assure you he exhibits quite a
+maidenly timidity in following it—through a doorway, for instance. He
+complains of its terrible weight. I have conceived that Benson
+invisible might be sitting on it. His hand, and the doctor’s, are in
+hourly consultation with it, but I fear it will not grow smaller. The
+Pilgrim has begotten upon it a new Aphorism: that Size is a matter of
+opinion.”
+
+“Poor uncle Hippy!” said Richard, “I wonder he doesn’t believe in
+magic. There’s nothing supernatural to rival the wonderful sensations
+he does believe in. Good God! fancy coming to that!”
+
+“I’m sure I’m very sorry,” Lucy protested, “but I can’t help laughing.”
+
+Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.
+
+“The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard. Whom does he not forestall?
+‘Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,’ and he accuses the
+Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which may
+have been the case, owing to their infamous cookery. He says again, if
+you remember, that our own Age is travelling back to darkness and
+ignorance through dyspepsia. He lays the seat of wisdom in the centre
+of our system, Mrs. Richard: for which reason you will understand how
+sensible I am of the vast obligation I am under to you at the present
+moment, for your especial care of mine.”
+
+Richard looked on at Lucy’s little triumph, attributing Adrian’s
+subjugation to her beauty and sweetness. She had latterly received a
+great many compliments on that score, which she did not care to hear,
+and Adrian’s homage to a practical quality was far pleasanter to the
+young wife, who shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not help her
+much in the struggle she had now to maintain. Adrian continuing to
+lecture on the excelling virtues of wise cookery, a thought struck her:
+Where, where had she tossed Mrs. Berry’s book?
+
+“So that’s all about the home-people?” said Richard.
+
+“All!” replied Adrian. “Or stay: you know Clare’s going to be married?
+Not? Your Aunt Helen”—
+
+“Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had the impertinence
+to write—but never mind! Is it to Ralph?”
+
+“Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary
+woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call
+the female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know. The
+Pilgrim’s Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding
+relatives. Well, your Aunt Helen”—
+
+“Mrs. Doria Battledoria!” laughed Richard.
+
+“—being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own—call it a System if
+you like—of some ten or fifteen years’ standing, with regard to Miss
+Clare!”—
+
+“The fair Shuttlecockiana!”
+
+“—instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence, and
+turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing the world
+upside down, what does the practical animal do? She wanted to marry her
+to somebody she couldn’t marry her to, so she resolved instantly to
+marry her to somebody she could marry her to: and as old gentlemen
+enter into these transactions with the practical animal the most
+readily, she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried old gentleman, a
+rich old gentleman, and now a captive old gentleman. The ceremony takes
+place in about a week from the present time. No doubt you will receive
+your invitation in a day or two.”
+
+“And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old man!”
+groaned Richard. “I’ll put a stop to that when I go to town.”
+
+Richard got up and strode about the room. Then he bethought him it was
+time to go on board and make preparations.
+
+“I’m off,” he said. “Adrian, you’ll take her. She goes in the Empress,
+Mountfalcon’s vessel. He starts us. A little schooner-yacht—such a
+beauty! I’ll have one like her some day. Good-bye, darling!” he
+whispered to Lucy, and his hand and eyes lingered on her, and hers on
+him, seeking to make up for the priceless kiss they were debarred from.
+But she quickly looked away from him as he held her:—Adrian stood
+silent: his brows were up, and his mouth dubiously contracted. He spoke
+at last.
+
+“Go on the water?”
+
+“Yes. It’s only to St. Helen’s. Short and sharp.”
+
+“Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has just received, my
+son?”
+
+“Oh, bother your system! Put on your hat, and come along. I’ll put you
+on board in my boat.”
+
+“Richard! I have already paid the penalty of them who are condemned to
+come to an island. I will go with you to the edge of the sea, and I
+will meet you there when you return, and take up the Tale of the
+Tritons: but, though I forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard’s company,
+I refuse to quit the land.”
+
+“Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!” Lucy broke from her husband, “and I will stay
+with you, if you please. I don’t want to go among those people, and we
+can see it all from the shore.
+
+“Dearest! I don’t want to go. You don’t mind? Of course, I will go if
+you wish, but I would so much rather stay;” and she lengthened her plea
+in her attitude and look to melt the discontent she saw gathering.
+
+Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he could amuse
+himself very well till their return, and so forth; but she had schemes
+in her pretty head, and held to it to be allowed to stay in spite of
+Lord Mountfalcon’s disappointment, cited by Richard, and at the great
+risk of vexing her darling, as she saw. Richard pished, and glanced
+contemptuously at Adrian. He gave way ungraciously.
+
+“There, do as you like. Get your things ready to leave this evening.
+No, I’m not angry.”—Who could be? he seemed as he looked up from her
+modest fondling to ask Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a kiss on
+her forehead, which, however, did not immediately disperse the shade of
+annoyance he felt.
+
+“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Such a day as this, and a fellow refuses
+to come on the water! Well, come along to the edge of the sea.”
+Adrian’s angelic quality had quite worn off to him. He never thought of
+devoting himself to make the most of the material there was: but
+somebody else did, and that fair somebody succeeded wonderfully in a
+few short hours. She induced Adrian to reflect that the baronet had
+only to see her, and the family muddle would be smoothed at once. He
+came to it by degrees; still the gradations were rapid. Her manner he
+liked; she was certainly a nice picture: best of all, she was sensible.
+He forgot the farmer’s niece in her, she was so very sensible. She
+appeared really to understand that it was a woman’s duty to know how to
+cook.
+
+But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could be brought to
+consent to see her. He had not yet consented to see his son, and
+Adrian, spurred by Lady Blandish, had ventured something in coming
+down. He was not inclined to venture more. The small debate in his mind
+ended by his throwing the burden on time. Time would bring the matter
+about. Christians as well as Pagans are in the habit of phrasing this
+excuse for folding their arms; “forgetful,” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip,
+“that the devil’s imps enter into no such armistice.”
+
+As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion, Lucy had
+many things to think of. There was her darling’s match. The yachts were
+started by pistol-shot by Lord Mountfalcon on board the Empress, and
+her little heart beat after Richard’s straining sails. Then there was
+the strangeness of walking with a relative of Richard’s, one who had
+lived by his side so long. And the thought that perhaps this night she
+would have to appear before the dreaded father of her husband.
+
+“O Mr. Harley!” she said, “is it true—are we to go tonight? And me,”
+she faltered, “will he see me?”
+
+“Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Adrian. “I made
+some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted. Our
+second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind. I
+said ‘see you,’ and he supposed—now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you will
+understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be advisable—when the
+father and son have settled their accounts, the daughter-in-law can’t
+be a debtor.”...
+
+Lucy threw up her blue eyes. A half-cowardly delight at the chance of a
+respite from the awful interview made her quickly apprehensive.
+
+“O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?”
+
+“Well, that is my notion. But the fact is, he is such an excellent
+husband that I fancy it will require more than a man’s power of
+persuasion to get him to go.”
+
+“But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley.”
+
+“Perhaps, if you would...”
+
+“There is nothing I would not do for his happiness,” murmured Lucy.
+
+The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation. They walked
+on till the yachts had rounded the point.
+
+“Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?” she asked with some trouble in her voice
+now that her darling was out of sight.
+
+“I don’t imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you
+to-night,” Adrian replied gallantly. “Besides, I must speak for myself.
+To achieve the passage to an island is enough for one day. No necessity
+exists for any hurry, except in the brain of that impetuous boy. You
+must correct it, Mrs. Richard. Men are made to be managed, and women
+are born managers. Now, if you were to let him know that you don’t want
+to go to-night, and let him guess, after a day or two, that you would
+very much rather... you might affect a peculiar repugnance. By taking
+it on yourself, you see, this wild young man will not require such
+frightful efforts of persuasion. Both his father and he are exceedingly
+delicate subjects, and his father unfortunately is not in a position to
+be managed directly. It’s a strange office to propose to you, but it
+appears to devolve upon you to manage the father through the son.
+Prodigal having made his peace, you, who have done all the work from a
+distance, naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile, knowing
+it due to you. I see no other way. If Richard suspects that his father
+objects for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities
+will be continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to worse,
+and I see no end to it.”
+
+Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are you capable of
+this piece of heroism? And it did seem hard to her that she should have
+to tell Richard she shrank from any trial. But the proposition chimed
+in with her fears and her wishes: she thought the wise youth very wise:
+the poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and the subtler
+flattery of making herself in some measure a sacrifice to the home she
+had disturbed. She agreed to simulate as Adrian had suggested.
+
+Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came on
+shore proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven
+minutes and three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated by
+his bride with her fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and
+anxiously questioned about wine.
+
+“Dearest! Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks we
+ought not to go immediately—that is, before he has had some letters,
+and I feel... I would so much rather...”
+
+“Ah! that’s it, you coward!” said Richard. “Well, then, to-morrow. We
+had a splendid race. Did you see us?”
+
+“Oh, yes! I saw you and was sure my darling would win.” And again she
+threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine. “Mr. Harley
+must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I’m so silly,
+I don’t know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can get good
+wine. I have seen to the dinner.”
+
+“So that’s why you didn’t come to meet me?”
+
+“Pardon me, darling.”
+
+“Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn’t, and Lady Judith thinks you ought
+to have been there.”
+
+“Ah, but my heart was with you!”
+
+Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her eyelids
+softened, and she ran away.
+
+It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault with it, and
+was in perfect good-humour at the conclusion of the service. He did not
+abuse the wine they were able to procure for him, which was also much.
+The coffee, too, had the honour of passing without comment. These were
+sound first steps toward the conquest of an epicure, and as yet Cupid
+did not grumble.
+
+After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith’s
+grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the zenith,
+and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and
+land: Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced
+Hyperion falling. There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and
+ravined brows, stretching all his hands up to unattainable blue
+summits. North-west the range had a rich white glow, as if shining to
+the moon, and westward, streams of amber, melting into upper rose, shot
+out from the dipping disk.
+
+“What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven,” said Richard under
+his breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters, and
+answered, in the swing of the caesura, “He might as well have said
+cauliflower.”
+
+Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met them in the
+walk. She was tall and dark; dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet and
+persuasive in her accent and manner. “A second edition of the
+Blandish,” thinks Adrian. She welcomed him as one who had claims on her
+affability. She kissed Lucy protectingly, and remarking on the wonders
+of the evening, appropriated her husband. Adrian and Lucy found
+themselves walking behind them.
+
+The sun was under. All the spaces of the sky were alight, and Richard’s
+fancy flamed.
+
+“So you’re not intoxicated with your immense triumph this morning?”
+said Lady Judith.
+
+“Don’t laugh at me. When it’s over I feel ashamed of the trouble I’ve
+taken. Look at that glory!—I’m sure you despise me for it.”
+
+“Was I not there to applaud you? I only think such energies should be
+turned into some definitely useful channel. But you must not go into
+the Army.”
+
+“What else can I do?”
+
+“You are fit for so much that is better.”
+
+“I never can be anything like Austin.”
+
+“But I think you can do more.”
+
+“Well, I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith. Something I will do. A
+man must deserve to live, as you say.
+
+“Sauces,” Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the rear,
+“Sauces are the top tree of this science. A woman who has mastered
+sauces sits on the apex of civilization.”
+
+Briareus reddened duskily seaward. The West was all a burning rose.
+
+“How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?” Richard resumed.
+“I feel ashamed of asking my men to work for me.—Or I feel so now.”
+
+“Not when you’re racing the Begum, I think. There’s no necessity for
+you to turn democrat like Austin. Do you write now?”
+
+“No. What is writing like mine? It doesn’t deceive me. I know it’s only
+the excuse I’m making to myself for remaining idle. I haven’t written a
+line since—lately.”
+
+“Because you are so happy.”
+
+“No, not because of that. Of course I’m very happy...” He did not
+finish.
+
+Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder skies. No
+Scientific Humanist was by to study the natural development, and guide
+him. This lady would hardly be deemed a very proper guide to the
+undirected energies of the youth, yet they had established relations of
+that nature. She was five years older than he, and a woman, which may
+explain her serene presumption.
+
+The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder smouldered over the
+sea.
+
+“We’ll work together in town, at all events,” said Richard,
+
+“Why can’t we go about together at night and find out people who want
+help?”
+
+Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by saying, “I think
+we mustn’t be too romantic. You will become a knight-errant, I suppose.
+You have the characteristics of one.”
+
+“Especially at breakfast,” Adrian’s unnecessarily emphatic
+gastronomical lessons to the young wife here came in.
+
+“You must be our champion,” continued Lady Judith: “the rescuer and
+succourer of distressed dames and damsels. We want one badly.”
+
+“You do,” said Richard, earnestly: “from what I hear: from what I
+know!” His thoughts flew off with him as knight-errant hailed shrilly
+at exceeding critical moment by distressed dames and damsels. Images of
+airy towers hung around. His fancy performed miraculous feats. The
+towers crumbled. The stars grew larger, seemed to throb with lustre.
+His fancy crumbled with the towers of the air, his heart gave a leap,
+he turned to Lucy.
+
+“My darling! what have you been doing?” And as if to compensate her for
+his little knight-errant infidelity, he pressed very tenderly to her.
+
+“We have been engaged in a charming conversation on domestic cookery,”
+interposed Adrian.
+
+“Cookery! such an evening as this?” His face was a handsome likeness of
+Hippias at the presentation of bridecake.
+
+“Dearest! you know it’s very useful,” Lucy mirthfully pleaded.
+
+“Indeed I quite agree with you, child,” said Lady Judith, “and I think
+you have the laugh of us. I certainly will learn to cook some day.”
+
+“Woman’s mission, in so many words,” ejaculated Adrian.
+
+“And pray, what is man’s?”
+
+“To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon.”
+
+“Let us give it up to them,” said Lady Judith to Richard. “You and I
+never will make so delightful and beautifully balanced a world of it.”
+
+Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give everything up
+to the fair face, his bridal Hesper.
+
+Next day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and, as she did so, her heart
+sank to see how painfully it affected him that she should hesitate to
+go with him to his father. He was patient, gentle; he sat down by her
+side to appeal to her reason, and used all the arguments he could think
+of to persuade her.
+
+“If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees he has nothing
+to be ashamed of in you—rather everything to be proud of; if you are
+only near him, you will not have to speak a word, and I’m certain—as
+certain as that I live—that in a week we shall be settled happily at
+Raynham. I know my father so well, Lucy. Nobody knows him but I.”
+
+Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.
+
+“Adrian? Not a bit. Adrian only knows a part of people, Lucy; and not
+the best part.”
+
+Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of her conquest.
+
+“Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?”
+
+“No, no, Richard; oh, dear no!” she cried, and looked at him more
+tenderly because she was not quite truthful.
+
+“He doesn’t know my father at all,” said Richard. But Lucy had another
+opinion of the wise youth, and secretly maintained it. She could not be
+won to imagine the baronet a man of human mould, generous, forgiving,
+full of passionate love at heart, as Richard tried to picture him, and
+thought him, now that he beheld him again through Adrian’s embassy. To
+her he was that awful figure, shrouded by the midnight. “Why are you so
+harsh?” she had heard Richard cry more than once. She was sure that
+Adrian must be right.
+
+“Well, I tell you I won’t go without you,” said Richard, and Lucy
+begged for a little more time.
+
+Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause. Adrian positively refused
+to go on the water unless that element were smooth as a plate. The
+South-west still joked boisterously at any comparison of the sort; the
+days were magnificent; Richard had yachting engagements; and Lucy
+always petitioned to stay to keep Adrian company, conceiving it her
+duty as hostess. Arguing with Adrian was an absurd idea. If Richard
+hinted at his retaining Lucy, the wise youth would remark: “It’s a
+wholesome interlude to your extremely Cupidinous behaviour, my dear
+boy.”
+
+Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to talk about.
+
+“All manner of things,” said Lucy; “not only cookery. He is so amusing,
+though he does make fun of The Pilgrim’s Scrip, and I think he ought
+not. And then, do you know, darling—you won’t think me vain?—I think he
+is beginning to like me a little.”
+
+Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.
+
+“Doesn’t everybody like you, admire you? Doesn’t Lord Mountfalcon, and
+Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?”
+
+“But he is one of your family, Richard.”
+
+“And they all will, if she isn’t a coward.”
+
+“Ah, no!” she sighs, and is chidden.
+
+The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife’s conquest beyond her
+husband, however loyally devised for their mutual happiness, may be
+costly to her. Richard in his hours of excitement was thrown very much
+with Lady Judith. He consulted her regarding what he termed Lucy’s
+cowardice. Lady Judith said: “I think she’s wrong, but you must learn
+to humour little women.”
+
+“Then would you advise me to go up alone?” he asked, with a cloudy
+forehead.
+
+“What else can you do? Be reconciled yourself as quickly as you can.
+You can’t drag her like a captive, you know?”
+
+It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride the peerless
+flower of Creation, to learn that he must humour a little woman in her.
+It was revolting to Richard.
+
+“What I fear,” he said, “is, that my father will make it smooth with
+me, and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall have
+to leave her, and tit for tat—an abominable existence, like a ball on a
+billiard-table. I won’t bear that ignominy. And this I know, I know!
+she might prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it.
+You, you, Lady Judith, you wouldn’t be a coward?”
+
+“Where my old lord tells me to go, I go,” the lady coldly replied.
+“There’s not much merit in that. Pray, don’t cite me. Women are born
+cowards, you know.”
+
+“But I love the women who are not cowards.”
+
+“The little thing—your wife has not refused to go?”
+
+“No—but tears! Who can stand tears?”
+
+Lucy had come to drop them. Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted, and
+urgent where he saw the thing to do so clearly, the young husband had
+spoken strong words: and she, who knew that she would have given her
+life by inches for him; who knew that she was playing a part for his
+happiness, and hiding for his sake the nature that was worthy his
+esteem; the poor little martyr had been weak a moment.
+
+She had Adrian’s support. The wise youth was very comfortable. He liked
+the air of the Island, and he liked being petted. “A nice little woman!
+a very nice little woman!” Tom Bakewell heard him murmur to himself
+according to a habit he had; and his air of rather succulent patronage
+as he walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty, with his head thrown
+back and a smile that seemed always to be in secret communion with his
+marked abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what
+she played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling,
+when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing.
+Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous
+pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then
+Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say: “That’s worse than Lord
+Mountfalcon.”
+
+“Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ—allow that?” quoth
+Adrian.
+
+“He is very kind,” said Lucy.
+
+“To all, save to our noble vernacular,” added Adrian. “He seems to
+scent a rival to his dignity there.”
+
+It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.
+
+“We are at our ease here in excellent society,” he wrote to Lady
+Blandish. “I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune, or
+a superlative instinct. Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable mate.
+She can look at a lord, and cook for an epicure. Besides Dr. Kitchener,
+she reads and comments on The Pilgrim’s Scrip. The ‘Love’ chapter, of
+course, takes her fancy. That picture of Woman, ‘Drawn by Reverence and
+coloured by Love,’ she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up
+pretty eyes. Also the lover’s petition: ‘Give me purity to be worthy
+the good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.’ ’Tis
+quite taking to hear her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the
+petition! I make her read me her choice passages. She has not a bad
+voice.
+
+“The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin’s Miss Menteith, married to the
+incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him. Lord
+Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her—what? She has been trying to find
+out, but they have both got over their perplexity, and act respectively
+the bad man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which our
+young couple found them, and haply diverted its perils. They had quite
+taken them in hand. Lady Judith undertakes to cure the fair Papist of a
+pretty, modest trick of frowning and blushing when addressed, and his
+lordship directs the exuberant energies of the original man. ’Tis thus
+we fulfil our destinies, and are content. Sometimes they change pupils;
+my lord educates the little dame, and my lady the hope of Raynham. Joy
+and blessings unto all! as the German poet sings. Lady Judith accepted
+the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent service to
+her fellow-creatures. Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.
+
+“I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study. I
+think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a
+yeoman’s niece. The language of the two social extremes is similar. I
+find it to consist in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and
+adjectives. My lord and Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my
+lord’s has lost its backbone, and is limp, though fluent. Their
+pursuits are identical; but that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim
+terms it, vantage, and the other has not. Their ideas seem to have a
+special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping where they have
+begun. Young Tom Blaize with vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon. Even in
+the character of their parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound
+to confess that the Hon. Peter Brayder, who is my lord’s parasite, is
+by no means noxious.
+
+“This sounds dreadfully democrat. Pray, don’t be alarmed. The discovery
+of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal British Oak has
+made me thrice conservative. I see now that the national love of a lord
+is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat
+on one’s image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable
+wisdom of our system:—could there be a finer balance of power than in a
+community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a
+gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to intellect—that noble rebel, as
+the Pilgrim has it—to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This
+exquisite compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period
+anticipated by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an
+intellectual aristocracy, is indeed horrible to contemplate. For what
+despotism is so black as one the mind cannot challenge? ’Twill be an
+iron Age. Wherefore, madam, I cry, and shall continue to cry, ‘Vive
+Lord Mountfalcon! long may he sip his Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed
+carry him on their shoulders!’
+
+“Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and
+Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a scrape.
+Our Richard has just been elected member of a Club for the promotion of
+nausea. Is he happy? you ask. As much so as one who has had the
+misfortune to obtain what he wanted can be. Speed is his passion. He
+races from point to point. In emulation of Leander and Don Juan, he
+swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the other day, or some
+world-shaking feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he went to meet:
+or, as they who pun say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty little domestic
+episode occurred this morning. He finds her abstracted in the fire of
+his caresses: she turns shy and seeks solitude: green jealousy takes
+hold of him: he lies in wait, and discovers her with his new rival—a
+veteran edition of the culinary Doctor! Blind to the Doctor’s great
+national services, deaf to her wild music, he grasps the intruder,
+dismembers him, and performs upon him the treatment he has recommended
+for dressed cucumber. Tears and shrieks accompany the descent of the
+gastronome. Down she rushes to secure the cherished fragments: he
+follows: they find him, true to his character, alighted and straggling
+over a bed of blooming flowers. Yet ere a fairer flower can gather him,
+a heel black as Pluto stamps him into earth, flowers and all:—happy
+burial! Pathetic tribute to his merit is watering his grave, when by
+saunters my Lord Mountfalcon. ‘What’s the mattah?’ says his lordship,
+soothing his moustache. They break apart, and ’tis left to me to
+explain from the window. My lord looks shocked, Richard is angry with
+her for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty dries her eyes, and
+after a pause of general foolishness, the business of life is resumed.
+I may add that the Doctor has just been dug up, and we are busy, in the
+enemy’s absence, renewing old Aeson with enchanted threads. By the way,
+a Papist priest has blest them.”
+
+A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He was very
+comfortable; so of course he thought Time was doing his duty. Not a
+word did he say of Richard’s return, and for some reason or other
+neither Richard nor Lucy spoke of it now.
+
+Lady Blandish wrote back: “His father thinks he has refused to come to
+him. By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must be so.
+Make him come. Bring him by force. Insist on his coming. Is he mad? He
+must come at once.”
+
+To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a
+day or two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady’s
+advice, “The point is that the half man declines to come without the
+whole man. The terrible question of sex is our obstruction.”
+
+Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive assurance that the
+baronet would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but she
+thought she saw in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at least
+when the opening to come and make his peace seemed to be before him,
+should let days and weeks go by. She saw through the mask sufficiently
+not to have any hope of his consenting to receive the couple at
+present; she was sure that his equanimity was fictitious; but she
+pierced no farther, or she might have started and asked herself, Is
+this the heart of a woman?
+
+The lady at last wrote to Richard. She said: “Come instantly, and come
+alone.” Then Richard, against his judgment, gave way. “My father is not
+the man I thought him!” he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy felt his eyes
+saying to her: “And you, too, are not the woman I thought you.” Nothing
+could the poor little heart reply but strain to his bosom and
+sleeplessly pray in his arms all the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin Clare was
+married, under the blessings of her energetic mother, and with the
+approbation of her kinsfolk, to the husband that had been expeditiously
+chosen for her. The gentleman, though something more than twice the age
+of his bride, had no idea of approaching senility for many long
+connubial years to come. Backed by his tailor and his hairdresser, he
+presented no such bad figure at the altar, and none would have thought
+that he was an ancient admirer of his bride’s mama, as certainly none
+knew he had lately proposed for Mrs. Doria before there was any
+question of her daughter. These things were secrets; and the elastic
+and happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter did not betray them at the
+altar. Perhaps he would rather have married the mother. He was a man of
+property, well born, tolerably well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria
+rejected him for the first time, the reputation of being a fool—which a
+wealthy man may have in his youth; but as he lived on, and did not
+squander his money—amassed it, on the contrary, and did not seek to go
+into Parliament, and did other negative wise things, the world’s
+opinion, as usual, veered completely round, and John Todhunter was
+esteemed a shrewd, sensible man—only not brilliant; that he was
+brilliant could not be said of him. In fact, the man could hardly talk,
+and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu deliveries were
+required of him in the marriage-service.
+
+Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She had discovered
+something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any
+confession of Clare’s, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes
+are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had
+fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In
+vain she entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she
+said, illegal alliance his son had contracted. Sir Austin would not
+even stop the little pension to poor Berry. “At least you will do that,
+Austin,” she begged pathetically. “You will show your sense of that
+horrid woman’s conduct?” He refused to offer up any victim to console
+her. Then Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,—and when an outraged
+energetic lady is finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded
+treasures, she does not use half words as a medium. His System, and his
+conduct generally were denounced to him, without analysis. She let him
+understand that the world laughed at him; and he heard this from her at
+a time when his mask was still soft and liable to be acted on by his
+nerves. “You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell you!” she said, and, like
+all angry and self-interested people, prophecy came easy to her. In her
+heart she accused him of her own fault, in imputing to him the wreck of
+her project. The baronet allowed her to revel in the proclamation of a
+dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep apart from him, which
+his sister assured him she would do.
+
+But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman. Mark the
+race at any hour. “What revolution and hubbub does not that little
+instrument, the needle, avert from us!” says The Pilgrim’s Scrip. Alas,
+that in calamity women cannot stitch! Now that she saw Clare wanted
+other than iron, it struck her she must have a husband, and be made
+secure as a woman and a wife. This seemed the thing to do: and, as she
+had forced the iron down Clare’s throat, so she forced the husband, and
+Clare gulped at the latter as she had at the former. On the very day
+that Mrs. Doria had this new track shaped out before her, John
+Todhunter called at the Foreys’. “Old John!” sang out Mrs. Doria, “show
+him up to me. I want to see him particularly.” He sat with her alone.
+He was a man multitudes of women would have married—whom will they
+not?—and who would have married any presentable woman: but women do
+want asking, and John never had the word. The rape of such men is left
+to the practical animal. So John sat alone with his old flame. He had
+become resigned to her perpetual lamentation and living Suttee for his
+defunct rival. But, ha! what meant those soft glances now—addressed to
+him? His tailor and his hairdresser gave youth to John, but they had
+not the art to bestow upon him distinction, and an undistinguished man
+what woman looks at? John was an indistinguishable man. For that reason
+he was dry wood to a soft glance.
+
+And now she said: “It is time you should marry; and you are the man to
+be the guide and helper of a young woman, John. You are well
+preserved—younger than most of the young men of our day. You are
+eminently domestic, a good son, and will be a good husband and good
+father. Some one you must marry.—What do you think of Clare for a wife
+for you?”
+
+At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much like his marrying
+a baby. However, he listened to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria.
+
+She went down to John’s mother, and consulted with her on the propriety
+of the scheme of wedding her daughter to John in accordance with his
+proposition. Mrs. Todhunter’s jealousy of any disturbing force in the
+influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria knew to be one of the causes
+of John’s remaining constant to the impression she had afore-time
+produced on him. She spoke so kindly of John, and laid so much stress
+on the ingrained obedience and passive disposition of her daughter,
+that Mrs. Todhunter was led to admit she did think it almost time John
+should be seeking a mate, and that he—all things considered—would
+hardly find a fitter one. And this, John Todhunter—old John no
+more—heard to his amazement when, a day or two subsequently, he
+instanced the probable disapproval of his mother.
+
+The match was arranged. Mrs. Doria did the wooing. It consisted in
+telling Clare that she had come to years when marriage was desirable,
+and that she had fallen into habits of moping which might have the
+worse effect on her future life, as it had on her present health and
+appearance, and which a husband would cure. Richard was told by Mrs.
+Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented to accept Mr. John
+Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than obedience—with
+alacrity. At all events, when Richard spoke to Clare, the strange
+passive creature did not admit constraint on her inclinations. Mrs.
+Doria allowed Richard to speak to her. She laughed at his futile
+endeavours to undo her work, and the boyish sentiments he uttered on
+the subject. “Let us see, child,” she said, “let us see which turns out
+the best; a marriage of passion, or a marriage of common sense.”
+
+Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union. Richard made
+repeated journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph was quartered, and if Ralph
+could have been persuaded to carry off a young lady who did not love
+him, from the bridegroom her mother averred she did love, Mrs. Doria
+might have been defeated. But Ralph in his cavalry quarters was cooler
+than Ralph in the Bursley meadows. “Women are oddities, Dick,” he
+remarked, running a finger right and left along his upper lip. “Best
+leave them to their own freaks. She’s a dear girl, though she doesn’t
+talk: I like her for that. If she cared for me I’d go the race. She
+never did. It’s no use asking a girl twice. She knows whether she cares
+a fig for a fellow.”
+
+The hero quitted him with some contempt. As Ralph Morton was a young
+man, and he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he
+sought another private interview with Clare, and getting her alone,
+said: “Clare, I’ve come to you for the last time. Will you marry Ralph
+Morton?”
+
+To which Clare replied, “I cannot marry two husbands, Richard.”
+
+“Will you refuse to marry this old man?”
+
+“I must do as mama wishes.”
+
+“Then you’re going to marry an old man—a man you don’t love, and can’t
+love! Oh, good God! do you know what you’re doing?” He flung about in a
+fury. “Do you know what it is? Clare!” he caught her two hands
+violently, “have you any idea of the horror you’re going to commit?”
+
+She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed nor
+stammered: answering: “I see nothing wrong in doing what mama thinks
+right, Richard.”
+
+“Your mother! I tell you it’s an infamy, Clare! It’s a miserable sin! I
+tell you, if I had done such a thing I would not live an hour after it.
+And coldly to prepare for it! to be busy about your dresses! They told
+me when I came in that you were with the milliner. To be smiling over
+the horrible outrage! decorating yourself!”...
+
+“Dear Richard,” said Clare, “you will make me very unhappy.”
+
+“That one of my blood should be so debased!” he cried, brushing angrily
+at his face. “Unhappy! I beg you to feel for yourself, Clare. But I
+suppose,” and he said it scornfully, “girls don’t feel this sort of
+shame.”
+
+She grew a trifle paler.
+
+“Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard.”
+
+“Have you no will of your own?” he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he
+detested in her.
+
+“No, I believe you have none!” he added. “And what can I do? I can’t
+step forward and stop this accursed marriage. If you would but say a
+word I would save you; but you tie my hands. And they expect me to
+stand by and see it done!”
+
+“Will you not be there, Richard?” said Clare, following the question
+with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that had so thrilled him on
+his marriage morn.
+
+“Oh, my darling Clare!” he cried in the kindest way he had ever used to
+her, “if you knew how I feel this!” and now as he wept she wept, and
+came insensibly into his arms.
+
+“My darling Clare!” he repeated.
+
+She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.
+
+“You will do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So lovely as you are,
+too!... Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to you, and
+tell you all.... Look up. Can you still consent?”
+
+“I must not disobey mama,” Clare murmured, without looking up from the
+nest her cheek had made on his bosom.
+
+“Then kiss me for the last time,” said Richard. “I’ll never kiss you
+after it, Clare.”
+
+He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly round
+him, and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips, shutting her
+eyes, her face suffused with a burning red.
+
+Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses.
+
+Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a stone
+wall. To her indeed the young married hero spoke almost indecorously,
+and that which his delicacy withheld him from speaking to Clare. He
+could provoke nothing more responsive from the practical animal than
+“Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!”
+
+“Really,” Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, “that boy’s education acts
+like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything sensibly. He is for
+ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come to at last
+heaven only knows! I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear
+it.”
+
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not
+very well worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical
+controversy, as it were, with her brother. Doubtless she did trust he
+would be able to bear his sorrows to come, but one who has uttered
+prophecy can barely help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophecied
+much grief to the baronet.
+
+Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and had
+none of your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love in
+marriage, moved as one guiltless of offence, and deserving his
+happiness. Mrs. Doria shielded him from the hero. To see him smile at
+Clare’s obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was touching.
+
+Meantime Clare’s marriage served one purpose. It completely occupied
+Richard’s mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of not
+finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A letter had
+awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, “Detain him till you hear
+further from me. Take him about with you into every form of society.”
+No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone
+down to Wales on pressing business, and would be back in a week or so.
+For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young
+gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria. “Leave him to me,” said
+Mrs. Doria, “I’ll manage him.” And she did.
+
+“Who can say,” asks The Pilgrim’s Scrip, “when he is not walking a
+puppet to some woman?”
+
+Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. “I believe,” she observed, as
+Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,—“it is my firm
+opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her
+little finger—only give her time and opportunity.” By dwelling on the
+arts of women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to
+divide the young husband from his wife till it pleased his father they
+should live their unhallowed union again. Without compunction, or a
+sense of incongruity, she abused her brother and assisted the
+fulfilment of his behests.
+
+So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or
+indifferent. Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his
+feelings, Richard found himself standing behind Clare in the church—the
+very edifice that had witnessed his own marriage, and heard, “I, Clare
+Doria, take thee John Pemberton,” clearly pronounced. He stood with
+black brows dissecting the arts of the tailor and hairdresser on
+unconscious John. The back, and much of the middle, of Mr. Todhunter’s
+head was bald; the back shone like an egg-shell, but across the middle
+the artist had drawn two long dabs of hair from the sides, and
+plastered them cunningly, so that all save wilful eyes would have
+acknowledged the head to be covered. The man’s only pretension was to a
+respectable juvenility. He had a good chest, stout limbs, a face
+inclined to be jolly. Mrs. Doria had no cause to be put out of
+countenance at all by the exterior of her son-in-law: nor was she. Her
+splendid hair and gratified smile made a light in the church. Playing
+puppets must be an immense pleasure to the practical animal. The Forey
+bridesmaids, five in number, and one Miss Doria, their cousin, stood as
+girls do stand at these sacrifices, whether happy, sad, or indifferent;
+a smile on their lips and tears in attendance. Old Mrs. Todhunter, an
+exceedingly small ancient woman, was also there. “I can’t have my boy
+John married without seeing it done,” she said, and throughout the
+ceremony she was muttering audible encomiums on her John’s manly
+behaviour.
+
+The ring was affixed to Clare’s finger; there was no ring lost in this
+common-sense marriage. The instant the clergyman bade him employ it,
+John drew the ring out, and dropped it on the finger of the cold
+passive hand in a businesslike way, as one who had studied the matter.
+Mrs. Doria glanced aside at Richard. Richard observed Clare spread out
+her fingers that the operation might be the more easily effected.
+
+He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to his aunt:
+
+“Now I’ll go.”
+
+“You’ll come to the breakfast, child? The Foreys”—
+
+He cut her short. “I’ve stood for the family, and I’ll do no more. I
+won’t pretend to eat and make merry over it.”
+
+“Richard!”
+
+“Good-bye.”
+
+She had attained her object and she wisely gave way.
+
+“Well. Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand. Pray, pray be civil.”
+
+She turned to Adrian, and said: “He is going. You must go with him, and
+find some means of keeping him, or he’ll be running off to that woman.
+Now, no words—go!”
+
+Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to him humbly, but he
+kissed her on the forehead.
+
+“Do not cease to love me,” she said in a quavering whisper in his ear.
+
+Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the hairdresser
+with his pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively was married, he thought
+he would rather have the daughter than the mother, which is a reverse
+of the order of human thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.
+
+“Richard, my boy!” he said heartily, “congratulate me.”
+
+“I should be happy to, if I could,” sedately replied the hero, to the
+consternation of those around. Nodding to the bridesmaids and bowing to
+the old lady, he passed out.
+
+Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
+unpleasantness, just hinted to John: “You know, poor fellow, he has got
+into a mess with his marriage.”
+
+“Oh! ah! yes!” kindly said John, “poor fellow!”
+
+All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.
+
+Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of
+mind. Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted
+him. However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong
+disgust he felt was only expressed in concentrated cynicism on every
+earthly matter engendered by the conversation. They walked side by side
+into Kensington Gardens. The hero was mouthing away to himself, talking
+by fits.
+
+Presently he faced Adrian, crying: “And I might have stopped it! I see
+it now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking
+him if he dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I never thought
+of it. Good heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience.”
+
+“Ah!” groaned Adrian. “An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that! I
+would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple. Do you
+purpose going to him now?”
+
+The hero soliloquized: “He’s not a bad sort of man.”...
+
+“Well, he’s not a Cavalier,” said Adrian, “and that’s why you wonder
+your aunt selected him, no doubt? He’s decidedly of the Roundhead type,
+with the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent.”
+
+“There’s the double infamy!” cried Richard, “that a man you can’t call
+bad, should do this damned thing!”
+
+“Well, it’s hard we can’t find a villain.”
+
+“He would have listened to me, I’m sure.”
+
+“Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It’s not yet too late.
+Who knows? If he really has a noble elevated superior mind—though not a
+Cavalier in person, he may be one at heart—he might, to please you, and
+since you put such stress upon it, abstain...perhaps with some loss of
+dignity, but never mind. And the request might be singular, or seem so,
+but everything has happened before in this world, you know, my dear
+boy. And what an infinite consolation it is for the eccentric, that
+reflection!”
+
+The hero was impervious to the wise youth. He stared at him as if he
+were but a speck in the universe he visioned.
+
+It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian’s best subject for
+cynical pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies he started, and his
+worst in the way he took it; and the wise youth, against his will, had
+to feel as conscious of the young man’s imaginative mental armour, as
+he was of his muscular physical.
+
+“The same sort of day!” mused Richard, looking up. “I suppose my
+father’s right. We make our own fates, and nature has nothing to do
+with it.”
+
+Adrian yawned.
+
+“Some difference in the trees, though,” Richard continued abstractedly.
+
+“Growing bald at the top,” said Adrian.
+
+“Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the conduct of that
+wretched slave Clare to Lucy’s, who, she had the cruel insolence to
+say, entangled me into marriage?” the hero broke out loudly and
+rapidly. “You know—I told you, Adrian—how I had to threaten and insist,
+and how she pleaded, and implored me to wait.”
+
+“Ah! hum!” mumbled Adrian.
+
+“You remember my telling you?” Richard was earnest to hear her
+exonerated.
+
+“Pleaded and implored, my dear boy? Oh, no doubt she did. Where’s the
+lass that doesn’t.”
+
+“Call my wife by another name, if you please.”
+
+“The generic title can’t be cancelled because of your having married
+one of the body, my son.”
+
+“She did all she could to persuade me to wait!” emphasized Richard.
+
+Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.
+
+“Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!”
+
+Richard bellowed: “What more could she have done?”
+
+“She could have shaved her head, for instance.”
+
+This happy shaft did stick. With a furious exclamation Richard shot in
+front, Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his
+assumption verified), whether he did not think she might have shaved
+her head? and, presuming her to have done so, whether, in candour, he
+did not think he would have waited—at least till she looked less of a
+rank lunatic?
+
+After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about
+Richard’s head. Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement
+deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear lovely
+home-face. He told Adrian it was his intention to go down that night.
+Adrian immediately became serious. He was at a loss what to invent to
+detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was coming
+to-morrow. He rendered homage to the genius of woman in these straits.
+“My aunt,” he thought, “would have the lie ready; and not only that,
+but she would take care it did its work.”
+
+At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them,
+proving to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon’s
+parasite. He greeted them very cordially; and Richard, remembering some
+fun they had in the Island, asked him to dine with them; postponing his
+return till the next day. Lucy was his. It was even sweet to dally with
+the delight of seeing her.
+
+The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to.
+Though not so tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and
+he had a power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it
+suited the exigencies of his profession. He had not a rap of money in
+the world; yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely. The world
+said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship, and that, in
+common with that of Parasite, he exercised the ancient companion
+profession. This the world said, and still smiled at the Hon. Peter;
+for he was an engaging fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon
+would not go.
+
+They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian, and made a
+square at the table, Ripton Thompson being the fourth. Richard sent
+down to his office to fetch him, and the two friends shook hands for
+the first time since the great deed had been executed. Deep was the Old
+Dog’s delight to hear the praises of his Beauty sounded by such
+aristocratic lips as the Hon. Peter Brayder’s. All through the dinner
+he was throwing out hints and small queries to get a fuller account of
+her; and when the claret had circulated, he spoke a word or two
+himself, and heard the Hon. Peter eulogize his taste, and wish him a
+bride as beautiful; at which Ripton blushed, and said, he had no hope
+of that, and the Hon. Peter assured him marriage did not break the
+mould.
+
+After the wine this gentleman took his cigar on the balcony, and found
+occasion to get some conversation with Adrian alone.
+
+“Our young friend here—made it all right with the governor?” he asked
+carelessly.
+
+“Oh yes!” said Adrian. But it struck him that Brayder might be of
+assistance in showing Richard a little of the ‘society in every form’
+required by his chief’s prescript. “That is,” he continued, “we are not
+yet permitted an interview with the august author of our being, and I
+have rather a difficult post. ’Tis mine both to keep him here, and also
+to find him the opportunity to measure himself with his fellow-man. In
+other words, his father wants him to see something of life before he
+enters upon housekeeping. Now I am proud to confess that I’m hardly
+equal to the task. The demi, or damnedmonde—if it’s that he wants him
+to observe—is one that I have not got the walk to.”
+
+“Ha! ha!” laughed Brayder. “You do the keeping, I offer to parade the
+demi. I must say, though, it’s a queer notion of the old gentleman.”
+
+“It’s the continuation of a philosophic plan,” said Adrian.
+
+Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar with his eyes,
+and ejaculated, “Infernally philosophic!”
+
+“Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?” Adrian inquired.
+
+“Mount? to tell the truth I don’t know where he is. Chasing some light
+craft, I suppose. That’s poor Mount’s weakness. It’s his ruin, poor
+fellow! He’s so confoundedly in earnest at the game.”
+
+“He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true,” remarked
+Adrian.
+
+“He’s a baby about women, and always will be,” said Brayder. “He’s been
+once or twice wanting to marry them. Now there’s a woman—you’ve heard
+of Mrs. Mount? All the world knows her.—If that woman hadn’t
+scandalized.”—The young man joined them, and checked the communication.
+Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully indicated the presence of an
+innocent.
+
+“A married man, you know,” said Adrian.
+
+“Yes, yes!—we won’t shock him,” Brayder observed. He appeared to study
+the young man while they talked.
+
+Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his aunt. Mrs. Doria
+took a seat by his side and spoke as follows:
+
+“My dear nephew. Now you know I have always loved you, and thought of
+your welfare as if you had been my own child. More than that, I fear.
+Well, now, you are thinking of returning to—to that place—are you not?
+Yes. It is as I thought. Very well now, let me speak to you. You are in
+a much more dangerous position than you imagine. I don’t deny your
+father’s affection for you. It would be absurd to deny it. But you are
+of an age now to appreciate his character. Whatever you may do he will
+always give you money. That you are sure of; that you know. Very well.
+But you are one to want more than money: you want his love. Richard, I
+am convinced you will never be happy, whatever base pleasures you may
+be led into, if he should withhold his love from you. Now, child, you
+know you have grievously offended him. I wish not to animadvert on your
+conduct.—You fancied yourself in love, and so on, and you were rash.
+The less said of it the better now. But you must now—it is your duty
+now to do something—to do everything that lies in your power to show
+him you repent. No interruptions! Listen to me. You must consider him.
+Austin is not like other men. Austin requires the most delicate
+management. You must—whether you feel it or no—present an appearance of
+contrition. I counsel it for the good of all. He is just like a woman,
+and where his feelings are offended he wants utter subservience. He has
+you in town, and he does not see you:—now you know that he and I are
+not in communication: we have likewise our differences:—Well, he has
+you in town, and he holds aloof:—he is trying you, my dear Richard. No:
+he is not at Raynham: I do not know where he is. He is trying you,
+child, and you must be patient. You must convince him that you do not
+care utterly for your own gratification. If this person—I wish to speak
+of her with respect, for your sake—well, if she loves you at all—if, I
+say, she loves you one atom, she will repeat my solicitations for you
+to stay and patiently wait here till he consents to see you. I tell you
+candidly, it’s your only chance of ever getting him to receive her.
+That you should know. And now, Richard, I may add that there is
+something else you should know. You should know that it depends
+entirely upon your conduct now, whether you are to see your father’s
+heart for ever divided from you, and a new family at Raynham. You do
+not understand? I will explain. Brothers and sisters are excellent
+things for young people, but a new brood of them can hardly be
+acceptable to a young man. In fact, they are, and must be, aliens. I
+only tell you what I have heard on good authority. Don’t you understand
+now? Foolish boy! if you do not humour him, he will marry her. Oh! I am
+sure of it. I know it. And this you will drive him to. I do not warn
+you on the score of your prospects, but of your feelings. I should
+regard such a contingency, Richard, as a final division between you.
+Think of the scandal! but alas, that is the least of the evils.”
+
+It was Mrs. Doria’s object to produce an impression, and avoid an
+argument. She therefore left him as soon as she had, as she supposed,
+made her mark on the young man. Richard was very silent during the
+speech, and save for an exclamation or so, had listened attentively. He
+pondered on what his aunt said. He loved Lady Blandish, and yet he did
+not wish to see her Lady Feverel. Mrs. Doria laid painful stress on the
+scandal, and though he did not give his mind to this, he thought of it.
+He thought of his mother. Where was she? But most his thoughts recurred
+to his father, and something akin to jealousy slowly awakened his heart
+to him. He had given him up, and had not latterly felt extremely
+filial; but he could not bear the idea of a division in the love of
+which he had ever been the idol and sole object. And such a man, too!
+so good! so generous! If it was jealousy that roused the young man’s
+heart to his father, the better part of love was also revived in it. He
+thought of old days: of his father’s forbearance, his own wilfulness.
+He looked on himself, and what he had done, with the eyes of such a
+man. He determined to do all he could to regain his favour.
+
+Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her nephew intended
+waiting in town another week.
+
+“That will do,” smiled Mrs. Doria. “He will be more patient at the end
+of a week.”
+
+“Oh! does patience beget patience?” said Adrian. “I was not aware it
+was a propagating virtue. I surrender him to you. I shan’t be able to
+hold him in after one week more. I assure you, my dear aunt, he’s
+already”...
+
+“Thank you, no explanation,” Mrs. Doria begged.
+
+When Richard saw her next, he was informed that she had received a most
+satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter: quite a glowing account
+of John’s behaviour: but on Richard’s desiring to know the words Clare
+had written, Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and shot into worldly
+gossip.
+
+“Clare seldom glows,” said Richard.
+
+“No, I mean for her,” his aunt remarked. “Don’t look like your father,
+child.”
+
+“I should like to have seen the letter,” said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+
+A Lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides and
+walks. She passed him rather obviously and often. She was very
+handsome; a bold beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes
+not afraid of men. The hair was brushed from her temples, leaving one
+of those fine reckless outlines which the action of driving, and the
+pace, admirably set off. She took his fancy. He liked the air of
+petulant gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture, rare to him,
+of a glorious dashing woman. He thought, too, she looked at him. He was
+not at the time inclined to be vain, or he might have been sure she
+did. Once it struck him she nodded slightly.
+
+He asked Adrian one day in the park—who she was.
+
+“I don’t know her,” said Adrian. “Probably a superior priestess of
+Paphos.”
+
+“Now that’s my idea of Bellona,” Richard exclaimed. “Not the fury they
+paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking creature like that.”
+
+“Bellona?” returned the wise youth. “I don’t think her hair was black.
+Red, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t compare her to Bellona; though, no doubt,
+she’s as ready to spill blood. Look at her! She does seem to scent
+carnage. I see your idea. No; I should liken her to Diana emerged from
+the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play among the gods.
+Depend upon it—they tell us nothing of the matter—Olympus shrouds the
+story—but you may be certain that when she left the pretty shepherd she
+had greater vogue than Venus up aloft.”
+
+Brayder joined them.
+
+“See Mrs. Mount go by?” he said.
+
+“Oh, that’s Mrs. Mount!” cried Adrian.
+
+“Who’s Mrs. Mount?” Richard inquired.
+
+“A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy.”
+
+“Like to know her?” drawled the Hon. Peter.
+
+Richard replied indifferently, “No,” and Mrs. Mount passed out of sight
+and out of the conversation.
+
+The young man wrote submissive letters to his father. “I have remained
+here waiting to see you now five weeks,” he wrote. “I have written to
+you three letters, and you do not reply to them. Let me tell you again
+how sincerely I desire and pray that you will come, or permit me to
+come to you and throw myself at your feet, and beg my forgiveness, and
+hers. She as earnestly implores it. Indeed, I am very wretched, sir.
+Believe me, there is nothing I would not do to regain your esteem and
+the love I fear I have unhappily forfeited. I will remain another week
+in the hope of hearing from you, or seeing you. I beg of you, sir, not
+to drive me mad. Whatever you ask of me I will consent to.”
+
+“Nothing he would not do!” the baronet commented as he read. “There is
+nothing he would not do! He will remain another week and give me that
+final chance! And it is I who drive him mad! Already he is beginning to
+cast his retribution on my shoulders.”
+
+Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way. A
+Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it, and
+the author of The Pilgrim’s Scrip in trouble found London too hot for
+him. He quitted London to take refuge among the mountains; living there
+in solitary commune with a virgin Note-book.
+
+Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son.
+Had he construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a
+vague principle that the young man should be tried and tested.
+
+“Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live with his equals
+for a term. If he loves me he will read my wishes.” Thus he explained
+his principle to Lady Blandish.
+
+The lady wrote: “You speak of a term. Till when? May I name one to him?
+It is the dreadful uncertainty that reduces him to despair. That, and
+nothing else. Pray be explicit.”
+
+In return, he distantly indicated Richard’s majority.
+
+How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away
+from his wife? Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she
+worshipped.
+
+When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in
+deceiving and imposing upon others. Not only was Lady Blandish
+mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody’s
+mind, and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother from
+infancy, and had never known herself to be once wrong about him, she
+confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin’s principle.
+“For principle he has,” said Mrs. Doria; “he never acts without one.
+But what it is, I cannot at present perceive. If he would write, and
+command the boy to await his return, all would be clear. He allows us
+to go and fetch him, and then leaves us all in a quandary. It must be
+some woman’s influence. That is the only way to account for it.”
+
+“Singular!” interjected Adrian, “what pride women have in their sex!
+Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow I
+hand my charge over to your keeping. I can’t hold him in an hour
+longer. I’ve had to leash him with lies till my invention’s exhausted.
+I petition to have them put down to the chief’s account, but when the
+stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I had heard from
+him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready for him on Tuesday
+proximate. ‘So!’ says my son, ‘I’ll wait till then,’ and from the
+gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I doubt any human power’s
+getting him to wait longer.”
+
+“We must, we must detain him,” said Mrs. Doria. “If we do not, I am
+convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever repent.
+He will marry that woman, Adrian. Mark my words. Now with any other
+young man!... But Richard’s education! that ridiculous System!... Has
+he no distraction? nothing to amuse him?”
+
+“Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow.”
+
+The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
+
+“I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman.”
+
+“My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?”
+
+“Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?—If he had but a
+profession!”
+
+“What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
+profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure you I have served a
+month’s apprenticeship with him. We sally forth on the tenth hour of
+the night. A female passes. I hear him groan. ‘Is she one of them,
+Adrian?’ I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the
+portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be. Another groan; an
+evident internal, ‘It cannot be—and yet!’...that we hear on the stage.
+Rollings of eyes: impious questionings of the Creator of the universe;
+savage mutterings against brutal males; and then we meet a second young
+person, and repeat the performance—of which I am rather tired. It would
+be all very well, but he turns upon me, and lectures me because I don’t
+hire a house, and furnish it for all the women one meets to live in in
+purity. Now that’s too much to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has
+latterly relieved me, I’m happy to say.”
+
+Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
+
+“Has Austin written to you since you were in town?”
+
+“Not an Aphorism!” returned Adrian.
+
+“I must see Richard to-morrow morning,” Mrs. Doria ended the colloquy
+by saying.
+
+The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made no
+allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days afterward he
+appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands: but what it was
+Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of Mrs. Doria’s genius
+for management rose to a very high pitch.
+
+On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of the
+Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable manner,
+“I’ve come to propose to you to join us in a little dinner-party at
+Richmond. Nobody’s in town, you know. London’s as dead as a stock-fish.
+Nothing but the scrapings to offer you. But the weather’s fine: I
+flatter myself you’ll find the company agreeable, What says my friend
+Feverel?”
+
+Richard begged to be excused.
+
+“No, no: positively you must come,” said the Hon. Peter. “I’ve had some
+trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness of your
+incarceration. Richmond’s within the rules of your prison. You can be
+back by night. Moonlight on the water—lovely woman. We’ve engaged a
+city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars—I’m not sure it isn’t sixteen.
+Come—the word!”
+
+Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment with Ripton.
+
+“You’re in for another rick, you two,” said Adrian. “Arrange that we
+go. You haven’t seen the cockney’s Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and taste
+of peace, my son.”
+
+After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
+aside the care that was on him, saying, “Very well. Just as you like.
+We’ll take old Rip with us.”
+
+Adrian consulted Brayder’s eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly declared
+he should be delighted to have Feverel’s friend, and offered to take
+them all down in his drag.
+
+“If you don’t get a match on to swim there with the tide—eh, Feverel,
+my boy?”
+
+Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which
+Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the youth.
+
+Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape, bathed
+in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red horizon haze.
+The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered. It touched no
+link in the chain of his recollection. It was quiet, and belonged to
+the spirit of the season.
+
+Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
+Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather
+an undervoice, as a thing to get over. They made their bow to the first
+knot of ladies they encountered. Propriety was observed strictly, even
+to severity. The general talk was of the weather. Here and there a lady
+would seize a button-hole or any little bit of the habiliments, of the
+man she was addressing; and if it came to her to chide him, she did it
+with more than a forefinger. This, however, was only here and there,
+and a privilege of intimacy.
+
+Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may be
+known by her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering leaned
+against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in
+whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton, with a
+sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were fine men, offering
+inanimate homage. The trim of their whiskerage, the cut of their coats,
+the high-bred indolence in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton’s sense of
+self-esteem. But they kindly looked over him. Occasionally one
+committed a momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to cry
+out in a voice of scathing scorn, “Who’s this?” and Ripton got closer
+to his hero to justify his humble pretensions to existence and an
+identity in the shadow of him. Richard gazed about. Heroes do not
+always know what to say or do; and the cold bath before dinner in
+strange company is one of the instances. He had recognized his superb
+Bellona in the lady by the garden window. For Brayder the men had nods
+and yokes, the ladies a pretty playfulness. He was very busy, passing
+between the groups, chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he
+received, and sometimes returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down
+and crossed his legs, looking amused and benignant.
+
+“Whose dinner is it?” Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a cavalier.
+
+“Mount’s, I suppose,” was the answer.
+
+“Where is he? Why don’t he come?”
+
+“An affaire, I fancy.”
+
+“There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!”
+
+“She don’t seem to cry over it.”
+
+Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of her
+Court, who appeared to be Fool.
+
+Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites.
+Brayder posted his three friends. Ripton found himself under the lee of
+a dame with a bosom. On the other side of him was the mignonne. Adrian
+was at the lower end of the table. Ladies were in profusion, and he had
+his share. Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat. A happy man had
+established himself next to Mrs. Mount. Him Brayder hailed to take the
+head of the table. The happy man objected, Brayder continued urgent,
+the lady tenderly insisted, the happy man grimaced, dropped into the
+post of honour, strove to look placable. Richard usurped his chair, and
+was not badly welcomed by his neighbour.
+
+Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company,
+till the flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a hum
+began to spread. Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and
+displayeth the verity, hath also the quality of colouring it. The
+ladies laughed high; Richard only thought them gay and natural. They
+flung back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton thought only of
+the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks continued a
+regular file-firing.
+
+“Where have you been lately? I haven’t seen you in the park,” said Mrs.
+Mount to Richard.
+
+“No,” he replied, “I’ve not been there.” The question seemed odd: she
+spoke so simply that it did not impress him. He emptied his glass, and
+had it filled again.
+
+The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to horses,
+yachting, opera, and sport generally: who was ruined; by what horse, or
+by what woman. He told one or two of Richard’s feats. Fair smiles
+rewarded the hero.
+
+“Do you bet?” said Mrs. Mount.
+
+“Only on myself,” returned Richard.
+
+“Bravo!” cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
+sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
+
+“I’m sure you’re a safe one to back,” she added, and seemed to scan his
+points approvingly.
+
+Richard’s cheeks mounted bloom.
+
+“Don’t you adore champagne?” quoth the dame with a bosom to Ripton.
+
+“Oh, yes!” answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy, “I always
+drink it.”
+
+“Do you indeed?” said the enraptured bosom, ogling him. “You would be a
+friend, now! I hope you don’t object to a lady joining you now and
+then. Champagne’s my folly.”
+
+A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre;
+first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till
+those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned behind
+gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of laughter. Each
+one, as her ear received it, caught up her handkerchief, and laughed,
+and looked shocked afterwards, or looked shocked and then spouted
+laughter. The anecdote might have been communicated to the bewildered
+cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a demurer cast, she looked shocked
+without laughing, and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it
+was consigned to burial: but here and there a man’s head was seen bent,
+and a lady’s mouth moved, though her face was not turned toward him,
+and a man’s broad laugh was presently heard, while the lady gazed
+unconsciously before her, and preserved her gravity if she could escape
+any other lady’s eyes; failing in which, handkerchiefs were
+simultaneously seized, and a second chime arose, till the tickling
+force subsided to a few chance bursts.
+
+What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought Richard.
+He says they can’t laugh, and don’t understand humour. It comes, he
+reflected, of his shutting himself from the world. And the idea that he
+was seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him. He talked
+fluently to his dangerous Bellona. He gave her some reminiscences of
+Adrian’s whimsies.
+
+“Oh!” said she, “that’s your tutor, is it!” She eyed the young man as
+if she thought he must go far and fast.
+
+Ripton felt a push. “Look at that,” said the bosom, fuming utter
+disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the
+mignonne. “Now that’s what I don’t like in company,” the bosom inflated
+to observe with sufficient emphasis. “She always will allow it with
+everybody. Give her a nudge.”
+
+Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, “Then I will”;
+and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing wine in his
+face, and gave the nudge. The mignonne turned an inquiring eye on
+Ripton; a mischievous spark shot from it. She laughed, and said;
+“Aren’t you satisfied with the old girl?”
+
+“Impudence!” muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
+
+“Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet—she drinks port when there’s
+no more champagne,” said the mignonne.
+
+The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the
+mignonne, and between them he was enabled to form a correcter estimate
+of the company, and quite recovered from his original awe: so much so
+as to feel a touch of jealousy at seeing his lively little neighbour
+still held in absolute possession.
+
+Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner in
+the bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures accord
+not save to clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk with three
+or four at the head of the table while she still had passages aside
+with Richard.
+
+The port and claret went very well after the champagne. The ladies here
+did not ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen; they
+maintained their position with honour. Silver was seen far out on
+Thames. The wine ebbed, and the laughter. Sentiment and cigars took up
+the wondrous tale.
+
+“Oh, what a lovely night!” said the ladies, looking above.
+
+“Charming,” said the gentlemen, looking below.
+
+The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast.
+Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.
+
+“We are split into couples,” said Adrian to Richard, who was standing
+alone, eying the landscape. “Tis the influence of the moon! Apparently
+we are in Cyprus. How has my son enjoyed himself? How likes he the
+society of Aspasia? I feel like a wise Greek to-night.”
+
+Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked. Ripton had been
+carried off by the sentimental bosom. He came up to them and whispered:
+“By Jove, Ricky! do you know what sort of women these are?”
+
+Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
+
+“Puritan!” exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back. “Why didn’t
+you get tipsy, sir? Don’t you ever intoxicate yourself except at lawful
+marriages? Reveal to us what you have done with the portly dame?”
+
+Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and
+watch over him. He was jealous of his innocent Beauty’s husband being
+in proximity with such women. Murmuring couples passed them to and fro.
+
+“By Jove, Ricky!” Ripton favoured his friend with another hard whisper,
+“there’s a woman smoking!”
+
+“And why not, O Riptonus?” said Adrian. “Art unaware that woman
+cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small
+price for the splendid gem?”
+
+“Well, I don’t like women to smoke,” said plain Ripton.
+
+“Why mayn’t they do what men do?” the hero cried impetuously. “I hate
+that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It’s that makes the ruin and
+horrors I see. Why mayn’t they do what men do? I like the women who are
+brave enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women are bad, I
+like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show,
+and deceive you in the end.”
+
+“Bravo!” shouted Adrian. “There speaks the regenerator.”
+
+Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no argument. He
+still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far away,
+lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
+
+The Pilgrim’s Scrip remarks that: “Young men take joy in nothing so
+much as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of experience
+more than knowing that all are not quite so.”
+
+The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random
+extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of
+feminine goodness Richard’s young bride had inspired in the breast of
+the youth. It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in our
+nature.
+
+Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He wandered about
+the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and threw himself
+down among some bushes on the slope of the hill. Lying there, and
+meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.
+
+“What does he want?” said a woman’s voice. “It’s another of his
+villanies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I have
+to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him.”
+
+“Tragic!” said the Hon. Peter. “Haven’t you revenged yourself, Bella,
+pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a commercial transaction. You
+ask for money, and you are to have it—on the conditions: double the
+sum, and debts paid.”
+
+“He applies to me!”
+
+“You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you. I think
+Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows. He’s not easily
+hoodwinked, you know. He resigns himself to his fate and follows other
+game.”
+
+“Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?”
+
+“My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk. I didn’t say seduce.
+Hold him in—play with him. Amuse him.”
+
+“I don’t understand half-measures.”
+
+“Women seldom do.”
+
+“How I hate you, Brayder!”
+
+“I thank your ladyship.”
+
+The two walked farther. Ripton had heard some little of the colloquy.
+He left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of something dark to
+the people he loved, though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter’s
+stipulation involved.
+
+On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs.
+Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of parasites got
+on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the
+moonlight curled around them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies
+were in a state of high sentiment. They sang without request. All
+deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate interpreter of their
+emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof, fair throats will make
+men of taste swallow that remarkable composer. Eyes, lips, hearts;
+darts and smarts and sighs; beauty, duty; bosom, blossom; false one,
+farewell! To this pathetic strain they melted. Mrs. Mount, though
+strongly requested, declined to sing. She preserved her state. Under
+the tall aspens of Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in
+their wake. Richard’s hand lay open by his side. Mrs. Mount’s little
+white hand by misadventure fell into it. It was not pressed, or soothed
+for its fall, or made intimate with eloquent fingers. It lay there like
+a bit of snow on the cold ground. A yellow leaf wavering down from the
+aspens struck Richard’s cheek, and he drew away the very hand to throw
+back his hair and smooth his face, and then folded his arms,
+unconscious of offence. He was thinking ambitiously of his life: his
+blood was untroubled, his brain calmly working.
+
+“Which is the more perilous?” is a problem put by the Pilgrim: “To meet
+the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?”
+
+Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to
+flirt with one of her Court. The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental. One
+or two rattled, and one was such a good-humoured fellow that Adrian
+could not make him ridiculous. The others seemed to give themselves up
+to a silent waxing in length of limb. However far they sat removed,
+everybody was entangled in their legs. Pursuing his studies, Adrian
+came to the conclusion, that the same close intellectual and moral
+affinity which he had discovered to exist between our nobility and our
+yeomanry, is to be observed between the Guardsman class, and that of
+the corps de ballet: they both live by the strength of their legs,
+where also their wits, if they do not altogether reside there, are
+principally developed: both are volage; wine, tobacco, and the moon,
+influence both alike; and admitting the one marked difference that does
+exist, it is, after all, pretty nearly the same thing to be coquetting
+and sinning on two legs as on the point of a toe.
+
+A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about the
+twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required urgent
+persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the end: before
+he had accomplished it, Adrian had contrived to raise a laugh in his
+neighbourhood, so that the company was divided, and the camp split:
+jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment held the other. Ripton,
+blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing a higher degree of
+heat than was possible for the rest. “Are you cold?” she would ask,
+smiling charitably.
+
+“I am,” said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
+
+“You always appear to be,” the fat one sniffed and snapped.
+
+“Won’t you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?” said the naughty little woman.
+
+Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those familiar with the
+ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent. The mignonne was
+heard to whisper: “That poor fellow will certainly be stewed.”
+
+Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the water
+was chill and misty. Adrian had beside him the demure one who had
+stopped the circulation of his anecdote. She in nowise objected to the
+fair exchange, but said “Hush!” betweenwhiles.
+
+Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney
+reach; through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and the
+shadows of great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
+
+All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted on
+land. Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs. Mount
+to her home.
+
+“My brougham’s here; I shall go alone,” said Mrs. Mount. “Some one
+arrange my shawl.”
+
+She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as he
+manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
+
+“Which way are you going?” she asked carelessly, and, to his reply as
+to the direction, said: “Then I can give you a lift,” and she took his
+arm with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs with him.
+
+Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow: the portly dame
+retained him, and desired him to get her a cab.
+
+“Oh, you happy fellow!” said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
+
+Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get into
+it himself.
+
+“Try and let him come in too?” said the persecuting creature, again
+passing.
+
+“Take liberties with your men—you shan’t with me,” retorted the angry
+bosom, and drove off.
+
+“So she’s been and gone and run away and left him after all his
+trouble!” cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton’s eyes. “Now
+you’ll never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women again.
+There! he shall be made happy another time.” She gave his nose a
+comical tap, and tripped away with her possessor.
+
+Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts laid
+hold of him. Cabs and carriages rattled past. He was sure he had been
+among members of the nobility that day, though when they went by him
+now they only recognized him with an effort of the eyelids. He began to
+think of the day with exultation, as an event. Recollections of the
+mignonne were captivating. “Blue eyes—just what I like! And such a
+little impudent nose, and red lips, pouting—the very thing I like! And
+her hair? darkish, I think—say brown. And so saucy, and light on her
+feet. And kind she is, or she wouldn’t have talked to me like that.”
+Thus, with a groaning soul, he pictured her. His reason voluntarily
+consigned her to the aristocracy as a natural appanage: but he did
+amorously wish that Fortune had made a lord of him.
+
+Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the
+conversation he had heard on the hill. He was not one to suspect
+anybody positively. He was timid of fixing a suspicion. It hovered
+indefinitely, and clouded people, without stirring him to any resolve.
+Still the attentions of the lady toward Richard were queer. He
+endeavoured to imagine they were in the nature of things, because
+Richard was so handsome that any woman must take to him. “But he’s
+married,” said Ripton, “and he mustn’t go near these people if he’s
+married.” Not a high morality, perhaps better than none at all: better
+for the world were it practised more. He thought of Richard along with
+that sparkling dame, alone with her. The adorable beauty of his dear
+bride, her pure heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking of her, he
+lost sight of the mignonne who had made him giddy.
+
+He walked to Richard’s hotel, and up and down the street there, hoping
+every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might have
+returned and gone to bed. Two o’clock struck. Ripton could not go away.
+He was sure he should not sleep if he did. At last the cold sent him
+homeward, and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of Piccadilly
+he met his friend patrolling with his head up and that swing of the
+feet proper to men who are chanting verses.
+
+“Old Rip!” cried Richard, cheerily. “What on earth are you doing here
+at this hour of the morning?”
+
+Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. “I wanted to shake your
+hand before I went home.”
+
+Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. “That all? You may shake
+my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip! I’ve been
+speaking about you. Do you know, that—Mrs. Mount—never saw you all the
+time at Richmond, or in the boat!”
+
+“Oh!” Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf “you saw her safe
+home?”
+
+“Yes. I’ve been there for the last couple of hours—talking. She talks
+capitally: she’s wonderfully clever. She’s very like a man, only much
+nicer. I like her.”
+
+“But, Richard, excuse me—I’m sure I don’t mean to offend you—but now
+you’re married...perhaps you couldn’t help seeing her home, but I think
+you really indeed oughtn’t to have gone upstairs.”
+
+Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
+
+“What do you mean?” said Richard. “You don’t suppose I care for any
+woman but my little darling down there.” He laughed.
+
+“No; of course not. That’s absurd. What I mean is, that people perhaps
+will—you know, they do—they say all manner of things, and that makes
+unhappiness; and I do wish you were going home to-morrow, Ricky. I
+mean, to your dear wife.” Ripton blushed and looked away as he spoke.
+
+The hero gave one of his scornful glances. “So you’re anxious about my
+reputation. I hate that way of looking on women. Because they have been
+once misled—look how much weaker they are!—because the world has given
+them an ill fame, you would treat them as contagious and keep away from
+them for the sake of your character!
+
+“It would be different with me,” quoth Ripton.
+
+“How?” asked the hero.
+
+“Because I’m worse than you,” was all the logical explanation Ripton
+was capable of.
+
+“I do hope you will go home soon,” he added.
+
+“Yes,” said Richard, “and I, so do I hope so. But I’ve work to do now.
+I dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy would be the last to ask me;—you
+saw her letter yesterday. Now listen to me, Rip. I want to make you be
+just to women.”
+
+Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as if
+he had known them and studied them for years. Clever, beautiful, but
+betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to cherish and
+redeem them. “We turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures.”
+And the world suffered for it. That—that was the root of all the evil
+in the world!
+
+“I don’t feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip! It’s strange. I
+knew what they were when we came home in the boat. But I do—it tears my
+heart to see a young girl given over to an old man—a man she doesn’t
+love. That’s shame!—Don’t speak of it.”
+
+Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women are betrayed
+by love, Ripton was quite silenced. He, like most young men, had
+pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be sentimental
+when he was not hungry. They walked in the moonlight by the railings of
+the park. Richard harangued at leisure, while Ripton’s teeth chattered.
+Chivalry might be dead, but still there was something to do, went the
+strain. The lady of the day had not been thrown in the hero’s path
+without an object, he said; and he was sadly right there. He did not
+express the thing clearly; nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean,
+he intended to rescue that lady from further transgressions, and show a
+certain scorn of the world. That lady, and then other ladies unknown,
+were to be rescued. Ripton was to help. He and Ripton were to be the
+knights of this enterprise. When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and
+shivered. Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be
+Titans, for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods,
+would have to be defied and overthrown. And Titan number one flung up
+his handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and
+Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet across
+his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers under his
+coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high seat and was in the mists
+of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets, and the cold
+acting on his friend’s eloquence made Ripton’s flesh very contrite. The
+poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was good. By
+the time he had got a little warmth about him, his heart gratefully
+strove to encourage him in the conception of becoming a knight and a
+Titan; and so striving Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful
+woman.
+
+“Alas!” writes the Pilgrim at this very time to Lady Blandish, “I
+cannot get that legend of the Serpent from me, the more I think. Has he
+not caught you, and ranked you foremost in his legions? For see: till
+you were fashioned, the fruits hung immobile on the boughs. They swayed
+before us, glistening and cold. The hand must be eager that plucked
+them. They did not come down to us, and smile, and speak our language,
+and read our thoughts, and know when to fly, when to follow! how surely
+to have us!
+
+“Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of the Serpent.
+What shall be done with her? I fear the world is wiser than its judges!
+Turn from her, says the world. By day the sons of the world do. It
+darkens, and they dance together downward. Then comes there one of the
+world’s elect who deems old counsel devilish; indifference to the end
+of evil worse than its pursuit. He comes to reclaim her. From deepest
+bane will he bring her back to highest blessing. Is not that a bait
+already? Poor fish! ’tis wondrous flattering. The Serpent has slimed
+her so to secure him! With slow weary steps he draws her into light:
+she clings to him; she is human; part of his work, and he loves it. As
+they mount upward, he looks on her more, while she, it may be, looks
+above. What has touched him? What has passed out of her, and into him?
+The Serpent laughs below. At the gateways of the Sun they fall
+together!”
+
+This alliterative production was written without any sense of the peril
+that makes prophecy.
+
+It suited Sir Austin to write thus. It was a channel to his acrimony
+moderated through his philosophy. The letter was a reply to a vehement
+entreaty from Lady Blandish for him to come up to Richard and forgive
+him thoroughly: Richard’s name was not mentioned in it.
+
+“He tries to be more than he is,” thought the lady: and she began
+insensibly to conceive him less than he was.
+
+The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification in his son’s
+apparent obedience to his wishes and complete submission; a
+gratification he chose to accept as his due, without dissecting or
+accounting for it. The intelligence reiterating that Richard waited,
+and still waited; Richard’s letters, and more his dumb abiding and
+practical penitence; vindicated humanity sufficiently to stop the
+course of virulent aphorisms. He could speak, we have seen, in sorrow
+for this frail nature of ours, that he had once stood forth to
+champion. “But how long will this last?” he demanded, with the air of
+Hippias. He did not reflect how long it had lasted. Indeed, his
+indigestion of wrath had made of him a moral Dyspepsy.
+
+It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his young
+wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to
+undertake. Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of
+hot blood, he was not a fool. There had been talk between him and Mrs.
+Doria of his mother. Now that he had broken from his father, his heart
+spoke for her. She lived, he knew: he knew no more. Words painfully
+hovering along the borders of plain speech had been communicated to
+him, filling him with moody imaginings. If he thought of her, the red
+was on his face, though he could not have said why. But now, after
+canvassing the conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a
+terrible riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent.
+As softly as she could she told the story. To her the shame was past:
+she could weep for the poor lady. Richard dropped no tears. Disgrace of
+this kind is always present to a son, and, educated as he had been,
+these tidings were a vivid fire in his brain. He resolved to hunt her
+out, and take her from the man. Here was work set to his hand. All her
+dear husband did was right to Lucy. She encouraged him to stay for that
+purpose, thinking it also served another. There was Tom Bakewell to
+watch over Lucy: there was work for him to do. Whether it would please
+his father he did not stop to consider. As to the justice of the act,
+let us say nothing.
+
+On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe’s place of
+residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet
+now went in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful.
+The friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish’s town-house, or at the
+Foreys’, where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr, and
+staunch conservative, a favourable reception. Pity, deep pity for
+Richard’s conduct Ripton saw breathing out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon
+Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of rough commiseration, as a
+young fellow who had run off the road.
+
+Pity was in Lady Blandish’s eyes, though for a different cause. She
+doubted if she did well in seconding his father’s unwise
+scheme—supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the young husband
+encompassed by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount had
+been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life. She
+touched on delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he
+understood her well enough. “If he loves this person to whom he has
+bound himself, what fear for him? Or are you coming to think it
+something that bears the name of love because we have to veil the
+rightful appellation?” So he responded, remote among the mountains. She
+tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he came to say that he denied
+himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially, that he for a time
+might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread. This was almost too
+much for Lady Blandish. Love’s charity boy so loftily serene now that
+she saw him half denuded—a thing of shanks and wrists—was a trial for
+her true heart.
+
+Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his
+marriage. “We’ll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I’ll do it
+alone—what there is to do.” He slightly adverted to a natural want of
+courage in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was
+deficient in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; “I’m sure there never
+was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She’s as brave as she’s
+lovely, I’ll swear she is! Look how she behaved that day! How her voice
+sounded! She was trembling... Brave? She’d follow you into battle,
+Richard!”
+
+And Richard rejoined: “Talk on, dear old Rip! She’s my darling love,
+whatever she is! And she is gloriously lovely. No eyes are like hers.
+I’ll go down to-morrow morning the first thing.”
+
+Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain apart
+from it. So thought Richard for a space.
+
+“But if I go, Rip,” he said despondently, “if I go for a day even I
+shall have undone all my work with my father. She says it herself—you
+saw it in her last letter.”
+
+“Yes,” Ripton assented, and the words “Please remember me to dear Mr.
+Thompson,” fluttered about the Old Dog’s heart.
+
+It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led her
+through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once dandled in
+long clothes, and helped make a man of, if ever woman did. He was
+walking under the trees beside a lady, talking to her, not
+indifferently. The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe. “I know
+his back,” said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it in
+infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry diverged from the
+path, and got before them on the left flank; she stared, retreated, and
+came round upon the right. There was that in the lady’s face which Mrs.
+Berry did not like. Her innermost question was, why he was not walking
+with his own wife? She stopped in front of them. They broke, and passed
+about her. The lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he turned to
+look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She had to bob a second time, and then he
+remembered the worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her
+hand so that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely
+agitated. He dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening.
+She heard the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they
+both laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner
+of each eye. “I don’t like the looks of that woman,” she said, and
+repeated it resolutely.
+
+“Why doesn’t he walk arm-in-arm with her?” was her neat inquiry.
+“Where’s his wife?” succeeded it. After many interrogations of the
+sort, she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding
+subsequently, brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she
+wished to get rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her
+emotions on the breast of her babe. “I know a lady when I see one,”
+said Mrs. Berry. “I haven’t lived with ’em for nothing; and if she’s a
+lady bred and born, I wasn’t married in the church alive.”
+
+Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know: “She’s
+imitation lady, I’m sure she is!” Berry vowed. “I say she don’t look
+proper.”
+
+Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was one
+to think of a married man in company with such? “Oh no! it ain’t that!”
+Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack. “Belike it’s
+some one of his acquaintance ’ve married her for her looks, and he’ve
+just met her.... Why it’d be as bad as my Berry!” the relinquished
+spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea of a second man being
+so monstrous in wickedness. “Just coupled, too!” Mrs. Berry groaned on
+the suspicious side of the debate. “And such a sweet young thing for
+his wife! But no, I’ll never believe it. Not if he tell me so himself!
+And men don’t do that,” she whimpered.
+
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters; soft women
+exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are rapid
+beyond measure. Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she pronounced
+distinctly and without a shadow of dubiosity: “My opinion is—married or
+not married, and wheresomever he pick her up—she’s nothin’ more nor
+less than a Bella Donna!” as which poisonous plant she forthwith
+registered the lady in the botanical note-book of her brain. It would
+have astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately hit
+off at a glance.
+
+In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied by Ripton.
+Mrs. Berry opened the door to them. She could not wait to get him into
+the parlour. “You’re my own blessed babe; and I’m as good as your
+mother, though I didn’t suck ye, bein’ a maid!” she cried, falling into
+his arms, while Richard did his best to support the unexpected burden.
+Then reproaching him tenderly for his guile—at mention of which Ripton
+chuckled, deeming it his own most honourable portion of the plot—Mrs.
+Berry led them into the parlour, and revealed to Richard who she was,
+and how she had tossed him, and hugged him, and kissed him all over,
+when he was only that big—showing him her stumpy fat arm. “I kissed ye
+from head to tail, I did,” said Mrs. Berry, “and you needn’t be ashamed
+of it. It’s be hoped you’ll never have nothin’ worse come t’ye, my
+dear!”
+
+Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned her that she
+must not do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it was out of the question
+now, and now that he had a wife, moreover. The young men laughed, and
+Ripton laughing over-loudly drew on himself Mrs. Berry’s attention:
+“But that Mr. Thompson there—however he can look me in the face after
+his inn’cence! helping blindfold an old woman! though I ain’t sorry for
+what I did—that I’m free for to say, and its’ over, and blessed be all!
+Amen! So now where is she and how is she, Mr. Richard, my dear—it’s
+only cuttin’ off the ‘s’ and you are as you was.—Why didn’t ye bring
+her with ye to see her old Berry?”
+
+Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of Wight.
+
+“Oh! and you’ve left her for a day or two?” said Mrs. Berry.
+
+“Good God! I wish it had been a day or two,” cried Richard.
+
+“Ah! and how long have it been?” asked Mrs. Berry, her heart beginning
+to beat at his manner of speaking.
+
+“Don’t talk about it,” said Richard.
+
+“Oh! you never been dudgeonin’ already? Oh! you haven’t been peckin’ at
+one another yet?” Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+
+Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.
+
+“Then how long ha’ you been divided?”
+
+In a guilty voice Ripton stammered “since September.”
+
+“September!” breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her fingers, “September,
+October, Nov—two months and more! nigh three! A young married husband
+away from the wife of his bosom nigh three months! Oh my! Oh my! what
+do that mean?”
+
+“My father sent for me—I’m waiting to see him,” said Richard. A few
+more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend the condition of affairs.
+Then Mrs. Berry spread her lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her
+eyes, and spoke.
+
+“My dear young gentleman!—I’d like to call ye my darlin’ babe! I’m
+going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye likes it or no; and what
+old Berry says, you won’t mind, for she’s had ye when there was no
+conventionals about ye, and she has the feelin’s of a mother to you,
+though humble her state. If there’s one that know matrimony it’s me, my
+dear, though Berry did give me no more but nine months of it and I’ve
+known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants to be woeful wise,
+there it is for ye. For what have been my gain? That man gave me
+nothin’ but his name; and Bessy Andrews was as good as Bessy Berry,
+though both is ‘Bs,’ and says he, you was ‘A,’ and now you’s ‘B,’ so
+you’re my A B, he says, write yourself down that, he says, the bad man,
+with his jokes!—Berry went to service.” Mrs. Berry’s softness came upon
+her. “So I tell ye, Berry went to service. He left the wife of his
+bosom forlorn and he went to service; because he were allays an
+ambitious man, and wasn’t, so to speak, happy out of his uniform—which
+was his livery—not even in my arms: and he let me know it. He got among
+them kitchen sluts, which was my mournin’ ready made, and worse than a
+widow’s cap to me, which is no shame to wear, and some say becoming.
+There’s no man as ever lived known better than my Berry how to show his
+legs to advantage, and gals look at ’em. I don’t wonder now that Berry
+was prostrated. His temptations was strong, and his flesh was weak.
+Then what I say is, that for a young married man—be he whomsoever he
+may be—to be separated from the wife of his bosom—a young sweet thing,
+and he an innocent young gentleman!—so to sunder, in their state, and
+be kep’ from each other, I say it’s as bad as bad can be! For what is
+matrimony, my dears? We’re told it’s a holy Ordnance. And why are ye so
+comfortable in matrimony? For that ye are not a sinnin’! And they that
+severs ye they tempts ye to stray: and you learn too late the meanin’
+o’ them blessin’s of the priest—as it was ordained. Separate—what
+comes? Fust it’s like the circulation of your blood a-stoppin’—all goes
+wrong. Then there’s misunderstandings—ye’ve both lost the key. Then,
+behold ye, there’s birds o’ prey hoverin’ over each on ye, and it’s
+which’ll be snapped up fust. Then—Oh, dear! Oh, dear! it be like the
+devil come into the world again.” Mrs. Berry struck her hands and
+moaned. “A day I’ll give ye: I’ll go so far as a week: but there’s the
+outside. Three months dwellin’ apart! That’s not matrimony, it’s
+divorcin’! what can it be to her but widowhood? widowhood with no cap
+to show for it! And what can it be to you, my dear? Think! you been a
+bachelor three months! and a bachelor man,” Mrs. Berry shook her head
+most dolefully, “he ain’t widow woman. I don’t go to compare you to
+Berry, my dear young gentleman. Some men’s hearts is vagabonds
+born—they must go astray—it’s their natur’ to. But all men are men, and
+I know the foundation of ’em, by reason of my woe.”
+
+Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon. The
+truth in the good creature’s address was not to be disputed, or
+despised, notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her
+quaint way of putting it. Ripton nodded encouragingly at every
+sentence, for he saw her drift, and wished to second it.
+
+Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry solemnly
+continued: “We all know what checked prespiration is.” But neither of
+the young gentlemen could resist this. Out they burst in a roar of
+laughter.
+
+“Laugh away,” said Mrs. Berry. “I don’t mind ye. I say again, we all do
+know what checked prespiration is. It fly to the lungs, it gives ye
+mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off. Then I say checked
+matrimony is as bad. It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue
+that’s in ye, and you might as well be dead! Them that is joined it’s
+their salvation not to separate! It don’t so much matter before it.
+That Mr. Thompson there—if he go astray, it ain’t from the blessed
+fold. He hurt himself alone—not double, and belike treble, for who can
+say now what may be? There’s time for it. I’m for holding back young
+people so that they knows their minds, howsomever they rattles about
+their hearts. I ain’t a speeder of matrimony, and good’s my reason! but
+where it’s been done—where they’re lawfully joined, and their bodies
+made one, I do say this, that to put division between ’em then, it’s to
+make wanderin’ comets of ’em—creatures without a objeck, and no soul
+can say what they’s good for but to rush about!”
+
+Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost for
+the time being.
+
+“My dear old girl,” Richard went up to her and, applauding her on the
+shoulder, “you’re a very wise old woman. But you mustn’t speak to me as
+if I wanted to stop here. I’m compelled to. I do it for her good
+chiefly.”
+
+“It’s your father that’s doin’ it, my dear?”
+
+“Well, I’m waiting his pleasure.”
+
+“A pretty pleasure! puttin’ a snake in the nest of young turtle-doves!
+And why don’t she come up to you?”
+
+“Well, that you must ask her. The fact is, she’s a little timid
+girl—she wants me to see him first, and when I’ve made all right, then
+she’ll come.”
+
+“A little timid girl!” cried Mrs. Berry. “Oh, lor’, how she must ha’
+deceived ye to make ye think that! Look at that ring,” she held out her
+finger, “he’s a stranger: he’s not my lawful! You know what ye did to
+me, my dear. Could I get my own wedding-ring back from her? ‘No!’ says
+she, firm as a rock, ‘he said, with this ring I thee wed’—I think I see
+her now, with her pretty eyes and lovesome locks—a darlin’!—And that
+ring she’d keep to, come life, came death. And she must ha’ been a rock
+for me to give in to her in that. For what’s the consequence? Here am
+I,” Mrs. Berry smoothed down the back of her hand mournfully, “here am
+I in a strange ring, that’s like a strange man holdin’ of me, and me
+a-wearin’ of it just to seem decent, and feelin’ all over no better
+than a b—a big—that nasty name I can’t abide!—I tell you, my dear, she
+ain’t soft, no!—except to the man of her heart; and the best of women’s
+too soft there—more’s our sorrow!”
+
+“Well, well!” said Richard, who thought he knew.
+
+“I agree with you, Mrs. Berry,” Ripton struck in, “Mrs. Richard would
+do anything in the world her husband asked her, I’m quite sure.”
+
+“Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson! Why, see her! she ain’t
+frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in the eyes; she ain’t one of
+your hang-down misses. Look how she behaved at the ceremony!”
+
+“Ah!” sighed Ripton.
+
+“And if you’d ha’ seen her when she spoke to me about my ring! Depend
+upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she blinded you about the nerve she’ve
+got, it was somethin’ she thought she ought to do for your sake, and I
+wish I’d been by to counsel her, poor blessed babe!—And how much
+longer, now, can ye stay divided from that darlin’?”
+
+Richard paced up and down.
+
+“A father’s will,” urged Mrs. Berry, “that’s a son’s law; but he
+mustn’t go again’ the laws of his nature to do it.”
+
+“Just be quiet at present—talk of other things, there’s a good woman,”
+said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.
+
+“How strange, now, our meetin’ like this! meetin’ at all, too!” she
+remarked contemplatively. “It’s them advertisements! They brings people
+together from the ends of the earth, for good or for bad. I often say,
+there’s more lucky accidents, or unlucky ones, since advertisements was
+the rule, than ever there was before. They make a number of romances,
+depend upon it! Do you walk much in the Gardens, my dear?”
+
+“Now and then,” said Richard.
+
+“Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers and titled
+people,” continued Mrs. Berry. “That was a handsome woman you was
+a-walkin’ beside, this mornin’.”
+
+“Very,” said Richard.
+
+“She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her day ain’t past,
+and she know it. I thought at first—by her back—it might ha’ been your
+aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do step out well and hold up her shoulders:
+straight as a dart she be! But when I come to see her face—Oh, dear me!
+says I, this ain’t one of the family. They none of ’em got such bold
+faces—nor no lady as I know have. But she’s a fine woman—that nobody
+can gainsay.”
+
+Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman. It was a liberty she took
+to speak in this disrespectful tone of her, and Mrs. Berry was quite
+aware that she was laying herself open to rebuke. She had her end in
+view. No rebuke was uttered, and during her talk she observed
+intercourse passing between the eyes of the young men.
+
+“Look here, Penelope,” Richard stopped her at last. “Will it make you
+comfortable if I tell you I’ll obey the laws of my nature and go down
+at the end of the week?”
+
+“I’ll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!” she exclaimed.
+
+“Very well, then—be happy—I will. Now listen. I want you to keep your
+rooms for me—those she had. I expect, in a day or two, to bring a lady
+here”—
+
+“A lady?” faltered Mrs. Berry.
+
+“Yes. A lady.”
+
+“May I make so bold as to ask what lady?”
+
+“You may not. Not now. Of course you will know.”
+
+Mrs. Berry’s short neck made the best imitation it could of an offended
+swan’s action. She was very angry. She said she did not like so many
+ladies, which natural objection Richard met by saying that there was
+only one lady.
+
+“And Mrs. Berry,” he added, dropping his voice. “You will treat her as
+you did my dear girl, for she will require not only shelter but
+kindness. I would rather leave her with you than with any one. She has
+been very unfortunate.”
+
+His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated the softness of
+Berry, and it was not until he had gone that she spoke out.
+“Unfort’nate! He’s going to bring me an unfort’nate female! Oh! not
+from my babe can I bear that! Never will I have her here! I see it.
+It’s that bold-faced woman he’s got mixed up in, and she’ve been and
+made the young man think he’ll go for to reform her. It’s one o’ their
+arts—that is; and he’s too innocent a young man to mean anythin’ else.
+But I ain’t a house of Magdalens no! and sooner than have her here I’d
+have the roof fall over me, I would.”
+
+She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.
+
+In love, Mrs. Berry’s charity was all on the side of the law, and this
+is the case with many of her sisters. The Pilgrim sneers at them for
+it, and would have us credit that it is their admirable instinct which,
+at the expense of every virtue save one, preserves the artificial
+barrier simply to impose upon us. Men, I presume, are hardly fair
+judges, and should stand aside and mark.
+
+Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard’s hotel to let him
+know her determination. She did not find him there. Returning homeward
+through the park, she beheld him on horseback riding by the side of the
+identical lady.
+
+The sight of this public exposure shocked her more than the secret walk
+under the trees... “You don’t look near your reform yet,” Mrs. Berry
+apostrophized her. “You don’t look to me one that’d come the Fair
+Penitent till you’ve left off bein’ fair—if then you do, which some of
+ye don’t. Laugh away and show yet airs! Spite o’ your hat and feather,
+and your ridin’ habit, you’re a Bella Donna.” Setting her down again
+absolutely for such, whatever it might signify, Mrs. Berry had a
+virtuous glow.
+
+In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at the door.
+“Never!” she rose from her chair to exclaim. “He ain’t rided her out in
+the mornin’, and been and made a Magdalen of her afore dark?”
+
+A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard. Mrs. Berry feebly
+tried to bar his progress in the passage. He pushed past her, and
+conducted the lady into the parlour without speaking. Mrs. Berry did
+not follow. She heard him murmur a few sentences within. Then he came
+out. All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, “Mr. Richard!
+if that woman stay here, I go forth. My house ain’t a penitentiary for
+unfort’nate females, sir”—
+
+He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing
+her indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and spoke
+words in her ear that had awful import to her. She trembled, breathing
+low: “My God, forgive, me!
+
+“Richard?” And her virtue was humbled. “Lady Feverel is it? Your
+mother, Mr. Richard?” And her virtue was humbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+
+One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad
+circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand,
+will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when
+a robust young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in
+her person. The colloquy was short between Diaper Sandoe and Richard.
+The question was referred to the poor spiritless lady, who, seeing that
+her son made no question of it, cast herself on his hands. Small loss
+to her was Diaper; but he was the loss of habit, and that is something
+to a woman who has lived. The blood of her son had been running so long
+alien from her that the sense of her motherhood smote her now with
+strangeness, and Richard’s stern gentleness seemed like dreadful
+justice come upon her. Her heart had almost forgotten its maternal
+functions. She called him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her
+son. Her voice sounded to him like that of a broken-throated lamb, so
+painful and weak it was, with the plaintive stop in the utterance. When
+he kissed her, her skin was cold. Her thin hand fell out of his when
+his grasp related. “Can sin hunt one like this?” he asked, bitterly
+reproaching himself for the shame she had caused him to endure, and a
+deep compassion filled his breast.
+
+Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all he
+had sacrificed for this woman—the comfortable quarters, the friend, the
+happy flights. He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving
+him in his old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. He wrote as
+pathetically of the break of habit as men feel at the death of love,
+and when we are old and have no fair hope tossing golden locks before
+us, a wound to this our second nature is quite as sad. I know not even
+if it be not actually sadder.
+
+Day by day Richard visited his mother. Lady Blandish and Ripton alone
+were in the secret. Adrian let him do as he pleased. He thought proper
+to tell him that the public recognition he accorded to a particular
+lady was, in the present state of the world, scarcely prudent.
+
+“’Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but the world will
+not think so. No one character is sufficient to cover two—in a
+Protestant country especially. The divinity that doth hedge a Bishop
+would have no chance, in contact with your Madam Danae. Drop the woman,
+my son. Or permit me to speak what you would have her hear.”
+
+Richard listened to him with disgust. “Well, you’ve had my doctorial
+warning,” said Adrian; and plunged back into his book.
+
+When Lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations Mrs.
+Berry perpetually opened on the subject of Richard’s matrimonial duty,
+another chain was cast about him. “Do not, oh, do not offend your
+father!” was her one repeated supplication. Sir Austin had grown to be
+a vindictive phantom in her mind. She never wept but when she said
+this.
+
+So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady Blandish
+as the only friend he had among women, bundled off in her black-satin
+dress to obtain an interview with her, and an ally. After coming to an
+understanding on the matter of the visit, and reiterating many of her
+views concerning young married people, Mrs. Berry said: “My lady, if I
+may speak so bold, I’d say the sin that’s bein’ done is the sin o’ the
+lookers-on. And when everybody appear frightened by that young
+gentleman’s father, I’ll say—hopin’ your pardon—they no cause be
+frighted at all. For though it’s nigh twenty year since I knew him, and
+I knew him then just sixteen months—no more—I’ll say his heart’s as
+soft as a woman’s, which I’ve cause for to know. And that’s it. That’s
+where everybody’s deceived by him, and I was. It’s because he keeps his
+face, and makes ye think you’re dealin’ with a man of iron, and all the
+while there’s a woman underneath. And a man that’s like a woman he’s
+the puzzle o’ life! We can see through ourselves, my lady, and we can
+see through men, but one o’ that sort—he’s like somethin’ out of
+nature. Then I say—hopin’ be excused—what’s to do is for to treat him
+like a woman, and not for to let him have his own way—which he don’t
+know himself, and is why nobody else do. Let that sweet young couple
+come together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say; and then give
+him time to come round, just like a woman; and round he’ll come, and
+give ’em his blessin’, and we shall know we’ve made him comfortable.
+He’s angry because matrimony have come between him and his son, and he,
+woman-like, he’s wantin’ to treat what is as if it isn’t. But
+matrimony’s a holier than him. It began long long before him, and it’s
+be hoped will endoor longs the time after, if the world’s not coming to
+rack—wishin’ him no harm.”
+
+Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish’s thoughts in bad English. The
+lady took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his
+wife. He wrote, bidding her come. Lucy, however, had wits, and
+inexperienced wits are as a little knowledge. In pursuance of her sage
+plan to make the family feel her worth, and to conquer the members of
+it one by one, she had got up a correspondence with Adrian, whom it
+tickled. Adrian constantly assured her all was going well: time would
+heal the wound if both the offenders had the fortitude to be patient:
+he fancied he saw signs of the baronet’s relenting: they must do
+nothing to arrest those favourable symptoms. Indeed the wise youth was
+languidly seeking to produce them. He wrote, and felt, as Lucy’s
+benefactor. So Lucy replied to her husband a cheerful rigmarole he
+could make nothing of, save that she was happy in hope, and still had
+fears. Then Mrs. Berry trained her fist to indite a letter to her
+bride. Her bride answered it by saying she trusted to time. “You poor
+marter” Mrs. Berry wrote back, “I know what your sufferin’s be. They is
+the only kind a wife should never hide from her husband. He thinks all
+sorts of things if she can abide being away. And you trusting to time,
+why it’s like trusting not to catch cold out of your natural clothes.”
+There was no shaking Lucy’s firmness.
+
+Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying behind him
+was the life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick and
+got married! He associated the two acts of his existence. Where was the
+hero he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!—a wretch he had taught
+to lie and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how ignoble did a
+flash from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear! The
+young man sought amusement. He allowed his aunt to drag him into
+society, and sick of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount,
+oblivious of the purpose he had in visiting her at all. Her man-like
+conversation, which he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on
+fair lips.
+
+“Call me Bella: I’ll call you Dick,” said she. And it came to be Bella
+and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in Richard’s
+letters to Lucy.
+
+Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. “I pretend to be no better
+than I am,” she said, “and I know I’m no worse than many a woman who
+holds her head high.” To back this she told him stories of blooming
+dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his
+ears.
+
+Also she understood him. “What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
+do. You went and got married like a—hum!—friends must be respectful. Go
+into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or two—friends
+should make themselves useful.”
+
+She told him what she liked in him. “You’re the only man I was ever
+alone with who don’t talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I hate
+men who can’t speak to a woman sensibly.—Just wait a minute.” She left
+him and presently returned with, “Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are
+you?”—arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat
+jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the
+costume. “What do you think of me? Wasn’t it a shame to make a woman of
+me when I was born to be a man?”
+
+“I don’t know that,” said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
+those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
+
+“What! you think I don’t do it well?”
+
+“Charming! but I can’t forget...”
+
+“Now that is too bad!” she pouted.
+
+Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
+arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
+impertinent manner of using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of
+the supreme dandy.
+
+“They take up men, Dick, for going about in women’s clothes, and vice
+versaw, I suppose. You’ll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my bow
+to the beak, won’t you? Say it’s becas I’m an honest woman and don’t
+care to hide the—a—unmentionables when I wear them—as the t’others do,”
+sprinkled with the dandy’s famous invocations.
+
+He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
+
+“You’re a wopper, my brave Dick! won’t let any peeler take me? by
+Jove!”
+
+And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent
+her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed upon it
+more. There was delicacy in her dandyism. She was a graceful cavalier.
+
+“Sir Julius,” as they named the dandy’s attire, was frequently called
+for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount. When he beheld Sir Julius he
+thought of the lady, and “vice versaw,” as Sir Julius was fond of
+exclaiming.
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
+
+The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius. Or she would sit,
+and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that worthy fop.
+
+She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her the
+cleverest woman he had ever met.
+
+All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold as ice, she
+hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.
+
+A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria’s ears. She rushed to Adrian
+first. The wise youth believed there was nothing in it. She sailed down
+upon Richard. “Is this true? that you have been seen going publicly
+about with an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray, relieve me!”
+
+Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt’s description in whose
+company he could have been seen.
+
+“Tell me, I say! Don’t quibble. Do you know any woman of bad
+character?”
+
+The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the
+world, Richard admitted to.
+
+Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew, both from the moral
+and the worldly point of view, mentally ejaculating all the while:
+“That ridiculous System! That disgraceful marriage!” Sir Austin in his
+mountain solitude was furnished with serious stuff to brood over.
+
+The rumour came to Lady Blandish. She likewise lectured Richard, and
+with her he condescended to argue. But he found himself obliged to
+instance something he had quite neglected. “Instead of her doing me
+harm, it’s I that will do her good.”
+
+Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger. “This person must
+be very clever to have given you that delusion, dear.”
+
+“She is clever. And the world treats her shamefully.”
+
+“She complains of her position to you?”
+
+“Not a word. But I will stand by her. She has no friend but me.”
+
+“My poor boy! has she made you think that?”
+
+“How unjust you all are!” cried Richard.
+
+“How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be tempted so!” thought
+Lady Blandish.
+
+He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to address her
+publicly. The world that condemned her and cast her out was no
+better—worse for its miserable hypocrisy. He knew the world now, the
+young man said.
+
+“My child! the world may be very bad. I am not going to defend it. But
+you have some one else to think of. Have you forgotten you have a wife,
+Richard?”
+
+“Ay! you all speak of her now. There’s my aunt: ‘Remember you have a
+wife!’ Do you think I love any one but Lucy? poor little thing! Because
+I am married am I to give up the society of women?”
+
+“Of women!”
+
+“Isn’t she a woman?”
+
+“Too much so!” sighed the defender of her sex.
+
+Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings. Richard laughed at him.
+The wise youth sneered at Mrs. Mount. The hero then favoured him with a
+warning equal to his own in emphasis, and surpassing it in sincerity.
+
+“We won’t quarrel, my dear boy,” said Adrian. “I’m a man of peace.
+Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a combat. Ride your steed
+to virtue’s goal! All I say is, that I think he’ll upset you, and it’s
+better to go at a slow pace and in companionship with the children of
+the sun. You have a very nice little woman for a wife—well, good-bye!”
+
+To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was unendurable to
+Richard; he associated them somewhat after the manner of the rick and
+the marriage. Charming Sir Julius, always gay, always honest, dispersed
+his black moods.
+
+“Why, you’re taller,” Richard made the discovery.
+
+“Of course I am. Don’t you remember you said I was such a little thing
+when I came out of my woman’s shell?”
+
+“And how have you done it?”
+
+“Grown to please you.”
+
+“Now, if you can do that, you can do anything.”
+
+“And so I would do anything.”
+
+“You would?”
+
+“Honour!”
+
+“Then”...his project recurred to him. But the incongruity of speaking
+seriously to Sir Julius struck him dumb.
+
+“Then what?” asked she.
+
+“Then you’re a gallant fellow.”
+
+“That all?”
+
+“Isn’t it enough?”
+
+“Not quite. You were going to say something. I saw it in your eyes.”
+
+“You saw that I admired you.”
+
+“Yes, but a man mustn’t admire a man.”
+
+“I suppose I had an idea you were a woman.”
+
+“What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an inch,” Sir
+Julius turned one heel, and volleyed out silver laughter.
+
+“I don’t come much above your shoulder even now,” she said, and
+proceeded to measure her height beside him with arch up-glances.
+
+“You must grow more.”
+
+“’Fraid I can’t, Dick! Bootmakers can’t do it.”
+
+“I’ll show you how,” and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and bore the
+fair gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him there exactly on a
+level with his head. “Will that do?”
+
+“Yes! Oh but I can’t stay here.”
+
+“Why can’t you?”
+
+“Why can’t I?”
+
+He should have known then—it was thundered at a closed door in him,
+that he played with fire. But the door being closed, he thought himself
+internally secure.
+
+Their eyes met. He put her down instantly.
+
+Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue. Seeing that, the wily
+woman resumed her shell. The memory, of Sir Julius breathing about her
+still, doubled the feminine attraction.
+
+“I ought to have been an actress,” she said.
+
+Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar wish.
+
+“Yes! Ah! then! if I had been!” sighed Mrs. Mount, gazing on the
+pattern of the carpet.
+
+He took her hand, and pressed it.
+
+“You are not happy as you are?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“May I speak to you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion, slid to the
+corner toward her ear, as she sat with her head sideways to him,
+listening. When he had gone, she said to herself: “Old hypocrites talk
+in that way; but I never heard of a young man doing it, and not making
+love at the same time.”
+
+Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one who had been
+set thinking. He lauded her fair looks.
+
+“Don’t make me thrice ashamed,” she petitioned.
+
+But it was not only that mood with her. Dauntless defiance, that
+splendidly befitted her gallant outline and gave a wildness to her
+bright bold eyes, when she would call out: “Happy? who dares say I’m
+not happy? D’you think if the world whips me I’ll wince? D’you think I
+care for what they say or do? Let them kill me! they shall never get
+one cry out of me!” and flashing on the young man as if he were the
+congregated enemy, add: “There! now you know me!”—that was a mood that
+well became her, and helped the work. She ought to have been an
+actress.
+
+“This must not go on,” said Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria in unison. A
+common object brought them together. They confined their talk to it,
+and did not disagree. Mrs. Doria engaged to go down to the baronet.
+Both ladies knew it was a dangerous, likely to turn out a disastrous,
+expedition. They agreed to it because it was something to do, and doing
+anything is better than doing nothing. “Do it,” said the wise youth,
+when they made him a third, “do it, if you want him to be a hermit for
+life. You will bring back nothing but his dead body, ladies—a Hellenic,
+rather than a Roman, triumph. He will listen to you—he will accompany
+you to the station—he will hand you into the carriage—and when you
+point to his seat he will bow profoundly, and retire into his congenial
+mists.”
+
+Adrian spoke their thoughts. They fretted; they relapsed.
+
+“Speak to him, you, Adrian,” said Mrs. Doria. “Speak to the boy
+solemnly. It would be almost better he should go back to that little
+thing he has married.”
+
+“Almost?” Lady Blandish opened her eyes. “I have been advising it for
+the last month and more.”
+
+“A choice of evils,” said Mrs. Doria’s sour-sweet face and shake of the
+head.
+
+Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed, with heroic
+effort, to avoid it by shutting their mouths. What was more, they
+preserved the peace in spite of Adrian’s artifices.
+
+“Well, I’ll talk to him again,” he said. “I’ll try to get the Engine on
+the conventional line.”
+
+“Command him!” exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
+
+“Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard,” said Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke to Richard.
+“You want to reform this woman. Her manner is open—fair and free—the
+traditional characteristic. We won’t stop to canvass how that
+particular honesty of deportment that wins your approbation has been
+gained. In her college it is not uncommon. Girls, you know, are not
+like boys. At a certain age they can’t be quite natural. It’s a bad
+sign if they don’t blush, and fib, and affect this and that. It wears
+off when they’re women. But a woman who speaks like a man, and has all
+those excellent virtues you admire—where has she learned the trick? She
+tells you. You don’t surely approve of the school? Well, what is there
+in it, then? Reform her, of course. The task is worthy of your
+energies. But, if you are appointed to do it, don’t do it publicly, and
+don’t attempt it just now. May I ask you whether your wife participates
+in this undertaking?”
+
+Richard walked away from the interrogation. The wise youth, who hated
+long unrelieved speeches and had healed his conscience, said no more.
+
+Dear tender Lucy! Poor darling! Richard’s eyes moistened. Her letters
+seemed sadder latterly. Yet she never called to him to come, or he
+would have gone. His heart leapt up to her. He announced to Adrian that
+he should wait no longer for his father. Adrian placidly nodded.
+
+The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded brow and an
+absent voice.
+
+“Richard—I can’t call you Dick now, I really don’t know why”—she said,
+“I want to beg a favour of you.”
+
+“Name it. I can still call you Bella, I suppose?”
+
+“If you care to. What I want to say is this: when you meet me out—to
+cut it short—please not to recognize me.”
+
+“And why?”
+
+“Do you ask to be told that?”
+
+“Certainly I do.”
+
+“Then look: I won’t compromise you.”
+
+“I see no harm, Bella.”
+
+“No,” she caressed his hand, “and there is none. I know that. But,”
+modest eyelids were drooped, “other people do,” struggling eyes were
+raised.
+
+“What do we care for other people?”
+
+“Nothing. I don’t. Not that!” snapping her finger, “I care for you,
+though.” A prolonged look followed the declaration.
+
+“You’re foolish, Bella.”
+
+“Not quite so giddy—that’s all.”
+
+He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity. Adrian’s abrupt
+inquiry had sunk in his mind, as the wise youth intended it should. He
+had instinctively refrained from speaking to Lucy of this lady. But
+what a noble creature the woman was!
+
+So they met in the park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him; and secresy added
+a new sense to their intimacy.
+
+Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his eloquence.
+
+Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was not mistaken in
+her cleverness. She could make evenings pass gaily, and one was not the
+fellow to the other. She could make you forget she was a woman, and
+then bring the fact startlingly home to you. She could read men with
+one quiver of her half-closed eye-lashes. She could catch the coming
+mood in a man, and fit herself to it. What does a woman want with
+ideas, who can do thus much? Keenness of perception, conformity,
+delicacy of handling, these be all the qualities necessary to
+parasites.
+
+Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from her tongue. It
+may also have been true that it sickened her. She played on his higher
+nature. She understood spontaneously what would be most strange and
+taking to him in a woman. Various as the Serpent of old Nile, she acted
+fallen beauty, humorous indifference, reckless daring, arrogance in
+ruin. And acting thus, what think you?—She did it so well because she
+was growing half in earnest.
+
+“Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You will not give me up
+quite?”
+
+“Never, Bella.”
+
+“I am not so bad as I’m painted!”
+
+“You are only unfortunate.”
+
+“Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier.”
+
+She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to
+throw heaven’s twilight across it. A woman’s history, you know: certain
+chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.
+
+“Did you love the man?” he asked. “You say you love no one now.”
+
+“Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman’s daughter. No. I
+did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate him,
+if I did not despise him.”
+
+“Can you be deceived in love?” said Richard, more to himself than to
+her.
+
+“Yes. When we’re young we can be very easily deceived. If there is such
+a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed
+it. Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:—and then it’s
+too late! we can’t have him.”
+
+“Singular!” murmured Richard, “she says just what my father said.”
+
+He spoke aloud: “I could forgive you if you had loved him.”
+
+“Don’t be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?”
+
+“You had some affection for him? He was the first?”
+
+She chose to admit that. “Yes. And the first who talks of love to a
+girl must be a fool if he doesn’t blind her.”
+
+“That makes what is called first love nonsense.”
+
+“Isn’t it?”
+
+He repelled the insinuation. “Because I know it is not, Bella.”
+
+Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a
+colder. He thought poorly of girls. A woman a sensible, brave,
+beautiful woman seemed, on comparison, infinitely nobler than those
+weak creatures.
+
+She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul injustice.
+“What am I to do? You tell me to be different. How can I? What am I to
+do? Will virtuous people let me earn my bread? I could not get a
+housemaid’s place! They wouldn’t have me—I see their noses smelling!
+Yes I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen! Do you expect me
+to bury myself alive? Why, man, I have blood: I can’t become a stone.
+You say I am honest, and I will be. Then let me tell you that I have
+been used to luxuries, and I can’t do without them. I might have
+married men—lots would have had me. But who marries one like me but a
+fool? and I could not marry a fool. The man I marry I must respect. He
+could not respect me—I should know him to be a fool, and I should be
+worse off than I am now. As I am now, they may look as pious as they
+like—I laugh at them!”
+
+And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives: horrible exultation
+at the universal peccancy of husbands. This lovely outcast almost made
+him think she had the right on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows
+pierced the holy centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.
+
+Mrs. Mount’s house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred to
+shock him there. The young man would ask himself where the difference
+was between her and the Women of society? How base, too, was the army
+of banded hypocrites! He was ready to declare war against them on her
+behalf. His casus belli, accurately worded, would have read curiously.
+Because the world refused to lure the lady to virtue with the offer of
+a housemaid’s place, our knight threw down his challenge. But the lady
+had scornfully rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity. Then the
+form of the challenge must be: Because the world declined to support
+the lady in luxury for nothing! But what did that mean? In other words:
+she was to receive the devil’s wages without rendering him her
+services. Such an arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on
+the devil. Heroes will have to conquer both before they will get them
+to subscribe to it.
+
+Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of
+war at all. Lance in rest they challenge and they charge. Like women
+they trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men. Wide fly the
+leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are scattered, they know
+not wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why.
+’Tis instinct strikes! Surely there is something divine in instinct.
+
+Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero could not charge
+down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the
+quadrille. He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge
+in the Law Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament
+with a trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation’s direct
+representatives did seem the likelier method. It was likewise out of
+the question that he should enter every house and shop, and battle with
+its master in the cause of Mrs. Mount. Where, then, was his enemy?
+Everybody was his enemy, and everybody was nowhere! Shall he convoke
+multitudes on Wimbledon Common? Blue Policemen, and a distant dread of
+ridicule, bar all his projects. Alas for the hero in our day!
+
+Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at empty
+air.
+
+“What can I do for this poor woman?” cried Richard, after fighting his
+phantom enemy till he was worn out.
+
+“O Rip! old Rip!” he addressed his friend, “I’m distracted. I wish I
+was dead! What good am I for? Miserable! selfish! What have I done but
+make every soul I know wretched about me? I follow my own
+inclinations—I make people help me by lying as hard as they can—and I’m
+a liar. And when I’ve got it I’m ashamed of myself. And now when I do
+see something unselfish for me to do, I come upon grins—I don’t know
+where to turn—how to act—and I laugh at myself like a devil!”
+
+It was only friend Ripton’s ear that was required, so his words went
+for little: but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to be
+ashamed of in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth. Richard added
+his customary comment of “Poor little thing!”
+
+He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted. A last
+letter written to his father procured him no reply. Then, said he, I
+have tried my utmost. I have tried to be dutiful—my father won’t listen
+to me. One thing I can do—I can go down to my dear girl, and make her
+happy, and save her at least from some of the consequences of my
+rashness.
+
+“There’s nothing better for me!” he groaned. His great ambition must be
+covered by a house-top: he and the cat must warm themselves on the
+domestic hearth! The hero was not aware that his heart moved him to
+this. His heart was not now in open communion with his mind.
+
+Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going—would go. She knew he was
+going to his wife. Far from discouraging him, she said nobly: “Go—I
+believe I have kept you. Let us have an evening together, and then go:
+for good, if you like. If not, then to meet again another time. Forget
+me. I shan’t forget you. You’re the best fellow I ever knew, Richard.
+You are, on my honour! I swear I would not step in between you and your
+wife to cause either of you a moment’s unhappiness. When I can be
+another woman I will, and I shall think of you then.”
+
+Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively going to
+his wife. The wise youth modestly veiled his own merit in bringing it
+about by saying: “I couldn’t see that poor little woman left alone down
+there any longer.”
+
+“Well! Yes!” said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest speech was repeated,
+“I suppose, poor boy, it’s the best he can do now.”
+
+Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last evening with Mrs.
+Mount.
+
+The enchantress received him in state.
+
+“Do you know this dress? No? It’s the dress I wore when I first met
+you—not when I first saw you. I think I remarked you, sir, before you
+deigned to cast an eye upon humble me. When we first met we drank
+champagne together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in the same
+liquor. Will you liquor with me, old boy?”
+
+She was gay. She revived Sir Julius occasionally. He, dispirited, left
+the talking all to her.
+
+Mrs. Mount kept a footman. At a late hour the man of calves dressed the
+table for supper. It was a point of honour for Richard to sit down to
+it and try to eat. Drinking, thanks to the kindly mother nature, who
+loves to see her children made fools of, is always an easier matter.
+The footman was diligent; the champagne corks feebly recalled the
+file-firing at Richmond.
+
+“We’ll drink to what we might have been, Dick,” said the enchantress.
+
+Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.
+
+His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.
+
+“What! down, my boy?” she cried. “They shall never see me hoist signals
+of distress. We must all die, and the secret of the thing is to die
+game, by Jove! Did you ever hear of Laura Fern? a superb girl!
+handsomer than your humble servant—if you’ll believe it—a ‘Miss’ in the
+bargain, and as a consequence, I suppose, a much greater rake. She was
+in the hunting-field. Her horse threw her, and she fell plump on a
+stake. It went into her left breast. All the fellows crowded round her,
+and one young man, who was in love with her—he sits in the House of
+Peers now—we used to call him ‘Duck’ because he was such a dear—he
+dropped from his horse to his knees: ‘Laura! Laura! my darling! speak a
+word to me!—the last!’ She turned over all white and bloody! ‘I—I
+shan’t be in at the death!’ and gave up the ghost! Wasn’t that dying
+game? Here’s to the example of Laura Fenn! Why, what’s the matter? See!
+it makes a man turn pale to hear how a woman can die. Fill the glasses,
+John. Why, you’re as bad!”
+
+“It’s give me a turn, my lady,” pleaded John, and the man’s hand was
+unsteady as he poured out the wine.
+
+“You ought not to listen. Go, and, drink some brandy.”
+
+John footman went from the room.
+
+“My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you’ve got!”
+
+He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.
+
+“Can’t you bear to hear of blood? You know, it was only one naughty
+woman out of the world. The clergyman of the parish didn’t refuse to
+give her decent burial. We Christians! Hurrah!”
+
+She cheered, and laughed. A lurid splendour glanced about her like
+lights from the pit.
+
+“Pledge me, Dick! Drink, and recover yourself. Who minds? We must all
+die—the good and the bad. Ashes to ashes—dust to dust—and wine for
+living lips! That’s poetry—almost. Sentiment: ‘May we never say die
+till we’ve drunk our fill!’ Not bad—eh? A little vulgar, perhaps, by
+Jove! Do you think me horrid?”
+
+“Where’s the wine?” Richard shouted. He drank a couple of glasses in
+succession, and stared about. Was he in hell, with a lost soul raving
+to him?
+
+“Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick! Now we’ll be
+companions.” She wished that heaven had made her such a man. “Ah! Dick!
+Dick! too late! too late!”
+
+Softly fell her voice. Her eyes threw slanting beams.
+
+“Do you see this?”
+
+She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with gems and coiled
+with a rope of hair in her bosom. It was a gift of his.
+
+“Do you know when I stole the lock? Foolish Dick! you gave me an anchor
+without a rope. Come and see.”
+
+She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.
+
+“Don’t you recognize your own hair! I should know a thread of mine
+among a million.”
+
+Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as he inspected his
+hair on the bosom of Delilah.
+
+“And you knew nothing of it! You hardly know it now you see it! What
+couldn’t a woman steal from you? But you’re not vain, and that’s a
+protection. You’re a miracle, Dick: a man that’s not vain! Sit here.”
+She curled up her feet to give him place on the sofa. “Now let us talk
+like friends that part to meet no more. You found a ship with fever on
+board, and you weren’t afraid to come alongside and keep her company.
+The fever isn’t catching, you see. Let us mingle our tears together.
+Ha! ha! a man said that once to me. The hypocrite wanted to catch the
+fever, but he was too old. How old are you, Dick?”
+
+Richard pushed a few months forward.
+
+“Twenty-one? You just look it, you blooming boy. Now tell me my age,
+Adonis!—Twenty—what?”
+
+Richard had given the lady twenty-five years.
+
+She laughed violently. “You don’t pay compliments, Dick. Best to be
+honest; guess again. You don’t like to? Not twenty-five, or
+twenty-four, or twenty-three, or see how he begins to
+stare!—-twenty-two. Just twenty-one, my dear. I think my birthday’s
+somewhere in next month. Why, look at me, close—closer. Have I a
+wrinkle?”
+
+“And when, in heaven’s name!”...he stopped short.
+
+“I understand you. When did I commence for to live? At the ripe age of
+sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair because of my beauty. He vowed he’d
+die. I didn’t want him to do that. So to save the poor man for his
+family, I ran away with him, and I dare say they didn’t appreciate the
+sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did. It’s the way of the
+world!”
+
+Richard seized some dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a tumbler,
+and drank it off.
+
+John footman entered to clear the table, and they were left without
+further interruption.
+
+“Bella! Bella!” Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as he walked the
+room.
+
+She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened cheek, her
+eyes half-shut and dreamy.
+
+“Bella!” he dropped beside her. “You are unhappy.”
+
+She blinked and yawned, as one who is awakened suddenly. “I think you
+spoke,” said she.
+
+“You are unhappy, Bella. You can’t conceal it. Your laugh sounds like
+madness. You must be unhappy. So young, too! Only twenty-one!”
+
+“What does it matter? Who cares for me?”
+
+The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole shape. She did
+not mistake it for tenderness, as another would have done.
+
+“Who cares for you, Bella? I do. What makes my misery now, but to see
+you there, and know of no way of helping you? Father of mercy! it seems
+too much to have to stand by powerless while such ruin is going on!”
+
+Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment with which his
+frame quaked.
+
+Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids. She glanced up at him
+quickly, then looked down, drew her hand from his, and smoothed it,
+eying it.
+
+“Bella! you have a father alive!”
+
+“A linendraper, dear. He wears a white neck-cloth.”
+
+This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone of the
+conversation, for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed the lady’s
+lap-dog, whose squeaks and howls were piteous, and demanded the most
+fervent caresses of its mistress. It was: “Oh, my poor pet Mumpsy, and
+he didn’t like a nasty great big ugly heavy foot an his poor soft
+silky—mum—mum—back, he didn’t, and he soodn’t that he—mum—mum—soodn’t;
+and he cried out and knew the place to come to, and was oh so sorry for
+what had happened to him—mum—mum—mum—and now he was going to be made
+happy, his mistress make him happy—mum—mum—mum—moo-o-o-o.”
+
+“Yes!” said Richard, savagely, from the other end of the room, “you
+care for the happiness of your dog.”
+
+“A course se does,” Mumpsy was simperingly assured in the thick of his
+silky flanks.
+
+Richard looked for his hat. Mumpsy was deposited on the sofa in a
+twinkling.
+
+“Now,” said the lady, “you must come and beg Mumpsy’s pardon, whether
+you meant to do it or no, because little doggies can’t tell that—how
+should they? And there’s poor Mumpsy thinking you’re a great terrible
+rival that tries to squash him all flat to nothing, on purpose,
+pretending you didn’t see; and he’s trembling, poor dear wee pet! And I
+may love my dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I won’t have him
+ill-treated, for he’s never been jealous of you, and he is a darling,
+ten times truer than men, and I love him fifty times better. So come to
+him with me.”
+
+First a smile changed Richard’s face; then laughing a melancholy laugh,
+he surrendered to her humour, and went through the form of begging
+Mumpsy’s pardon.
+
+“The dear dog! I do believe he saw we were getting dull,” said she.
+
+“And immolated himself intentionally? Noble animal!”
+
+“Well, we’ll act as if we thought so. Let us be gay, Richard, and not
+part like ancient fogies. Where’s your fun? You can rattle; why don’t
+you? You haven’t seen me in one of my characters—not Sir Julius: wait a
+couple of minutes.” She ran out.
+
+A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her black hair was
+scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She moved
+slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a
+finger at the region of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the
+representation. He did not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly
+charming and exquisitely horrid witch she was. Something in the way her
+underlids worked seemed to remind him of a forgotten picture; but a
+veil hung on the picture. There could be no analogy, for this was
+beautiful and devilish, and that, if he remembered rightly, had the
+beauty of seraphs.
+
+His reflections and her performance were stayed by a shriek. The
+spirits of wine had run over the plate she held to the floor. She had
+the coolness to put the plate down on the table, while he stamped out
+the flame on the carpet. Again she shrieked: she thought she was on
+fire. He fell on his knees and clasped her skirts all round, drawing
+his arms down them several times.
+
+Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, “Do you feel safe now?”
+
+She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair touched his
+cheek.
+
+Said she, “Do you?”
+
+Was she a witch verily? There was sorcery in her breath; sorcery in her
+hair: the ends of it stung him like little snakes.
+
+“How do I do it, Dick?” she flung back, laughing.
+
+“Like you do everything, Bella,” he said, and took breath.
+
+“There! I won’t be a witch; I won’t be a witch: they may burn me to a
+cinder, but I won’t be a witch!”
+
+She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.
+
+“I suppose I look a figure. I must go and tidy myself.”
+
+“No, don’t change. I like to see you so.” He gazed at her with a
+mixture of wonder and admiration. “I can’t think you the same
+person—not even when you laugh.”
+
+“Richard,” her tone was serious, “you were going to speak to me of my
+parents.”
+
+“How wild and awful you looked, Bella!”
+
+“My father, Richard, was a very respectable man.”
+
+“Bella, you’ll haunt me like a ghost.”
+
+“My mother died in my infancy, Richard.”
+
+“Don’t put up your hair, Bella.”
+
+“I was an only child!”
+
+Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons. He followed
+the abstracted intentness of her look, and came upon her words.
+
+“Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella. Speak of him.”
+
+“Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry, ‘’Tis time’?”
+
+“Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go to him. He
+shall receive you. He shall not refuse—he shall forgive you.”
+
+“If I haunt you, you can’t forget me, Richard.”
+
+“Let me go to your father, Bella let me go to him to-morrow. I’ll give
+you my time. It’s all I can give. O Bella! let me save you.”
+
+“So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty boy! Ha! ha!” and
+away she burst from him, and up flew her hair, as she danced across the
+room, and fell at full length on the sofa.
+
+He felt giddy: bewitched.
+
+“We’ll talk of everyday things, Dick,” she called to him from the sofa.
+“It’s our last evening. Our last? Heigho! It makes me sentimental.
+How’s that Mr. Ripson, Pipson, Nipson?—it’s not complimentary, but I
+can’t remember names of that sort. Why do you have friends of that
+sort? He’s not a gentleman. Better is he? Well, he’s rather too
+insignificant for me. Why do you sit off there? Come to me instantly.
+There—I’ll sit up, and be proper, and you’ll have plenty of room. Talk,
+Dick!”
+
+He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown. They had a
+haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft languor
+circled them. Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red. He was a youth,
+and she an enchantress. He a hero; she a female will-o’-the-wisp.
+
+The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.
+
+“You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?”
+
+He had no thought of departing:
+
+“It’s our last night—I suppose it’s our last hour together in this
+world—and I don’t want to meet you in the next, for poor Dick will have
+to come to such a very, very disagreeable place to make the visit.”
+
+He grasped her hand at this.
+
+“Yes, he will! too true! can’t be helped: they say I’m handsome.”
+
+“You’re lovely, Bella.”
+
+She drank in his homage.
+
+“Well, we’ll admit it. His Highness below likes lovely women, I hear
+say. A gentleman of taste! You don’t know all my accomplishments yet,
+Richard.”
+
+“I shan’t be astonished at anything new, Bella.”
+
+“Then hear, and wonder.” Her voice trolled out some lively roulades.
+“Don’t you think he’ll make me his prima donna below? It’s nonsense to
+tell me there’s no singing there. And the atmosphere will be favourable
+to the voice. No damp, you know. You saw the piano—why didn’t you ask
+me to sing before? I can sing Italian. I had a master—who made love to
+me. I forgave him because of the music-stool—men can’t help it on a
+music-stool, poor dears!”
+
+She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang—
+
+“‘My heart, my heart—I think ’twill break.’
+
+
+“Because I’m such a rake. I don’t know any other reason. No; I hate
+sentimental songs. Won’t sing that. Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy—a...e! How
+ridiculous those women were, coming home from Richmond!
+
+‘Once the sweet romance of story
+    Clad thy moving form with grace;
+Once the world and all its glory
+    Was but framework to thy face.
+Ah, too fair!—what I remember
+    Might my soul recall—but no!
+To the winds this wretched ember
+    Of a fire that falls so low!’
+
+
+“Hum! don’t much like that. Tum-te-tum-tum—accanto al fuoco—heigho! I
+don’t want to show off, Dick—or to break down—so I won’t try that.
+
+‘Oh! but for thee, oh! but for thee,
+    I might have been a happy wife,
+And nursed a baby on my knee,
+    And never blushed to give it life.’
+
+
+“I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn’t know
+at all, at all, what it meant. Mustn’t sing that sort of song in
+company. We’re oh! so proper—even we!
+
+‘If I had a husband, what think you I’d do?
+    I’d make it my business to keep him a lover;
+For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
+    Some other amusement he’ll quickly discover.’
+
+
+“For such are young gentlemen made of—made of: such are young gentlemen
+made of!”
+
+After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He was in the
+mood when imagination intensely vivifies everything. Mere suggestions
+of music sufficed. The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was
+the lady before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid
+night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd large and close above the arid
+plain this lady leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her
+abandoned heart.
+
+Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.
+
+The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In
+Venice she was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any woman
+anywhere. But, oh! to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion through
+throbbing street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends;
+under storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in dead
+quietness; past grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, and
+out, and on with her, on into the silver infinity shaking over seas!
+
+Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two
+former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many
+instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And this
+enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her touch. She
+was no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might have seen a
+manoeuvre. She liked him—liked none better. She wished him well. Her
+pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome, and he was going. What she
+liked him for, she rather—very slightly—wished to do away with, or see
+if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty
+butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings. No harm intended to the
+innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the
+marvel of it, in one’s tender possession, and have the felicity of
+thinking one could crush it, if one would.
+
+He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in Venice, the spot
+was on her. Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not celestial light
+that illumined her beauty. Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save,
+he was soft to her sin—drowned it in deep mournfulness.
+
+Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing. She
+swam wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.
+
+“I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of course I meant
+it. I must be happy with my best friend going to leave me.”
+
+Those witch underlids were working brightly.
+
+“You will not forget me? and I shall try...try...”
+
+Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome fellow.
+
+“If I change—if I can change... Oh! if you could know what a net I’m
+in, Richard!”
+
+Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not
+divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast,
+and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale
+beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.
+
+“Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!”
+
+“Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!”
+
+He cried: “I never will!” and strained her in his arms, and kissed her
+passionately on the lips.
+
+She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head
+with a kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping,
+clinging to him. It was wicked truth.
+
+Not a word of love between them!
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion won?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+
+At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions
+to other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the
+potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust
+of his friends and special parasite. “Mount’s in for it again,” they
+said among themselves. “Hang the women!” was a natural sequence. For,
+don’t you see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling
+such a very inflammable subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged
+his bow, and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but
+none would perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent
+oaths, that this was a totally different case from the antecedent ones.
+So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man
+with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but
+inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his
+noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of
+blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely
+felt the case was different. There is something impressive in a great
+human hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he
+cannot contend with, or account for, or explain by means of
+intelligible words. At first he took refuge in the depths of his
+contempt for women. Cupid gave him line. When he had come to vent his
+worst of them, the fair face now stamped on his brain beamed the more
+triumphantly: so the harpooned whale rose to the surface, and after a
+few convulsions, surrendered his huge length. My lord was in love with
+Richard’s young wife. He gave proofs of it by burying himself beside
+her. To her, could she have seen it, he gave further proofs of a real
+devotion, in affecting, and in her presence feeling, nothing beyond a
+lively interest in her well-being. This wonder, that when near her he
+should be cool and composed, and when away from her wrapped in a
+tempest of desires, was matter for what powers of cogitation the heavy
+nobleman possessed.
+
+The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press
+the business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than his
+parasite. Almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little
+wife apprehended no harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had commended
+her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith. Lady Judith had
+left the Island for London: Lord Mountfalcon remained. There could be
+no harm. If she had ever thought so, she no longer did. Secretly,
+perhaps, she was flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as well educated as it
+is the fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he could talk and
+instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand that he was wicked,
+very wicked, and that she improved him. The heroine, in common with the
+hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world—to do some good: and
+the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.
+Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending!
+Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his
+title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to
+sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his
+villanies for him. No alarm was given to Lucy’s pure instinct, as might
+have been the case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her
+martyrdom to have a true friend to support her, and really to be able
+to do something for that friend. Too simple-minded to think much of his
+lordship’s position, she was yet a woman. “He, a great nobleman, does
+not scorn to acknowledge me, and think something of me,” may have been
+one of the half-thoughts passing through her now and then, as she
+reflected in self-defence on the proud family she had married into.
+
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon.
+Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had no
+sooner broached his lordship’s immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon
+began to plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He swore by this
+and that he had come across an angel for his sins, and would do her no
+hurt. The next moment he swore she must be his, though she cursed like
+a cat. His lordship’s illustrations were not choice. “I haven’t
+advanced an inch,” he groaned. “Brayder! upon my soul, that little
+woman could do anything with me. By heaven! I’d marry her to-morrow.
+Here I am, seeing her every day in the week out or in, and what do you
+think she gets me to talk about?—history! Isn’t it enough to make a
+fellow mad? and there am I lecturing like a prig, and by heaven! while
+I’m at it I feel a pleasure in it; and when I leave the house I should
+feel an immense gratification in shooting somebody. What do they say in
+town?”
+
+“Not much,” said Brayder, significantly.
+
+“When’s that fellow—her husband—coming down?”
+
+“I rather hope we’ve settled him for life, Mount.”
+
+Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
+
+“How d’ye mean?”
+
+Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, “He’s in for Don Juan at a
+gallop, that’s all.”
+
+“The deuce! Has Bella got him?” Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
+
+Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the Sussex coast,
+signed “Richard,” and was worded thus:
+
+“My beautiful Devil—!
+
+“Since we’re both devils together, and have found each other out, come
+to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry. Come, my
+bright hell-star! I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come to me!
+You have taught me how devils love, and I can’t do without you. Come an
+hour after you receive this.”
+
+Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
+“Complimentary love-epistle!” he remarked, and rising from his chair
+and striding about, muttered, “The dog! how infamously he treats his
+wife!”
+
+“Very bad,” said Brayder.
+
+“How did you get hold of this?”
+
+“Strolled into Bella’s dressing-room, waiting for her turned over her
+pincushion hap-hazard. You know her trick.”
+
+“By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank heaven, I haven’t
+written her any letters for an age. Is she going to him?”
+
+“Not she! But it’s odd, Mount!—did you ever know her refuse money
+before? She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the fragments
+with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt at your
+Academy. I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!”
+
+Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter could
+be made to serve. Both conscientiously agreed that Richard’s behaviour
+to his wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no mercy.
+“But,” said his lordship, “it won’t do to show the letter. At first
+she’ll be swearing it’s false, and then she’ll stick to him closer. I
+know the sluts.”
+
+“The rule of contrary,” said Brayder, carelessly. “She must see the
+trahison with her eyes. They believe their eyes. There’s your chance,
+Mount. You step in: you give her revenge and consolation—two birds at
+one shot. That’s what they like.”
+
+“You’re an ass, Brayder,” the nobleman exclaimed. “You’re an infernal
+blackguard. You talk of this little woman as if she and other women
+were all of a piece. I don’t see anything I gain by this confounded
+letter. Her husband’s a brute—that’s clear.”
+
+“Will you leave it to me, Mount?”
+
+“Be damned before I do!” muttered my lord.
+
+“Thank you. Now see how this will end: You’re too soft, Mount. You’ll
+be made a fool of.”
+
+“I tell you, Brayder, there’s nothing to be done. If I carry her
+off—I’ve been on the point of doing it every day—what’ll come of that?
+She’ll look—I can’t stand her eyes—I shall be a fool—worse off with her
+than I am now.”
+
+Mountfalcon yawned despondently. “And what do you think?” he pursued.
+“Isn’t it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth? She’s”...he
+mentioned something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
+
+“Hm!” Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on his
+chin. “That’s disagreeable, Mount. You don’t exactly want to act in
+that character. You haven’t got a diploma. Bother!”
+
+“Do you think I love her a bit less?” broke out my lord in a frenzy.
+“By heaven! I’d read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal
+history to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night.”
+
+“You’re evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount.”
+
+The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
+
+“What do they say in town?” he asked again.
+
+Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or
+widow.
+
+“I’ll go to her this evening,” Mountfalcon resumed, after—to judge by
+the cast of his face—reflecting deeply. “I’ll go to her this evening.
+She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer.”
+
+“Do you mean to say she don’t know it?”
+
+“Hasn’t an idea—thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven! I’ll be to her.”
+
+“A—hm!” went the Honourable Peter. “This way to the sign of the Green
+Man, ladies!”
+
+“Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?”
+
+“Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong. I may have
+forgotten the trick of alighting on my feet. There—there! I’ll be sworn
+she’s excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested friend.”
+
+“I’ll go to her this evening,” Mountfalcon repeated. “She shall know
+what damned misery it is to see her in such a position. I can’t hold
+out any longer. Deceit’s horrible to such a girl as that. I’d rather
+have her cursing me than speaking and looking as she does. Dear little
+girl!—she’s only a child. You haven’t an idea how sensible that little
+woman is.”
+
+“Have you?” inquired the cunning one.
+
+“My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women,” said
+Mountfalcon, evading his parasite’s eye as he spoke.
+
+To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his
+parasite simply ingeniously dissipated. Full many a man of God had
+thought it the easier task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
+
+Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat much
+in the shade. She offered to have the candles brought in. He begged her
+to allow the room to remain as it was. “I have something to say to
+you,” he observed with a certain solemnity.
+
+“Yes—to me?” said Lucy, quickly.
+
+Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it,
+and what it exactly was, he did not know.’
+
+“You conceal it admirably,” he began, “but you must be very lonely
+here—I fear, unhappy.”
+
+“I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord,” said Lucy.
+“I am not unhappy.” Her face was in shade and could not belie her.
+
+“Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might give
+you, Mrs. Feverel?”
+
+“None indeed that I know of,” Lucy replied. “Who can help us to pay for
+our sins?”
+
+“At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you
+have helped me to wash out some of any sins.”
+
+“Ah, my lord!” said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet for a woman to
+believe she has drawn the serpent’s teeth.
+
+“I tell you the truth,” Lord Mountfalcon went on. “What object could I
+have in deceiving you? I know you quite above flattery—so different
+from other women!”
+
+“Oh, pray, do not say that,” interposed Lucy.
+
+“According to my experience, then.”
+
+“But you say you have met such—such very bad women.”
+
+“I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune.”
+
+“Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?”
+
+“Yes, and I might say more.”
+
+His lordship held impressively mute.
+
+“How strange men are!” thought Lucy. “He had some unhappy secret.”
+
+Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various
+pretences during the nobleman’s visits, put a stop to the revelation,
+if his lordship intended to make any.
+
+When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: “Do you know, I am
+always ashamed to ask you to begin to read.”
+
+Mountfalcon stared. “To read?—oh! ha! yes!” he remembered his evening
+duties. “Very happy, I’m sure. Let me see. Where were we?”
+
+“The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask
+you to read, my lord. It’s new to me; like a new world—hearing about
+Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we
+walk upon. It fills my mind. But it must have ceased to interest you,
+and I was thinking that I would not tease you any more.”
+
+“Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. ’Pon my honour, I’d read till I
+was hoarse, to hear your remarks.”
+
+“Are you laughing at me?”
+
+“Do I look so?”
+
+Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he
+could appear to endow them with mental expression.
+
+“No, you are not,” said Lucy. “I must thank you for your forbearance.”
+
+The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
+
+Now it was an object of Lucy’s to have him reading; for his sake, for
+her sake, and for somebody else’s sake; which somebody else was
+probably considered first in the matter. When he was reading to her, he
+seemed to be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no
+doubts or suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while she
+had him employed in that office. So she rose to fetch the book, laid it
+open on the table at his lordship’s elbow, and quietly waited to ring
+for candles when he should be willing to commence.
+
+That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce,
+and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with
+anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak,
+or insinuate. He sat silent and did nothing.
+
+“What I do not like him for,” said Lucy, meditatively, “is his changing
+his religion. He would have been such a hero, but for that. I could
+have loved him.”
+
+“Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?” Lord Mountfalcon asked.
+
+“The Emperor Julian.”
+
+“Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate but then, you know,
+he meant what he was about. He didn’t even do it for a woman.”
+
+“For a woman!” cried Lucy. “What man would for a woman?”
+
+“I would.”
+
+“You, Lord Mountfalcon?”
+
+“Yes. I’d turn Catholic to-morrow.”
+
+“You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord.”
+
+“Then I’ll unsay it.”
+
+Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell to ring for
+lights.
+
+“Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?” said the nobleman.
+
+“Oh yes! yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience I would not
+have.”
+
+“If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?”
+
+Lucy’s hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful light with
+one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken in this
+way before. He spoke better, too. She missed the aristocratic twang in
+his voice, and the hesitation for words, and the fluid lordliness with
+which he rolled over difficulties in speech.
+
+Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and
+presented Tom Bakewell. There was a double knock at the same instant at
+the street door. Lucy delayed to give orders.
+
+“Can it be a letter, Tom!—so late?” she said, changing colour. “Pray
+run and see.”
+
+“That an’t powst” Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
+
+“Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?” Lord Mountfalcon
+inquired.
+
+“Oh, no!—yes, I am, very,” said Lucy. Her quick ear caught the tones of
+a voice she remembered. “That dear old thing has come to see me,” she
+cried, starting up.
+
+Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
+
+“Mrs. Berry!” said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
+
+“Me, my darlin’!” Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her journey,
+returned the salute. “Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for I ain’t
+one to stand by and give the devil his licence—roamin’! and the salt
+sure enough have spilte my bride-gown at the beginnin’, which ain’t the
+best sign. Bless ye!—Oh, here he is.” She beheld a male figure in a
+chair by the half light, and swung around to address him. “You bad
+man!” she held aloft one of her fat fingers, “I’ve come on ye like a
+bolt, I have, and goin’ to make ye do your duty, naughty boy! But
+you’re my darlin’ babe,” she melted, as was her custom, “and I’ll never
+meet you and not give to ye the kiss of a mother.”
+
+Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft woman
+had him by the neck, and was down among his luxurious whiskers.
+
+“Ha!” She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back. “What hair’s that?”
+
+Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
+
+“Oh, my gracious!” Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, “I been and kiss a
+strange man!”
+
+Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord to
+excuse the woful mistake.
+
+“Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I’m sure;” said his lordship,
+re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; “may I beg the pleasure of an
+introduction?”
+
+“My husband’s dear old nurse—Mrs. Berry,” said Lucy, taking her hand to
+lend her countenance. “Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs. Berry.”
+
+Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic
+bobs, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
+
+Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her
+passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars,
+by which it was revealed that the softness of her heart was only
+equalled by the weakness of her stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry
+down.
+
+“Well, and where’s my—where’s Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?” Mrs.
+Berry turned from her tale to question.
+
+“Did you expect to see him here?” said Lucy, in a broken voice.
+
+“And where else, my love? since he haven’t been seen in London a whole
+fortnight.”
+
+Lucy did not speak.
+
+“We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think,” said Lord
+Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
+
+Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly,
+embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house
+by Tom Bakewell.
+
+The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. “Did ye ever know
+sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!” she
+exclaimed. “I could cry at it, I could! To be goin’ and kissin’ a
+strange hairy man! Oh dear me! what’s cornin’ next, I wonder? Whiskers!
+thinks I—for I know the touch o’ whiskers—’t ain’t like other
+hair—what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it
+flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in,
+and I see that great hairy man—beggin’ his pardon—nobleman, and if I
+could ’a dropped through the floor out o’ sight o’ men, drat ’em!
+they’re al’ays in the way, that they are!”—
+
+“Mrs. Berry,” Lucy checked her, “did you expect to find him here?”
+
+“Askin’ that solemn?” retorted Berry. “What him? your husband? O’
+course I did! and you got him—somewheres hid.”
+
+“I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days,” said Lucy, and her
+tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
+
+“Not heer from him!—fifteen days!” Berry echoed.
+
+“O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell
+me! I’ve borne it so long. They’re cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do you
+know if I have offended him—my husband? While he wrote I did not
+complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from
+him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they want to
+take him from me? Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I’ve had no one
+to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help
+crying, Mrs. Berry!”
+
+Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy’s
+lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never
+this excellent creature’s system to be miserable in company. The sight
+of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set
+her resolutely the other way.
+
+“Fiddle-faddle,” she said. “I’d like to see him repent! He won’t find
+anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know it. Now,
+look you here, my dear—you blessed weepin’ pet—the man that could see
+ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law,
+and not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he ain’t got
+much man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my babe! I was
+sayin’, look here, to comfort ye—oh, why, to be sure he’ve got some
+surprise for ye. And so’ve I, my lamb! Hark, now! His father’ve come to
+town, like a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring
+your bodies together, as your hearts is, for everlastin’. Now ain’t
+that news?”
+
+“Oh!” cried Lucy, “that takes my last hope away. I thought he had gone
+to his father.” She burst into fresh tears.
+
+Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
+
+“Belike he’s travellin’ after him,” she suggested.
+
+“Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!”
+
+“Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sich a man as that. He’s a regular
+meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey. Well, so hark you here. I
+says to myself, that knows him—for I did think my babe was in his
+natural nest—I says, the bar’net’ll never write for you both to come up
+and beg forgiveness, so down I’ll go and fetch you up. For there was
+your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye
+one hour in a young marriage. It’s dangerous, it’s mad, it’s wrong, and
+it’s only to be righted by your obeyin’ of me, as I commands it: for I
+has my fits, though I am a soft ’un. Obey me, and ye’ll be happy
+tomorrow—or the next to it.”
+
+Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted
+martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else’s guidance
+utterly.
+
+“But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?”
+
+“’Cause, ’cause—who can tell the why of men, my dear? But that he love
+ye faithful, I’ll swear. Haven’t he groaned in my arms that he couldn’t
+come to ye?—weak wretch! Hasn’t he swore how he loved ye to me, poor
+young man! But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be. You should ’a
+followed my ’dvice at the fust—’stead o’ going into your ’eroics about
+this and t’other.” Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
+matrimony, pointed especially at young couples. “I should ’a been a
+fool if I hadn’t suffered myself,” she confessed, “so I’ll thank my
+Berry if I makes you wise in season.”
+
+Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into
+the soft woman’s kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed from mouth
+to mouth. And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very
+secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring
+herself to speak it.
+
+“Well! these’s three men in my life I kissed,” said Mrs. Berry, too
+much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife’s
+struggling bosom, “three men, and one a nobleman! He’ve got more
+whisker than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought. Ten to one he’ll
+think, now, I was glad o’ my chance—they’re that vain, whether they’s
+lords or commons. How was I to know? I nat’ral thinks none but her
+husband’d sit in that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?”
+Mrs. Berry hardened her eyes, “and your husband away? What do this
+mean? Tell to me, child, what it mean his bein’ here alone without ere
+a candle?”
+
+“Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here,” said Lucy. “He is
+very kind. He comes almost every evening.”
+
+“Lord Montfalcon—that his name!” Mrs. Berry exclaimed. “I been that
+flurried by the man, I didn’t mind it at first. He come every evenin’,
+and your husband out o’ sight! My goodness me! it’s gettin’ worse and
+worse. And what do he come for, now, ma’am? Now tell me candid what ye
+do together here in the dark of an evenin’.”
+
+Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
+
+“O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way—I don’t like it,” said
+Lucy, pouting.
+
+“What do he come for, I ask?”
+
+“Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely, and wishes to
+amuse me. And he tells me of things I know nothing about and”—
+
+“And wants to be a-teachin’ some of his things, mayhap,” Mrs. Berry
+interrupted with a ruffled breast.
+
+“You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman,” said Lucy,
+chiding her.
+
+“And you’re a silly, unsuspectin’ little bird,” Mrs. Berry retorted, as
+she returned her taps on the cheek. “You haven’t told me what ye do
+together, and what’s his excuse for comin’.”
+
+“Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
+History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the great
+men. And he says I’m not silly, Mrs. Berry.”
+
+“That’s one bit o’ lime on your wings, my bird. History, indeed!
+History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty
+History! Why, I know that man’s name, my dear. He’s a notorious living
+rake, that Lord Montfalcon. No woman’s safe with him.”
+
+“Ah, but he hasn’t deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not pretended he was
+good.”
+
+“More’s his art,” quoth the experienced dame. “So you read History
+together in the dark; my dear!”
+
+“I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
+Look! there’s the book open ready for him when the candles come in. And
+now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.
+I do love you. Talk of other things.”
+
+“So we will,” said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy’s caresses. “So let us.
+A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich a
+beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
+spot it shall! He won’t meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I
+drop him. I’m dyin’ for a cup o’ tea, my dear.”
+
+Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
+dropping him, was continuing to say: “Let him go and boast I kiss him;
+he ain’t nothin’ to be ’shamed of in a chaste woman’s
+kiss—unawares—which men don’t get too often in their lives, I can
+assure ’em;”—her eye surveyed Lucy’s figure.
+
+Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms,
+and drew her into feminine depths. “Oh, you blessed!” she cried in most
+meaning tone, “you good, lovin’, proper little wife, you!”
+
+“What is it, Mrs. Berry!” lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
+eyes.
+
+“As if I couldn’t see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or I’d ’a
+marked ye the fast shock. Thinkin’ to deceive me!”
+
+Mrs. Berry’s eyes spoke generations. Lucy’s wavered; she coloured all
+over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.
+
+“You’re a sweet one,” murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
+rocking her. “You’re a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk. Haven’t
+told a word to your husband, my dear?” she asked quickly.
+
+Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
+
+“That’s right. We’ll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
+him, and thinks he—losin’ breath ‘I’m a father!’ Nor a hint even you
+haven’t give him?”
+
+Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
+
+“Oh! you are a sweet one,” said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more
+closely and lovingly.
+
+Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
+persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
+
+Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
+fingers’ ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: “Now this
+right everything—a baby in the balance! Now I say this angel-infant
+come from on high. It’s God’s messenger, my love! and it’s not wrong to
+say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn’t ’a had one—not for all
+the tryin’ in the world, you wouldn’t, and some tries hard enough, poor
+creatures! Now let us rejice and make merry! I’m for cryin’ and
+laughin’, one and the same. This is the blessed seal of matrimony,
+which Berry never stamp on me. It’s be hoped it’s a boy. Make that man
+a grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe. Oh! this
+is what I call happiness, and I’ll have my tea a little stronger in
+consequence. I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news.”
+
+So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate and
+she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste was
+hers.
+
+Says Lucy demurely: “Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
+books.”
+
+“Do I?” replies Berry. “Belike I do. Since what you done’s so good, my
+darlin’, I’m agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They can’t
+come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and
+Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your own
+dear way, and that’s all I cares for.”
+
+“No, but you don’t understand,” persists Lucy. “I only read sensible
+books, and talk of serious things, because I’m sure... because I have
+heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don’t you understand now?”
+
+Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. “Only to think of her bein’ that
+thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of one
+religion ain’t as good as another, after that. Why, you want to make
+him a historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who’ve been comin’
+here playin’ at wolf, you been and made him—unbeknown to himself—sort
+o’ tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that little women ain’t got
+art ekal to the cunningest of ’em. Oh! I understand. Why, to be sure,
+didn’t I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman: he was a postermost
+child, and afore his birth that women read nothin’ but Blair’s ‘Grave’
+over and over again, from the end to the beginnin’;—that’s a serious
+book!—very hard readin’!—and at four years of age that child that come
+of it reelly was the piousest infant!—he was like a little curate. His
+eyes was up; he talked so solemn.” Mrs. Berry imitated the little
+curate’s appearance and manner of speaking. “So she got her wish, for
+one!”
+
+But at this lady Lucy laughed.
+
+They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to
+sleep with her. “If it’s not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin’ beside
+a woman,” said Mrs. Berry. “I know it were to me shortly after my
+Berry, and I felt it. It don’t somehow seem nat’ral after matrimony—a
+woman in your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for the cold sheets
+do give ye the creeps when you’ve been used to that that’s different.”
+
+Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then
+Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced
+linen, all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own
+hands: and Mrs. Berry praised them and her. “You been guessing a
+boy—woman-like,” she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed
+by the fire, and knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each
+other, praying; both praying for the unborn child; and Mrs. Berry
+pressed Lucy’s waist the moment she was about to breathe the petition
+to heaven to shield and bless that coming life; and thereat Lucy closed
+to her, and felt a strong love for her. Then Lucy got into bed first,
+leaving Berry to put out the light, and before she did so, Berry leaned
+over her, and eyed her roguishly, saying, “I never see ye like this,
+but I’m half in love with ye myself, you blushin’ beauty! Sweet’s your
+eyes, and your hair do take one so—lyin’ back. I’d never forgive my
+father if he kep me away from ye four-and-twenty hours just. Husband o’
+that!” Berry pointed at the young wife’s loveliness. “Ye look so ripe
+with kisses, and there they are a-languishin’!—... You never look so
+but in your bed, ye beauty!—just as it ought to be.” Lucy had to
+pretend to rise to put out the light before Berry would give up her
+amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled
+her, and arranged for their departure to-morrow, and reviewed Richard’s
+emotions when he came to hear he was going to be made a father by her,
+and hinted at Lucy’s delicious shivers when Richard was again in his
+rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now usurped; and all sorts of
+amorous sweet things; enough to make one fancy the adage subverted,
+that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew such glowing pictures of
+bliss within the law and the limits of the conscience, till at last,
+worn out, Lucy murmured “Peepy, dear Berry,” and the soft woman
+gradually ceased her chirp.
+
+Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
+beside her, and listening to Lucy’s breath as it came and went;
+squeezing the fair sleeper’s hand now and then, to ease her love as her
+reflections warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire
+hills, and sprang white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It
+passed, leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land. The moon shone
+brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark. His bark was savage and
+persistent. She was roused by the noise. By and by she fancied she
+heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that the
+house-door opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out
+voices in the midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and
+bolted the door of the room, assured herself of Lucy’s unconsciousness,
+and went on tiptoe to the window. The trees all stood white to the
+north; the ground glittered; the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat
+arms across her bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the
+situation of the window permitted. Berry was a soft, not a timid,
+woman: and it happened this night that her thoughts were above the
+fears of the dark. She was sure of the voices; curiosity without a
+shade of alarm held her on the watch; and gathering bundles of her
+day-apparel round her neck and shoulders, she silenced the chattering
+of her teeth as well as she could, and remained stationary. The low hum
+of the voices came to a break; something was said in a louder tone; the
+house-door quietly shut; a man walked out of the garden into the road.
+He paused opposite her window, and Berry let the blind go back to its
+place, and peeped from behind an edge of it. He was in the shadow of
+the house, so that it was impossible to discern much of his figure.
+After some minutes he walked rapidly away, and Berry returned to the
+bed an icicle, from which Lucy’s limbs sensitively shrank.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in
+the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top. Mrs.
+Berry went into the garden. The snow was partially melted; all save one
+spot, just under the portal, and there she saw the print of a man’s
+foot. By some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of
+Richard’s boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of
+the boot in that solitary footmark. There could be no doubt that it
+fitted. She tried it from heel to toe a dozen times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher
+who says, ’Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not
+arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His
+deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and
+more tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature
+who had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his
+heart of hearts. This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for
+his softness. But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must
+think he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his long
+absence signify?—Something highly unphilosophical. So, though love was
+strong, and was moving him to a straightforward course, the last tug of
+vanity drew him still aslant.
+
+The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
+necessity. As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one
+who entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental
+duty, based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific
+Humanist, in short.
+
+He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish’s
+manner when he did appear. “At last!” said the lady, in a sad way that
+sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course,
+nothing to reproach himself with.
+
+But where was Richard?
+
+Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
+
+“If he had gone,” said the baronet, “he would have anticipated me by a
+few hours.”
+
+This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and
+shown his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at him
+wistfully.
+
+Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not
+seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent,
+more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.
+
+Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin’s pitch of
+self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
+
+Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the
+rumour of him that was about.
+
+“If,” said the baronet, “this person, his wife, is what you paint her,
+I do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If she is
+one to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him.
+It is impossible.”
+
+The lady saw one thing to be done.
+
+“Call her to you,” she said. “Have her with you at Raynham. Recognize
+her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
+wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If she
+is with you his way will be clear. Will you do that?”
+
+Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish’s proposition
+was far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by nature, have no idea
+of science.
+
+“We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be between
+me and my son.”
+
+He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything,
+when he had just brought himself to do so much.
+
+A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
+
+The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
+expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook his
+hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common social
+solicitude. He then said: “During your absence, sir, I have taken the
+liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which you are more
+deeply concerned than myself. I have taken upon myself to find out my
+mother and place her under my care. I trust you will not think I have
+done wrong. I acted as I thought best.”
+
+Sir Austin replied: “You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself
+in such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself in
+imagining that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you
+did.”
+
+“I have not deceived myself, sir,” said Richard, and the interview was
+over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
+satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for
+tones indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard
+gave him none of those. The young man did not even face him as he
+spoke: if their eyes met by chance, Richard’s were defiantly cold. His
+whole bearing was changed.
+
+“This rash marriage has altered him,” said the very just man of science
+in life: and that meant: “it has debased him.”
+
+He pursued his reflections. “I see in him the desperate maturity of a
+suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never
+lost, what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost, perhaps to me!
+lost to him! It may show itself in his children.”
+
+The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting
+embryos: but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin. Bitterly
+he felt the injury to himself.
+
+One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at the
+hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told him a
+tale that threw Christian light on one part of Richard’s nature. But
+this might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man
+of science. A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought. He sat
+down deliberately to study his son.
+
+No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and drank; joked
+and laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh
+bottle. He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound
+forced. In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth
+who sees a future before him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be
+carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much on his
+mind. The man of science was not reckoning that Richard also might have
+learned to act and wear a mask. Dead subjects—this is to say, people
+not on their guard—he could penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare
+chance, as scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
+examining the structure of the living.
+
+However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were engaged
+to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys’, and walked down to her in the
+afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them. Previously
+the offended father had condescended to inform his son that it would
+shortly be time for him to return to his wife, indicating that
+arrangements would ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham.
+Richard had replied nothing; which might mean excess of gratitude, or
+hypocrisy in concealing his pleasure, or any one of the thousand shifts
+by which gratified human nature expresses itself when all is made to
+run smooth with it. Now Mrs. Berry had her surprise ready charged for
+the young husband. She had Lucy in her own house waiting for him. Every
+day she expected him to call and be overcome by the rapturous surprise,
+and every day, knowing his habit of frequenting the park, she marched
+Lucy thither, under the plea that Master Richard, whom she had already
+christened, should have an airing.
+
+The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington
+chestnuts, when these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the hope
+she bore in her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman
+galloping by at the moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or
+twice, to prepare her eyes for the shock, but Lucy’s head was still
+half averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry, “Twon’t hurt her if she go into
+his arms head foremost.” They were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob
+preliminary. Richard held her silent with a terrible face; he grasped
+her arm, and put her behind him. Other people intervened. Lucy saw
+nothing to account for Berry’s excessive flutter. Berry threw it on the
+air and some breakfast bacon, which, she said, she knew in the morning
+while she ate it, was bad for the bile, and which probably was the
+cause of her bursting into tears, much to Lucy’s astonishment.
+
+“What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?”
+
+“It’s all—” Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways, “it’s
+all stomach, my dear. Don’t ye mind,” and becoming aware of her
+unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the elms.
+
+“You have a singular manner with old ladies,” said Sir Austin to his
+son, after Berry had been swept aside. “Scarcely courteous. She behaved
+like a mad woman, certainly.—Are you ill, my son?”
+
+Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness.
+The baronet sought Adrian’s eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed,
+and he had a glimpse of Richard’s countenance while disposing of Berry.
+Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly. As
+she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave
+matters as they were. He answered the baronet’s look with a shrug.
+
+“Are you ill, Richard?” Sir Austin again asked his son.
+
+“Come on, sir! come on!” cried Richard.
+
+His father’s further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the
+Foreys’, gave poor Berry a character which one who lectures on
+matrimony, and has kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear
+the very title of.
+
+“Richard will go to his wife to-morrow,” Sir Austin said to Adrian some
+time before they went in to dinner.
+
+Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by
+the side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the
+baronet’s acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a
+person, Adrian said: “That was his wife, sir.”
+
+Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had
+torn open the young man’s skull, and some blast of battle laid his
+palpitating organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and
+his heart; and with the grief and terror of one whose mental habit was
+ever to pierce to extremes. Not altogether conscious that he had
+hitherto played with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into
+the stormful reality of it. He projected to speak plainly to his son on
+all points that night.
+
+“Richard is very gay,” Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.
+
+“All will be right with him to-morrow,” he replied; for the game had
+been in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine,
+that having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a
+certain extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
+
+“I notice he has rather a wild laugh—I don’t exactly like his eyes,”
+said Mrs. Doria.
+
+“You will see a change in him to-morrow,” the man of science remarked.
+
+It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In
+the middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law,
+worthy John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was
+alarmingly ill, bidding her come instantly. She cast about for some one
+to accompany her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his
+consent for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him apart,
+and in that interview he said to his son: “My dear Richard! it was my
+intention that we should come to an understanding together this night.
+But the time is short—poor Helen cannot spare many minutes. Let me then
+say that you deceived me, and that I forgive you. We fix our seal on
+the past. You will bring your wife to me when you return.” And very
+cheerfully the baronet looked down on the generous future he thus
+founded.
+
+“Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?” said Richard.
+
+“Yes, my son, when you bring her.”
+
+“Are you mocking me, sir?”
+
+“Pray, what do you mean?”
+
+“I ask you to receive her at once.”
+
+“Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be
+kept from your happiness many days.”
+
+“I think it will be some time, sir!” said Richard, sighing deeply.
+
+“And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
+play with your first duty?”
+
+“What is my first duty, sir?”
+
+“Since you are married, to be with your wife.”
+
+“I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!” said Richard to
+himself, not intending irony.
+
+“Will you receive her at once?” he asked resolutely.
+
+The baronet was clouded by his son’s reception of his graciousness. His
+grateful prospect had formerly been Richard’s marriage—the culmination
+of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He now
+looked for a pretty scene in recompense:—Richard leading up his wife to
+him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one
+ostentatious minute in his embrace.
+
+He said: “Before you return, I demur to receiving her.”
+
+“Very well, sir,” replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken all.
+
+“Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash proceeding!”
+the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he had uttered
+the words, Richard’s eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It pained him,
+but he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from
+glancing acutely and asking: “Do you?”
+
+“Regret it, sir?” The question aroused one of those struggles in the
+young man’s breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and
+which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not.
+Richard’s eyes had the light of the desert.
+
+“Do you?” his father repeated. “You tempt me—I almost fear you do.” At
+the thought—for he expressed his mind—the pity that he had for Richard
+was not pure gold.
+
+“Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is
+to have taken one of God’s precious angels and chained her to misery!
+Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
+over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes,
+I do! Would you?”
+
+His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
+
+Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
+mind’s eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and
+won’t understand.
+
+“Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon,” he said
+gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: “I passed her because
+I could not do otherwise.”
+
+“Your wife, Richard?”
+
+“Yes! my wife!”
+
+“If she had seen you, Richard?”
+
+“God spared her that!”
+
+Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard’s hat and
+greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
+Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
+brother’s perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare,
+deploring his fatuity.
+
+Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel
+with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. “Somebody has kissed him,
+sir, and the chaste boy can’t get over it.” This absurd suggestion did
+more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
+reasonable key to Richard’s conduct. It set him thinking that it might
+be a prudish strain in the young man’s mind, due to the System in
+difficulties.
+
+“I may have been wrong in one thing,” he said, with an air of the
+utmost doubt of it. “I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much
+liberty during his probation.”
+
+Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
+
+“Yes, yes; that is on me.”
+
+His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
+and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.
+
+Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
+telegraph to John Todhunter’s uxorious distress at a toothache, or
+possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.
+
+“That child’s mind has disease in it... She is not sound,” said the
+baronet.
+
+On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry.
+Her wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially
+communicated, she was ushered upstairs into his room.
+
+Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to
+occupy.
+
+“Well’ ma’am, you have something to say,” observed the baronet, for she
+seemed loth to commence.
+
+“Wishin’ I hadn’t—” Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good
+rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: “I dare say, Sir Austin, you
+don’t remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting
+’d be like this. Twenty year don’t go over one without showin’ it, no
+more than twenty ox. It’s a might o’ time,—twenty year! Leastways not
+quite twenty, it ain’t.”
+
+“Round figures are best,” Adrian remarked.
+
+“In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
+married!” said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
+
+Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
+assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience to
+hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally
+courteous.
+
+“He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us
+as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that
+we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so
+sweet! so strong! so fat!”
+
+Adrian laughed aloud.
+
+Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: “I wished
+afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not
+cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel,
+Raynham Abbey, ain’t one o’ them that likes to hear their good deeds
+pumlished. And a pension to me now, it’s something more than it were.
+For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was—that’s a
+bait many a man’ll bite, that won’t so a forsaken wife!”
+
+“If you will speak to the point, ma’am, I will listen to you,” the
+baronet interrupted her.
+
+“It’s the beginnin’ that’s the worst, and that’s over, thank the Lord!
+So I’ll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:—Lord speed me! Believin’ our
+idees o’ matrimony to be sim’lar, then, I’ll say, once married—married
+for life! Yes! I don’t even like widows. For I can’t stop at the grave.
+Not at the tomb I can’t stop. My husband’s my husband, and if I’m a
+body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the
+husband o’ my body; and to think of two claimin’ of me then—it makes me
+hot all over. Such is my notion of that state ’tween man and woman. No
+givin’ in marriage, o’ course I know; and if so I’m single.”
+
+The baronet suppressed a smile. “Really, my good woman, you wander very
+much.”
+
+“Beggin’ pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same,
+and I’m comin’ to it. Ac-knowledgin’ our error, it’d done, and bein’
+done, it’s writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature
+she be! Indeed; ’taint all of humble birth that’s unworthy, Sir Austin.
+And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible
+as would surprise ye. But for all that she’s a prey to the artful o’
+men—unpertected. And it’s a young marriage—but there’s no fear for her,
+as far as she go. The fear’s t’other way. There’s that in a man—at the
+commencement—which make of him Lord knows what if you any way
+interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet! It’s consolation catch her,
+which is what we mean by seduein’. Whereas a man—he’s a savage!”
+
+Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge
+delight.
+
+“Well, ma’am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only
+come to it quickly.”
+
+“Then here’s my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there ain’t
+another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me. And
+as for her, I’ll risk sayin’—it’s done, and no harm—you might search
+England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that’s his match like
+his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O
+Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I
+went, and fetched her out of seducers’ ways—which they may say what
+they like, but the inn’cent is most open to when they’re healthy and
+confidin’—I fetch her, and—the liberty—boxed her safe in my own house.
+So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it’s him—Mr.
+Richard—I am bold, I know, but there—I’m in for it, and the Lord’ll
+help me! It’s him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a
+young marriage. It’s him, and—I say nothin’ of her, and how sweet she
+bears it, and it’s eating her at a time when Natur’ should have no
+other trouble but the one that’s goin’ on—it’s him, and I ask—so
+bold—shall there—and a Christian gentlemen his father—shall there be a
+tug ’tween him as a son and him as a husband—soon to be somethin’ else?
+I speak bold out—I’d have sons obey their fathers, but a priest’s words
+spoke over them, which they’re now in my ears, I say I ain’t a doubt on
+earth—I’m sure there ain’t one in heaven—which dooty’s the holier of
+the two.”
+
+Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the
+sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject,
+however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to
+assent to this old lady’s doctrine was rather humiliating, when it
+could not be averred that he had latterly followed it out. He sat
+cross-legged and silent, a finger to his temple.
+
+“One gets so addle-gated thinkin’ many things,” said Mrs. Berry,
+simply. “That’s why we see wonder clever people goin’ wrong—to my mind.
+I think it’s al’ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk
+forward.”
+
+The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet’s thoughts, and she
+had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth,
+by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a
+principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected
+to comprehend.
+
+Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time
+to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
+
+He gave her his hand, saying, “My son has gone out of town to see his
+cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they
+will both come to me at Raynham.”
+
+Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
+perpendicularly. “He pass her like a stranger in the park this
+evenin’,” she faltered.
+
+“Ah?” said the baronet. “Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the
+week is over.”
+
+Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. “Not of his own accord he pass that
+sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!”
+
+“I must beg you not to intrude further, ma’am.”
+
+Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
+
+“All’s well that ends well,” she said to herself. “It’s just bad
+inquirin’ too close among men. We must take ’em somethin’ like
+Providence—as they come. Thank heaven! I kep’ back the baby.”
+
+In Mrs. Berry’s eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
+
+Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.
+
+“I think I have not met a better in my life,” said the baronet,
+mingling praise and sarcasm.
+
+Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her
+white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head
+to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for
+the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay—the spark gone.
+
+Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have
+spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead,
+and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.
+
+When hours of weeping had silenced the mother’s anguish, she, for some
+comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard,
+speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was
+his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her
+husband that Clare’s last request had been that neither of the rings
+should be removed. She had written it; she would not speak it.
+
+“I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me
+between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched.”
+
+The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering,
+as she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.
+
+In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare’s dead hand,
+Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to
+enter it, reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had buried while she
+lived, arose with her death. He saw it play like flame across her
+marble features. The memory of her voice was like a knife at his
+nerves. His coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was
+bitter blame.
+
+On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his
+bedroom, with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse
+could happen to a mother than the loss of her child. Choking she said
+to him, “Read this,” and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling
+in his hand. She would not breathe to him what it was. She entreated
+him not to open it before her.
+
+“Tell me,” she said, “tell me what you think. John must not hear of it.
+I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!”
+
+“My Diary” was written in the round hand of Clare’s childhood on the
+first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.
+
+“Richard’s fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put it
+under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He does
+not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but
+Richard is not, and never will be.”
+
+The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish
+prayer to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her growing mind in
+his history. As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made
+much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.
+
+“We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted
+each other, and I told him he used to call them ‘coals-sleeps’ when he
+was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to
+be told he was ever a baby.”
+
+He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek
+affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress
+and pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He
+read on:
+
+“Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure
+there is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a great
+General and going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself as a boy
+and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray
+he will never, never be wounded. I wonder what I should feel if Richard
+was ever to die.”
+
+Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
+
+“Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me.
+Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is angry
+with me because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I
+know I am not looking after earthworms.”
+
+Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.
+
+Then it came to a period when the words: “Richard kissed me,” stood by
+themselves, and marked a day in her life.
+
+Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He
+read one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that
+ambition.
+
+“Thy truth to me is truer
+    Than horse, or dog, or blade;
+Thy vows to me are fewer
+    Than ever maiden made.
+
+Thou steppest from thy splendour
+    To make my life a song:
+My bosom shall be tender
+    As thine has risen strong.”
+
+
+All the verses were transcribed. “It is he who is the humble knight,”
+Clare explained at the close, “and his lady, is a Queen. Any Queen
+would throw her crown away for him.”
+
+It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
+
+“Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men.
+Something tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed in
+blue. He said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek. Richard
+never kisses me on the mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and
+kissed him while he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm under his head,
+and the other out on the bed. I moved away a bit of his hair that was
+over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have one piece. I do not let
+anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama. She says I want iron. I am
+sure I do not. I like to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard’s is
+Richard Doria Feverel.”
+
+His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music of
+that name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow now
+behind the hills of death.
+
+He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to belong
+to her. The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare’s. Clare’s
+voice clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
+
+Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages. She
+spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.
+
+“I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning. I
+saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His wife
+must be so beautiful! Richard’s wife! Perhaps he will love me better
+now he is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful.
+If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God
+hears poor sinners’ prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do.
+They say I am good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not
+looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me, God!”
+
+Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey
+her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.
+
+“I have seen Richard. Richard despises me,” was the next entry.
+
+But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine
+handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible
+conclusion.
+
+“I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my
+fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should
+not have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth
+was on mine.”
+
+Further: “I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than
+endure it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would
+do? I think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so
+kind, and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I
+pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of my God the
+more I pray.”
+
+Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be
+mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words
+in earnest? Did she lie there dead—he shrouded the thought.
+
+He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
+
+“A quarter to one o’clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow. I
+shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the fields
+together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children,
+but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he
+said—if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I
+made a vow to wear it for ever and ever... It is not mama’s fault. She
+does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward,
+nor am I. He hates cowards.
+
+“I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead
+he will hear what I say.
+
+“I heard just now Richard call distinctly—Clare, come out to me. Surely
+he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very
+cold.”
+
+The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if
+her hand had lost mastery over the pen.
+
+“I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I
+am not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words.
+‘Clari,’ and ‘Don Ricardo,’ and his laugh. He used to be full of fun.
+Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a
+friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a
+young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been
+happier. I must have died. God never looks on me.
+
+“It is past two o’clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be
+very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard.”
+
+With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not
+over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of
+existence left half the number of pages white.
+
+Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay,
+the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved—to
+him she had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with
+strange tidings—it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to
+have been speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that
+still heart.
+
+He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her
+alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent
+him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine,
+hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the
+silent fold. Death in life it sounded.
+
+The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare’s bed. She knelt by
+his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but
+neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in
+common. They prayed God to forgive her.
+
+Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother
+breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
+
+After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them
+together.
+
+“Richard,” she said, “the worst is over for me. I have no one to love
+but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this...
+Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare
+my brother what I suffer.”
+
+He answered the broken spirit: “I have killed one. She sees me as I am.
+I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her
+hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt.
+Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head
+that—No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me.
+If I find it I shall come to claim her. If not, God help us all!”
+
+She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he
+went forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of
+Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely
+behind.
+
+“Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I’m not a man of
+fashion, happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are
+you?”
+
+That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.
+
+Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had
+been in the wilderness five years.
+
+“The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton is
+to receive Liberty’s pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a
+cycle’s notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out;
+Demos and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see,
+your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five years, and you
+will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an
+equality made perfect by universal prostration.”
+
+Austin indulged him in a laugh. “I want to hear about ourselves. How is
+old Ricky?”
+
+“You know of his—what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed to
+jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?—a very charming little woman she
+makes, by the way—presentable! quite old Anacreon’s rose in milk. Well!
+everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It continued to
+flourish in spite. It’s in a consumption now, though—emaciated, lean,
+raw, spectral! I’ve this morning escaped from Raynham to avoid the
+sight of it. I have brought our genial uncle Hippias to town—a
+delightful companion! I said to him: ‘We’ve had a fine Spring.’ ‘Ugh!’
+he answers, ‘there’s a time when you come to think the Spring old.’ You
+should have heard how he trained out the ‘old.’ I felt something like
+decay in my sap just to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear
+Austin, our uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let’s
+guard ourselves there, and go and order dinner.”
+
+“But where’s Ricky now, and what is he doing?” said Austin.
+
+“Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!”
+
+“A child? Richard has one?” Austin’s clear eyes shone with pleasure.
+
+“I suppose it’s not common among your tropical savages. He has one: one
+as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It bore the
+marriage—the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby,
+’twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy. I
+assure you it’s quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every
+hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a
+consummate cure, or a happy release.”
+
+By degrees Austin learnt the baronet’s proceedings, and smiled sadly.
+
+“How has Ricky turned out?” he asked. “What sort of a character has
+he?”
+
+“The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it. Character?
+he has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind
+it. Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an enthusiasm for
+the maiden days of Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your
+fashion, Austin,—you have something to answer for. Unfortunately he
+began with the feminine side of it. Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain,
+or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the
+soft head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for
+his good work. Oh, horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System
+in the flesh, and you have our Richard. The consequence is, that this
+male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for
+him, the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful
+within. We heard of him last that he was trying the German
+waters—preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from the
+subjugation of the Teuton. Let’s hope they’ll wash him. He is in the
+company of Lady Judith Felle—your old friend, the ardent female Radical
+who married the decrepit to carry out her principles. They always marry
+English lords, or foreign princes: I admire their tactics.”
+
+“Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but she was always
+too sentimental,” said Austin.
+
+“Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I like her for her
+sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are sure to live long and die
+fat. Feeling, that’s the slayer, coz. Sentiment! ’tis the cajolery of
+existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable.
+Would that I had more!”
+
+“You’re not much changed, Adrian.”
+
+“I’m not a Radical, Austin.”
+
+Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian’s figurative speech,
+instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a
+posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his
+daughter-in-law and grandson. That was what Adrian meant by the efforts
+of the System to swallow the baby.
+
+“We’re in a tangle,” said the wise youth. “Time will extricate us, I
+presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?”
+
+Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy’s place of residence.
+
+“We’ll go to her by and by,” said Adrian.
+
+“I shall go and see her now,” said Austin.
+
+“Well, we’ll go and order the dinner first, coz.”
+
+“Give me her address.”
+
+“Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard,” Adrian
+objected. “Don’t you care what you eat?” he roared hoarsely, looking
+humorously hurt. “I daresay not. A slice out of him that’s handy—sauce
+du ciel! Go, batten on the baby, cannibal. Dinner at seven.”
+
+Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy’s, and strolled off to do the
+better thing.
+
+Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup.
+Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had
+vaulted lightly and thereby indicated that he was positively coming the
+next day. She forgot him in the bustle of her duties and the absorption
+of her faculties in thoughts of the incomparable stranger Lucy had
+presented to the world, till a knock at the street-door reminded her.
+“There he is!” she cried, as she ran to open to him. “There’s my
+stranger come!” Never was a woman’s faith in omens so justified. The
+stranger desired to see Mrs. Richard Feverel. He said his name was Mr.
+Austin Wentworth. Mrs. Berry clasped her hands, exclaiming, “Come at
+last!” and ran bolt out of the house to look up and down the street.
+Presently she returned with many excuses for her rudeness, saying: “I
+expected to see her comin’ home, Mr. Wentworth. Every day twice a day
+she go out to give her blessed angel an airing. No leavin’ the child
+with nursemaids for her! She is a mother! and good milk, too, thank the
+Lord! though her heart’s so low.”
+
+Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the history of the young
+couple and her participation in it, and admired the beard. “Although
+I’d swear you don’t wear it for ornament, now!” she said, having in the
+first impulse designed a stroke at man’s vanity.
+
+Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication, and with
+dejected head and joined hands threw out dark hints about Richard.
+
+While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case, Lucy came in
+preceding the baby.
+
+“I am Austin Wentworth,” he said, taking her hand. They read each
+other’s faces, these two, and smiled kinship.
+
+“Your name is Lucy?”
+
+She affirmed it softly.
+
+“And mine is Austin, as you know.”
+
+Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy’s charms to subdue him, and presented
+Richard’s representative, who, seeing a new face, suffered himself to
+be contemplated before he commenced crying aloud and knocking at the
+doors of Nature for something that was due to him.
+
+“Ain’t he a lusty darlin’?” says Mrs. Berry. “Ain’t he like his own
+father? There can’t be no doubt about zoo, zoo pitty pet. Look at his
+fists. Ain’t he got passion? Ain’t he a splendid roarer? Oh!” and she
+went off rapturously into baby-language.
+
+A fine boy, certainly. Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for further proof,
+desiring Austin’s confirmation as to their being dumplings.
+
+Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid roarer out of the
+room.
+
+“She might a done it here,” said Mrs. Berry. “There’s no prettier
+sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see that! He’s off in his
+heroics—he want to be doin’ all sorts o’ things: I say he’ll never do
+anything grander than that baby. You should ’a seen her uncle over that
+baby—he came here, for I said, you shall see your own family, my dear,
+and so she thinks. He come, and he laughed over that baby in the joy of
+his heart, poor man! he cried, he did. You should see that Mr.
+Thompson, Mr. Wentworth—a friend o’ Mr. Richard’s, and a very
+modest-minded young gentleman—he worships her in his innocence. It’s a
+sight to see him with that baby. My belief is he’s unhappy ’cause he
+can’t anyways be nurse-maid to him. O Mr. Wentworth! what do you think
+of her, sir?”
+
+Austin’s reply was as satisfactory as a man’s poor speech could make
+it. He heard that Lady Feverel was in the house, and Mrs. Berry
+prepared the way for him to pay his respects to her. Then Mrs. Berry
+ran to Lucy, and the house buzzed with new life. The simple creatures
+felt in Austin’s presence something good among them. “He don’t speak
+much,” said Mrs. Berry, “but I see by his eye he mean a deal. He ain’t
+one o’ yer long-word gentry, who’s all gay deceivers, every one of
+’em.”
+
+Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast. “I wonder what he
+thinks of me, Mrs. Berry? I could not speak to him. I loved him before
+I saw him. I knew what his face was like.”
+
+“He looks proper even with a beard, and that’s a trial for a virtuous
+man,” said Mrs. Berry. “One sees straight through the hair with him.
+Think! he’ll think what any man’d think—you a-suckin spite o’ all your
+sorrow, my sweet,—and my Berry talkin’ of his Roman matrons!—here’s a
+English wife’ll match ’em all! that’s what he thinks. And now that
+leetle dark under yer eye’ll clear, my darlin’, now he’ve come.”
+
+Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more than the peace
+she had in being near Richard’s best friend. When she sat down to tea
+it was with a sense that the little room that held her was her home
+perhaps for many a day.
+
+A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin’s dinner. During
+the meal he entertained them with anecdotes of his travels. Poor Lucy
+had no temptation to try to conquer Austin. That heroic weakness of
+hers was gone.
+
+Mrs. Berry had said: “Three cups—I goes no further,” and Lucy had
+rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin, who was in the thick of
+a Brazilian forest, asked her if she was a good traveller.
+
+“I mean, can you start at a minute’s notice?”
+
+Lucy hesitated, and then said; “Yes,” decisively, to which Mrs. Berry
+added, that she was not a “luggage-woman.”
+
+“There used to be a train at seven o’clock,” Austin remarked,
+consulting his watch.
+
+The two women were silent.
+
+“Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?”
+
+Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+Lucy’s lips parted to speak. She could not answer.
+
+Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry’s dropping hands.
+
+“Joy and deliverance!” she exclaimed with a foundering voice.
+
+“Will you come?” Austin kindly asked again.
+
+Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, “Yes.” Mrs.
+Berry cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones
+with a mighty whisper: “She’s thinking what’s to be done with baby.”
+
+“He must learn to travel,” said Austin.
+
+“Oh!” cried Mrs. Berry, “and I’ll be his nuss, and bear him, a sweet!
+Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham Abbey! but it’s
+nurse-woman now, you must say. Let us be goin’ on the spot.”
+
+She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool the
+heaven-sent resolve. Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy
+alternately. She was wishing to ask a multitude of questions. His face
+reassured her, and saying: “I will be dressed instantly,” she also left
+the room. Talking, bustling, preparing, wrapping up my lord, and
+looking to their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready within the
+time prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming over the baby.
+“He’ll sleep it through,” she said. “He’s had enough for an alderman,
+and goes to sleep sound after his dinner, he do, a duck!” Before they
+departed, Lucy ran up to Lady Feverel. She returned for the small one.
+
+“One moment, Mr. Wentworth?”
+
+“Just two,” said Austin.
+
+Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were full
+of tears.
+
+“She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth.”
+
+“She shall,” Austin said simply.
+
+Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all
+upon the great act of courage she was performing.
+
+“I do hope baby will not wake,” was her chief solicitude.
+
+“He!” cries nurse-woman Berry, from the rear, “his little tum-tum’s as
+tight as he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty! and ye may take
+yer oath he never wakes till that’s slack. He’ve got character of his
+own, a blessed!”
+
+There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by storm.
+The baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and rejoicing
+in the pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and to himself.
+Hearing Austin’s name sonorously pronounced by the man of calves, he
+looked up from his book, and held out his hand. “Glad to see you,
+Austin.” His appearance betokened complete security. The next minute he
+found himself escaladed.
+
+It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room
+besides Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the lamp: Mrs. Berry close
+to the door. The door was half open, and passing through it might be
+seen the petrified figure of a fine man. The baronet glancing over the
+lamp rose at Mrs. Berry’s signification of a woman’s personality.
+Austin stepped back and led Lucy to him by the hand. “I have brought
+Richard’s wife, sir,” he said with a pleased, perfectly uncalculating,
+countenance, that was disarming. Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed.
+She felt her two hands taken, and heard a kind voice. Could it be
+possible it belonged to the dreadful father of her husband? She lifted
+her eyes nervously: her hands were still detained. The baronet
+contemplated Richard’s choice. Had he ever had a rivalry with those
+pure eyes? He saw the pain of her position shooting across her brows,
+and, uttering gentle inquiries as to her health, placed her in a seat.
+Mrs. Berry had already fallen into a chair.
+
+“What aspect do you like for your bedroom?—East?” said the baronet.
+
+Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: “Am I to stay?”
+
+“Perhaps you had better take to Richard’s room at once,” he pursued.
+“You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will
+feel more at home.”
+
+Lucy’s colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should
+say, “The day is ours!” Undoubtedly—strange as it was to think it—the
+fortress was carried.
+
+“Lucy is rather tired,” said Austin, and to hear her Christian name
+thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.
+
+The baronet was about to touch the bell. “But have you come alone?” he
+asked.
+
+At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to require
+effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp,
+her agitation could not escape notice. The blissful bundle shook in her
+arms.
+
+“By the way, what is he to me?” Austin inquired generally as he went
+and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. “My relationship is not so
+defined as yours, sir.”
+
+An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson
+with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment
+the mother of anybody’s child.
+
+“I really think he’s like Richard,” Austin laughed. Lucy looked: I am
+sure he is!
+
+“As like as one to one,” Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa not
+speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. “And he’s as
+healthy as his father was, Sir Austin—spite o’ the might ’a beens.
+Reg’lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he come. We knows the
+hour o’ the day, and of the night.”
+
+“You nurse him yourself, of course?” the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was
+satisfied on that point.
+
+Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the
+consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.
+“’T’d take a deal to do that,” said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master
+Richard’s health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it,
+considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions
+of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.
+
+“He looks healthy,” said the baronet, “but I am not a judge of babies.”
+
+Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new
+commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the
+housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.
+
+Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: “She is
+extremely well-looking.” He replied: “A person you take to at once.”
+There it ended.
+
+But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy
+and Mrs. Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to talk about the reception
+they had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms,
+and the solid happiness that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry all the while
+would persist in consulting the looking-glass. Her first distinct
+answer was, “My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?”
+
+“Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would be
+so kind, so considerate?”
+
+“I am sure I looked a frump,” returned Mrs. Berry. “Oh dear! two birds
+at a shot. What do you think, now?”
+
+“I never saw so wonderful a likeness,” says Lucy.
+
+“Likeness! look at me.” Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the palms.
+
+“You’re very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?”
+
+“Ain’t it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear.”
+
+“Go to bed, Berry, dear,” says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing way.
+“I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart! You’ve had so much
+excitement.”
+
+“Ha! ha!” Berry laughed hysterically; “she thinks it’s about this
+business of hers. Why, it’s child’s-play, my darlin’. But I didn’t look
+for tragedy to-night. Sleep in this house I can’t, my love!”
+
+Lucy was astonished. “Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?—Oh! why, you silly
+old thing? I know.”
+
+“Do ye!” said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.
+
+“You’re afraid of ghosts.”
+
+“Belike I am when they’re six foot two in their shoes, and bellows when
+you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my Berry!”
+
+“Your husband?”
+
+“Large as life!”
+
+Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as
+the Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that he
+had recognized her and quaked. “Time ain’t aged him,” said Mrs. Berry,
+“whereas me! he’ve got his excuse now. I know I look a frump.”
+
+Lucy kissed her: “You look the nicest, dearest old thing.”
+
+“You may say an old thing, my dear.”
+
+“And your husband is really here?”
+
+“Berry’s below!”
+
+Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of incredulity.
+
+“What will you do, Mrs. Berry?”
+
+“Go, my dear. Leave him to be happy in his own way. It’s over atween
+us, I see that. When I entered the house I felt there was something
+comin’ over me, and lo and behold ye! no sooner was we in the
+hall-passage—if it hadn’t been for that blessed infant I should ’a
+dropped. I must ’a known his step, for my heart began thumpin’, and I
+knew I hadn’t got my hair straight—that Mr. Wentworth was in such a
+hurry—nor my best gown. I knew he’d scorn me. He hates frumps.”
+
+“Scorn you!” cried Lucy, angrily. “He who has behaved so wickedly!”
+
+Mrs. Berry attempted to rise. “I may as well go at once,” she
+whimpered. “If I see him I shall only be disgracin’ of myself. I feel
+it all on my side already. Did ye mark him, my dear? I know I was
+vexin’ to him at times, I was. Those big men are so touchy about their
+dignity—nat’ral. Hark at me! I’m goin’ all soft in a minute. Let me
+leave the house, my dear. I daresay it was good half my fault. Young
+women don’t understand men sufficient—not altogether—and I was a young
+woman then; and then what they goes and does they ain’t quite
+answerable for: they, feel, I daresay, pushed from behind. Yes. I’ll
+go. I’m a frump. I’ll go. ’Tain’t in natur’ for me to sleep in the same
+house.”
+
+Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry’s shoulders, and forcibly fixed her
+in her seat. “Leave baby, naughty woman? I tell you he shall come to
+you, and fall on his knees to you and beg your forgiveness.”
+
+“Berry on his knees!”
+
+“Yes. And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him.”
+
+“If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away words, great’ll be
+my wonder!” said Mrs. Berry.
+
+“We will see,” said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do something for the
+good creature that had befriended her.
+
+Mrs. Berry examined her gown. “Won’t it seem we’re runnin’ after him?”
+she murmured faintly.
+
+“He is your husband, Mrs. Berry. He may be wanting to come to you now.”
+
+“Oh! Where is all I was goin’ to say to that man when we met.” Mrs.
+Berry ejaculated. Lucy had left the room.
+
+On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed in black, who
+stopped her and asked if she was Richard’s wife, and kissed her,
+passing from her immediately. Lucy despatched a message for Austin, and
+related the Berry history. Austin sent for the great man and said: “Do
+you know your wife is here?” Before Berry had time to draw himself up
+to enunciate his longest, he was requested to step upstairs, and as his
+young mistress at once led the way, Berry could not refuse to put his
+legs in motion and carry the stately edifice aloft.
+
+Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch that night. “He
+began in the old way, my dear, and says I, a true heart and plain
+words, Martin Berry. So there he cuts himself and his Johnson short,
+and down he goes—down on his knees. I never could ’a believed it. I kep
+my dignity as a woman till I see that sight, but that done for me. I
+was a ripe apple in his arms ’fore I knew where I was. There’s
+something about a fine man on his knees that’s too much for us women.
+And it reely was the penitent on his two knees, not the lover on his
+one. If he mean it! But ah! what do you think he begs of me, my
+dear?—not to make it known in the house just yet! I can’t, I can’t say
+that look well.”
+
+Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct, and Mrs. Berry
+did her best to look on it in that light.
+
+“Did the bar’net kiss ye when you wished him goodnight?” she asked.
+Lucy said he had not. “Then bide awake as long as ye can,” was Mrs.
+Berry’s rejoinder. “And now let us pray blessings on that
+simple-speaking gentleman who does so much ’cause he says so little.”
+
+Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly where her own
+soft heart was concerned. As she secretly anticipated, the baronet came
+into her room when all was quiet. She saw him go and bend over Richard
+the Second, and remain earnestly watching him. He then went to the
+half-opened door of the room where Lucy slept, leaned his ear a moment,
+knocked gently, and entered. Mrs. Berry heard low words interchanging
+within. She could not catch a syllable, yet she would have sworn to the
+context. “He’ve called her his daughter, promised her happiness, and
+given a father’s kiss to her.” When Sir Austin passed out she was in a
+deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+Briareus reddening angrily over the sea—what is that vaporous Titan?
+And Hesper set in his rosy garland—why looks he so implacably sweet? It
+is that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work,
+and he has got a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West
+fair Lucy beckons him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How strong and
+fierce the temptation is! how subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his
+reason, his honour. For he loves her; she is still the first and only
+woman to him. Otherwise would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise
+would his limbs be chained while her arms are spread open to him. And
+if he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit, or a thousand?
+Is not love the password to that beckoning bliss? So may we say; but
+here is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is
+desecrated.
+
+A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for a dance of
+devils? His education has thus wrought him to think.
+
+He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel base and accept
+the bliss that beckons—he has not fallen so low as that.
+
+Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the
+Fancy led him away from you, high in his conceit? Poor wretch! that
+thought to be he of the hundred hands, and war against the absolute
+Gods. Jove whispered a light commission to the Laughing Dame; she met
+him; and how did he shake Olympus? with laughter?
+
+Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears, than
+one called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever outcast. He
+has not the oblivion of madness. Clothed in the lights of his first
+passion, robed in the splendour of old skies, she meets him everywhere;
+morning, evening, night, she shines above him; waylays him suddenly in
+forest depths; drops palpably on his heart. At moments he forgets; he
+rushes to embrace her; calls her his beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss
+brings agony of shame to his face.
+
+Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by the
+love he had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt unread all
+the letters he received. He knew too well how easily he could persuade
+himself: words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish the
+spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that he clung to in
+desperate self-vindication.
+
+To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous and
+thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one that fair women greatly
+prize, and certain of them professionally follow. Lady Judith, as far
+as her sex would permit, was also of the Titans in their battle against
+the absolute Gods; for which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord
+incapable in all save his acres. Her achievements she kept to her own
+mind: she did not look happy over them. She met Richard accidentally in
+Paris; she saw his state; she let him learn that she alone on earth
+understood him. The consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in
+her train. It soothed him to be near a woman. Did she venture her guess
+as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility
+women have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to
+participate in. She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, much as he
+might speak of his—vaguely, and with self-blame. And she understood
+him. How the dark unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman’s eye!
+We are at compound interest immediately: so much richer than we
+knew!—almost as rich as we dreamed! But then the instant we are away
+from her we find ourselves bankrupt, beggared. How is that? We do not
+ask. We hurry to her and bask hungrily in her orbs. The eye must be
+feminine to be thus creative: I cannot say why. Lady Judith understood
+Richard, and he feeling infinitely vile, somehow held to her more
+feverishly, as one who dreaded the worst in missing her. The spirit
+must rest; he was weak with what he suffered.
+
+Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans, male
+and female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift, prone on
+floods of sentiment. The blue-flocked peasant swinging behind his oxen
+of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver,
+even the doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows.
+Horrible reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it, but it frets at
+Richard when he is out of her shadow. Often wretchedly he watches the
+young men of his own age trooping to their work. Not cloud-work theirs!
+Work solid, unambitious, fruitful!
+
+Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped blindfolded
+for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters. He
+swallowed it comfortably. It was an intoxicating cordial. Himself on
+horseback overriding wrecks of Empires! Well might common sense cower
+with the meaner animals at the picture. Tacitly they agreed to recast
+the civilized globe. The quality of vapour is to melt and shape itself
+anew; but it is never the quality of vapour to reassume the same
+shapes. Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn to a
+monstrous donkey with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering
+apes. The phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those
+we see in the skies, and equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith
+blew. There was plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into
+some shape or other. You that mark those clouds of eventide, and know
+youth, will see the similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely
+seem foolish to you, that a young man of Richard’s age, Richard’s
+education and position, should be in this wild state. Had he not been
+nursed to believe he was born for great things? Did she not say she was
+sure of it? And to feel base, yet born for better, is enough to make
+one grasp at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg. How
+intense is his faith to quacks! with what a passion of longing is he
+not seized to break somebody’s head! They spoke of Italy in low voices.
+“The time will come,” said she. “And I shall be ready,” said he. What
+rank was he to take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel, general
+in chief, or simple private? Here, as became him, he was much more
+positive and specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he
+save himself caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of
+course. Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She
+looked forth under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that
+object in the distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary
+fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and
+mortal wounds in her fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber,
+the Arno, and the Po, and their hands joined. Who has not wept for
+Italy? I see the aspirations of a world arise for her, thick and
+frequent as the puffs of smoke from cigars of Pannonian sentries!
+
+So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady
+Judith said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind! This
+Richard verified. Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The high road
+of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse. He is
+foolish, God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero
+because he has not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it were,
+anointed by his occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
+
+Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must
+term folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and
+somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin
+plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he
+could.
+
+“Why can’t you go to your wife, Richard?”
+
+“For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin.”
+
+He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at
+heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian
+palace of the West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith’s old lord
+played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
+Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable a wife was
+to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She was an enthusiast even in
+her connubial duties. She had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion
+she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded
+from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different
+from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that
+order who always do what they see to be right, and always have
+confidence in their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man’s
+admiration, if she was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient
+intimacy with Austin easily, while she preserved her new footing with
+Richard. She and Austin were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and
+had not married an old lord.
+
+The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where the
+shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water
+brawling over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a
+baby, whose mighty size drew their attention.
+
+“What a wopper!” Richard laughed.
+
+“Well, that is a fine fellow,” said Austin, “but I don’t think he’s
+much bigger than your boy.”
+
+“He’ll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius,” Richard was saying. Then
+he looked at Austin.
+
+“What was that you said?” Lady Judith asked of Austin.
+
+“What have I said that deserves to be repeated?” Austin counterqueried
+quite innocently.
+
+“Richard has a son?”
+
+“You didn’t know it?”
+
+“His modesty goes very far,” said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow of a
+curtsey to Richard’s paternity.
+
+Richard’s heart throbbed with violence. He looked again in Austin’s
+face. Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said nothing
+more on the subject.
+
+“Well!” murmured Lady Judith.
+
+When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: “Austin!
+you were in earnest?”
+
+“You didn’t know it, Richard?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your father, your aunt.
+I believe Adrian wrote too.”
+
+“I tore up their letters,” said Richard.
+
+“He’s a noble fellow, I can tell you. You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.
+He’ll soon be coming to ask about you. I made sure you knew.”
+
+“No, I never knew.” Richard walked away, and then said: “What is he
+like?”
+
+“Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother’s eyes.”
+
+“And she’s—”
+
+“Yes. I think the child has kept her well.”
+
+“They’re both at Raynham?”
+
+“Both.”
+
+Hence fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where are the dreams of
+the hero when he learns he has a child? Nature is taking him to her
+bosom. She will speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills
+can boast the same, yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
+prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most common
+performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he were trying to
+make out the lineaments of his child.
+
+Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into the
+air, and walked on and on. “A father!” he kept repeating to himself: “a
+child!” And though he knew it not, he was striking the keynotes of
+Nature. But he did know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over
+his whole being.
+
+The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still. He
+left the high road and pierced into the forest. His walk was rapid: the
+leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the
+dells noised to his feet. Something of a religious joy—a strange sacred
+pleasure—was in him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself: and now
+he was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared never
+see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall upon. He was
+utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it seemed to him that
+Clare looked down on him—Clare who saw him as he was; and that to her
+eyes it would be infamy for him to go and print his kiss upon his
+child. Then came stern efforts to command his misery and make the
+nerves of his face iron.
+
+By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past
+summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his journey’s
+end. There he discovered he had a companion in Lady Judith’s little
+dog. He gave the friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were
+silent in the forest-silence.
+
+It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged. He
+must advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
+
+An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells and
+on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook tinkled it
+was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of
+water. Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as
+white fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys
+were clear, defined to the shadows of their verges, the distances
+sharply distinct, and with the colours of day but slightly softened.
+Richard beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of
+rifle-mark. The breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone
+in a broad blue heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog
+after him; crouched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly
+when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted
+through the dusk of the forest.
+
+On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey
+topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard
+mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to
+the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet were emerald lights:
+hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark dry ground.
+
+He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were expended
+in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his
+shadow Westward from the South. Overhead, as she declined, long ripples
+of silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the
+van of a tempest. He did not observe them or the leaves beginning to
+chatter. When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a
+huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his
+mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his
+vigorous outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the
+sky. Then heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were
+singing, the earth breathed, it was black before him, and behind. All
+at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had marked was bursting over
+him.
+
+Up startled the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the country at the
+foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.
+Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven,
+and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing
+him; filling him with awful rapture. Alone there—sole human creature
+among the grandeurs and mysteries of storm—he felt the representative
+of his kind, and his spirit rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be
+glory, let it be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled
+the wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the
+sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were
+supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused in the
+leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and
+heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the
+desire of the earth. Even in this, drenched as he was by the first
+outpouring, Richard had a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was
+scarcely conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was
+refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril. He
+fancied he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in
+Rhineland—never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in a
+forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little companion
+wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance. He went an slowly,
+thinking indistinctly. After two or three steps he stooped and
+stretched out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he knew not why,
+a strong wish to verify its growth there. Groping about, his hand
+encountered something warm that started at his touch, and he, with the
+instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to look at it. The creature
+was very small, evidently quite young. Richard’s eyes, now accustomed
+to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it was, a tiny
+leveret, and ha supposed that the dog had probably frightened its dam
+just before he found it. He put the little thing on one hand in his
+breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
+
+The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured. So cool and
+easy had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of
+shelter the birds could find, and how the butterflies and moths saved
+their coloured wings from washing. Folded close they might hang under a
+leaf, he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness of the
+coverts on each side, as one of their children. He was next musing on a
+strange sensation he experienced. It ran up one arm with an
+indescribable thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was
+purely physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all
+through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little
+thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand there. The small
+rough tongue going over and over the palm of his hand produced the
+strange sensation he felt. Now that he knew the cause, the marvel
+ended; but now that he knew the cause, his heart was touched and made
+more of it. The gentle scraping continued without intermission as on he
+walked. What did it say to him? Human tongue could not have said so
+much just then.
+
+A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the
+dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all
+about in his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly.
+Impelled as a man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his
+brain, Richard was passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung
+with votive wreaths, where the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold,
+still, in the twilight it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He
+looked within, and saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But
+not many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and he
+shuddered. What was it? He asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as
+lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He felt in his heart the
+cry of his child, his darling’s touch. With shut eyes he saw them both.
+They drew him from the depths; they led him a blind and tottering man.
+And as they led him he had a sense of purification so sweet he
+shuddered again and again.
+
+When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
+birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills.
+He was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe
+corn under a spacious morning sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming. Lucy had the news first
+in a letter from Ripton Thompson, who met him at Bonn. Ripton did not
+say that he had employed his vacation holiday on purpose to use his
+efforts to induce his dear friend to return to his wife; and finding
+Richard already on his way, of course Ripton said nothing to him, but
+affected to be travelling for his pleasure like any cockney. Richard
+also wrote to her. In case she should have gone to the sea he directed
+her to send word to his hotel that he might not lose an hour. His
+letter was sedate in tone, very sweet to her. Assisted by the faithful
+female Berry, she was conquering an Aphorist.
+
+“Woman’s reason is in the milk of her breasts,” was one of his rough
+notes, due to an observation of Lucy’s maternal cares. Let us remember,
+therefore, we men who have drunk of it largely there, that she has it.
+
+Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master Richard’s education
+had commenced, and the great future historian he must consequently be.
+This trait in Lucy was of itself sufficient to win Sir Austin.
+
+“Here my plan with Richard was false,” he reflected: “in presuming that
+anything save blind fortuity would bring him such a mate as he should
+have.” He came to add: “And has got!”
+
+He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten science; for as
+Richard was coming, as all were to be happy, his wisdom embraced them
+all paternally as the author of their happiness. Between him and Lucy a
+tender intimacy grew.
+
+“I told you she could talk, sir,” said Adrian.
+
+“She thinks!” said the baronet.
+
+The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle, he settled
+generously. Farmer Blaize should come up to Raynham when he would: Lucy
+must visit him at least three times a week. He had Farmer Blaize and
+Mrs. Berry to study, and really excellent Aphorisms sprang from the
+plain human bases this natural couple presented.
+
+“It will do us no harm,” he thought, “some of the honest blood of the
+soil in our veins.” And he was content in musing on the parentage of
+the little cradled boy. A common sight for those who had the entry to
+the library was the baronet cherishing the hand of his daughter-in-law.
+
+So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham were beating
+quicker measures as the minutes progressed. That night he would be with
+them. Sir Austin gave Lucy a longer, warmer salute when she came down
+to breakfast in the morning. Mrs. Berry waxed thrice amorous. “It’s
+your second bridals, ye sweet livin’ widow!” she said. “Thanks be the
+Lord! it’s the same man too! and a baby over the bed-post,” she
+appended seriously.
+
+“Strange,” Berry declared it to be, “strange I feel none o’ this to my
+Berry now. All my feelin’s o’ love seem t’ave gone into you two sweet
+chicks.”
+
+In fact, the faithless male Berry complained of being treated badly,
+and affected a superb jealousy of the baby; but the good dame told him
+that if he suffered at all he suffered his due. Berry’s position was
+decidedly uncomfortable. It could not be concealed from the lower
+household that he had a wife in the establishment, and for the
+complications this gave rise to, his wife would not legitimately
+console him. Lucy did intercede, but Mrs. Berry, was obdurate. She
+averred she would not give up the child till he was weaned. “Then,
+perhaps,” she said prospectively. “You see I ain’t so soft as you
+thought for.”
+
+“You’re a very unkind, vindictive old woman,” said Lucy.
+
+“Belike I am,” Mrs. Berry was proud to agree. We like a new character,
+now and then. Berry had delayed too long.
+
+Were it not notorious that the straightlaced prudish dare not listen
+to, the natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry thought it advisable
+to impart to the young wife with regard to Berry’s infidelity, and the
+charity women should have toward sinful men, might here be reproduced.
+Enough that she thought proper to broach the matter, and cite her own
+Christian sentiments, now that she was indifferent in some degree.
+
+Oily calm is on the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and
+speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to throw
+himself on his darling’s mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest and sea,
+tempest and peace—to her the hero comes humbly. Great is that day when
+we see our folly! Ripton and he were the friends of old. Richard
+encouraged him to talk of the two he could be eloquent on, and Ripton,
+whose secret vanity was in his powers of speech, never tired of
+enumerating Lucy’s virtues, and the peculiar attributes of the baby.
+
+“She did not say a word against me, Rip?”
+
+“Against you, Richard! The moment she knew she was to be a mother, she
+thought of nothing but her duty to the child. She’s one who can’t think
+of herself.”
+
+“You’ve seen her at Raynham, Rip?”
+
+“Yes, once. They asked me down. And your father’s so fond of her—I’m
+sure he thinks no woman like her, and he’s right. She is so lovely, and
+so good.”
+
+Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his father: too
+British to expose his emotions. Ripton divined how deep and changed
+they were by his manner. He had cast aside the hero, and however Ripton
+had obeyed him and looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him
+tenfold now. He told his friend how much Lucy’s mere womanly sweetness
+and excellence had done for him, and Richard contrasted his own
+profitless extravagance with the patient beauty of his dear home angel.
+He was not one to take her on the easy terms that offered. There was
+that to do which made his cheek burn as he thought of it, but he was
+going to do it, even though it lost her to him. Just to see her and
+kneel to her was joy sufficient to sustain him, and warm his blood in
+the prospect. They marked the white cliffs growing over the water.
+Nearer, the sun made them lustrous. Houses and people seemed to welcome
+the wild youth to common sense, simplicity, and home.
+
+They were in town by mid-day. Richard had a momentary idea of not
+driving to his hotel for letters. After a short debate he determined to
+go there. The porter said he had two letters for Mr. Richard
+Feverel—one had been waiting some time. He went to the box and fetched
+them. The first Richard opened was from Lucy, and as he read it, Ripton
+observed the colour deepen on his face, while a quivering smile played
+about his mouth. He opened the other indifferently. It began without
+any form of address. Richard’s forehead darkened at the signature. This
+letter was in a sloping feminine hand, and flourished with light
+strokes all over, like a field of the bearded barley. Thus it ran:
+
+“I know you are in a rage with me because I would not consent to ruin
+you, you foolish fellow. What do you call it? Going to that unpleasant
+place together. Thank you, my milliner is not ready yet, and I want to
+make a good appearance when I do go. I suppose I shall have to some
+day. Your health, Sir Richard. Now let me speak to you seriously. Go
+home to your wife at once. But I know the sort of fellow you are, and I
+must be plain with you. Did I ever say I loved you? You may hate me as
+much as you please, but I will save you from being a fool.
+
+“Now listen to me. You know my relations with Mount. That beast Brayder
+offered to pay all my debts and set me afloat, if I would keep you in
+town. I declare on my honour I had no idea why, and I did not agree to
+it. But you were such a handsome fellow—I noticed you in the park
+before I heard a word of you. But then you fought shy—you were just as
+tempting as a girl. You stung me. Do you know what that is? I would
+make you care for me, and we know how it ended, without any intention
+of mine, I swear. I’d have cut off my hand rather than do you any harm,
+upon my honour. Circumstances! Then I saw it was all up between us.
+Brayder came and began to chaff about you. I dealt the animal a stroke
+on the face with my riding-whip—I shut him up pretty quick. Do you
+think I would let a man speak about you?—I was going to swear. You see
+I remember Dick’s lessons. O my God! I do feel unhappy.—Brayder offered
+me money. Go and think I took it, if you like. What do I care what
+anybody thinks! Something that black-guard said made me suspicious. I
+went down to the Isle of Wight where Mount was, and your wife was just
+gone with an old lady who came and took her away. I should so have
+liked to see her. You said, you remember, she would take me as a
+sister, and treat me—I laughed at it then. My God! how I could cry now,
+if water did any good to a devil, as you politely call poor me. I
+called at your house and saw your man-servant, who said Mount had just
+been there. In a minute it struck me. I was sure Mount was after a
+woman, but it never struck me that woman was your wife. Then I saw why
+they wanted me to keep you away. I went to Brayder. You know how I hate
+him. I made love to the man to get it out of him. Richard! my word of
+honour, they have planned to carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot
+seduce her. Talk of devils! He’s one; but he is not so bad as Brayder.
+I cannot forgive a mean dog his villany.
+
+“Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a man to stop away
+from her another moment. I have no more to say. I suppose we shall not
+see each other again, so good-bye, Dick! I fancy I hear you cursing me.
+Why can’t you feel like other men on the subject? But if you were like
+the rest of them I should not have cared for you a farthing. I have not
+worn lilac since I saw you last. I’ll be buried in your colour, Dick.
+That will not offend you—will it?
+
+“You are not going to believe I took the money? If I thought you
+thought that—it makes me feel like a devil only to fancy you think it.
+
+“The first time you meet Brayder, cane him publicly.
+
+“Adieu! Say it’s because you don’t like his face. I suppose devils must
+not say Adieu. Here’s plain old good-bye, then, between you and me.
+Good-bye, dear Dick! You won’t think that of me?
+
+“May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took or ever will
+touch a scrap of their money.
+
+BELLA.”
+
+
+Richard folded up the letter silently.
+
+“Jump into the cab,” he said to Ripton.
+
+“Anything the matter, Richard?”
+
+“No.”
+
+The driver received directions. Richard sat without speaking. His
+friend knew that face. He asked whether there was bad news in the
+letter. For answer, he had the lie circumstancial. He ventured to
+remark that they were going the wrong way.
+
+“It’s the right way,” cried Richard, and his jaws were hard and square,
+and his eyes looked heavy and full.
+
+Ripton said no more, but thought.
+
+The cabman pulled up at a Club. A gentleman, in whom Ripton recognized
+the Hon. Peter Brayder, was just then swinging a leg over his horse,
+with one foot in the stirrup. Hearing his name called, the Hon. Peter
+turned about, and stretched an affable hand.
+
+“Is Mountfalcon in town?” said Richard taking the horse’s reins instead
+of the gentlemanly hand. His voice and aspect were quite friendly.
+
+“Mount?” Brayder replied, curiously watching the action; “yes. He’s off
+this evening.”
+
+“He is in town?” Richard released his horse. “I want to see him. Where
+is he?”
+
+The young man looked pleasant: that which might have aroused Brayder’s
+suspicions was an old affair in parasitical register by this time.
+“Want to see him? What about?” he said carelessly, and gave the
+address.
+
+“By the way,” he sang out, “we thought of putting your name down,
+Feverel.” He indicated the lofty structure. “What do you say?”
+
+Richard nodded back at him, crying, “Hurry.” Brayder returned the nod,
+and those who promenaded the district soon beheld his body in elegant
+motion to the stepping of his well-earned horse.
+
+“What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for, Richard?” said Ripton.
+
+“I just want to see him,” Richard replied.
+
+Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord’s residence. He had
+to wait there a space of about ten minutes, when Richard returned with
+a clearer visage, though somewhat heated. He stood outside the cab, and
+Ripton was conscious of being examined by those strong grey eyes. As
+clear as speech he understood them to say to him, “You won’t do,” but
+which of the many things on earth he would not do for he was at a loss
+to think.
+
+“Go down to Raynham, Ripton. Say I shall be there tonight certainly.
+Don’t bother me with questions. Drive off at once. Or wait. Get another
+cab. I’ll take this.”
+
+Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street. As
+he was on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to get a
+word of elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him.
+
+“You are Feverel’s friend?”
+
+Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman, standing at the open
+door of Lord Mountfalcon’s house, and a gentleman standing on the
+doorstep, told him that he was addressed by that nobleman. He was
+requested to step into the house. When they were alone, Lord
+Mountfalcon, slightly ruffled, said: “Feverel has insulted me grossly.
+I must meet him, of course. It’s a piece of infernal folly!—I suppose
+he is not quite mad?”
+
+Ripton’s only definite answer was, a gasping iteration of “My lord.”
+
+My lord resumed: “I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far as
+I know. In fact, I had a friendship for him. Is he liable to fits of
+this sort of thing?”
+
+Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: “Fits, my lord?”
+
+“Ah!” went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style. “You know
+nothing of this business, perhaps?”
+
+Ripton said he did not.
+
+“Have you any influence with him?”
+
+“Not much, my lord. Only now and then—a little.”
+
+“You are not in the Army?”
+
+The question was quite unnecessary. Ripton confessed to the law, and my
+lord did not look surprised.
+
+“I will not detain you,” he said, distantly bowing.
+
+Ripton gave him a commoner’s obeisance; but getting to the door, the
+sense of the matter enlightened him.
+
+“It’s a duel, my lord?”
+
+“No help for it, if his friends don’t shut him up in Bedlam between
+this and to-morrow morning.”
+
+Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton’s imagination. He
+stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter of
+calamity suddenly opened where happiness had promised.
+
+“A duel! but he won’t, my lord,—he mustn’t fight, my lord.”
+
+“He must come on the ground,” said my lord, positively.
+
+Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord Mountfalcon said:
+“I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you. I saw you from the
+window. Your friend is mad. Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad. I have
+particular reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and if an
+apology is to be got out of him when we’re on the ground, I’ll take it,
+and we’ll stop the damned scandal, if possible. You understand? I’m the
+insulted party, and I shall only require of him to use formal words of
+excuse to come to an amicable settlement. Let him just say he regrets
+it. Now, sir,” the nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness,
+“should anything happen—I have the honour to be known to Mrs.
+Feverel—and I beg you will tell her. I very particularly desire you to
+let her know that I was not to blame.”
+
+Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out. With this on his mind
+Ripton hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at
+Raynham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
+calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.
+Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump
+face,—held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,—sat writing at
+the library table. Round the baronet’s chair, in a semi-circle, were
+Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that very ill bird at
+Raynham. They were silent as those who question the flying minutes.
+Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but the feminine eyes
+reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for disquietude, which
+increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in his habitual air of
+speculative repose.
+
+Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak
+and betray his state.
+
+“Pray, put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing,” he said,
+half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
+
+Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: “It’s no nightmare,
+this!”
+
+His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure.
+Adrian’s pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in
+commiseration or infernal glee, none might say.
+
+“What are you writing?” the baronet inquired testily of Adrian, after a
+pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the wise youth’s
+coolness.
+
+“Do I disturb you, sir?” rejoined Adrian. “I am engaged on a portion of
+a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under one
+Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and lamented Holy
+Roman. This treats of the management of Youths and Maids, and of
+certain magisterial functions connected therewith. ‘It is decreed that
+these officers be all and every men of science,’ etc.” And Adrian
+cheerily drove his pen afresh.
+
+Mrs. Doria took Lucy’s hand, mutely addressing encouragement to her,
+and Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to reply with.
+
+“I fear we must give him up to-night,” observed Lady Blandish.
+
+“If he said he would come, he will come,” Sir Austin interjected.
+Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly
+going on. He was conscious that nothing save perfect success would now
+hold this self-emancipating mind. She had seen him through.
+
+“He declared to me he would be certain to come,” said Ripton; but he
+could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware that
+Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black
+conspirator against their happiness. He determined to tell the baronet
+what he knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.
+
+“What is the time?” he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
+
+“Time for me to be in bed,” growled Hippias, as if everybody present
+had been treating him badly.
+
+Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She
+quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: “You had
+better not come down again, my child.” She kept her eyes on him.
+“Oblige me by retiring for the night,” he added. Lucy shook their
+hands, and went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
+
+“This agitation will be bad for the child,” he said, speaking to
+himself aloud.
+
+Lady Blandish remarked: “I think she might just as well have returned.
+She will not sleep.”
+
+“She will control herself for the child’s sake.”
+
+“You ask too much of her.”
+
+“Of her, not,” he emphasized.
+
+It was twelve o’clock when Hippias shut his watch, and said with
+vehemence: “I’m convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
+decreases!”
+
+“Going back to the pre-Harvey period!” murmured Adrian as he wrote.
+
+Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce
+them to the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was
+sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve. Taking
+it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition, Hippias resumed
+despairingly: “It’s a fact. I’ve brought you to see that. No one can be
+more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse. My system is organically
+sound—I believe: I do every possible thing, and yet I get worse. Nature
+never forgives! I’ll go to bed.”
+
+The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
+
+Sir Austin took up his brother’s thought: “I suppose nothing short of a
+miracle helps us when we have offended her.”
+
+“Nothing short of a quack satisfies us,” said Adrian, applying wax to
+an envelope of official dimensions.
+
+Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by
+Lucy’s last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went round
+to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and
+accompanied him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone, Lady
+Blandish said to the baronet: “He is not coming.”
+
+“To-morrow, then, if not tonight,” he replied. “But I say he will come
+to-night.”
+
+“You do really wish to see him united to his wife?”
+
+The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
+
+“Can you ask me?”
+
+“I mean,” said, the ungenerous woman, “your System will require no
+further sacrifices from either of them?”
+
+When he did answer, it was to say: “I think her altogether a superior
+person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her.”
+
+“Admit that your science does not accomplish everything.”
+
+“No: it was presumptuous—beyond a certain point,” said the baronet,
+meaning deep things.
+
+Lady Blandish eyed him. “Ah me!” she sighed, “if we would always be
+true to our own wisdom!”
+
+“You are very singular to-night, Emmeline.” Sir Austin stopped his walk
+in front of her.
+
+In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely
+forgiven. Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into
+his family and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would have
+done more—or as much? This lady, for instance, had the case been hers,
+would have fought it. All the people of position that he was acquainted
+with would have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly.
+But while the baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional
+education his son had received. He took the common ground of fathers,
+forgetting his System when it was absolutely on trial. False to his son
+it could not be said that he had been: false to his System he was.
+Others saw it plainly, but he had to learn his lesson by and by.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table,
+saying, “Well! well!” She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there,
+and drew forth a little book she recognized. “Ha! what is this?” she
+said.
+
+“Benson returned it this morning,” he informed her. “The stupid fellow
+took it away with him—by mischance, I am bound to believe.”
+
+It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned over
+the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
+
+She read: “A maker of Proverbs—what is he but a narrow mind with the
+mouthpiece of narrower?”
+
+“I do not agree with that,” she observed. He was in no humour for
+argument.
+
+“Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?”
+
+He merely said: “Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings.
+A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the
+majority rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be
+flattered by his company?”
+
+She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There must
+be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and
+admirable aptitude.
+
+Further she read, “Which is the coward among us?—He who sneers at the
+failings of Humanity!”
+
+“Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!” cried the dark-eyed dame as
+she beamed intellectual raptures.
+
+Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: “There is no more
+grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at
+the mercy of his feelings.”
+
+“He must have written it,” she thought, “when he had himself for an
+example—strange man that he is!”
+
+Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly
+insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she
+reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man
+that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the
+loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless
+Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady’s allegiance was
+his for ever. The trial was at hand.
+
+She said again: “He is not coming to-night,” and the baronet, on whose
+visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past,
+quietly added: “He is come.”
+
+Richard’s voice was heard in the hall.
+
+There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir.
+Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that
+her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value—“Such is men!” as the
+soft woman reflected—Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in
+pompous tones and wheedling gestures. “The best word you’ve spoke for
+many a day,” says she, and leaves him unfee’d, in an attitude, to hurry
+and pour bliss into Lucy’s ears.
+
+“Lord be praised!” she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, “we’re
+got to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I could
+cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!”
+
+“Hush!” Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her knees.
+The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes
+started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing,
+but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to
+still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper
+from bursting Mrs. Berry.
+
+Richard had come. He was under his father’s roof, in the old home that
+had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife and child.
+He might embrace them both: and now the fulness of his anguish and the
+madness of the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he
+tasted hard earthly misery.
+
+Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of heaven
+directed him homeward? And he had come: here he stood: congratulations
+were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was held to him, and he
+was invited to drink of it. Which was the dream? his work for the
+morrow, or this? But for a leaden load that he felt like a bullet in
+his breast, he might have thought the morrow with death sitting on it
+was the dream. Yes; he was awake. Now first the cloud of phantasms
+cleared away: he beheld his real life, and the colours of true human
+joy: and on the morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them. That
+leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities.
+
+They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs.
+Doria, Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long. They shook his
+hand: they gave him greetings he had never before understood the worth
+of or the meaning. Now that he did they mocked him. There was Mrs.
+Berry in the background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing, there
+was Tom Bakewell grinning. Somehow he loved the sight of these better.
+
+“Ah, my old Penelope!” he said, breaking through the circle of his
+relatives to go to her. “Tom! how are you?”
+
+“Bless ye, my Mr. Richard,” whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered,
+rosily, “all’s agreeable now. She’s waiting up in bed for ye, like a
+new-born.”
+
+The person who betrayed most agitation was Mrs. Doria. She held close
+to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one
+accustomed to masks. “You are pale, Richard?” He pleaded exhaustion.
+“What detained you, dear?” “Business,” he said. She drew him
+imperiously apart from the others. “Richard! is it over?” He asked what
+she meant. “The dreadful duel, Richard.” He looked darkly. “Is it over?
+is it done, Richard?” Getting no immediate answer, she continued—and
+such was her agitation that the words were shaken by pieces from her
+mouth: “Don’t pretend not to understand me, Richard! Is it over? Are
+you going to die the death of my child—Clare’s death? Is not one in a
+family enough? Think of your dear young wife—we love her so!—your
+child!—your father! Will you kill us all?”
+
+Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton’s communication
+to Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken
+soul.
+
+Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
+“It’s arranged—the matter you allude to.”
+
+“Indeed!—truly, dear?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Tell me”—but he broke away from her, saying: “You shall hear the
+particulars to-morrow,” and she, not alive to double meaning just then,
+allowed him to leave her.
+
+He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he
+would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the
+library. He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat before
+he saw the young hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking bread, and
+eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine, talking of
+what they would. His father’s studious mind felt itself years behind
+him, he was so completely altered. He had the precision of speech, the
+bearing of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all that the necessity for
+cloaking an infinite misery gives. But let things be as they might, he
+was, there. For one night in his life Sir Austin’s perspective of the
+future was bounded by the night.
+
+“Will you go to your wife now?” he had asked and Richard had replied
+with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better that their
+meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs. The
+others perceived that father and son should now be left alone. Adrian
+went up to him, and said: “I can no longer witness this painful sight,
+so Good-night, Sir Famish! You may cheat yourself into the belief that
+you’ve made a meal, but depend upon it your progeny—and it threatens to
+be numerous—will cry aloud and rue the day. Nature never forgives! A
+lost dinner can never be replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And
+here—oblige me by taking this,” he handed Richard the enormous envelope
+containing what he had written that evening. “Credentials!” he
+exclaimed humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard
+also the words “propagator—species,” but had no idea of their import.
+The wise youth looked: You see we’ve made matters all right for you
+here, and quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
+
+Richard shook his hand, and Ripton’s. Then Lady Blandish said her
+good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual
+happiness. The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke
+together outside. Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that the
+duel would not be fought, but Adrian said: “Time enough tomorrow. He’s
+safe enough while he’s here. I’ll stop it to-morrow:” ending with
+banter of Ripton and allusions to his adventures with Miss Random,
+which must, Adrian said, have led him into many affairs of the sort.
+Certainly Richard was there, and while he was there he must be safe. So
+thought Ripton, and went to his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise,
+and likewise thought him safe while he was there. For once in her life
+she thought it better not to trust to her instinct, for fear of useless
+disturbance where peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to
+her brother. She only looked more deeply into Richard’s eyes, as she
+kissed him, praising Lucy. “I have found a second daughter in her,
+dear. Oh! may you both be happy!”
+
+They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they were
+alone. “Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her, Richard.
+I think Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young person,
+possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have
+never before met.”
+
+He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some hours
+back he would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.
+
+“You compliment me on my choice, sir?”
+
+Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible and he could
+speak no other way, his bitterness was so intense.
+
+“I think you very fortunate,” said his father.
+
+Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal
+feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against the
+chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only when he
+spoke. Fortunate! very fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and
+remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must love Lucy if he
+but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade her to come with
+him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain. But could he blame
+that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself? Not utterly. His
+father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was there: it was
+everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, and
+looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.
+
+“Richard,” said his father, coming close to him, “it is late to-night.
+I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I should have
+explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think—or at least hope—you
+would have justified me. I had cause to believe that you had not only
+violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It was not so, I now
+know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding has resulted from
+that mistake. But you were married—a boy: you knew nothing of the
+world, little of yourself. To save you in after-life—for there is a
+period when mature men and women who have married young are more
+impelled to temptation than in youth,—though not so exposed to it,—to
+save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and
+learn something of your fellows of both sexes, before settling into a
+state that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the
+woman who is your mate. My System with you would have been otherwise
+imperfect, and you would have felt the effects of it. It is over now.
+You are a man. The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust,
+at an end. I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and
+pray God to conduct and strengthen you both.”
+
+Sir Austin’s mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly. True
+or not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers over, and
+happiness, mockery.
+
+Richard coldly took his father’s extended hand.
+
+“We will go to her,” said the baronet. “I will leave you at her door.”
+
+Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the
+colour rushed, Richard said: “A husband who has been unfaithful to his
+wife may go to her there, sir?”
+
+It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no advice
+on such a matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday he would
+have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what
+was to be done humbly before God and her: now in the recklessness of
+his misery he had as little pity for any other soul as for his own. Sir
+Austin’s brows were deep drawn down.
+
+“What did you say, Richard?”
+
+Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this—the worst he could
+hear—this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and
+cast aside—could it be?
+
+Richard said: “I told you all but the very words when we last parted.
+What else do you think would have kept me from her?”
+
+Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: “What brings you to
+her now?”
+
+“That will be between us two,” was the reply.
+
+Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke
+from a wrathful heart: “You will not dare to take her without”—
+
+“No, sir,” Richard interrupted him, “I shall not. Have no fear.”
+
+“Then you did not love your wife?”
+
+“Did I not?” A smile passed faintly over Richard’s face.
+
+“Did you care so much for this—this other person?”
+
+“So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I
+had none.”
+
+O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose in
+the baronet’s mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.
+
+“Poor child! poor child!” he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
+Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son—her true forgiving
+heart—it seemed she should be spared this misery.
+
+He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between
+women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical
+and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that to hear him
+one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His
+words were idle.
+
+“She must know it,” said Richard, sternly. “I will go to her now, sir,
+if you please.”
+
+Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded
+his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He could not induce
+his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being
+interchanged, he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on
+Lucy’s mercy. He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange
+thing to have come to. On which should the accusation fall—on science,
+or on human nature?
+
+He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times
+breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted
+suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he
+deserved that blow from his son which had plunged him into
+wretchedness. Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy
+sleeper, and told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at the park
+gates East within an hour. Tom’s nearest approach to a hero was to be a
+faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his
+conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and
+heroically dashed his head into cold water. “She shall be ready, sir,”
+he nodded.
+
+“Tom! if you don’t see me back here at Raynham, your money will go on
+being paid to you.”
+
+“Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard,” said Tom.
+
+“And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom.”
+
+“Mrs. Richard, sir?” Tom stared. “God bless me, Mr. Richard”—
+
+“No questions. You’ll do what I say.”
+
+“Ay, sir; that I will. Did’n Isle o’ Wight.”
+
+The very name of the Island shocked Richard’s blood; and he had to walk
+up and down before he could knock at Lucy’s door. That infamous
+conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him
+the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
+
+The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door, and
+stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that
+passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in
+her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman—a blooming woman: for
+pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and
+deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose
+dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart
+thump and his eyes swim.
+
+“My darling!” each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
+fastened on his.
+
+They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her,
+whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and
+clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the
+oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace.
+Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet
+with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted
+him: their light as the light on a rolling wave. This young creature,
+commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in
+her husband’s arms—womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love;
+tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible
+tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly—far on the horizon of
+memory—the fatal truth returned to him.
+
+Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
+
+The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying
+glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and
+glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling
+wave.
+
+And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And his
+she was! a woman—his wife! The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was
+all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the
+prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this time
+it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure—with exultation and
+defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now
+surmounted the first wild passion of their meeting, bent back her head
+from her surrendered body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids
+wistfully quivering: “Come and see him—baby;” and then in great hope of
+the happiness she was going to give her husband, and share with him,
+and in tremour and doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed,
+and her brows worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year
+of separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
+
+“Darling! come and see him. He is here.” She spoke more clearly, though
+no louder.
+
+Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered
+himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His heart began rapidly
+throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot covered with lace
+like milky summer cloud.
+
+It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that child’s
+face.
+
+“Stop!” he cried suddenly.
+
+Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should
+have been disturbed.
+
+“Lucy, come back.”
+
+“What is it, darling?” said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip he
+had unwittingly given her hand.
+
+O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death,
+perhaps die and be torn from his darling—his wife and his child; and
+that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and lean his
+head reproachfully on his young wife’s breast—for the last time, it
+might be—he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of
+him.
+
+“Lucy!” She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
+whiteness of his—she bending forward to him, all her faculties strung
+to hearing.
+
+He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the
+horrible wound he was going to lay open to her eyes.
+
+“Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?”
+
+She moved her lips repeating his words.
+
+“Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?”
+
+Her head shook widened eyes.
+
+“Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you
+understand?”
+
+“Darling,” she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him,
+“what have I done to make you angry with me?”
+
+“O beloved!” cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes. “O beloved!”
+was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
+
+She waited, reassured, but in terror.
+
+“Lucy. I stayed away from you—I could not come to you, because... I
+dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come because I
+was a coward: because—hear me—this was the reason: I have broken my
+marriage oath.”
+
+Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in them.
+“But you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?”
+
+“Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you.”
+
+“Darling! Kiss me.”
+
+“Have you understood what I have told you?”
+
+“Kiss me,” she said.
+
+He did not join lips. “I have come to you to-night to ask your
+forgiveness.”
+
+Her answer was: “Kiss me.”
+
+“Can you forgive a man so base?”
+
+“But you love me, Richard?”
+
+“Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed you,
+and am unworthy of you—not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your
+feet, to breathe the same air with you.”
+
+Her eyes shone brilliantly. “You love me! you love me, darling!” And as
+one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said: “My
+husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be parted
+again?”
+
+He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with
+fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she
+spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from
+it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her on the
+summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her to him,
+and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child: of the sweet
+wonders of life she had made real to him.
+
+Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made him
+think so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: “You
+mustn’t disturb him—mustn’t touch him, dear!” and with dainty fingers
+drew off the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the child was
+out along the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth was pouted
+full; the dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his plump cheeks.
+Richard stooped lower down to him, hungering for some movement as a
+sign that he lived. Lucy whispered. “He sleeps like you, Richard—one
+arm under his head.” Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping
+tenderness was in Richard. He breathed quick and soft, bending lower,
+till Lucy’s curls, as she nestled and bent with him, rolled on the
+crimson quilt of the cot. A smile went up the plump cheeks: forthwith
+the bud of a mouth was in rapid motion. The young mother whispered,
+blushing: “He’s dreaming of me,” and the simple words did more than
+Richard’s eyes to make him see what was. Then Lucy began to hum and
+buzz sweet baby-language, and some of the tiny fingers stirred, and he
+made as if to change his cosy position, but reconsidered, and deferred
+it, with a peaceful little sigh. Lucy whispered: “He is such a big
+fellow. Oh! when you see him awake he is so like you, Richard.”
+
+He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped
+there in his likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the
+more heavenly it seemed. His son! his child! should he ever see him
+awake? At the thought, he took the words that had been spoken, and
+started from the dream he had been in. “Will he wake soon, Lucy?”
+
+“Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept him awake for
+you, but he was so sleepy.”
+
+Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he saw the eyes of
+his boy, and had him once on his heart, he never should have force to
+leave him. Then he looked down on him, again struggled to tear himself
+away. Two natures warred in his bosom, or it may have been the Magian
+Conflict still going on. He had come to see his child once and to make
+peace with his wife before it should be too late. Might he not stop
+with them? Might he not relinquish that devilish pledge? Was not divine
+happiness here offered to him?—If foolish Ripton had not delayed to
+tell him of his interview with Mountfalcon all might have been well.
+But pride said it was impossible. And then injury spoke. For why was he
+thus base and spotted to the darling of his love? A mad pleasure in the
+prospect of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for
+him, once more blackened his brain. If he would stay he could not. So
+he resolved, throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but
+oh, the pain!
+
+Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child’s cot.
+She marvelled at such excess of emotion. But when his chest heaved, and
+the extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized him, her heart
+sank, and she tried to get him in her arms. He turned away from her and
+went to the window. A half-moon was over the lake.
+
+“Look!” he said, “do you remember our rowing there one night, and we
+saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could have come early to-night
+that we might have had another row, and I have heard you sing there!”
+
+“Darling!” said she, “will it make you happier if I go with you now? I
+will.”
+
+“No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!”
+
+“Oh, no! that I’m not. I thought so once. I know I am not now.”
+
+“Yes! to have lived—the child on your heart—and never to have uttered a
+complaint!—you are brave. O my Lucy! my wife! you that have made me
+man! I called you a coward. I remember it. I was the coward—I the
+wretched vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you now. You are
+brave, and you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or three, I may be
+back—back for good, if you will accept me. Promise me to go to bed
+quietly. Kiss the child for me, and tell him his father has seen him.
+He will learn to speak soon. Will he soon speak, Lucy?”
+
+Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one arm
+of his with both her hands.
+
+“Going?” she presently gasped.
+
+“For two or three days. No more—I hope.”
+
+“To-night?”
+
+“Yes. Now.”
+
+“Going now? my husband!” her faculties abandoned her.
+
+“You will be brave, my Lucy!”
+
+“Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it takes you from me?” But
+questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried piteously to
+him to stay—not to leave them. Then she dragged him to the little
+sleeper, and urged him to pray by his side, and he did, but rose
+abruptly from his prayer when he had muttered a few broken words—she
+praying on with tight-strung nerves, in the faith that what she said to
+the interceding Mother above would be stronger than human hands on him.
+Nor could he go while she knelt there.
+
+And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering. She came
+to him, quiet. “I knew you would remain.” And taking his hand,
+innocently fondling it: “Am I so changed from her he loved? You will
+not leave me, dear?” But dread returned, and the words quavered as she
+spoke them.
+
+He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood. She drew
+his hand to her heart, and strained it there under one breast. “Come:
+lie on my heart,” she murmured with a smile of holy sweetness.
+
+He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of hell,
+kissed her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried to the
+door. It was over in an instant. She cried out his name, clinging to
+him wildly, and was adjured to be brave, for he would be dishonoured if
+he did not go. Then she was shaken off.
+
+Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child,
+which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any
+answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.
+There she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor
+senseless:—she had taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her
+husband with it as her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
+
+“Oh my! oh my!” Mrs. Berry moaned, “and I just now thinkin’ they was so
+happy!”
+
+Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to revive
+Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.
+
+“Go to his father,” said Mrs. Berry. “Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go, my
+love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after ’m. This is what
+men brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah! Or you take blessed baby,
+and I’ll go.”
+
+The baronet himself knocked at the door. “What is this?” he said. “I
+heard a noise and a step descend.”
+
+“It’s Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and
+babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy—Oh, my goodness! what sorrow’s come on us!”
+and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently, and
+Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips
+and tears dropping over him. And if the Scientific Humanist to the day
+of his death forgets the sight of those two poor true women jigging on
+their wretched hearts to calm the child, he must have very little of
+the human in him.
+
+There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+“His ordeal is over. I have just come from his room and seen him bear
+the worst that could be. Return at once—he has asked for you. I can
+hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.
+
+“Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard
+from Ralph Morton. Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord
+Mountfalcon, and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast. His father
+started immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in company with
+his aunt and his child. The wound was not dangerous. He was shot in the
+side somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part. We thought all
+would be well. Oh! how sick I am of theories, and Systems, and the
+pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and the man
+was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could
+hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of
+Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace
+unpretending people!
+
+“They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely, where we
+still remain, and the people try as much as they can do to compensate
+for our discomforts by their kindness. The French poor people are very
+considerate where they see suffering. I will say that for them. The
+doctors had not allowed his poor Lucy to go near him. She sat outside
+his door, and none of us dared disturb her. That was a sight for
+Science. His father and myself, and Mrs. Berry, were the only ones
+permitted to wait on him, and whenever we came out, there she sat, not
+speaking a word—for she had been told it would endanger his life—but
+she looked such awful eagerness. She had the sort of eye I fancy mad
+persons have. I was sure her reason was going. We did everything we
+could think of to comfort her. A bed was made up for her and her meals
+were brought to her there. Of course there was no getting her to eat.
+What do you suppose his alarm was fixed on? He absolutely said to
+me—but I have not patience to repeat his words. He thought her to blame
+for not commanding herself for the sake of her maternal duties. He had
+absolutely an idea of insisting that she should make an effort to
+suckle the child. I shall love that Mrs. Berry to the end of my days. I
+really believe she has twice the sense of any of us—Science and all.
+She asked him plainly if he wished to poison the child, and then he
+gave way, but with a bad grace.
+
+“Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him. I remember that you said Richard
+had done wrong. Yes; well, that may be. But his father eclipsed his
+wrong in a greater wrong—a crime, or quite as bad; for if he deceived
+himself in the belief that he was acting righteously in separating
+husband and wife, and exposing his son as he did, I can only say that
+there are some who are worse than people who deliberately commit
+crimes. No doubt Science will benefit by it. They kill little animals
+for the sake of Science.
+
+“We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician from Dieppe, a
+very skilful man. It was he who told us where the real danger lay. We
+thought all would be well. A week had passed, and no fever supervened.
+We told Richard that his wife was coming to him, and he could bear to
+hear it. I went to her and began to circumlocute, thinking she
+listened—she had the same eager look. When I told her she might go in
+with me to see her dear husband, her features did not change. M.
+Despres, who held her pulse at the time, told me, in a whisper, it was
+cerebral fever—brain fever coming on. We have talked of her since. I
+noticed that though she did not seem to understand me, her bosom
+heaved, and she appeared to be trying to repress it, and choke
+something. I am sure now, from what I know of her character, that
+she—even in the approaches of delirium—was preventing herself from
+crying out. Her last hold of reason was a thought for Richard. It was
+against a creature like this that we plotted! I have the comfort of
+knowing that I did my share in helping to destroy her. Had she seen her
+husband a day or two before—but no! there was a new System to interdict
+that! Or had she not so violently controlled her nature as she did, I
+believe she might have been saved.
+
+“He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb. Will you
+believe that when he saw his son’s wife—poor victim! lying delirious,
+he could not even then see his error. You said he wished to take
+Providence out of God’s hands. His mad self-deceit would not leave him.
+I am positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her
+for not having considered the child. Indeed he made a remark to me that
+it was unfortunate ‘disastrous,’ I think he said—that the child should
+have to be fed by hand. I dare say it is. All I pray is that this young
+child may be saved from him. I cannot bear to see him look on it. He
+does not spare himself bodily fatigue—but what is that? that is the
+vulgarest form of love. I know what you will say. You will say I have
+lost all charity, and I have. But I should not feel so, Austin, if I
+could be quite sure that he is an altered man even now the blow has
+struck him. He is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is
+evident, but I have doubts. He heard her while she was senseless call
+him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his
+mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his
+mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not
+imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a ‘forte et
+belle jeune femme:’ and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God
+moulded clay upon. A noble soul ‘forte et belle!’ She lies upstairs. If
+he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never
+enlighten him.
+
+“She died five days after she had been removed. The shock had utterly
+deranged her. I was with her. She died very quietly, breathing her last
+breath without pain—asking for no one—a death I should like to die.
+
+“Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She screamed that she was
+‘drowning in fire,’ and that her husband would not come to her to save
+her. We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible
+to prevent Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and it produced an
+effect like fever on him. Whenever she called he answered. You could
+not hear them without weeping. Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with
+him, and his father moved from one to the other.
+
+“But the trial for us came when she was gone. How to communicate it to
+Richard—or whether to do so at all! His father consulted with us. We
+were quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it while he was
+in that state. I can admit now—as things have turned out—we were wrong.
+His father left us—I believe he spent the time in prayer—and then
+leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in so many words, that his
+Lucy was no more. I thought it must kill him. He listened, and smiled.
+I never saw a smile so sweet and so sad. He said he had seen her die,
+as if he had passed through his suffering a long time ago. He shut his
+eyes. I could see by the motion of his eyeballs up that he was
+straining his sight to some inner heaven.—I cannot go on.
+
+“I think Richard is safe. Had we postponed the tidings, till he came to
+his clear senses, it must have killed him. His father was right for
+once, then. But if he has saved his son’s body, he has given the
+death-blow to his heart. Richard will never be what he promised.
+
+“A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the quarrel. I
+have had an interview with Lord M. this morning. I cannot say I think
+him exactly to blame: Richard forced him to fight. At least I do not
+select him the foremost for blame. He was deeply and sincerely affected
+by the calamity he has caused. Alas! he was only an instrument. Your
+poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks strange things of her
+daughter’s death. She is only happy in drudging. Dr. Bairam says we
+must under any circumstances keep her employed. Whilst she is doing
+something, she can chat freely, but the moment her hands are not
+occupied she gives me an idea that she is going into a fit.
+
+“We expect the dear child’s uncle to-day. Mr. Thompson is here. I have
+taken him upstairs to look at her. That poor young man has a true
+heart.
+
+“Come at once. You will not be in time to see her. She will lie at
+Raynham. If you could you would see an angel. He sits by her side for
+hours. I can give you no description of her beauty.
+
+“You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want you, for your
+presence will make me more charitable than I find it possible to be.
+Have you noticed the expression in the eyes of blind men? That is just
+how Richard looks, as he lies there silent in his bed—striving to image
+her on his brain.”
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
+be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
+United States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+
+START: FULL LICENSE
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
+person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
+1.E.8.
+
+1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
+Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
+on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+
+  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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.
+
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
+other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
+Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+provided that:
+
+* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
+  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+  Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
+  works.
+
+* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+  receipt of the work.
+
+* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
+www.gutenberg.org
+
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
+widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
+state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: www.gutenberg.org
+
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
diff --git a/4412-0.zip b/4412-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dd73f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4412-0.zip
diff --git a/4412-h.zip b/4412-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2aaadb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4412-h.zip
diff --git a/4412-h/4412-h.htm b/4412-h/4412-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a3dd01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/4412-h/4412-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,27609 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, by George Meredith</title>
+
+<style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+body { margin-left: 20%;
+       margin-right: 20%;
+       text-align: justify; }
+
+h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight:
+normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;}
+
+h1 {font-size: 300%;
+    margin-top: 0.6em;
+    margin-bottom: 0.6em;
+    letter-spacing: 0.12em;
+    word-spacing: 0.2em;
+    text-indent: 0em;}
+h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;}
+h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;}
+h4 {font-size: 120%;}
+h5 {font-size: 110%;}
+
+.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */
+
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;}
+
+hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+
+p {text-indent: 1em;
+   margin-top: 0.25em;
+   margin-bottom: 0.25em; }
+
+.p2 {margin-top: 2em;}
+
+p.poem {text-indent: 0%;
+        margin-left: 10%;
+        font-size: 90%;
+        margin-top: 1em;
+        margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.letter {text-indent: 0%;
+          margin-left: 10%;
+          margin-right: 10%;
+          margin-top: 1em;
+          margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+p.center  {text-align: center;
+           text-indent: 0em;
+           margin-top: 1em;
+           margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+p.right {text-align: right;
+         margin-right: 10%;
+         margin-top: 1em;
+         margin-bottom: 1em; }
+
+pre     { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none}
+a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none}
+a:hover {color:red}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, by George Meredith</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: George Meredith</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 28, 2001 [eBook #4412]<br />
+[Most recently updated: December 4, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Pat Castevans and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***</div>
+
+<h1>THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">By George Meredith</h2>
+
+<h3>1905</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I. THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II. THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III. THE MAGIAN CONFLICT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV. ARSON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V. ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI. JUVENILE STRATAGEMS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII. DAPHNE&rsquo;S BOWER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII. THE BITTER CUP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX. A FINE DISTINCTION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X. RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI. THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII. THE BLOSSOMING SEASON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII. THE MAGNETIC AGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV. AN ATTRACTION</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV. FERDINAND AND MIRANDA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI. UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII. GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII. THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX. A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX. CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI. RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII. INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII. CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV. OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV. IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI. RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII. CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII. PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX. IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE OF THE FIRST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX. CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI. THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII. PROCESSION OF THE CAKE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII. NURSING THE DEVIL</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV. CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV. CLARE&rsquo;S MARRIAGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI. A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII. MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII. AN ENCHANTRESS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX. THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE RESCUE!</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL. CLARE&rsquo;S DIARY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI. AUSTIN RETURNS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII. NATURE SPEAKS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII. AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV. THE LAST SCENE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV. LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>
+CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p>
+Some years ago a book was published under the title of &ldquo;The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip.&rdquo; It consisted of a selection of original aphorisms
+by an anonymous gentleman, who in this bashful manner gave a bruised heart to
+the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no pretension to novelty. &ldquo;Our new thoughts have thrilled dead
+bosoms,&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For an example of his ideas of the sex he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by so monstrous a scorn of
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds&rsquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The outline of the baronet&rsquo;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 little, though Sir Austin was ever expecting much of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In time he
+touched his guitar in her chamber, and they played Rizzio and Mary together.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;For I am not the first who found<br/>
+The name of Mary fatal!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+says a subsequent sentimental alliterative love-poem of Diaper&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s
+fair aspect for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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, &ldquo;Oh, sir!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s trophies of war decorated the little boy&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s first fight, which was with young Tom Blaize
+of Belthorpe Farm, three years the boy&rsquo;s senior.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin Wentworth&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a fault in early youth, redeemed by him nobly, according to his light, he
+was condemned to undergo the world&rsquo;s harsh judgment: not for the
+fault&mdash;for its atonement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;Married his mother&rsquo;s housemaid,&rdquo; whispered Mrs.
+Doria, with a ghastly look, and a shudder at young men of republican
+sentiments, which he was reputed to entertain. &ldquo;&lsquo;The compensation
+for Injustice,&rsquo; says the &lsquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip,&rsquo; is, that in
+that dark Ordeal we gather the worthiest around us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And the baronet&rsquo;s fair friend, Lady Blandish, and some few true men and
+women, held Austin Wentworth high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The principal characteristic of the second nephew, Adrian Harley, was his
+sagacity. He was essentially the wise youth, both in counsel and in action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In action,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip&rdquo; observes,
+&ldquo;Wisdom goes by majorities.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin&rsquo;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&rsquo;s college
+term, bequeathing him nothing but his legal complexion, and Adrian became
+stipendiary officer in his uncle&rsquo;s household.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A playfellow of Richard&rsquo;s occasionally, and the only comrade of his age
+that he ever saw, was Master Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir Austin&rsquo;s
+solicitor, a boy without a character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>
+CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p>
+October shone royally on Richard&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising on the lower grounds
+towards the river, whither the lads of Bursley and Lobourne, in boats and in
+carts, shouting for a day of ale and honour, jogged merrily to match themselves
+anew, and pluck at the living laurel from each other&rsquo;s brows, like manly
+Britons. The whole park was beginning to be astir and resound with holiday
+cries. Sir Austin Feverel, a thorough good Tory, was no game-preserver, and
+could be popular whenever he chose, which Sir 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s farm,
+and Ripton had fired badly, called his friend a fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Feeling that circumstances were making him look wonderfully like one, Ripton
+lifted his head and retorted defiantly, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This angry contradiction, so very uncalled for, annoyed Richard, who was still
+smarting at the loss of the birds, owing to Ripton&rsquo;s bad shot, and was
+really the injured party. He, therefore bestowed the abusive epithet on Ripton
+anew, and with increase of emphasis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shan&rsquo;t call me so, then, whether I am or not,&rdquo; says
+Ripton, and sucks his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do it, and see!&rdquo; returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and
+breathing quick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the obnoxious word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton&rsquo;s capital shortcoming, Ripton
+delivered a smart back-hander on Richard&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall we fight here?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anywhere you like,&rdquo; replied Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little more into the wood, I think. We may be interrupted.&rdquo; And
+Richard led the way with a courteous reserve that somewhat chilled
+Ripton&rsquo;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they halted to take breath, there was a mutual study of faces.
+Ripton&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; shouts the noble enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, look here,&rdquo; said Richard, appealing to common sense,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m tired of knocking you down. I&rsquo;ll say you&rsquo;re not a
+fool, if you&rsquo;ll give me your hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton demurred an instant to consult with honour, who bade him catch at his
+chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held out his hand. &ldquo;There!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had brought down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and was exulting over it,
+when the farmer&rsquo;s portentous figure burst upon them, cracking an avenging
+horsewhip. His salute was ironical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Havin&rsquo; good sport, gentlemen, are ye?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just bagged a splendid bird!&rdquo; radiant Richard informed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Farmer Blaize gave an admonitory flick of the whip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just let me clap eye on&rsquo;t, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say, please,&rdquo; interposed Ripton, who was not blind to doubtful
+aspects.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize threw up his chin, and grinned grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please to you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn&rsquo;t much
+mind what come t&rsquo;yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do.
+Tall ye what &rsquo;tis!&rdquo; He changed his banter to business, &ldquo;That
+bird&rsquo;s mine! Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young
+scoundrels! I know ye!&rdquo; And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and
+uttered contempt of the name of Feverel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard opened his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you wants to be horsewhipped, you&rsquo;ll stay where
+y&rsquo;are!&rdquo; continued the farmer. &ldquo;Giles Blaize never stands
+nonsense!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll stay,&rdquo; quoth Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good! so be&rsquo;t! If you will have&rsquo;t, have&rsquo;t, my
+men!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s your game,&rdquo; cried the farmer. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a
+taste of horsewhip for ye. I never stands nonsense!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take your beastly bird,&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Money, my lads, and interest,&rdquo; roared the farmer, lashing out
+again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to them. They
+decided to surrender the field.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look! you big brute,&rdquo; Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d have shot you, if I&rsquo;d been loaded. Mind if I come across
+you when I&rsquo;m loaded, you coward, I&rsquo;ll fire!&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;No! Gentlemen
+don&rsquo;t fling stones; leave that to the blackguards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just one shy at him!&rdquo; pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer
+Blaize&rsquo;s broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation
+of the advantages of light troops in opposition to heavies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Richard, imperatively, &ldquo;no stones,&rdquo; and
+marched briskly away. Ripton followed with a sigh. His leader&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots were raging
+in his comrade&rsquo;s brain, now sparkling for immediate execution, and anon
+lapsing disdainfully dark in their chances of fulfilment, &ldquo;how I wish
+you&rsquo;d have let me notch him, Ricky! I&rsquo;m a safe shot. I never miss.
+I should feel quite jolly if I&rsquo;d spanked him once. We should have had the
+beat of him at that game. I say!&rdquo; and a sharp thought drew Ripton&rsquo;s
+ideas nearer home, &ldquo;I wonder whether my nose is as bad as he says! Where
+can I see myself?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily forward, facing
+but one object.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where are you going to?&rdquo; he inquired with a voice of the last time
+of asking, and halted resolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard now broke his silence to reply, &ldquo;Anywhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anywhere!&rdquo; Ripton took up the moody word. &ldquo;But ain&rsquo;t
+you awfully hungry?&rdquo; he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total
+emptiness of his stomach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; was Richard&rsquo;s brief response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not hungry!&rdquo; Ripton&rsquo;s amazement lent him increased
+vehemence. &ldquo;Why, you haven&rsquo;t had anything to eat since breakfast!
+Not hungry? I declare I&rsquo;m starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry
+bread and cheese!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar
+demonstration of the philosopher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; cried Ripton, &ldquo;at all events, tell us where
+you&rsquo;re going to stop.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The injured and hapless visage
+that met his eye disarmed him. The lad&rsquo;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
+&ldquo;Here!&rdquo; dropped down on a withered bank, leaving Ripton to
+contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move was a worse perplexity.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>
+CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s friend, his company,
+his consolation, his comfort, his refuge at night, his first thought in the
+morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better than a wife!&rdquo; chuckled the tinker. &ldquo;No
+curtain-lecturin&rsquo; with a pipe. Your pipe an&rsquo;t a shrew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That be it!&rdquo; the other chimed in. &ldquo;Your pipe doan&rsquo;t
+mak&rsquo; ye out wi&rsquo; all the cash Saturday evenin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take one,&rdquo; said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the moment,
+handing a grimy short clay. Speed-the-Plough filled from the tinker&rsquo;s
+pouch, and continued his praises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Penny a day, and there y&rsquo;are, primed! Better than a wife? Ha,
+ha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants,&rdquo;
+added tinker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So ye can!&rdquo; Speed-the-Plough took him up. &ldquo;And ye
+doan&rsquo;t want for to. Leastways, t&rsquo;other case. I means pipe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, &ldquo;it
+don&rsquo;t bring repentance after it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not nohow, master, it doan&rsquo;t! And&rdquo;&mdash;Speed-the-Plough
+cocked his eye&mdash;&ldquo;it doan&rsquo;t eat up half the victuals, your pipe
+doan&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s pots, smoking, profoundly
+contemplative. The minutes seemed to be taken up alternately by the grey puffs
+from their mouths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, &ldquo;Times is
+bad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion assented, &ldquo;Sure-ly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it somehow comes round right,&rdquo; resumed the tinker. &ldquo;Why,
+look here. Where&rsquo;s the good o&rsquo; moping? I sees it all come round
+right and tight. Now I travels about. I&rsquo;ve got my beat. &rsquo;Casion
+calls me t&rsquo;other day to Newcastle!&mdash;Eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Coals!&rdquo; ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Coals!&rdquo; echoed the tinker. &ldquo;You ask what I goes there for,
+mayhap? Never you mind. One sees a mort o&rsquo; life in my trade. Not for
+coals it isn&rsquo;t. And I don&rsquo;t carry &rsquo;em there, neither. Anyhow,
+I comes back. London&rsquo;s my mark. Says I, I&rsquo;ll see a bit o&rsquo; the
+sea, and steps aboard a collier. We were as nigh wrecked as the prophet
+Paul.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;A&mdash;who&rsquo;s him?&rdquo; the other wished to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Read your Bible,&rdquo; said the tinker. &ldquo;We pitched and
+tossed&mdash;&rsquo;tain&rsquo;t that game at sea &rsquo;tis on land, I can
+tell ye! I thinks, down we&rsquo;re a-going&mdash;say your prayers, Bob Tiles!
+That was a night, to be sure! But God&rsquo;s above the devil, and here I am,
+ye see.&rdquo; Speed-the-Plough lurched round on his elbow and regarded him
+indifferently. &ldquo;D&rsquo;ye call that doctrin&rsquo;? He bean&rsquo;t
+al&rsquo;ays, or I shoo&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be scrapin&rsquo; my heels wi&rsquo;
+nothin&rsquo; to do, and, what&rsquo;s warse, nothin&rsquo; to eat. Why, look
+heer. Luck&rsquo;s luck, and bad luck&rsquo;s the con-trary. Varmer Bollop,
+t&rsquo;other day, has&rsquo;s rick burnt down. Next night his
+gran&rsquo;ry&rsquo;s burnt. What do he tak&rsquo; and go and do? He takes and
+goes and hangs unsel&rsquo;, and turns us out of his employ. God warn&rsquo;t
+above the devil then, I thinks, or I can&rsquo;t make out the
+reckonin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a darn&rsquo;d bad case. I&rsquo;ll tak&rsquo; my oath
+on&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Speed-the-Plough. &ldquo;Well, look heer! Heer&rsquo;s
+another darn&rsquo;d bad case. I threshed for Varmer Blaize Blaize o&rsquo;
+Beltharpe afore I goes to Varmer Bollop. Varmer Blaize misses pilkins. He
+swears our chaps steals pilkins. &rsquo;Twarn&rsquo;t me steals &rsquo;em. What
+do he tak&rsquo; 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&rsquo;t above
+the devil then, I thinks. Not nohow, as I can see!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tinker shook his head, and said that was a bad case also.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can&rsquo;t mend it,&rdquo; added Speed-the-Plough.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s bad, and there it be. But I&rsquo;ll tell ye what, master.
+Bad wants payin&rsquo; for.&rdquo; He nodded and winked mysteriously.
+&ldquo;Bad has its wages as well&rsquo;s honest work, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;.
+Varmer Bollop I don&rsquo;t owe no grudge to: Varmer Blaize I do. And I shud
+like to stick a Lucifer in his rick some dry windy night.&rdquo;
+Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye villainously. &ldquo;He wants hittin&rsquo;
+in the wind,&mdash;jest where the pocket is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and
+he&rsquo;ll cry out &lsquo;O Lor&rsquo;!&rsquo; Varmer Blaize will. You
+won&rsquo;t get the better o&rsquo; Varmer Blaize by no means, as I makes out,
+if ye doan&rsquo;t hit into him jest there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from his mouth, and said
+that would be taking the devil&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with him. The hope of Raynham
+had lent a careless half-compelled attention to the foregoing dialogue, wherein
+a common labourer and a travelling tinker had propounded and discussed one of
+the most ancient theories of transmundane dominion and influence on mundane
+affairs. He now started to his feet, and came tearing through the briar hedge,
+calling out for one of them to direct them the nearest road to Bursley. The
+tinker was kindling preparations for his tea, under the tawny umbrella. A loaf
+was set forth, on which Ripton&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow,&rdquo;
+said Richard to the tinker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bargain;&rdquo; quoth the tinker, &ldquo;eh, missus?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake,&rdquo; said the tinker
+to his companion. &ldquo;Come! we&rsquo;ll to Bursley after &rsquo;em, and talk
+it out over a pot o&rsquo; beer.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>
+CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s death compelled to take his father&rsquo;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&rsquo;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 hospitably cheerful, and requested them to dance. If he had desired them to
+laugh he would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a manner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How triste!&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne&rsquo;s curate, as
+that most enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with
+professional stiffness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One who does not suffer can hardly assent,&rdquo; the curate answered,
+basking in her beams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, you are good!&rdquo; exclaimed the lady. &ldquo;Look at my Clare.
+She will not dance on her cousin&rsquo;s birthday with anyone but him. What are
+we to do to enliven these people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas, madam! you cannot do for all what you do for one,&rdquo; the
+curate sighed, and wherever she wandered in discourse, drew her back with
+silken strings to gaze on his enamoured soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
+voice below in the hall, shouting for supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Master Richard has returned,&rdquo; old Benson the butler tolled out
+intelligence to Sir Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He complains of being hungry,&rdquo; the butler hesitated, with a look
+of solemn disgust.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him eat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that the boy had called for
+wine. It was an unprecedented thing. Sir Austin&rsquo;s brows were portending
+an arch, but Adrian suggested that he wanted possibly to drink his birthday,
+and claret was conceded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s scrutinizing glance.
+Adrian saw there was matter for study, if it were only on Master Ripton&rsquo;s
+betraying nose, and sat down to hear and mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?&rdquo; he began his quiet
+banter, and provoked a loud peal of laughter from Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha, ha! I say, Rip: &lsquo;Havin&rsquo; good sport, gentlemen, are
+ye?&rsquo; You remember the farmer! Your health, parson! We haven&rsquo;t had
+our sport yet. We&rsquo;re going to have some first-rate sport. Oh, well! we
+haven&rsquo;t much show of birds. We shot for pleasure, and returned them to
+the proprietors. You&rsquo;re fond of game, parson! Ripton is a dead shot in
+what Cousin Austin calls the Kingdom of &lsquo;would-have-done&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;might-have-been.&rsquo; Up went the birds, and cries Rip,
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;ve forgotten to load!&rsquo; Oh, ho!&mdash;Rip! some more
+claret.&mdash;Do just leave that nose of yours alone.&mdash;Your health, Ripton
+Thompson! The birds hadn&rsquo;t the decency to wait for him, and so, parson,
+it&rsquo;s their fault, and not Rip&rsquo;s, you haven&rsquo;t a dozen brace at
+your feet. What have you been doing at home, Cousin Rady?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark. The day without
+you, my dear boy, must be dull, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;&lsquo;He speaks: can I trust what he says is sincere?<br/>
+There&rsquo;s an edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+&ldquo;Sandoe&rsquo;s poems! You know the couplet, Mr. Rady. Why
+shouldn&rsquo;t I quote Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady. But, if
+you&rsquo;ve missed me, I&rsquo;m sorry. Rip and I have had a beautiful day.
+We&rsquo;ve made new acquaintances. We&rsquo;ve seen the world. I&rsquo;m the
+monkey that has seen the world, and I&rsquo;m going to tell you all about it.
+First, there&rsquo;s a gentleman who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next,
+there&rsquo;s a farmer who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his
+premises. Next, there&rsquo;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&rsquo;s for God, and the ploughman&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll drink your health, Ricky,&rdquo; said Adrian, interrupting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I forgot, parson;&mdash;I mean no harm, Adrian. I&rsquo;m only
+telling what I&rsquo;ve heard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No harm, my dear boy,&rdquo; returned Adrian. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m perfectly
+aware that Zoroaster is not dead. You have been listening to a common creed.
+Drink the Fire-worshippers, if you will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to Zoroaster, then!&rdquo; cried Richard. &ldquo;I say,
+Rippy! we&rsquo;ll drink the Fire-worshippers to-night won&rsquo;t we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fearful conspiratorial frown, that would not have disgraced Guido Fawkes, was
+darted back from the plastic features of Master Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard gave his lungs loud play.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, what did you say about Blaizes, Rippy? Didn&rsquo;t you say it was
+fun?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another hideous and silencing frown was Ripton&rsquo;s answer. Adrian matched
+the innocent youths, and knew that there was talking under the table.
+&ldquo;See,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;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,&rdquo; he apostrophized Sir
+Austin, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;&mdash;a prophecy Adrian
+kept to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look here, uncle!&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;Would you let a churlish
+old brute of a farmer strike you without making him suffer for it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancy I should return the compliment, my lad,&rdquo; replied his
+uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you would! So would I. And he shall suffer for it.&rdquo; The
+boy looked savage, and his uncle patted him down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve boxed his son; I&rsquo;ll box him,&rdquo; said Richard,
+shouting for more wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What, boy! Is it old Blaize has been putting you up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind, uncle!&rdquo; The boy nodded mysteriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&lsquo;Look there!&rsquo; Adrian read on Ripton&rsquo;s face, he says
+&lsquo;never mind,&rsquo; and lets it out!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did we beat to-day, uncle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, boy; and we&rsquo;d beat them any day they bowl fair. I&rsquo;d
+beat them on one leg. There&rsquo;s only Watkins and Featherdene among them
+worth a farthing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We beat!&rdquo; cries Richard. &ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll have some more
+wine, and drink their healths.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bottle, however, was procured by Adrian subsequently. He liked studying
+intoxicated urchins.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One subject was at Richard&rsquo;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&rsquo;s face fell at that,
+and his gaiety forsook him. He marched to his room without another word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian gave Sir Austin an able version of his son&rsquo;s behaviour and
+adventures; dwelling upon this sudden taciturnity when he heard of his
+father&rsquo;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&rsquo;s fortune, and so perform her
+chief business on earth. By her door he murmured, &ldquo;Good creature! you
+sleep with a sense of duty done,&rdquo; and paced on, reflecting, &ldquo;She
+has not made money a demon of discord,&rdquo; and blessed her. He had his
+thoughts at Hippias&rsquo;s somnolent door, and to them the world might have
+subscribed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks Adrian
+Harley, as he hears Sir Austin&rsquo;s footfall, and truly that was a strange
+object to see.&mdash;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&rsquo;s son? Favourable
+circumstances&mdash;good air, good company, two or three good rules rigidly
+adhered to&mdash;keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a
+passion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode for it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s chamber. At
+the same moment a door closed hastily. He entered Richard&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable stars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How jolly I feel!&rdquo; exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret; and then,
+after a luxurious pause&mdash;&ldquo;I think that fellow has pocketed his
+guinea, and cut his lucky.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he has, I&rsquo;ll go; and I&rsquo;ll do it myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would?&rdquo; returned Master Ripton. &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m
+hanged!&mdash;I say, if you went to school, wouldn&rsquo;t you get into rows!
+Perhaps he hasn&rsquo;t found the place where the box was stuck in. I think he
+funks it. I almost wish you hadn&rsquo;t done it, upon my honour&mdash;eh? Look
+there! what was that? That looked like something.&mdash;I say! do you think we
+shall ever be found out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation verb seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think about it,&rdquo; said Richard, all his faculties
+bent on signs from Lobourne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, but,&rdquo; Ripton persisted, &ldquo;suppose we are found
+out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we are, I must pay for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was the fellow&rsquo;s name?&rdquo; inquired Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion answered, &ldquo;Tom Bakewell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you what,&rdquo; continued Ripton. &ldquo;You let it all
+clean out to your cousin and uncle at supper.&mdash;How capital claret is with
+partridge-pie! What a lot I ate!&mdash;Didn&rsquo;t you see me frown?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young sensualist was in an ecstasy of gratitude to his late refection, and
+the slightest word recalled him to it. Richard answered him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; and felt your kick. It doesn&rsquo;t matter. Rady&rsquo;s safe, and
+uncle never blabs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my plan is to keep it close. You&rsquo;re never safe if you
+don&rsquo;t.&mdash;I never drank much claret before,&rdquo; Ripton was off
+again. &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t I now, though! claret&rsquo;s my wine. You know, it
+may come out any day, and then we&rsquo;re done for,&rdquo; he rather
+incongruously appended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard only took up the business-thread of his friend&rsquo;s rambling
+chatter, and answered:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got nothing to do with it, if we are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t I, though! I didn&rsquo;t stick-in the box but I&rsquo;m
+an accomplice, that&rsquo;s clear. Besides,&rdquo; added Ripton, &ldquo;do you
+think I should leave you to bear it all on your shoulders? I ain&rsquo;t that
+sort of chap, Ricky, I can tell you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sensation of infinite melancholy overcame the poor gentleman&mdash;a thought
+that he was fighting with a fate in this beloved boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s old system prevailed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian characterized this system well, in saying that Sir Austin wished to be
+Providence to his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;must take its shape, sometimes
+intensify its narrowness&mdash;can spiritualize, but not expel, the old
+lifelong lodgers above-stairs and below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin decided to continue quiescent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s done it!&rdquo; cried Richard, in great heat. &ldquo;Now you
+may say old Blaize&rsquo;ll soon be old Blazes, Rip. I hope he&rsquo;s
+asleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s snoring!&mdash;Look there! He&rsquo;s alight
+fast enough. He&rsquo;s dry. He&rsquo;ll burn.&mdash;I say,&rdquo; Ripton
+re-assumed the serious intonation, &ldquo;do you think they&rsquo;ll ever
+suspect us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What if they do? We must brunt it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course we will. But, I say! I wish you hadn&rsquo;t given them the
+scent, though. I like to look innocent. I can&rsquo;t when I know people
+suspect me. Lord! look there! Isn&rsquo;t it just beginning to flare up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer&rsquo;s grounds were indeed gradually standing out in sombre
+shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fetch my telescope,&rdquo; said Richard. Ripton, somehow not
+liking to be left alone, caught hold of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; don&rsquo;t go and lose the best of it. Here, I&rsquo;ll throw open
+the window, and we can see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; shouted Richard, overcome by excitement, &ldquo;if I had my
+telescope! We must have it! Let me go and fetch it! I Will!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>
+CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s malicious advice,
+framed a formal report of the catastrophe, in which the farmer&rsquo;s breeches
+figured, and certain cooling applications to a part of the farmer&rsquo;s
+person. Sir Austin perused it without a smile. He took occasion to have it read
+out before the two boys, who listened very demurely, as to an ordinary
+newspaper incident; only when the report particularized the garments damaged,
+and the unwonted distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his bed,
+an indecorous fit of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton Thompson, and Richard
+bit his lip and burst into loud laughter, Ripton joining him, lost to
+consequences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I trust you feel for this poor man,&rdquo; said Sir Austin to his son,
+somewhat sternly. He saw no sign of feeling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s possession of his son&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The youngster&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know the grounds, my dear boy,&rdquo; Adrian observed to him.
+&ldquo;Tell me; do you think it easy to get to the rick unperceived? I hear
+they suspect one of the farmer&rsquo;s turned-off hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you I don&rsquo;t know the grounds,&rdquo; Richard sullenly
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not?&rdquo; Adrian counterfeited courteous astonishment. &ldquo;I
+thought Mr. Thompson said you were over there yesterday?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton, glad to speak the truth, hurriedly assured Adrian that it was not he
+had said so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not? You had good sport, gentlemen, hadn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; mumbled the wretched victims, reddening as they
+remembered, in Adrian&rsquo;s slightly drawled rusticity of tone, Farmer
+Blaize&rsquo;s first address to them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you were among the Fire-worshippers last night, too?&rdquo;
+persisted Adrian. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t a rip here and
+there to treat us to a little conflagration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A rip!&rdquo; laughed Richard, to his friend&rsquo;s disgust and alarm
+at his daring. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t mean this Rip, do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Thompson fire a rick? I should as soon suspect you, my dear
+boy.&mdash;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,&rdquo; Adrian continued, as if diverging to another topic,
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More likely two tinkers,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! if you wish to exclude the ploughman&mdash;was he out of
+employ?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton, with Adrian&rsquo;s eyes inveterately fixed on him, stammered an
+affirmative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The tinker, or the ploughman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ploughm&mdash;&rdquo; Ingenuous Ripton looking about, as if to aid
+himself whenever he was able to speak the truth, beheld Richard&rsquo;s face
+blackening at him, and swallowed back half the word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ploughman!&rdquo; Adrian took him up cheerily. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it transportation for rick-burning?&rdquo; inquired Ripton aghast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian spoke solemnly: &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How should I know his name?&rdquo; said Richard, with an assumption of
+innocence painful to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s whip had reduced them to bodily
+contortions; these were decorous compared with the spiritual writhings they had
+to perform under Adrian&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>
+CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p>
+As soon as they could escape, the boys got together into an obscure corner of
+the park, and there took counsel of their extremity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whatever shall we do now?&rdquo; asked Ripton of his leader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s only one chance,&rdquo; said Richard, coming to a dead
+halt, and folding his arms resolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His comrade inquired with the utmost eagerness what that chance might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard fixed his eyes on a flint, and replied: &ldquo;We must rescue that
+fellow from jail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton gazed at his leader, and fell back with astonishment. &ldquo;My dear
+Ricky! but how are we to do it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard, still perusing his flint, replied: &ldquo;We must manage to get a file
+in to him and a rope. It can be done, I tell you. I don&rsquo;t care what I
+pay. I don&rsquo;t care what I do. He must be got out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bother that old Blaize!&rdquo; exclaimed Ripton, taking off his cap to
+wipe his frenzied forehead, and brought down his friend&rsquo;s reproof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind old Blaize now. Talk about letting it out! Look at you.
+I&rsquo;m ashamed of you. You talk about Robin Hood and King Richard! Why, you
+haven&rsquo;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?&mdash;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&rsquo;s way as much as you can. And keep to one
+story.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Lobourne Austin Wentworth had the reputation of the poor man&rsquo;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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;And though it&rsquo;s a gentleman that&rsquo;s
+coming to you, Tom&mdash;for he never refuses a poor body,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Bakewell, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a true Christian, Tom! and the Lord knows if the
+sight of him mayn&rsquo;t be the saving of you, for he&rsquo;s light to look
+on, and a sermon to listen to, he is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take and tell young master up at the Abbey that I an&rsquo;t the chap to
+peach. He&rsquo;ll know. He&rsquo;s a young gentleman as&rsquo;ll make any man
+do as he wants &rsquo;em! He&rsquo;s a mortal wild young gentleman! And
+I&rsquo;m a Ass! That&rsquo;s where &rsquo;tis. But I an&rsquo;t a blackguard.
+Tell him that, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Tom Bakewell told me to let you know he
+does not intend to peach on you,&rdquo; and left him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard repeated the intelligence to Ripton, who cried aloud that Tom was a
+brick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He shan&rsquo;t suffer for it,&rdquo; said Richard, and pondered on a
+thicker rope and sharper file.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But will your cousin tell?&rdquo; was Ripton&rsquo;s reflection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He!&rdquo; Richard&rsquo;s lip expressed contempt. &ldquo;A ploughman
+refuses to peach, and you ask if one of our family will?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton stood for the twentieth time reproved on this point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boys had examined the outer walls of the jail, and arrived at the
+conclusion that Tom&rsquo;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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try your cousin,&rdquo; Ripton suggested, after much debate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard, smiling, wished to know if he meant Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; Ripton hurriedly reassured him. &ldquo;Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same idea was knocking at Richard&rsquo;s head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s get the rope and file first,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Ricky,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;there are two ways of getting out
+of a scrape: a long way and a short way. When you&rsquo;ve tried the roundabout
+method, and failed, come to me, and I&rsquo;ll show you the straight
+route.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard was too entirely bent upon the roundabout method to consider this
+advice more than empty words, and only ground his teeth at Austin&rsquo;s
+unkind refusal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He imparted to Ripton, at the eleventh hour, that they must do it themselves,
+to which Ripton heavily assented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the day preceding poor Tom&rsquo;s doomed appearance before the magistrate,
+Dame Bakewell had an interview with Austin, who went to Raynham immediately,
+and sought Adrian&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boys are like monkeys,&rdquo; remarked Adrian, at the close of his
+explosions, &ldquo;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&rsquo;t
+simulate the ape. Your antics are dull. They haven&rsquo;t the charming
+inconsequence of the natural animal. Look at these two! Think of the shifts
+they are put to all day long! They know I know all about it, and yet their
+serenity of innocence is all but unruffled in my presence. You&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sinks deepest,&rdquo; said Austin, &ldquo;but whether he learns good or
+evil from it is the question at stake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian stretched his length at ease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time&rsquo;s fruit,
+hateful to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment!
+Experience! You know Coleridge&rsquo;s capital simile?&mdash;Mournful you call
+it? Well! all wisdom is mournful. &rsquo;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&rsquo;s dark at home. The
+stage is the pastime of great minds. That&rsquo;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&mdash;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!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;An Age of petty tit for tat,<br/>
+    An Age of busy gabble:<br/>
+An Age that&rsquo;s like a brewer&rsquo;s vat,<br/>
+    Fermenting for the rabble!<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;An Age that&rsquo;s chaste in Love, but lax<br/>
+    To virtuous abuses:<br/>
+Whose gentlemen and ladies wax<br/>
+    Too dainty for their uses.<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;An Age that drives an Iron Horse,<br/>
+    Of Time and Space defiant;<br/>
+Exulting in a Giant&rsquo;s Force,<br/>
+    And trembling at the Giant.<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;An Age of Quaker hue and cut,<br/>
+    By Mammon misbegotten;<br/>
+See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!<br/>
+    And mark the Kings of Cotton!<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;From this unrest, lo, early wreck&rsquo;d,<br/>
+    A Future staggers crazy,<br/>
+Ophelia of the Ages, deck&rsquo;d<br/>
+    With woeful weed and daisy!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Murmuring, &ldquo;Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!&rdquo; Adrian
+changed the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The Age was an old battle-field
+between him and Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it,&rdquo; said
+Austin, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t see Sandoe&rsquo;s depth,&rdquo; Adrian replied.
+&ldquo;Consider that phrase, &lsquo;Ophelia of the Ages&rsquo;! Is not
+Brawnley, like a dozen other leading spirits&mdash;I think that&rsquo;s your
+term&mdash;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin laughed. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, those boys!&rdquo; Adrian tossed a hand. &ldquo;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&rsquo;ve been studying Latude&rsquo;s
+Escape. I found the book open in Ricky&rsquo;s room, on the top of Jonathan
+Wild. Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and taught them
+nothing. So they&rsquo;re going to make a Latude of Mr. Tom Bakewell.
+He&rsquo;s to be Bastille Bakewell, whether he will or no. Let them. Let the
+wild colt run free! We can&rsquo;t help them. We can only look on. We should
+spoil the play.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast Impatience with
+pleasantries&mdash;a not congenial diet; and Austin, the most patient of human
+beings, began to lose his self-control.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have but a few hours
+left us. Work first, and joke afterwards. The boy&rsquo;s fate is being decided
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So is everybody&rsquo;s, my dear Austin!&rdquo; yawned the epicurean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship&mdash;under yours
+especially.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet! not yet!&rdquo; Adrian interjected languidly. &ldquo;No getting
+into scrapes when I have him. The leash, young hound! the collar, young colt!
+I&rsquo;m perfectly irresponsible at present.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may have something different to deal with when you are responsible,
+if you think that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you leave me to act alone?&rdquo; said Austin, rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Without a single curb!&rdquo; Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced
+withdrawal. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you would not, still more certain you cannot,
+do harm. And be mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever&rsquo;s done, old
+Blaize will have to be bought off. There&rsquo;s the affair settled at once. I
+suppose I must go to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can&rsquo;t
+see this poor devil condemned, though it&rsquo;s nonsense to talk of a boy
+being the prime instigator.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s two ears were stuffed with his own
+wisdom. One evil only Adrian dreaded, it was clear&mdash;the action of the law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he was moving away, Adrian called out to him, &ldquo;Stop, Austin! There!
+don&rsquo;t be anxious! You invariably take the glum side. I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t say a word&mdash;in thine ear, coz: I&rsquo;ve
+turned Master Blaize&rsquo;s elephants. If they charge, &rsquo;twill be a
+feint, and back to the destruction of his serried ranks! You understand. Not?
+Well, &rsquo;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.&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>
+CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s your friend?&rdquo; Austin began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s box to be packed and ready before noon; and Ripton&rsquo;s
+alacrity in taking the baronet&rsquo;s view of filial duty was as little
+feigned as his offer to Richard to throw filial duty to the winds. He rejoiced
+that the Fates had agreed to remove him from the very hot neighbourhood of
+Lobourne, while he grieved, like an honest lad, to see his comrade left to face
+calamity alone. The boys parted amicably, as they could hardly fail to do, when
+Ripton had sworn fealty to the Feverels with a warmth that made him declare
+himself bond, and due to appear at any stated hour and at any stated place to
+fight all the farmers in England, on a mandate from the heir of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you&rsquo;re left alone,&rdquo; said Austin, contemplating the
+boy&rsquo;s shapely head. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m glad of it. We never know
+what&rsquo;s in us till we stand by ourselves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity, however, replied at last,
+&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t much support.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Remember his good points now he&rsquo;s gone, Ricky.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! he was staunch,&rdquo; the boy grumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried your
+own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have done everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And failed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tom Bakewell&rsquo;s a coward!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose, poor fellow,&rdquo; said Austin, in his kind way, &ldquo;he
+doesn&rsquo;t want to get into a deeper mess. I don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s a
+coward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is a coward,&rdquo; cried Richard. &ldquo;Do you think if I had a
+file I would stay in prison? I&rsquo;d be out the first night! And he might
+have had the rope, too&mdash;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&rsquo;t give way. He&rsquo;s a coward, and deserves his fate. I&rsquo;ve
+no compassion for a coward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor I much,&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s clear eyes
+while he faced them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never met a coward myself,&rdquo; Austin continued. &ldquo;I have
+heard of one or two. One let an innocent man die for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How base!&rdquo; exclaimed the boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, it was bad,&rdquo; Austin acquiesced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bad!&rdquo; Richard scorned the poor contempt. &ldquo;How I would have
+spurned him! He was a coward!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a coward!&rdquo; shouted Richard. &ldquo;And he confessed it
+publicly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may read it yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He actually wrote it down, and printed it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have the book in your father&rsquo;s library. Would you have done so
+much?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then who is to call that man a coward?&rdquo; said Austin. &ldquo;He
+expiated his cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not
+cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think &lsquo;God does not see. I shall
+escape.&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Richard&rsquo;s eyes were wandering on Austin&rsquo;s gravely cheerful
+face. A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I think you&rsquo;re wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward
+because he refuses to try your means of escape,&rdquo; Austin resumed. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s nature, left to itself, wanted
+little more than an indication of the proper track, and when he said,
+&ldquo;Tell me what I can do, Austin?&rdquo; he had fought the best half of the
+battle. His voice was subdued. Austin put his hand on the boy&rsquo;s shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must go down to Farmer Blaize.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll know what to say to him when you&rsquo;re there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy bit his lip and frowned. &ldquo;Ask a favour of that big brute, Austin?
+I can&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just tell him the whole case, and that you don&rsquo;t intend to stand
+by and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of his
+scrape.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Austin,&rdquo; the boy pleaded, &ldquo;I shall have to ask him to
+help off Tom Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I hate him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences till he got there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard groaned in soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve no pride, Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what it is to ask a favour of a brute you
+hate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; continued the boy, &ldquo;I shall hardly be able to keep my
+fists off him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely you&rsquo;ve punished him enough, boy?&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He struck me!&rdquo; Richard&rsquo;s lip quivered. &ldquo;He dared not
+come at me with his hands. He struck me with a whip. He&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his grounds. He turned
+you off, and you fired his rick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll pay him for his loss. And I won&rsquo;t do any
+more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you won&rsquo;t ask a favour of him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No! I will not ask a favour of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin looked at the boy steadily. &ldquo;You prefer to receive a favour from
+poor Tom Bakewell?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Austin&rsquo;s enunciation of this obverse view of the matter Richard raised
+his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon him. &ldquo;Favour from Tom Bakewell,
+the ploughman? How do you mean, Austin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country lad to sacrifice
+himself for you? I confess I should not have so much pride.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pride!&rdquo; shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his sight
+hard at the blue ridges of the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew a picture of Tom in
+prison, and repeated Tom&rsquo;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured
+pride&mdash;pride that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of gaping
+Tom, and cry to Richard, in the very tone of Adrian&rsquo;s ironic voice,
+&ldquo;Behold your benefactor!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he had stirred. Little of
+it was perceptible in Richard&rsquo;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, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go at once to
+old Blaize and tell him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of Daphne&rsquo;s Bower,
+in the direction of Lobourne.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>
+CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard Feverel as that
+young gentleman expected him to be. The farmer, seated in his easy-chair in the
+little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned farm-house, with a long clay pipe
+on the table at his elbow, and a veteran pointer at his feet, had already given
+audience to three distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come
+separately, according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object.
+In the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly after his departure, arrived
+Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about Lobourne as the
+Captain, popular wherever he was known. Farmer Blaize reclined in considerable
+elation. He had brought these great people to a pretty low pitch. He had
+welcomed them hospitably, as a British yeoman should; but not budged a foot in
+his demands: not to the baronet: not to the Captain: not to good young Mr.
+Wentworth. For Farmer Blaize was a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the
+baronet a frank confession of the hold he had on the family, he determined to
+tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for tangible
+advantages&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come to you direct,&rdquo; the baronet explained. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hum!&rdquo; said the farmer. &ldquo;I think I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know the cause?&rdquo; Sir Austin stared. &ldquo;I beg you to
+confide it to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Least, I can pretty nigh neighbour it with a guess,&rdquo; said
+the farmer. &ldquo;We an&rsquo;t good friends, Sir Austin, me and your son,
+just now&mdash;not to say cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I&rsquo;m a man as
+don&rsquo;t like young gentlemen a-poachin&rsquo; on his grounds without his
+permission,&mdash;in special when birds is plentiful on their own. It appear he
+do like it. Consequently I has to flick this whip&mdash;as them fellers at the
+races: All in this &rsquo;ere Ring&rsquo;s mine! as much as to say; and
+who&rsquo;s been hit, he&rsquo;s had fair warnin&rsquo;. I&rsquo;m sorry
+for&rsquo;t, but that&rsquo;s just the case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he should find him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Algernon&rsquo;s interview passed off in ale and promises. He also assured
+Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected by his proviso.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Money&rsquo;s safe, I know,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;now for the
+&rsquo;pology!&rdquo; and Farmer Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his
+head further back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate visits had been
+conspired together. Still the baronet&rsquo;s frankness, and the
+baronet&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s arm-chair to steal a look at the handsome new-comer. She
+was introduced to Richard as the farmer&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer&rsquo;s eyes twinkled. &ldquo;Her father,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;fought and fell for his coontry. A man as fights for&rsquo;s
+coontry&rsquo;s a right to hould up his head&mdash;ay! with any in the land.
+Desb&rsquo;roughs o&rsquo; Dorset! d&rsquo;ye know that family, Master
+Feverel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard did not know them, and, by his air, did not desire to become acquainted
+with any offshoot of that family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She can make puddens and pies,&rdquo; the farmer went on, regardless of
+his auditor&rsquo;s gloom. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s a lady, as good as the best of
+&rsquo;em. I don&rsquo;t care about their being Catholics&mdash;the
+Desb&rsquo;roughs o&rsquo; Dorset are gentlemen. And she&rsquo;s good for the
+pianer, too! She strums to me of evenin&rsquo;s. I&rsquo;m for the old tunes:
+she&rsquo;s for the new. Gal-like! While she&rsquo;s with me she shall be
+taught things use&rsquo;l. She can parley-voo a good &rsquo;un and foot it, as
+it goes; been in France a couple of year. I prefer the singin&rsquo; of
+&rsquo;t to the talkin&rsquo; of &rsquo;t. Come, Luce! toon
+up&mdash;eh?&mdash;Ye wun&rsquo;t? That song abort the Viffendeer&mdash;a
+female&rdquo;&mdash;Farmer Blaize volunteered the translation of the
+title&mdash;&ldquo;who wears the&mdash;you guess what! and marches along with
+the French sojers: a pretty brazen bit o&rsquo; goods, I sh&rsquo;d
+fancy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mademoiselle Lucy corrected her uncle&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; laughed the farmer, dismissing her, &ldquo;they soon learn
+the difference &rsquo;twixt the young &rsquo;un and the old &rsquo;un. Go
+along, Luce! and learn yer lessons for to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reluctantly the daughter of the Royal Navy glided away. Her uncle&rsquo;s head
+followed her to the door, where she dallied to catch a last impression of the
+young stranger&rsquo;s lowering face, and darted through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. &ldquo;She an&rsquo;t so fond of her uncle
+as that, every day! Not that she an&rsquo;t a good nurse&mdash;the kindest
+little soul you&rsquo;d meet of a winter&rsquo;s walk! She&rsquo;ll read
+t&rsquo; ye, and make drinks, and sing, too, if ye likes it, and she
+won&rsquo;t be tired. A obstinate good &rsquo;un, she be! Bless her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s
+intention had been to come to the farmer&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire to
+your rick the other night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An odd consternation formed about the farmer&rsquo;s mouth. He changed his
+posture, and said, &ldquo;Ay? that&rsquo;s what ye&rsquo;re come to tell me
+sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; said Richard, firmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that be all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; Richard reiterated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer again changed his posture. &ldquo;Then, my lad, ye&rsquo;ve come to
+tell me a lie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush of ire
+he had kindled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You dare to call me a liar!&rdquo; cried Richard, starting up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say,&rdquo; the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his
+thigh thereto, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s a lie!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard held out his clenched fist. &ldquo;You have twice insulted me. You have
+struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have apologized&mdash;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&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite proper!&rdquo; interposed the farmer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You&rsquo;re a
+coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own
+house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master,&rdquo; said the farmer,
+indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. &ldquo;Sit ye
+down. Don&rsquo;t ye be hasty. If ye hadn&rsquo;t been hasty t&rsquo;other day,
+we sh&rsquo;d a been friends yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh&rsquo;d be sorry to
+reckon you out a liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o&rsquo; your name. I respects
+yer father though we&rsquo;re opp&rsquo;site politics. I&rsquo;m willin&rsquo;
+to think well o&rsquo; you. What I say is, that as you say an&rsquo;t the
+trewth. Mind! I don&rsquo;t like you none the worse for&rsquo;t. But it
+an&rsquo;t what is. That&rsquo;s all! You knows it as well&rsquo;s I!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; continued the farmer, not unkindly, &ldquo;what else have
+you to say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at
+Richard&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy blinked and tossed it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for your
+striking me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And now ye&rsquo;ve done, young gentleman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still another cupful!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be very much obliged,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Very much
+obliged,&rdquo; he repeated: &ldquo;much obliged, if you would be so
+kind,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;So kind,&rdquo; he stammered, &ldquo;so kind&rdquo;
+(fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so kind!) &ldquo;as to do me the
+favour&rdquo; (me the favour!) &ldquo;to exert yourself&rdquo; (it&rsquo;s all
+to please Austin) &ldquo;to endeavour to&mdash;hem! to&rdquo; (there&rsquo;s no
+saying it!)&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I came to ask is, whether you would have the kindness to try what
+you could do&rdquo; (what an infamous shame to have to beg like this!)
+&ldquo;do to save&mdash;do to ensure&mdash;whether you would have the
+kindness&rdquo; It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The draught
+grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one&rsquo;s iniquity, to apologize
+for one&rsquo;s wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the
+offended party&mdash;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&rsquo;s prison, crying a second time,
+&ldquo;Behold your Benefactor!&rdquo; and, with the words burning in his ears,
+Richard swallowed the dose:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t
+mind&mdash;will you help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request.
+&ldquo;Hum! ha! we&rsquo;ll see about it t&rsquo;morrow. But if he&rsquo;s
+innocent, you know, we shan&rsquo;t mak&rsquo;n guilty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was I did it!&rdquo; Richard declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer&rsquo;s half-amused expression sharpened a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So, young gentleman! and you&rsquo;re sorry for the night&rsquo;s
+work?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your losses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank&rsquo;ee,&rdquo; said the farmer drily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don&rsquo;t care what the
+amount is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. &ldquo;Bribery,&rdquo; one
+motion expressed: &ldquo;Corruption,&rdquo; the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on his
+knees, while he counted the case at his fingers&rsquo; ends, &ldquo;excuse the
+liberty, but wishin&rsquo; to know where this &rsquo;ere money&rsquo;s to come
+from, I sh&rsquo;d like jest t&rsquo;ask if so be Sir Austin know o&rsquo;
+this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father knows nothing of it,&rdquo; replied Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer flung back in his chair. &ldquo;Lie number Two,&rdquo; said his
+shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being plotted at, and not dealt
+with openly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And ye&rsquo;ve the money ready, young gentleman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall ask my father for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he&rsquo;ll hand&rsquo;t out?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly he will!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting his father into his
+counsels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A good three hundred pounds, ye know?&rdquo; the farmer suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of the sum, affected
+young Richard, who said boldly, &ldquo;He will not object when I tell him I
+want that sum.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was natural Farmer Blaize should be a trifle suspicious that a youth&rsquo;s
+guarantee would hardly be given for his father&rsquo;s readiness to disburse
+such a thumping bill, unless he had previously received his father&rsquo;s
+sanction and authority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hum!&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;why not &rsquo;a told him before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer threw an objectionable shrewdness into his query, that caused
+Richard to compress his mouth and glance high.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize was positive &rsquo;twas a lie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hum! Ye still hold to&rsquo;t you fired the rick?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The blame is mine!&rdquo; quoth Richard, with the loftiness of a patriot
+of old Rome.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Na, na!&rdquo; the straightforward Briton put him aside. &ldquo;Ye
+did&rsquo;t, or ye didn&rsquo;t do&rsquo;t. Did ye do&rsquo;t, or no?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thrust in a corner, Richard said, &ldquo;I did it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the farmer, &ldquo;these be my principles. I&rsquo;m a
+plain man, Mr. Feverel. Above board with me, and you&rsquo;ll find me handsome.
+Try to circumvent me, and I&rsquo;m a ugly customer. I&rsquo;ll show you
+I&rsquo;ve no animosity. Your father pays&mdash;you apologize. That&rsquo;s
+enough for me! Let Tom Bakewell fight&rsquo;t out with the Law, and I&rsquo;ll
+look on. The Law wasn&rsquo;t on the spot, I suppose? so the Law ain&rsquo;t
+much witness. But I am. Leastwise the Bantam is. I tell you, young gentleman,
+the Bantam saw&rsquo;t! It&rsquo;s no moral use whatever your denyin&rsquo;
+that ev&rsquo;dence. And where&rsquo;s the good, sir, I ask? What comes of
+&rsquo;t? Whether it be you, or whether it be Tom Bakewell&mdash;ain&rsquo;t
+all one? If I holds back, ain&rsquo;t it sim&rsquo;lar? It&rsquo;s the trewth I
+want! And here&rsquo;t comes,&rdquo; added the farmer, as Miss Lucy ushered in
+the Bantam, who presented a curious figure for that rare divinity to enliven.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>
+CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bantam&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the farmer, marshalling forth his elephant with the
+confidence of one who delivers his ace of trumps, &ldquo;tell this young
+gentleman what ye saw on the night of the fire, Bantam!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bantam jerked a bit of a bow to his patron, and then swung round, fully
+obscuring him from Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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
+&ldquo;T&rsquo;m Baak&rsquo;ll wi&rsquo;s owen hoies,&rdquo; Richard faced him,
+and was amazed to find himself being mutely addressed by a series of intensely
+significant grimaces, signs, and winks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean? Why are you making those faces at me?&rdquo; cried the
+boy indignantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize leaned round the Bantam to have a look at him, and beheld the
+stolidest mask ever given to man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bain&rsquo;t makin&rsquo; no faces at nobody,&rdquo; growled the sulky
+elephant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer commanded him to face about and finish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A see T&rsquo;m Baak&rsquo;ll,&rdquo; 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&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never saw Tom Bakewell set fire to that rick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Bantam swore to it, grimacing an accompaniment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you,&rdquo; said Richard, &ldquo;I put the lucifers there
+myself!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A thowt I see &rsquo;un, then,&rdquo; muttered the Bantam, trying a
+middle course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This brought down on him the farmer, who roared, &ldquo;Thought! Ye thought!
+What d&rsquo;ye mean? Speak out, and don&rsquo;t be thinkin&rsquo;. Thought?
+What the devil&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?&rdquo; Richard put
+in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thought!&rdquo; the farmer bellowed louder. &ldquo;Thought&mdash;Devil
+take ye, when ye took ye oath on&rsquo;t. Hulloa! What are ye screwin&rsquo;
+yer eye at Mr. Feverel for?&mdash;I say, young gentleman, have you spoke to
+this chap before now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I?&rdquo; replied Richard. &ldquo;I have not seen him before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat on, and glared his
+doubts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said he to the Bantam, &ldquo;speak out, and ha&rsquo; done
+wi&rsquo;t. Say what ye saw, and none o&rsquo; yer thoughts. Damn yer thoughts!
+Ye saw Tom Bakewell fire that there rick!&rdquo; The farmer pointed at some
+musk-pots in the window. &ldquo;What business ha&rsquo; you to be
+a-thinkin&rsquo;? You&rsquo;re a witness? Thinkin&rsquo; an&rsquo;t
+ev&rsquo;dence. What&rsquo;ll ye say to morrow before magistrate! Mind! what
+you says today, you&rsquo;ll stick by to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s evidence rather bound him down
+to the morrow&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So ended the Bantam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re liars, every one!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Liars,
+perj&rsquo;rers, bribers, and c&rsquo;rrupters!&mdash;Stop!&rdquo; to the
+Bantam, who was slinking away. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done for yerself already!
+You swore to it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A din&rsquo;t!&rdquo; said the Bantam, doggedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You swore to&rsquo;t!&rdquo; the farmer vociferated afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Noa!&rdquo; said the Bantam, ducking his poll. &ldquo;Noa!&rdquo; he
+repeated in a lower note; and then, while a sombre grin betokening idiotic
+enjoyment of his profound casuistical quibble worked at his jaw:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not up&rsquo;n o-ath!&rdquo; he added, with a twitch of the shoulder and
+an angular jerk of the elbow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize looked vacantly at Richard, as if to ask him what he thought of
+England&rsquo;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, &ldquo;Lucky for&rsquo;m,&rdquo; he exclaimed, seeing the
+Bantam had vanished, for his fingers itched to break that stubborn head. He
+grew very puffy, and addressed Richard solemnly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, look ye here, Mr. Feverel! You&rsquo;ve been a-tampering with my
+witness. It&rsquo;s no use denyin&rsquo;! I say y&rsquo; &rsquo;ave, sir! You,
+or some of ye. I don&rsquo;t care about no Feverel! My witness there has been
+bribed. The Bantam&rsquo;s been bribed,&rdquo; and he shivered his pipe with an
+energetic thump on the table&mdash;&ldquo;bribed! I knows it! I could swear
+to&rsquo;t!&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Upon oath?&rdquo; Richard inquired, with a grave face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, upon oath!&rdquo; said the farmer, not observing the impertinence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d take my Bible oath on&rsquo;t! He&rsquo;s been corrupted, my
+principal witness! Oh! it&rsquo;s dam cunnin&rsquo;, but it won&rsquo;t do the
+trick. I&rsquo;ll transport Tom Bakewell, sure as a gun. He shall travel, that
+man shall. Sorry for you, Mr. Feverel&mdash;sorry you haven&rsquo;t seen how to
+treat me proper&mdash;you, or yours. Money won&rsquo;t do everything&mdash;no!
+it won&rsquo;t. It&rsquo;ll c&rsquo;rrupt a witness, but it won&rsquo;t clear a
+felon. I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; &rsquo;soused you, sir! You&rsquo;re a boy
+and&rsquo;ll learn better. I asked no more than payment and apology; and that
+I&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; taken content&mdash;always provided my witnesses
+weren&rsquo;t tampered with. Now you must stand yer luck, all o&rsquo;
+ye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard stood up and replied, &ldquo;Very well, Mr. Blaize.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if,&rdquo; continued the farmer, &ldquo;Tom Bakewell don&rsquo;t
+drag you into&rsquo;t after &rsquo;m, why, you&rsquo;re safe, as I hope
+ye&rsquo;ll be, sincere!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was not in consideration of my own safety that I sought this
+interview with you,&rdquo; said Richard, head erect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grant ye that,&rdquo; the farmer responded. &ldquo;Grant ye that! Yer
+bold enough, young gentleman&mdash;comes of the blood that should be! If
+y&rsquo; had only ha&rsquo; spoke trewth!&mdash;I believe yer
+father&mdash;believe every word he said. I do wish I could ha&rsquo; said as
+much for Sir Austin&rsquo;s son and heir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; cried Richard, with an astonishment hardly to be feigned,
+&ldquo;you have seen my father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Farmer Blaize had now such a scent for lies that he could detect them where
+they did not exist, and mumbled gruffly,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, we knows all about that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father knows of this?&rdquo; said he, very loudly, and staring, as he
+spoke, right through the farmer. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t he be open with me? I shall never trust him again!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why not you with me, young gentleman?&rdquo; said the farmer.
+&ldquo;I sh&rsquo;d trust you if ye had.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard did not see the analogy. He bowed stiffly and bade him good afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize pulled the bell. &ldquo;Company the young gentleman out,
+Lucy,&rdquo; he waved to the little damsel in the doorway. &ldquo;Do the
+honours. And, Mr. Richard, ye might ha&rsquo; made a friend o&rsquo; me, sir,
+and it&rsquo;s not too late so to do. I&rsquo;m not cruel, but I hate lies. I
+whipped my boy Tom, bigger than you, for not bein&rsquo; above board, only
+yesterday,&mdash;ay! made &rsquo;un stand within swing o&rsquo; this chair, and
+take&rsquo;s measure. Now, if ye&rsquo;ll come down to me, and speak trewth
+before the trial&mdash;if it&rsquo;s only five minutes before&rsquo;t; or if
+Sir Austin, who&rsquo;s a gentleman, &rsquo;ll say there&rsquo;s been no
+tamperin&rsquo; with any o&rsquo; my witnesses, his word for&rsquo;t&mdash;well
+and good! I&rsquo;ll do my best to help off Tom Bakewell. And I&rsquo;m glad,
+young gentleman, you&rsquo;ve got a conscience about a poor man, though
+he&rsquo;s a villain. Good afternoon, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>
+CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s influence,
+he was almost the same boy who had slipped the guinea into Tom Bakewell&rsquo;s
+hand, and the lucifers into Farmer Blaize&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s eye was by wounded pride, saw that
+clearly, and hated his enemy for it the more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heavy Benson&rsquo;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&rsquo;s aphorisms open on the dressing-table. Hastily
+combing his hair, Richard glanced down and read&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Dog returneth to his vomit: the Liar must eat his Lie.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Underneath was interjected in pencil: &ldquo;The Devil&rsquo;s mouthful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Richard ran downstairs feeling that his father had struck him in the
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin marked the scarlet stain on his son&rsquo;s cheekbones. He sought
+the youth&rsquo;s eye, but Richard would not look, and sat conning his plate,
+an abject copy of Adrian&rsquo;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&rsquo;s mouthful?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heavy Benson sat upon the wretched dinner. Hippias usually the silent member,
+as if awakened by the unnatural stillness, became sprightly, like the
+goatsucker owl at night and spoke much of his book, his digestion, and his
+dreams, and was spared both by Algernon and Adrian. One inconsequent dream he
+related, about fancying himself quite young and rich, and finding himself
+suddenly in a field cropping razors around him, when, just as he had, by steps
+dainty as those of a French dancing-master, reached the middle, he to his
+dismay beheld a path clear of the bloodthirsty steel-crop, which he might have
+taken at first had he looked narrowly; and there he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias&rsquo;s brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly said they wished
+he had remained there. Sir Austin, however, drew forth his note-book, and
+jotted down a reflection. A composer of aphorisms can pluck blossoms even from
+a razor-crop. Was not Hippias&rsquo;s dream the very counterpart of
+Richard&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a strange meeting. They seemed to have been separated so long. The
+father took his son&rsquo;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&rsquo;s study: hard he had met his
+father&rsquo;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&rsquo;s lips moved. He was praying internally to God for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth, and Algernon Feverel were
+summoned to the baronet&rsquo;s study.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+in parody of the old ballad. Young Richard&rsquo;s red eyes, and the
+baronet&rsquo;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&rsquo;s family were, as it
+seemed to him, bound in honour to do their utmost to effect the man&rsquo;s
+release.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Expediency is man&rsquo;s wisdom, Adrian Harley. Doing right is
+God&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am to understand then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that Blaize consents not
+to press the prosecution.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course he won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Algernon remarked. &ldquo;Confound him!
+he&rsquo;ll have his money, and what does he want besides?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These agricultural gentlemen are delicate customers to deal with.
+However, if he really consents&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have his promise,&rdquo; said the baronet, fondling his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I saw him last,&rdquo; murmured Richard, and relinquished his
+father&rsquo;s hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian fastened on his prey. &ldquo;And left him with a distinct and
+satisfactory assurance of his amicable intentions?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not?&rdquo; the Feverels joined in astounded chorus.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard sidled away from his father, and repeated a shamefaced
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he hostile?&rdquo; inquired Adrian, smoothing his palms, and
+smiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; the boy confessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it his duty to go,&rdquo; he observed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was!&rdquo; said the baronet, emphatically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you see what comes of it, sir,&rdquo; Adrian struck in. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said he would transport Tom Bakewell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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 &lsquo;father of the man&rsquo; with a
+vengeance, and one might hear next that &lsquo;the baby was father of the
+boy.&rsquo; They would find common sense a more benevolent ruler than poetical
+metaphysics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he had done, Austin, with his customary directness, asked him what he
+meant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I confess, Adrian,&rdquo; said the baronet, hearing him expostulate with
+Austin&rsquo;s stupidity, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s character which many a gentleman might take example from. We are
+bound to do our utmost for the man.&rdquo; And, saying that he should pay a
+second visit to Belthorpe, to inquire into the reasons for the farmer&rsquo;s
+sudden exposition of vindictiveness, Sir Austin rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s &ldquo;Not upon oath!&rdquo; 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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How little,&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard saw his father go forth. Adrian, too, was ill at ease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This trotting down to Belthorpe spoils all,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The
+affair would pass over to-morrow&mdash;Blaize has no witnesses. The old rascal
+is only standing out for more money.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, he isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; Richard corrected him. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not
+that. I&rsquo;m sure he believes his witnesses have been tampered with, as he
+calls it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What if they have, boy?&rdquo; Adrian put it boldly. &ldquo;The ground
+is cut from under his feet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Adrian, &ldquo;you had better stop him from going
+down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s I, sir,&rdquo; said Richard panting. &ldquo;Pardon me. You
+mustn&rsquo;t go in there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said the baronet, putting his arm about him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; continued the boy. &ldquo;I will tell you all to-night.
+I must see the farmer myself. It was my fault, sir. I-I lied to him&mdash;the
+Liar must eat his Lie. Oh, forgive me for disgracing you, sir. I did it&mdash;I
+hope I did it to save Tom Bakewell. Let me go in alone, and speak the
+truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go, and I will wait for you here,&rdquo; said his father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;s lonely
+pacing up and down under the darkness, awaiting his boy&rsquo;s return. The
+solemn gladness of his heart gave nature a tongue. Through the desolation
+flying overhead&mdash;the wailing of the Mother of Plenty across the bare-swept
+land&mdash;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dark, the dead leaves beating on his face, he had a word for his
+note-book: &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>
+CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Of all the chief actors in the Bakewell Comedy, Master Ripton Thompson awaited
+the fearful morning which was to decide Tom&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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. &ldquo;Why, it&rsquo;s next to murder!&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+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&rsquo;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)&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the delivery of a letter into Master Ripton&rsquo;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&rsquo;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:
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;Dear Ripton,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;clock by the clock and we
+proved that at nine o&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&mdash;I remain, Your sworn friend,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;R<small>ICHARD</small> D<small>ORIA</small>
+F<small>EVEREL</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s pointing out to his friends the
+beneficial action of the System in it from beginning to end.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>
+CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the apparition that
+had frightened little Clare was never solved on the stage of events at Raynham,
+where dread walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a moment. Morally
+superstitious as the baronet was, the character of his mind was opposed to
+anything like spiritual agency in the affairs of men, and, when the matter was
+made clear to him, it shook off a weight of weakness and restored his mental
+balance; so that from this time he went about more like the man he had once
+been, grasping more thoroughly the great truth, that This World is well
+designed. Nay, he could laugh on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill
+luck of one of the family members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy
+spirit, Algernon&rsquo;s Leg.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen &mdash;&mdash;.
+Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property. After
+satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin, moved by
+pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost could write words in
+the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady who had given Richard
+birth,&mdash;brief cold lines, simply telling him his house would be disturbed
+by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what heart-broken abnegation, and
+underlying them with what anguish of soul! Like most who dealt with him, Lady
+Feverel thought her husband a man fatally stern and implacable, and she acted
+as silly creatures will act when they fancy they see a fate against them: she
+neither petitioned for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her
+heart&rsquo;s yearning by stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not
+wanting in the family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting
+the sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to this
+boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and father. A few
+years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. &ldquo;Let this be
+her penance, not inflicted by me!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria bowed to the System for
+another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
+disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,&mdash;he with gouty fingers on a
+greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small hires. His
+fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What he can do, and
+will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the juniper is in
+requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot be performed without
+it. Returning from her wretched journey to her wretcheder home, the lady had to
+listen to a mild reproof from easy-going Diaper,&mdash;a reproof so mild that
+he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to
+talking it. With a fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was
+damaging her interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking
+to elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her
+that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and
+that he had reason to believe&mdash;could assure her&mdash;that an annuity was
+on the point of being granted her by her husband. And Diaper broke his bud of a
+smile into full flower as he delivered this information. She learnt that he had
+applied to her husband for money. It is hard to have one&rsquo;s prop of
+self-respect cut away just when we are suffering a martyr&rsquo;s agony at the
+stake. There was a five minutes&rsquo; tragic colloquy in the recesses behind
+the scenes,&mdash;totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in the
+warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then
+wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere behind the
+scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost, we will return and face the
+curtain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had furnished
+to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect was considered by
+Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time quite sufficient, so
+that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to Raynham, and Richard had no
+special intimate of his own age to rub his excessive vitality against, and
+wanted none. His hands were full enough with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father
+and he were heart in heart. The boy&rsquo;s mind was opening, and turned to his
+father affectionately reverent. At this period, when the young savage grows
+into higher influences, the faculty of worship is foremost in him. At this
+period Jesuits will stamp the future of their chargeling flocks; and all who
+bring up youth by a System, and watch it, know that it is the malleable moment.
+Boys possessing any mental or moral force to give them a tendency, then
+predestinate their careers; or, if under supervision, take the impress that is
+given them: not often to cast it off, and seldom to cast it off altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Sir Austin&rsquo;s Note-book was written: &ldquo;Between Simple Boyhood and
+Adolescence&mdash;The Blossoming Season&mdash;on the threshold of Puberty,
+there is one Unselfish Hour&mdash;say, Spiritual Seed-time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the most
+fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to germinate in
+him the love of every form of nobleness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am only striving to make my son a Christian,&rdquo; he said, answering
+them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these instructions
+he gave an aim: &ldquo;First be virtuous,&rdquo; he told his son, &ldquo;and
+then serve your country with heart and soul.&rdquo; The youth was instructed to
+cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read history and
+the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one day Sir Austin found
+him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his chin, against a pedestal
+supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero of our Parliament, his
+eyes streaming with tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he only
+retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order to exhibit
+to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life of indulgence;
+poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This was unjust, but there
+is no doubt he made use of every illustration to disgust or encourage his son
+that his neighbourhood afforded him, and did not spare his brother, for whom
+Richard entertained a contempt in proportion to his admiration of his father,
+and was for flying into penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is it, sir,&rdquo; he said one night, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t get Tom
+Bakewell to pray?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does he refuse?&rdquo; Sir Austin asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He seems to be ashamed to,&rdquo; Richard replied. &ldquo;He wants to
+know what is the good? and I don&rsquo;t know what to tell him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid it has gone too far with him,&rdquo; said Sir Austin,
+&ldquo;and until he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want
+of Prayer. Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for their
+education. He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable rind. Culture is
+half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever be brought to ask how he
+may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his prayer will be answered, tell him
+(he quoted The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip):
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is
+answered.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will, sir,&rdquo; said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was
+beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known to men;
+though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this side, now on
+that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments in his
+pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin&rsquo;s interdict not to banter
+him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of a felonious young
+rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of sympathy and extreme
+accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of his various changes. The
+Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the Vegetarian (an imitation of his
+cousin Austin), little better than a month: the religious, somewhat longer: the
+religious-propagandist (when he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and
+Burnley, and the domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still,
+and hard to bear;&mdash;he tried to convert Adrian! All the while Tom was being
+exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a drill-sergeant from the nearest
+barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself, and marched him
+to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke his heart trying to get
+the round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments of letters: for the boy
+had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
+thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to him the
+fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I an animal!&rdquo; cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as
+troubled by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin
+had him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin Clare
+felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was growing, but
+nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed absorbed in the
+sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree, and Clare was his
+handmaiden, little marked by him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: &ldquo;If I had been
+a girl, I would have had you for my husband.&rdquo; And he with the frankness
+of his years would reply: &ldquo;And how do you know I would have had
+you?&rdquo; causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard
+her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning
+of!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t read your father&rsquo;s Book,&rdquo; she said. Her own
+copy was bound in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have
+holier books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
+remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at him
+therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her brother would
+not be on his guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See here,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to
+one of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must clay-enclose
+us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human creature in our
+path. &ldquo;Can you understand it, child?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard informed her that when she read he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, my squire,&rdquo; she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
+through his hair, &ldquo;learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon
+with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise man to guide
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is my father very wise?&rdquo; Richard asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think so,&rdquo; the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you&mdash;&rdquo; Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating
+of his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I&mdash;what?&rdquo; she calmly queried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was going to say, do you&mdash;I mean, I love him so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it; always
+with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the sense of a
+growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally disturb him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
+Austin&rsquo;s principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly joyous
+and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of his
+pupil&rsquo;s advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were
+planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard was
+supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his studies.
+The System flourished. Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he took the lead of
+his companions on land and water, and had more than one bondsman in his service
+besides Ripton Thompson&mdash;the boy without a Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a
+Destiny was growing up a trifle too conscious of it. His generosity to his
+occasional companions was princely, but was exercised something too much in the
+manner of a prince; and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would
+overlook that more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded an utter
+servility when it had once been rendered susceptible. If Richard had his
+followers he had also his feuds. The Papworths were as subservient as Ripton,
+but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr. Morton, and a match for Richard in
+numerous promising qualities, comprising the noble science of fisticuffs, this
+youth spoke his mind too openly, and moreover would not be snubbed. There was
+no middle course for Richard&rsquo;s comrades between high friendship or
+absolute slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite habits and feelings
+which enable boys and men to hold together without caring much for each other;
+and, like every insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which he was
+quite aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior nature. Young Ralph was a
+lively talker: therefore, argued Richard&rsquo;s vanity, he had no intellect.
+He was affable: therefore he was frivolous. The women liked him: therefore he
+was a butterfly. In fine, young Ralph was popular, and our superb prince,
+denied the privilege of despising, ended by detesting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the absurdity
+of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton boy, and hence, being
+robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer and a cricketer is nowhere to be
+scorned in youth&rsquo;s republic. Finding that manoeuvre would not do, Richard
+was prompted once or twice to entrench himself behind his greater wealth and
+his position; but he soon abandoned that also, partly because his chilliness to
+ridicule told him he was exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too
+chivalrous. And so he was dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the
+luck of champions. For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt:
+Richard&rsquo;s middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom pick
+up more than three eggs underwater to Ralph&rsquo;s half-dozen. He was beaten,
+too, in jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to the painful
+pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached them, not have the
+magnanimity and circumspection to retire into private life immediately? Stung
+by his defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent Papworths to Poer Hall, with
+a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton; matching himself to swim across the
+Thames and back, once, twice, or thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph
+Barthrop Morton, would require for the undertaking. It was accepted, and a
+reply returned, equally formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein
+Ralph Barthrop Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria Feverel, and
+was his man. The match came off on a midsummer morning, under the direction of
+Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a spectator from the cover of a plantation by
+the river-side, unknown to his son, and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady
+Blandish accompanied the baronet. He had invited her attendance, and she,
+obeying her frank nature, and knowing what The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip said about
+prudes, at once agreed to view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not
+here a woman worthy the Golden Ages of the world? one who could look upon man
+as a creature divinely made, and look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted,
+by the Serpent! Such a woman was rare. Sir Austin did not discompose her by
+uttering his praises. She was conscious of his approval only in an increased
+gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and communications, as if he
+were speaking to a familiar, a very high compliment from him. While the lads
+were standing ready for the signal to plunge from the steep decline of
+greensward into the shining waters, Sir Austin called upon her to admire their
+beauty, and she did, and even advanced her head above his shoulder delicately.
+In so doing, and just as the start was given, a bonnet became visible to
+Richard. Young Ralph was heels in air before he moved, and then he dropped like
+lead. He was beaten by several lengths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard&rsquo;s
+friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start. But though the youth,
+with full confidence in his better style and equal strength, had backed himself
+heavily against his rival, and had lost his little river-yacht to Ralph, he
+would do nothing of the sort. It was the Bonnet had beaten him, not Ralph. The
+Bonnet, typical of the mystery that caused his heart those violent
+palpitations, was his dear, detestable enemy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned towards a
+field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet was etherealized,
+and reigned glorious mistress. A check to the pride of a boy will frequently
+divert him to the path where lie his subtlest powers. Richard gave up his
+companions, servile or antagonistic: he relinquished the material world to
+young Ralph, and retired into himself, where he was growing to be lord of
+kingdoms where Beauty was his handmaid, and History his minister and Time his
+ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in a realm vaster
+and more gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have
+been. For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal this
+early one that is made bountifully common to so many, when the ripening blood
+has put a spark to the imagination, and the earth is seen through rosy mists of
+a thousand fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires; panting for bliss and
+taking it as it comes; making of any sight or sound, perforce of the
+enchantment they carry with them, a key to infinite, because innocent,
+pleasure. The passions then are gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they
+grow to. They have their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor
+bite. They are in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and brain.
+The whole sweet system moves to music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son, which
+were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to his plan.
+The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to solitude, his
+abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were matters for rejoicing to
+the prescient gentleman. &ldquo;For it comes,&rdquo; said he to Dr. Clifford of
+Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the youth&rsquo;s behalf and being
+assured of his soundness, &ldquo;it comes of a thoroughly sane condition. The
+blood is healthy, the mind virtuous: neither instigates the other to evil, and
+both are perfecting toward the flower of manhood. If he reach that
+pure&mdash;in the untainted fulness and perfection of his natural
+powers&mdash;I am indeed a happy father! But one thing he will owe to me: that
+at one period of his life he knew paradise, and could read God&rsquo;s
+handwriting on the earth! Now those abominations whom you call precocious
+boys&mdash;your little pet monsters, doctor!&mdash;and who can wonder that the
+world is what it is? when it is full of them&mdash;as they will have no divine
+time to look back upon in their own lives, how can they believe in innocence
+and goodness, or be other than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my
+boy,&rdquo; and the baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to
+hear, &ldquo;my boy, if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity. He
+dare not be a sceptic as to that. Whatever his darkness, he will have the
+guiding light of a memory behind him. So much is secure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of profound
+sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received opinion so
+seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight, is the peculiar
+gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded themselves, contrive to
+influence their neighbours, and through them to make conquest of a good half of
+the world, for good or for ill. Sir Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw
+the truth, and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited by those who did
+not understand him, and silenced them that did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall see,&rdquo; was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and
+other unbelievers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, bracer, better boy
+was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The vessel, too, though it
+lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by the buffets of the elements
+on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well through stormy
+weather, as the records of the Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No
+augury could be hopefuller. The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe,
+the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was,
+the baronet relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He said to his
+intimates: &ldquo;Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought,
+in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future. The living Tree now
+requires incessant watchfulness.&rdquo; And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin
+did watch. The youth submitted to an examination every night before he sought
+his bed; professedly to give an account of his studies, but really to
+recapitulate his moral experiences of the day. He could do so, for he was pure.
+Any wildness in him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of fancy
+in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the Blossoming Season. There
+is nothing like a theory for binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid
+watch and ward, knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And he
+was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him that the
+youth was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning
+propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the System had foreseen
+it, he said. But when he came to hear that the youth was writing poetry, his
+wounded heart had its reasons for being much disturbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish, &ldquo;you knew he scribbled?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A very different thing from writing poetry,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+&ldquo;No Feverel has ever written poetry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s a sign of degeneracy,&rdquo; the lady
+remarked. &ldquo;He rhymes very prettily to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry, quieted Sir
+Austin&rsquo;s fears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty; and
+the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced several
+consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to him. Added to
+this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his best, done what no
+poet had ever been known to be capable of doing: he had, with his own hands,
+and in cold blood, committed his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made
+Lady Blandish sigh forth, &ldquo;Poor boy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Killing one&rsquo;s darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in his
+Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to destroy his
+first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason cogent enough to
+justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of abhorrent despotism, and
+Richard&rsquo;s blossoms withered under it. A strange man had been introduced
+to him, who traversed and bisected his skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and
+crushed his soul while, in an infallible voice, declaring him the animal he
+was: making him feel such an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his being
+seemed to draw in its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the
+strange man having departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest
+manner, stated that it would give him pleasure to see those same precocious,
+utterly valueless, scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining mental
+blossoms spontaneously fell away. Richard&rsquo;s spirit stood bare. He
+protested not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a minute in
+doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a drawer in his room,
+and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by Sir Austin, the secretive
+youth drew out bundle after bundle: each neatly tied, named, and numbered: and
+pitched them into flames. And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it
+farewell all true confidence between Father and Son.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>
+CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the Age of
+violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is dangerous, and to see it,
+a communication of the disease. People at Raynham were put on their guard by
+the baronet, and his reputation for wisdom was severely criticized in
+consequence of the injunctions he thought fit to issue through butler and
+housekeeper down to the lower household, for the preservation of his son from
+any visible symptom of the passion. A footman and two housemaids are believed
+to have been dismissed on the report of heavy Benson that they were in or
+inclining to the state; upon which an undercook and a dairymaid voluntarily
+threw up their places, averring that &ldquo;they did not want no young men, but
+to have their sex spied after by an old wretch like that,&rdquo; indicating the
+ponderous butler, &ldquo;was a little too much for a Christian woman,&rdquo;
+and then they were ungenerous enough to glance at Benson&rsquo;s well-known
+marital calamity, hinting that some men met their deserts. So intolerable did
+heavy Benson&rsquo;s espionage become, that Raynham would have grown
+depopulated of its womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the
+baronet what a fearful arm his butler was wielding. Sir Austin acknowledged it
+despondently. &ldquo;It only shows,&rdquo; said he, with a fine spirit of
+justice, &ldquo;how all but impossible it is to legislate where there are
+women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not object,&rdquo; he added; &ldquo;I hope I am too just to object
+to the exercise of their natural inclinations. All I ask from them is
+discreetness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No gadding about in couples,&rdquo; continued the baronet, &ldquo;no
+kissing in public. Such occurrences no boy should witness. Whenever people of
+both sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they are
+high-fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for as a matter of
+course. Let it be known that I only require discreetness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under
+Adrian&rsquo;s able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that virtue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household. Sir Austin, who had not
+previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne&rsquo;s hopeless curate, now
+desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least discourage, his visits, for the
+appearance of the man was that of an embodied sigh and groan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really, Austin!&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother
+more awake than she had supposed, &ldquo;I have never allowed him to
+hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him see it, then,&rdquo; replied the baronet; &ldquo;let him see
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The man amuses me,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;You know, we have few
+amusements here, we inferior creatures. I confess I should like a barrel-organ
+better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and besides, it plays more than
+one tune. However, since you think my society bad for him, let him stop
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the moment her
+daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view. Mrs.
+Doria&rsquo;s maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins, Richard and Clare;
+had already beheld them espoused and fruitful. For this she yielded the
+pleasures of town; for this she immured herself at Raynham; for this she bore
+with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences, things abhorrent to her,
+and heaven knows what forms of torture and self-denial, which are smilingly
+endured by that greatest of voluntary martyrs&mdash;a mother with a daughter to
+marry. Mrs. Doria, an amiable widow, had surely married but for her daughter
+Clare. The lady&rsquo;s hair no woman could possess without feeling it her
+pride. It was the daily theme of her lady&rsquo;s-maid,&mdash;a natural aureole
+to her head. She was gay, witty, still physically youthful enough to claim a
+destiny; and she sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter&rsquo;s! sacrificed,
+as with heroic scissors, hair, wit, gaiety&mdash;let us not attempt to
+enumerate how much! more than may be said. And she was only one of thousands;
+thousands who have no portion of the hero&rsquo;s reward; for he may reckon on
+applause, and condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they, poor slaves! must
+look for nothing but the opposition of their own sex and the sneers of ours. O,
+Sir Austin! had you not been so blinded, what an Aphorism might have sprung
+from this point of observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told, between sister and
+brother, that during the Magnetic Age her daughter&rsquo;s presence at Raynham
+was undesirable. Instead of nursing offence, her sole thought was the mountain
+of prejudice she had to contend against. She bowed, and said, Clare wanted
+sea-air&mdash;she had never quite recovered the shock of that dreadful night.
+How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know, might the Peculiar Period be expected to
+last?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That,&rdquo; said Sir Austin, &ldquo;depends. A year, perhaps. He is
+entering on it. I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen. Clare is
+now&mdash;how old?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seventeen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is marriageable.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don&rsquo;t name such a thing. My
+child shall not be robbed of her youth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our women marry early, Helen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My child shall not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose his sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As you are of that opinion, Helen,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;perhaps we may
+still make arrangements to retain you with us. Would you think it advisable to
+send Clare&mdash;she should know discipline&mdash;to some establishment for a
+few months?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To an asylum, Austin?&rdquo; cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her
+indignation as well as she could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are such to be
+found.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Austin!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in
+her eyes. &ldquo;Unjust! absurd!&rdquo; she murmured. The baronet thought it a
+natural proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot leave my child.&rdquo; Mrs. Doria trembled. &ldquo;Where she
+goes, I go. I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no
+value to the world, but she is my child. I will see, poor dear, that you have
+no cause to complain of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought,&rdquo; Sir Austin remarked, &ldquo;that you acquiesced in my
+views with regard to my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;generally,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she
+had not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol
+in his house&mdash;an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than wood
+or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol too long&mdash;she had too
+entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency. She had, and she
+dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics, in teaching her
+daughter to bow to the Idol also. Love of that kind Richard took for tribute.
+He was indifferent to Clare&rsquo;s soft eyes. The parting kiss he gave her was
+ready and cold as his father could desire. Sir Austin now grew eloquent to him
+in laudation of manly pursuits: but Richard thought his eloquence barren, his
+attempts at companionship awkward, and all manly pursuits and aims, life
+itself, vain and worthless. To what end? sighed the blossomless youth, and
+cried aloud, as soon as he was relieved of his father&rsquo;s society, what was
+the good of anything? Whatever he did&mdash;whichever path he selected, led
+back to Raynham. And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed
+himself, only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his
+previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the youth&rsquo;s groom, had to give the baronet
+a report of his young master&rsquo;s proceedings, in common with Adrian, and
+while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out. &ldquo;He do ride like fire
+every day to Pig&rsquo;s Snout,&rdquo; naming the highest hill in the
+neighbourhood, &ldquo;and stand there and stare, never movin&rsquo;, like a mad
+&rsquo;un. And then hoam agin all slack as if he&rsquo;d been beaten in a race
+by somebody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is no woman in that!&rdquo; mused the baronet. &ldquo;He would
+have ridden back as hard as he went,&rdquo; reflected this profound scientific
+humanist, &ldquo;had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast expanses, and
+seek shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for distances betokens emptiness
+and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an image we fly to wood
+and forest, like the guilty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian&rsquo;s report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of cynicism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said the baronet. &ldquo;As I foresaw. At this period an
+insatiate appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing but the
+quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will satisfy
+this craving, which is not to be satisfied! Hence his bitterness. Life can
+furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and purity of his energies have
+reached to an almost divine height, and roam through the Inane. Poetry, love,
+and such-like, are the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers
+to low ones debauchery. &rsquo;Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to
+none of the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to keep him clear of them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As yet, however, it could
+not be said that Sir Austin&rsquo;s System had failed. On the contrary, it had
+reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed the ladies,
+with acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they asked, was such another young man to
+be found?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, &ldquo;if men could give
+their hands to women unsoiled&mdash;how different would many a marriage be! She
+will be a happy girl who calls Richard husband.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy, indeed!&rdquo; was the baronet&rsquo;s caustic ejaculation.
+&ldquo;But where shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was innocent when I was a girl,&rdquo; said the lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think no girls innocent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, that you know they are not,&rdquo; said the lady, stamping.
+&ldquo;But they are more innocent than boys, I am sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because of their education, madam. You see now what a youth can be.
+Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather&mdash;to speak more
+humbly&mdash;when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall
+have virtuous young men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of
+them,&rdquo; said the lady, pouting and laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is never too late for beauty to waken love,&rdquo; returned the
+baronet, and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne&rsquo;s Bower,
+which they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending
+midsummer day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for serious
+converse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall believe again in Arthur&rsquo;s knights,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;When I was a girl I dreamed of one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And he was in quest of the San Greal?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San
+Blandish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you consider it would have been so,&rdquo; sighed the lady,
+ruffling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only judge by our generation,&rdquo; said Sir Austin, with a bend
+of homage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady gathered her mouth. &ldquo;Either we are very mighty or you are very
+weak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both, madam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and truth,
+and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in them, we are
+constant, and would die for them&mdash;die for them. Ah! you know men but not
+women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I
+presume?&rdquo; said Sir Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old, or young!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;ah!&rdquo; said the lady. &ldquo;Intellect may subdue
+women&mdash;make slaves of them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you
+do. But they only love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble
+nature.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And did you encounter the knight of your dream?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not then.&rdquo; She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how did you bear the disappointment?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a gown I
+stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made a woman in a day,
+and given to an ogre instead of a true knight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; exclaimed Sir Austin, &ldquo;women have much to
+bear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the baronet grew
+earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know it is our lot,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And we are allowed many
+amusements. If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like our virtue,
+is its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful privileges.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To preserve which, you remain a widow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; she responded. &ldquo;I have no trouble now in
+patching and piecing that rag the world calls&mdash;a character. I can sit at
+your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are
+female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin drew nearer to her. &ldquo;You would have made an admirable mother,
+madam.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;ten thousand pities that you are not
+one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; She spoke with humility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that heaven had given you a
+daughter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our blood, madam, should have been one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. &ldquo;But I am a mother,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy,&rdquo; she reiterated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin most graciously appended, &ldquo;Call him ours, madam,&rdquo; and
+held his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she chose
+to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point for their eyes,
+and then Sir Austin said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As you will not say &lsquo;ours,&rsquo; let me. And, as you have
+therefore an equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have
+lately conceived.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but for Sir
+Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a declaration. So
+Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed smile, as she perused
+the ground while listening to the project. It concerned Richard&rsquo;s
+nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to marry when he was
+five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years his junior, was to be sought
+for in the homes of England, who would be every way fitted by education,
+instincts, and blood&mdash;on each of which qualifications Sir Austin
+unreservedly enlarged&mdash;to espouse so perfect a youth and accept the
+honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of the Feverels. The baronet
+went on to say that he proposed to set forth immediately, and devote a couple
+of months, to the first essay in his Coelebite search.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully
+unfolded, &ldquo;you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You must not
+be too exacting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it.&rdquo; The baronet&rsquo;s shake of the head was piteous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class. If I
+ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood. I believe many
+of the middle classes are frequently more careful&mdash;more
+pure-blooded&mdash;than our aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing
+family who educate their children&mdash;I should prefer a girl without brothers
+and sisters&mdash;as a Christian damsel should be educated&mdash;say, on the
+model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to Richard
+Feverel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish bit her lip. &ldquo;And what do you do with Richard while you are
+absent on this expedition?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said the baronet, &ldquo;he accompanies his father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
+bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and pudding. How
+can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old women like me. He will be
+certain to kick against her, and destroy your plan, believe me, Sir
+Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay? ay? do you think that?&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay! true,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Adrian said the same. He must not
+see her. How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise
+her. Naturally!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Naturally!&rdquo; echoed the lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, madam,&rdquo; and the baronet rose, &ldquo;there is one thing for
+me to determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you, indeed?&rdquo; said the lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly
+mated,&mdash;not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so
+delicately trained might be; more easily than another! Betrothed, he will be
+safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a term. My
+precautions have saved him from the temptations of his season.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And under whose charge will you leave him?&rdquo; Lady Blandish
+inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the upper
+steps, under a clear summer twilight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Madam!&rdquo; he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender,
+&ldquo;under whose but yours?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She did not
+withdraw her hand. The baronet&rsquo;s salute was flatteringly reverent. He
+deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony. And he, the scorner
+of women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish forgot that she had
+taken some trouble to arrive at it. She received the exquisite compliment in
+all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine
+bloom of fruition is gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady&rsquo;s hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
+from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring beechwood
+startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime. They turned their heads, and
+beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the scene. The next moment he
+had galloped away.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>
+CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter, and his
+brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and the great Realm of
+Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer. Months he had wandered
+about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing, knocking at them, and
+getting neither admittance nor answer. He had the key now. His own father had
+given it to him. His heart was a lightning steed, and bore him on and on over
+limitless regions bathed in superhuman beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers
+and ladies leaned whispering upon close green swards, and knights and ladies
+cast a splendour upon savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in
+golden courts lit to a glorious day by ladies&rsquo; eyes, one pair of which,
+dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him through the boskage
+and dwelt upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering
+white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act of
+consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small white hand.
+Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth: to fling the Jewel of Life
+into that one cup and drink it off! He was intoxicated by anticipation. For
+that he was born. There was, then, some end in existence, something to live
+for! to kiss a woman&rsquo;s hand, and die! He would leap from the couch, and
+rush to pen and paper to relieve his swarming sensations. Scarce was he seated
+when the pen was dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the exclamation,
+&ldquo;Have I not sworn I would never write again?&rdquo; Sir Austin had shut
+that safety-valve. The nonsense that was in the youth might have poured
+harmlessly out, and its urgency for ebullition was so great that he was
+repeatedly oblivious of his oath, and found himself seated under the lamp in
+the act of composition before pride could speak a word. Possibly the pride even
+of Richard Feverel had been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such
+a time, and a single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were
+demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed
+impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite as much
+as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the
+powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length and another
+headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went forth into
+the air. A lamp was still burning in his father&rsquo;s room, and Richard
+thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on the watch.
+Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold against the hues of
+dawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of fever.
+Richard took to it instinctively. The clear fresh water, burnished with
+sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep shadows curled smiling
+away from his gliding keel. Overhead solitary morning unfolded itself, from
+blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still, delicious changes of light and
+colour, to whose influences he was heedless as he shot under willows and
+aspens, and across sheets of river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory,
+himself the sole tenant of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of the world lay
+the land he was rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be
+discerned here and there. It was not a dream, now he knew. There was a secret
+abroad. The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds.
+Oh, why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should
+draw down ladies&rsquo; eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur! To
+such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had pulled
+through his first feverish energy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude which
+follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a hail and his own name called. It
+was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption of miserable
+masculine prose. Heartily wishing him abed with the rest of mankind, Richard
+rowed in and jumped ashore. Ralph immediately seized his arm, saying that he
+desired earnestly to have a talk with him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth from
+his water-dreams, up and down the wet mown grass. That he had to say seemed to
+be difficult of utterance, and Richard, though he barely listened, soon had
+enough of his old rival&rsquo;s gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of
+impatience; whereat Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat foreign to
+his mind, but of great human interest and importance, put the question to him:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say, what woman&rsquo;s name do you like best?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know any,&rdquo; quoth Richard, indifferently. &ldquo;Why
+are you out so early?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be considered a
+pretty name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half the women
+cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name of Mary was
+equivalent for women at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Ralph. &ldquo;We have lots of Marys. It&rsquo;s
+so common. Oh! I don&rsquo;t like Mary best. What do you think?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard thought it just like another.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging
+into the subject, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d do anything on earth for some
+names&mdash;one or two. It&rsquo;s not Mary, nor Lucy. Clarinda&rsquo;s pretty,
+but it&rsquo;s like a novel. Claribel, I like. Names beginning with
+&lsquo;Cl&rsquo; I prefer. The &lsquo;Cl&rsquo;s&rsquo; are always gentle and
+lovely girls you would die for! Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to inspire that emotion.
+Indeed these urgent appeals to his fancy in feminine names at five
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning slightly surprised him, though he was but half
+awake to the outer world. By degrees he perceived that Ralph was changed.
+Instead of the lusty boisterous boy, his rival in manly sciences, who spoke
+straightforwardly and acted up to his speech, here was an abashed and
+blush-persecuted youth, who sued piteously for a friendly ear wherein to pour
+the one idea possessing him. Gradually, too, Richard apprehended that Ralph
+likewise was on the frontiers of the Realm of Mystery, perhaps further toward
+it than he himself was; and then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was revealed to
+him the wonderful beauty and depth of meaning in feminine names. The theme
+appeared novel and delicious, fitted to the season and the hour. But the
+hardship was, that Richard could choose none from the number; all were the same
+to him; he loved them all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you really prefer the &lsquo;Cl&rsquo;s&rsquo;?&rdquo; said
+Ralph, persuasively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not better than the names ending in &lsquo;a&rsquo; and &lsquo;y,&rsquo;
+Richard replied, wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently ahead of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come under these trees,&rdquo; said Ralph. And under the trees Ralph
+unbosomed. His name was down for the army: Eton was quitted for ever. In a few
+months he would have to join his regiment, and before he left he must say
+goodbye to his friends.... Would Richard tell him Mrs. Forey&rsquo;s address?
+he had heard she was somewhere by the sea. Richard did not remember the
+address, but said he would willingly take charge of any letter and forward it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ralph dived his hand into his pocket. &ldquo;Here it is. But don&rsquo;t let
+anybody see it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My aunt&rsquo;s name is not Clare,&rdquo; said Richard, perusing what
+was composed of the exterior formula. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve addressed it to Clare
+herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was plain to see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish,&rdquo; Richard
+continued in a low tone, transferring the names, and playing on the musical
+strings they were to him. Then he said: &ldquo;Names of ladies! How they
+sweeten their names!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fixed his eyes on Ralph. If he discovered anything further he said nothing,
+but bade the good fellow good-bye, jumped into his boat, and pulled down the
+tide. The moment Ralph was hidden by an abutment of the banks, Richard perused
+the address. For the first time it struck him that his cousin Clare was a very
+charming creature: he remembered the look of her eyes, and especially the last
+reproachful glance she gave him at parting. What business had Ralph to write to
+her? Did she not belong to Richard Feverel? He read the words again and again:
+Clare Doria Forey. Why, Clare was the name he liked best&mdash;nay, he loved
+it. Doria, too&mdash;she shared his own name with him. Away went his heart, not
+at a canter now, at a gallop, as one who sights the quarry. He felt too weak to
+pull. Clare Doria Forey&mdash;oh, perfect melody! Sliding with the tide, he
+heard it fluting in the bosom of the hills.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the Fates are
+behindhand in furnishing a temple for the flame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below,
+lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet
+hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also hung a
+daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad straw hat with a flexible
+brim that left her lips and chin in the sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth
+a light of promising eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose
+curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched them. She was
+simply dressed, befitting decency and the season. On a closer inspection you
+might see that her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling
+on dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she found
+the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her mouth.
+Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite proportions on
+bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully have her scraggy to have
+her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed the act of eating them is
+dainty and induces musing. The dewberry is a sister to the lotus, and an
+innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged
+mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who knelt there. The little
+skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along
+the blue: from a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted,
+calling to her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of
+green osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat
+slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the fruit,
+and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her territories, and as
+if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green
+shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir-fall&rsquo;s thundering
+white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she was a bit of lovely
+human life in a fair setting; a terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned
+round to note his proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision.
+Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her
+posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he
+dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes. He was
+floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not gather
+what it sought. A stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel
+glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the brink. Richard
+sprang from his boat into the water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which
+she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he
+enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed
+her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>
+CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<p>
+He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world lay wrecked
+behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of
+this white hand which had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in an
+eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang overhead! What splendour in the heavens! What
+marvels of beauty about his enchanted brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by
+whose light the glories of being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda! Prince
+Ferdinand is at your feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus transformed, to
+make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First Woman to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And she&mdash;mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood together; he
+pale, and she blushing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival damsels.
+On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung like an arrow
+drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with her.
+The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes, bore witness to the
+body&rsquo;s virtue; and health and happy blood were in her bearing. Had she
+stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels, that Scientific Humanist, for the
+consummation of his System, would have thrown her the handkerchief for his son.
+The wide summer-hat, nodding over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow
+with the flowing heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only
+half-curls, waves of hair call them, rippling at the ends, went like a sunny
+red-veined torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious vision to the
+youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There
+were curious features of colour in her face for him to have read. Her brows,
+thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of the blood, met in
+the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and level: you saw that she
+was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and by the pliability of her brows
+that the wonderful creature used her faculty, and was not going to be a statue
+to the gazer. Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a
+wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning&mdash;more
+than brain was ever meant to fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom
+to Prince Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of
+colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match the
+depth of its lightest look?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire his figure looked
+heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his forehead, in what
+his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the
+temples across the nearly imperceptible upward curve of his brows
+there&mdash;felt more than seen, so slight it was&mdash;and gave to his profile
+a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a flattering charm. An
+arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and far with her! He leaned a
+little forward, drinking her in with all his eyes, and young Love has a
+thousand. Then truly the System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could
+Sir Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head, and let it fly,
+when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said to the
+world, &ldquo;Match him!&rdquo; Such keen bliss as the youth had in the sight
+of her, an innocent youth alone has powers of soul in him to experience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Women!&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, in one of its solitary
+outbursts, &ldquo;Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are
+you not to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
+putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero, and was
+not present, or their fates might have been different.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they came
+down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words; and
+used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him she was
+uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested
+in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to be chronicled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of anguish,
+and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face, clapped her
+hands, crying aloud, &ldquo;My book! my book!&rdquo; and ran to the bank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prince Ferdinand was at her side. &ldquo;What have you lost?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My book!&rdquo; she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
+shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, &ldquo;Oh, no, no! let me entreat
+you not to,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;I do not so very much mind losing
+it.&rdquo; And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her
+gentle hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,&rdquo; she continued,
+withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. &ldquo;Pray, do not!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell of
+contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and discoloured
+by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his head with the spirit
+of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating from the bramble
+just above the water, and looking as if fire had caught its edges and it had
+flown from one adverse element to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and
+he returned to land disconsolately, to hear Miranda&rsquo;s murmured mixing of
+thanks and pretty expostulations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me try again,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, indeed!&rdquo; she replied, and used the awful threat: &ldquo;I will
+run away if you do,&rdquo; which effectually restrained him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she cried,
+&ldquo;There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care for the
+book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard had
+glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves: his
+crest in silver: and below&mdash;O wonderment immense! his own handwriting!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls, Lines,
+Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously reserved for such
+a starry fate&mdash;passing beatitude!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember the hour
+and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable production. The stars
+were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then his love
+reclined, and so forth; Hesper was complacent enough to do so, and described
+her in a couplet&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Through sunset&rsquo;s amber see me shining fair,<br/>
+As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes and golden
+hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working of a divine
+finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfil
+it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak. Doubtless the damsel had
+less to think of, or had some trifling burden on her conscience, for she seemed
+to grow embarrassed. At last she drew up her chin to look at her companion
+under the nodding brim of her hat (and the action gave her a charmingly
+freakish air), crying, &ldquo;But where are you going to? You are wet through.
+Let me thank you again; and, pray, leave me, and go home and change
+instantly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wet?&rdquo; replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest;
+&ldquo;not more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your
+stockings in the sun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and you are
+dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you really do not feel that you are wet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes
+lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot help it,&rdquo; she said, her mouth opening, and sounding
+harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. &ldquo;Pardon me, won&rsquo;t
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment
+after!&rdquo; she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; he said; and his own gravity then touched him to
+join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the
+work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the breast
+to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here
+and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious, O British young!
+and laugh and treat love as an honest God, and dabble not with the sentimental
+rouge. These two laughed, and the souls of each cried out to other, &ldquo;It
+is I it is I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried his
+light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird&rsquo;s copse, and
+stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the many-coloured rings
+of eddies streaming forth from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
+swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid backwater.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you let it go?&rdquo; said the damsel, eying it curiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It can&rsquo;t be stopped,&rdquo; he replied, and could have added:
+&ldquo;What do I care for it now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was with
+her, alive, divine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flapped low the brim of her hat. &ldquo;You must really not come any
+farther,&rdquo; she softly said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And will you go, and not tell me who you are?&rdquo; he asked, growing
+bold as the fears of losing her came across him. &ldquo;And will you not tell
+me before you go&rdquo;&mdash;his face burned&mdash;&ldquo;how you came by
+that&mdash;that paper?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She chose to select the easier question for answer: &ldquo;You ought to know
+me; we have been introduced.&rdquo; Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then who, in heaven&rsquo;s name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
+forgotten you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have, I think,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember Belthorpe?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Belthorpe! Belthorpe!&rdquo; quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his
+brain to recollect there was such a place. &ldquo;Do you mean old
+Blaize&rsquo;s farm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I am old Blaize&rsquo;s niece.&rdquo; She tripped him a soft
+curtsey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine sweet
+creature could be allied with that old churl!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what&mdash;what is your name?&rdquo; said his mouth, while his eyes
+added, &ldquo;O wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?&rdquo; she peered at him
+from a side-bend of the flapping brim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Desboroughs of Dorset?&rdquo; A light broke in on him. &ldquo;And
+have you grown to this? That little girl I saw there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She could no
+more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her volubility fluttered under
+his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high, and they were mutually
+constrained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she murmured, &ldquo;we are old acquaintances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, &ldquo;You are
+very beautiful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious. Her
+overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that is touched
+and answers to the touch, he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness; but his
+eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned away from them,
+her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who
+has been a damsel&rsquo;s first dream, dreamed of nightly many long nights, and
+clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin
+the heart cannot reject, if it would. She quickened her steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have offended you!&rdquo; said a mortally wounded voice across her
+shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That he should think so were too dreadful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, no! you would never offend me.&rdquo; She gave him her whole
+sweet face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why&mdash;why do you leave me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; she hesitated, &ldquo;I must go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I must,&rdquo; she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of
+her hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
+resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said,
+&ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; as if it were a natural thing to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hand was pure white&mdash;white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a
+Maynight. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night bent his
+head reverentially above, and kissed&mdash;resigning himself thereupon over to
+execution for payment of the penalty of such daring&mdash;by such bliss well
+rewarded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the
+same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It was a
+signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, let me,&rdquo; she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not go?&rdquo; Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
+thumping heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must,&rdquo; she faltered piteously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes! yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me. Do you wish to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question was a subtle one. A moment or two she did not answer, and then
+forswore herself, and said, Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you&mdash;you wish to go?&rdquo; He looked with quivering eyelids
+under hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fainter Yes responded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wish&mdash;wish to leave me?&rdquo; His breath went with the words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I must.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand became a closer prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame. From him to
+her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and back love&rsquo;s
+electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it surged
+tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its mate. They
+stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair heavens of the
+morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he could get his voice it said, &ldquo;Will you go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her gentle
+wrist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, farewell!&rdquo; he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair
+hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him. Strange, that his
+audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid tenderness to
+his side, and the sweet words, &ldquo;You are not angry with me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With you, O Beloved!&rdquo; cried his soul. &ldquo;And you forgive me,
+fair charity!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again,&rdquo; she
+said, and again proffered her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious glory of
+heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving his eyes from her,
+nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile,
+and up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and out of the arch of
+the light, away from his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren air. But it
+was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous splendours had sown seeds in
+him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the vivid
+conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes them leap and illumine him
+like fitful summer lightnings&mdash;ghosts of the vanished sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring it
+with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft flushed cheeks! sweet
+mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his ripe eyes
+behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let you go? And he
+seriously asked himself that question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-morrow this place will have a memory&mdash;the river and the meadow, and the
+white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the skylark will be
+its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there
+will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is grass: his heart is
+chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere. Only when the most tender freshness
+of his flower comes across him does he taste a moment&rsquo;s calm; and no
+sooner does it come than it gives place to keen pangs of fear that she may not
+be his for ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and discovers
+that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph and the curate of
+Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical discussions on ladies&rsquo;
+hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from those of Cleopatra to the
+Borgia&rsquo;s. &ldquo;Fair! fair! all of them fair!&rdquo; sighs the
+melancholy curate, &ldquo;as are those women formed for our perdition! I think
+we have in this country what will match the Italian or the Greek.&rdquo; His
+mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before the vision of Lucy, and
+Ralph, whose heroine&rsquo;s hair is a dark luxuriance, dissents, and claims a
+noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-haired Wonders. They have no
+mutual confidences, but they are singularly kind to each other, these three
+children of instinct.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>
+CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and future
+of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of families whose
+alliance according to apparent calculations, would not degrade his blood: and
+over these names, secretly preserved on an open leaf of the note-book, Sir
+Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly dropped his eye. There were
+names historic and names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called
+in his muster-roll; names that had been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum
+of civilized lifer by a millwheel or a merchant-stool. Against them the baronet
+had written M. or Po. or Pr.&mdash;signifying, Money, Position, Principles,
+favouring the latter with special brackets. The wisdom of a worldly man, which
+he could now and then adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round of
+visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician thereanent;
+lawyers and doctors being the rats who know best the merits of a house, and on
+what sort of foundation it may be standing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his misfortune
+came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it were but yesterday
+that he found the letter telling him that he had no wife and his son no mother.
+He wandered on foot through the streets the first night of his arrival, looking
+strangely at the shops and shows and bustle of the world from which he had
+divorced himself; feeling as destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost
+forgotten how to find his way about, and came across his old mansion in his
+efforts to regain his hotel. The windows were alight&mdash;signs of merry life
+within. He stared at it from the shadow of the opposite side. It seemed to him
+he was a ghost gazing upon his living past. And then the phantom which had
+stood there mocking while he felt as other men&mdash;the phantom, now flesh and
+blood reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its unforgiving
+crevices with bitter ironic venom. He remembered by the time reflection
+returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house at his disposal,
+probably giving a card-party, or something of the sort. In the morning, too, he
+remembered that he had divorced the world to wed a System, and must be faithful
+to that exacting Spouse, who, now alone of things on earth, could fortify and
+recompense him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to such a
+rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour. He was a thin stately man of
+law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops, and carrying on his
+countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment skins, and of a virtuous
+attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase his respectability in the eyes
+of moral Britain. After congratulating Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two
+or three suits, and being assured that the baronet&rsquo;s business in town had
+no concern therewith, Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all
+his father could desire him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a
+pattern to the youth of the Age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!&rdquo; said the old lawyer,
+shaking his head. &ldquo;We must keep our eyes on them&mdash;keep awake! The
+mischief is done in a minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root was
+sound, or the mischief will do itself in spite of, or under the very spectacles
+of, supervision,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His legal adviser murmured &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; as if that were his own idea,
+adding, &ldquo;It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an
+introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young friend,
+whom he does not forget. Ripton follows the Law. He is articled to me, and
+will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence. I bring him into town in
+the morning; I take him back at night. I think I may say that I am quite
+content with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, &ldquo;that you
+can trace every act of his to its motive?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you&rdquo;&mdash;Sir Austin held the same searching
+expression&mdash;&ldquo;do you establish yourself in a radiating centre of
+intuition: do you base your watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with
+his character, so perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its
+movements&mdash;even the eccentric ones&mdash;are anticipated by you, and
+provided for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat another
+repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man, Mr. Thompson
+smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was afraid he could not
+affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to say that Ripton had borne an
+extremely good character at school.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I find,&rdquo; Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his
+inspecting pose and mien, &ldquo;there are fathers who are content to be simply
+obeyed. Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would have him
+guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes&mdash;feeling me in him stronger
+than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my responsibility
+ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting machine. He cannot cease to be a
+machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and
+in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition. Young, he is an
+organism ripening to the set mechanic diurnal round, and while so he needs all
+the angels to hold watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit
+for what machinal duties he may have to perform&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was utterly lost. He
+respected Sir Austin&rsquo;s estates too much to believe for a moment he was
+listening to downright folly. Yet how otherwise explain the fact of his
+excellent client being incomprehensible to him? For a middle-aged gentleman,
+and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing, will rarely have a
+notion of accusing his understanding; and Mr. Thompson had not the slightest
+notion of accusing his. But the baronet&rsquo;s condescension in coming thus to
+him, and speaking on the subject nearest his heart, might well affect him, and
+he quickly settled the case in favour of both parties, pronouncing mentally
+that his honoured client had a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that no
+wonder he experienced difficulty in giving it fitly significant words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism, for his
+lawyer&rsquo;s edification. At a recurrence of the word &ldquo;healthy&rdquo;
+Mr. Thompson caught him up:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely! Allow me
+to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if you condescend to examine him, you will
+say that regular habits, and a diet of nothing but law-reading&mdash;for other
+forms of literature I strictly interdict&mdash;have made him all that you
+instance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson&rsquo;s hand was on the bell. Sir Austin arrested him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Permit me to see the lad at his occupation,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential clerk, Mr.
+Beazley, a veteran of law, now little better than a document, looking already
+signed and sealed, and shortly to be delivered, who enjoined nothing from his
+pupil and companion save absolute silence, and sounded his praises to his
+father at the close of days when it had been rigidly observed&mdash;not caring,
+or considering, the finished dry old document that he was, under what kind of
+spell a turbulent commonplace youth could be charmed into stillness for six
+hours of the day. Ripton was supposed to be devoted to the study of Blackstone.
+A tome of the classic legal commentator lay extended outside his desk, under
+the partially lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student&rsquo;s
+head&mdash;law being thus brought into direct contact with his brain-pan. The
+office-door opened, and he heard not; his name was called, and he remained
+equally moveless. His method of taking in Blackstone seemed absorbing as it was
+novel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Comparing notes, I daresay,&rdquo; whispered Mr. Thompson to Sir Austin.
+&ldquo;I call that study!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it like this every day, Beazley?&rdquo; Mr. Thompson asked with
+parental pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ahem!&rdquo; the old clerk replied, &ldquo;he is like this every day,
+sir. I could not ask more of a mouse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity roused one of
+Ripton&rsquo;s senses, which blew a pall to the others. Down went the lid of
+the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in Ripton&rsquo;s
+face. He slouched from his perch with the air of one who means rather to defend
+his position than welcome a superior, the right hand in his waistcoat pocket
+fumbling a key, the left catching at his vacant stool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth&rsquo;s shoulder, and said, leaning his
+head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, &ldquo;I am glad to find
+my son&rsquo;s old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study is
+myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not be
+offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread again. Besides,
+you know, you must get accustomed to the visits of your client.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson, that, seeing
+Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and sneaking defiance, he
+thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and desired him to inform the
+baronet what particular part of Blackstone he was absorbed in mastering at that
+moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious articulation,
+&ldquo;The Law of Gravelkind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What Law?&rdquo; said Sir Austin, perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gravelkind,&rdquo; again rumbled Ripton&rsquo;s voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation. The old lawyer was
+shaking his law-box.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Singular!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;He will make that mistake! What
+law, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father&rsquo;s
+face, and corrected himself. &ldquo;Gavelkind, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief. &ldquo;Gravelkind,
+indeed! Gavelkind! An old Kentish&rdquo;&mdash;He was going to expound, but Sir
+Austin assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, &ldquo;I
+should like to look at your son&rsquo;s notes, or remarks on the judiciousness
+of that family arrangement, if he had any.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered,&rdquo; said
+Mr. Thompson to the sucking lawyer; &ldquo;a very good plan, which I have
+always enjoined on you. Were you not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton stammered that he was afraid he hid not any notes to show, worth seeing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What were you doing then, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Making notes,&rdquo; muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exhibit!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and at the
+confidential clerk. He took out his key. It would not fit the hole.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exhibit!&rdquo; was peremptorily called again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton discovered that
+the desk was already unlocked. Mr. Thompson marched to it, and held the lid
+aloft. A book was lying open within, which Ripton immediately hustled among a
+mass of papers and tossed into a dark corner, not before the glimpse of a
+coloured frontispiece was caught by Sir Austin&rsquo;s eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet smiled, and said, &ldquo;You study Heraldry, too? Are you fond of
+the science?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton replied that he was very fond of it&mdash;extremely attached, and threw
+a further pile of papers into the dark corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them was
+tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were found, that
+made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of his son&rsquo;s
+exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of Gavelkind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those scraps he had
+thrown carelessly into the dark corner. Ripton, though he consented to inspect
+them, was positive they were not there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What have we here?&rdquo; said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded
+paper addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them
+forth, one by one. Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read aloud:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;To the Editor of the &lsquo;Jurist.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir,&mdash;In your recent observations on the great case of
+Crim&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson hem&rsquo;d! and stopped short, like a man who comes unexpectedly
+upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley&rsquo;s feet shuffled. Sir Austin changed
+the position of an arm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s on the other side, I think,&rdquo; gasped Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond Court,
+Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U Five pounds, when I
+can pay.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&ldquo;Signed: R<small>IPTON</small> T<small>HOMPSON</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly appended:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;(Mem. Document not binding.)&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment and reproach
+passed round the office. Sir Austin assumed an attitude. Mr. Thompson shed a
+glance of severity on his confidential clerk, who parried by throwing up his
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his father&rsquo;s
+nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked &ldquo;Legal
+Considerations.&rdquo; Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding his
+son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their offspring, he
+felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up to a certain point, for the
+good of both. He therefore opened the paper, expecting something worse than
+what he had hitherto seen, despite its formal heading, and he was not
+disappointed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;Legal Considerations&rdquo; related to the Case regarding, which
+Ripton had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to the Editor
+of the &ldquo;Jurist,&rdquo; and was indeed a great case, and an ancient;
+revived apparently for the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities
+of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr. Ripton Thompson, whose assistance
+the Attorney-General, in his opening statement, congratulated himself on
+securing; a rather unusual thing, due probably to the eminence and renown of
+that youthful gentleman at the Bar of his country. So much was seen from the
+copy of a report purporting to be extracted from a newspaper, and prefixed to
+the Junior Counsel&rsquo;s remarks, or Legal Considerations, on the conduct of
+the Case, the admissibility and non-admissibility of certain evidence, and the
+ultimate decision of the judges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of one prepared to
+do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a town-crier, varied by a
+bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song tone, deliberately read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;V<small>ULCAN</small> <i>v</i>. M<small>ARS</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on
+behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital Opportunity,
+for the Defendant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the
+unfortunate Ripton over his spectacles, &ldquo;your notes are on that issue,
+sir! Thus you employ your time, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired immediately
+behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was pushed by the devil of
+his rancour to continue reading:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of
+particulars&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial,&rdquo; said Mr.
+Thompson. &ldquo;Ah!&mdash;what do you mean here, sir,&mdash;but enough! I
+think we may be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case. This is how
+you employ your law-studies, sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr. Beazley!
+you will henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man under my own eye.
+Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to a scene so
+disagreeable. It was a father&rsquo;s duty not to spare him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutus might have done after passing
+judgment on the scion of his house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;These papers,&rdquo; he went on, fluttering Ripton&rsquo;s precious
+lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, &ldquo;I shall retain. The day will
+come when he will regard them with shame. And it shall be his penance, his
+punishment, to do so! Stop!&rdquo; he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting
+his desk, &ldquo;have you more of them, sir; of a similar description? Rout
+them out! Let us know you at your worst. What have you there&mdash;in that
+corner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on important
+cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and turned over
+the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much remarking it, for his
+suspicions had not risen to print.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Manual of Heraldry?&rdquo; the baronet politely, and it may be
+ironically, inquired, before it could well escape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like it very much,&rdquo; said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful
+torment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct.&rdquo; The
+baronet proffered a hand for the book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves,&rdquo; cried Ripton, still clutching
+it nervously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book from
+Ripton&rsquo;s hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads together
+over the title-page. It set forth in attractive characters beside a coloured
+frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed there, the entrancing
+adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to consign
+Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his sinful flesh, Mr.
+Thompson would have used them. As it was, he contented himself by looking Black
+Holes and Iron Rods at the detected youth, who sat on his perch insensible to
+what might happen next, collapsed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a &ldquo;Pah!&rdquo; He,
+however, took her up again, and strode away with her. Sir Austin gave Ripton a
+forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying, &ldquo;Good-bye, boy! At some
+future date Richard will be happy to see you at Raynham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>
+CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it possible,&rdquo; quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had ushered his
+client into his private room, &ldquo;that you will consent, Sir Austin, to see
+him and receive him again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; the baronet replied. &ldquo;Why not? This by no means
+astonishes me. When there is no longer danger to my son he will be welcome as
+he was before. He is a schoolboy. I knew it. I expected it. The results of your
+principle, Thompson!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of the very worst books of that abominable class!&rdquo; exclaimed
+the old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which brazen Miss
+Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt of captivating Time and
+all his veterans on a fair field. &ldquo;Pah!&rdquo; he shut her to with the
+energy he would have given to the office of publicly slapping her face;
+&ldquo;from this day I diet him on bread and water&mdash;rescind his
+pocket-money!&mdash;How he could have got hold of such a book! How he&mdash;!
+And what ideas! Concealing them from me as he has done so cunningly! He trifles
+with vice! His mind is in a putrid state! I might have believed&mdash;I did
+believe&mdash;I might have gone on believing&mdash;my son Ripton to be a moral
+young man!&rdquo; The old lawyer interjected on the delusion of fathers, and
+sat down in a lamentable abstraction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The lad has come out!&rdquo; said Sir Austin. &ldquo;His adoption of the
+legal form is amusing. He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated are
+as hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner&rsquo;s amusements will resemble
+those of a confirmed debauchee. The satiated, and the insatiate, appetite alike
+appeal to extremes. You are astonished at this revelation of your son&rsquo;s
+condition. I expected it; though assuredly, believe me, not this sudden and
+indisputable proof of it. But I knew that the seed was in him, and therefore I
+have not latterly invited him to Raynham. School, and the corruption there,
+will bear its fruits sooner or later. I could advise you, Thompson, what to do
+with him: it would be my plan.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he should esteem it an honour
+to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel&rsquo;s advice: secretly resolute, like
+a true Briton, to follow his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him, then,&rdquo; continued the baronet, &ldquo;see vice in its
+nakedness. While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him! Vice, taken little by
+little, usurps gradually the whole creature. My counsel to you, Thompson, would
+be, to drag him through the sinks of town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson began to blink again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin! Do not fear me, sir. I have no
+tenderness for vice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That is not what is wanted, Thompson. You mistake me. He should be dealt
+with gently. Heavens! do you hope to make him hate vice by making him a martyr
+for its sake? You must descend from the pedestal of age to become his Mentor:
+cause him to see how certainly and pitilessly vice itself punishes: accompany
+him into its haunts&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Over town?&rdquo; broke forth Mr. Thompson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Over town,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And depend upon it,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that, until fathers act
+thoroughly up to their duty, we shall see the sights we see in great cities,
+and hear the tales we hear in little villages, with death and calamity in our
+homes, and a legacy of sorrow and shame to the generations to come. I do
+aver,&rdquo; he exclaimed, becoming excited, &ldquo;that, if it were not for
+the duty to my son, and the hope I cherish in him, I, seeing the accumulation
+of misery we are handing down to an innocent posterity&mdash;to whom, through
+our sin, the fresh breath of life will be foul&mdash;I&mdash;yes! I would hide
+my name! For whither are we tending? What home is pure absolutely? What cannot
+our doctors and lawyers tell us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what is to come of this?&rdquo; Sir Austin continued. &ldquo;When
+the sins of the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is not perdition the final
+sum of things? And is not life, the boon of heaven, growing to be the
+devil&rsquo;s game utterly? But for my son, I would hide my name. I would not
+bequeath it to be cursed by them that walk above my grave!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was indeed a terrible view of existence. Mr. Thompson felt uneasy. There
+was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his speech, that silenced
+remonstrating reason and the cry of long years of comfortable respectability.
+Mr. Thompson went to church regularly; paid his rates and dues without
+overmuch, or at least more than common, grumbling. On the surface he was a good
+citizen, fond of his children, faithful to his wife, devoutly marching to a
+fair seat in heaven on a path paved by something better than a thousand a year.
+But here was a man sighting him from below the surface, and though it was an
+unfair, unaccustomed, not to say un-English, method of regarding one&rsquo;s
+fellow-man, Mr. Thompson was troubled by it. What though his client
+exaggerated? Facts were at the bottom of what he said. And he was
+acute&mdash;he had unmasked Ripton! Since Ripton&rsquo;s exposure he winced at
+a personal application in the text his client preached from. Possibly this was
+the secret source of part of his anger against that peccant youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered visage and a pitiable
+contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly up from his chair. Apparently he was
+about to speak, but he straightway turned and went meditatively to a
+side-recess in the room, whereof he opened a door, drew forth a tray and a
+decanter labelled Port, filled a glass for his client, deferentially invited
+him to partake of it; filled another glass for himself, and drank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was his reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin never took wine before dinner. Thompson had looked as if he meant to
+speak: he waited for Thompson&rsquo;s words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in his glass, the
+eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his client.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this precious draught, and turned
+its flavour over and over with an aspect of potent Judicial wisdom (one might
+have thought that he was weighing mankind in the balance), the old lawyer
+heaved, and said, sharpening his lips over the admirable vintage, &ldquo;The
+world is in a very sad state, I fear, Sir Austin!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His client gazed at him queerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that,&rdquo; Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing by his
+gaze the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him, &ldquo;that
+is, I think you would say, Sir Austin&mdash;if I could but prevail upon
+you&mdash;a tolerably good character wine!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!&rdquo; Sir Austin
+murmured, without disturbing his legal adviser&rsquo;s dimples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that such a wine was not
+to be had everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were then outwardly silent for a apace. Inwardly one of them was full of
+riot and jubilant uproar: as if the solemn fields of law were suddenly to be
+invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals: and to preserve a decently
+wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on terms with his companion, he had to
+grimace like a melancholy clown in a pantomime.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair. The baronet was still expectant. Mr.
+Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied his glass. He combated the change that had
+come over him. He tried not to see Ruby. He tried to feel miserable, and it was
+not in him. He spoke, drawing what appropriate inspirations he could from his
+client&rsquo;s countenance, to show that they had views in common:
+&ldquo;Degenerating sadly, I fear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;According to what my wine-merchants say,&rdquo; continued Mr. Thompson,
+&ldquo;there can be no doubt about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin stared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the grape, or the ground, or something,&rdquo; Mr. Thompson
+went on. &ldquo;All I can say is, our youngsters will have a bad look-out! In
+my opinion Government should be compelled to send out a Commission to inquire
+into the cause. To Englishmen it would be a public calamity. It surprises
+me&mdash;I hear men sit and talk despondently of this extraordinary disease of
+the vine, and not one of them seems to think it incumbent on him to act, and do
+his best to stop it.&rdquo; He fronted his client like a man who accuses an
+enormous public delinquency. &ldquo;Nobody makes a stir! The apathy of
+Englishmen will become proverbial. Pray, try it, Sir Austin! Pray, allow me.
+Such a wine cannot disagree at any hour. Do! I am allowanced two glasses three
+hours before dinner. Stomachic. I find it agree with me surprisingly: quite a
+new man. I suppose it will last our time. It must! What should we do?
+There&rsquo;s no Law possible without it. Not a lawyer of us could live. Ours
+is an occupation which dries the blood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine had renovated, and gratitude
+to the wine inspired his tongue. He thought that his client, of the whimsical
+mind, though undoubtedly correct moral views, had need of a glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that very wine&mdash;Sir Austin&mdash;I think I do not err in
+saying, that very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher Feverel, used to
+taste whenever he came to consult my father, when I was a boy. And I remember
+one day being called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me out a glass. I wish
+I could call in Ripton now, and do the same. No! Leniency in such a case as
+that!&mdash;The wine would not hurt him&mdash;I doubt if there be much left for
+him to welcome his guests with. Ha! ha! Now if I could persuade you, Sir
+Austin, as you do not take wine before dinner, some day to favour me with your
+company at my little country cottage I have a wine there&mdash;the fellow to
+that&mdash;I think you would, I do think you would&rdquo;&mdash;Mr. Thompson
+meant to say, he thought his client would arrive at something of a similar
+jocund contemplation of his fellows in their degeneracy that inspirited lawyers
+after potation, but condensed the sensual promise into &ldquo;highly
+approve.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour mouth comically
+compressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and Thompson after, were
+two different men. To indoctrinate him now was too late: it was perhaps the
+time to make the positive use of him he wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pencilled on a handy slip of paper: &ldquo;Two prongs of a fork; the World
+stuck between them&mdash;Port and the Palate: &rsquo;Tis one which fails
+first&mdash;Down goes World;&rdquo; and again the
+hieroglyph&mdash;&ldquo;Port-spectacles.&rdquo; He said, &ldquo;I shall gladly
+accompany you this evening, Thompson,&rdquo; words that transfigured the
+delighted lawyer, and ensigned the skeleton of a great Aphorism to his pocket,
+there to gather flesh and form, with numberless others in a like condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I came to visit my lawyer,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;I think I
+have been dealing with The World in epitome!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>
+CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of Raynham, the rank
+misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking out a bride for his only son
+and uncorrupted heir. Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the excellent authority.
+Doctor Bairam had safely delivered Mrs. Deborah Gossip of this interesting
+bantling, which was forthwith dandled in dozens of feminine laps. Doctor Bairam
+could boast the first interview with the famous recluse. He had it from his own
+lips that the object of the baronet was to look out a bride for his only son
+and uncorrupted heir; &ldquo;and,&rdquo; added the doctor, &ldquo;she&rsquo;ll
+be lucky who gets him.&rdquo; Which was interpreted to mean, that he would be a
+catch; the doctor probably intending to allude to certain extraordinary
+difficulties in the way of a choice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A demand was made on the publisher of The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip for all his
+outstanding copies. Conventionalities were defied. A summer-shower of cards
+fell on the baronet&rsquo;s table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal. The cards he
+contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband, if there was a
+husband, evidently dragged in for propriety&rsquo;s sake. He perused the cards
+and smiled. He knew their purpose. What terrible light Thompson and Bairam had
+thrown on some of them! Heavens! in what a state was the blood of this Empire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates, Lord Heddon,
+and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of Parliament, useful
+men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine crop of wild oats, and
+advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that they did not fancy themselves
+the worse for it. He found one with an imbecile son and the other with
+consumptive daughters. &ldquo;So much,&rdquo; he wrote in the Note-book,
+&ldquo;for the Wild Oats theory!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Darley was proud of his daughters&rsquo; white and pink skins. &ldquo;Beautiful
+complexions,&rdquo; he called them. The eldest was in the market, immensely
+admired. Sir Austin was introduced to her. She talked fluently and sweetly. A
+youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even a man, might have
+fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair. There was something
+poetic about her. And she was quite well, she said, the baronet frequently
+questioning her on that point. She intimated that she was robust; but towards
+the close of their conversation her hand would now and then travel to her side,
+and she breathed painfully an instant, saying, &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it odd? Dora,
+Adela, and myself, we all feel the same queer sensation&mdash;about the heart,
+I think it is&mdash;after talking much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, &ldquo;Wild oats!
+wild oats!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all nonsense, Feverel,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;about bringing
+up a lad out of the common way. He&rsquo;s all the better for a little
+racketing when he&rsquo;s green&mdash;feels his bone and muscle&mdash;learns to
+know the world. He&rsquo;ll never be a man if he hasn&rsquo;t played at the old
+game one time in his life, and the earlier the better. I&rsquo;ve always found
+the best fellows were wildish once. I don&rsquo;t care what he does when
+he&rsquo;s a green-horn; besides, he&rsquo;s got an excuse for it then. You
+can&rsquo;t expect to have a man, if he doesn&rsquo;t take a man&rsquo;s food.
+You&rsquo;ll have a milksop. And, depend upon it, when he does break out
+he&rsquo;ll go to the devil, and nobody pities him. Look what those fellows the
+grocers, do when they get hold of a young&mdash;what d&rsquo;ye call
+&rsquo;em?&mdash;apprentice. They know the scoundrel was born with a sweet
+tooth. Well! they give him the run of the shop, and in a very short time he
+soberly deals out the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract a morsel even
+for the pleasure of stealing. I know you have contrary theories. You hold that
+the young grocer should have a soul above sugar. It won&rsquo;t do! Take my
+word for it, Feverel, it&rsquo;s a dangerous experiment, that of bringing up
+flesh and blood in harness. No colt will bear it, or he&rsquo;s a tame beast.
+And look you: take it on medical grounds. Early excesses the frame will recover
+from: late ones break the constitution. There&rsquo;s the case in a nutshell.
+How&rsquo;s your son?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sound and well!&rdquo; replied Sir Austin. &ldquo;And yours?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Lipscombe&rsquo;s always the same!&rdquo; Lord Heddon sighed
+peevishly. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s quiet&mdash;that&rsquo;s one good thing; but
+there&rsquo;s no getting the country to take him, so I must give up hopes of
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin surveyed him, and was
+not astonished at the refusal of the country to take him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wild oats!&rdquo; he thought, as he contemplated the headless,
+degenerate, weedy issue and result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the marriage of their offspring
+as a matter of course. &ldquo;And if I were not a coward,&rdquo; Sir Austin
+confessed to himself, &ldquo;I should stand forth and forbid the banns! This
+universal ignorance of the inevitable consequence of sin is frightful! The wild
+oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have struck the world, and rendered it
+morally insensible.&rdquo; However, they silenced him. He was obliged to spare
+their feelings on a subject to him so deeply sacred. The healthful image of his
+noble boy rose before him, a triumphant living rejoinder to any hostile
+argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought the third generation of
+wild oats would be a pretty thin crop!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor Bairam physician could
+recollect a progenitorial blot, either on the male or female side, were not
+numerous. &ldquo;Only,&rdquo; said the doctors &ldquo;you really must not be
+too exacting in these days, my dear Sir Austin. It is impossible to contest
+your principle, and you are doing mankind incalculable service in calling its
+attention to this the gravest of its duties: but as the stream of civilization
+progresses we must be a little taken in the lump, as it were. The world is, I
+can assure you&mdash;and I do not look only above the surface, you can
+believe&mdash;the world is awakening to the vital importance of the
+question.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doctor,&rdquo; replied Sir Austin, &ldquo;if you had a pure-blood Arab
+barb would you cross him with a screw?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Decidedly not,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to match my son
+according to his merits,&rdquo; Sir Austin returned. &ldquo;I trust the world
+is awakening, as you observe. I have been to my publisher, since my arrival in
+town, with a manuscript &lsquo;Proposal for a New System of Education of our
+British Youth,&rsquo; which may come in opportunely. I think I am entitled to
+speak on that subject.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;You will admit, Sir Austin,
+that, compared with continental nations&mdash;our neighbours, for
+instance&mdash;we shine to advantage, in morals, as in everything else. I hope
+you admit that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower
+standard,&rdquo; said the baronet. &ldquo;If I compare the enlightenment of
+your views&mdash;for you admit my principle&mdash;with the obstinate
+incredulity of a country doctor&rsquo;s, who sees nothing of the world, you are
+hardly flattered, I presume?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison, assuredly, he
+interjected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; added the baronet, &ldquo;the French make no pretences,
+and thereby escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy. Whereas
+we!&mdash;but I am not their advocate, credit me. It is better, perhaps, to pay
+our homage to virtue. At least it delays the spread of entire
+corruptness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured to assist
+his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by putting several mamas,
+whom he visited, on the alert.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>
+CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air of the
+Enchanted Island.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-stems.
+The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the waters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to him
+golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch the leaves
+of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems redder gold;
+leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded banks, where the
+foxglove&rsquo;s last upper-bells incline, and bramble-shoots wander amid moist
+rich herbage. The plumes of the woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the
+open, &rsquo;tis a race with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths
+and up the hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the
+heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly there. A film
+athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade fragrant with warm
+pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little brown squirrel drops tail,
+and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a chance tuneless note. From silence
+into silence things move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious full
+heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their glories
+through voluminous leafage. But these are bowers where deep bliss dwells,
+imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in which the young lamb
+gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend, great Radiance! embrace
+creation with beneficent fire, and pass from us! You and the vice-regal light
+that succeeds to you, and all heavenly pageants, are the ministers and the
+slaves of the throbbing content within.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed shores, the
+prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling nightingales they
+sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless ever-fresh treasures of
+their souls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in a calm,
+groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of exultation,
+complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great boldness, has
+called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the key-notes of the wonderful
+harmonies the angels sing aloft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! my beloved!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy pipes to
+meditative eye on a penny-whistle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Love&rsquo;s musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops;
+and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of feeling, and of
+feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping volume is too wild, and is
+no more than their sigh of tenderness spoken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had unblunted edges,
+and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food. To gentlemen and
+ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows into the mellow
+bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet; or, it may be, commands
+the whole Orchestra for them. And they are pleased. He is still the cunning
+musician. They languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an
+earthly concert. For them the spheres move not to two notes. They have lost, or
+forfeited and never known, the first super-sensual spring of the ripe senses
+into passion; when they carry the soul with them, and have the privileges of
+spirits to walk disembodied, boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other
+is a dead body. Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple
+to whom Love&rsquo;s simple bread and water is a finer feast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pipe, happy sheep-bop, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings and lift your
+voices!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They have out-flown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the ken of
+science. They were made for their Eden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And this divine gift was in store for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their recurring
+refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone by and suffused the
+living Future!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You for me: I for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are born for each other!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their cradles. The
+celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them together. And, O victory! O
+wonder! after toil and pain, and difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts
+have succeeded!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here we two sit who are written above as one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea of sunken
+fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire before the
+advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and,
+with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Richard! yes; for I remembered you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal
+journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full half the
+sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hears the delicious music.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you are mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they sit, and
+for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly fluttering over
+the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her eyes her soul is naked to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! my bride! my life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The soft beam
+travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips are locked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express their first
+kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it nothing. St.
+Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of Paradise, pressing fingers
+upon all the notes of which Love is but one, from her you may hear it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, the
+self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent squint down the length of
+his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish correspondingly awry, he also marches
+into silence, hailed by supper. The woods are still. There is heard but the
+night-jar spinning on the pine-branch, circled by moonlight.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>
+CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of dragons. Wherever
+there is romance, these monsters come by inimical attraction. Because the
+heavens are certainly propitious to true lovers, the beasts of the abysses are
+banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable sad victories; and every
+love-tale is an Epic Par of the upper and lower powers. I wish good fairies
+were a little more active. They seem to be cajoled into security by the
+happiness of their favourites; whereas the wicked are always alert, and
+circumspect. They let the little ones shut their eyes to fancy they are not
+seen, and then commence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the dinner-table at the
+hour of contemplative digestion and prime claret; the hour when the wise youth
+Adrian delighted to talk at his ease&mdash;to recline in dreamy consciousness
+that a work of good was going on inside him; these abstractions from his
+studies, excesses of gaiety, and glumness, heavings of the chest, and other odd
+signs, but mainly the disgusting behaviour of his pupil at the dinner-table,
+taught Adrian to understand, though the young gentleman was clever in excuses,
+that he had somehow learnt there was another half to the divided Apple of
+Creation, and had embarked upon the great voyage of discovery of the difference
+between the two halves. With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether he might
+be in the observatory or the practical stage of the voyage. For himself, as a
+man and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its being either; and he had
+only to consider which was temporarily most threatening to the ridiculous
+System he had to support. Richard&rsquo;s absence annoyed him. The youth was
+vivacious, and his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when he left table, Adrian
+had to sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth Century, from both of whom he
+had extracted all the amusement that could be got, and he saw his digestion
+menaced by the society of two ruined stomachs, who bored him just when he loved
+himself most. Poor Hippias was now so reduced that he had profoundly to
+calculate whether a particular dish, or an extra-glass of wine, would have a
+bitter effect on him and be felt through the remainder of his years. He was in
+the habit of uttering his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic doubts
+of experience, and the succulent insinuations of appetite, contended hotly. It
+was horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian for tempting him to a
+decision in favour of the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Happy to take wine with you,&rdquo; Adrian would say, and Hippias would
+regard the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!&rdquo; the
+Eighteenth Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends her own
+practice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s this literary work!&rdquo; interjects Hippias, handling his
+glass of remorse. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what else it can be. You have no
+idea how anxious I feel. I have frightful dreams. I&rsquo;m perpetually
+anxious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No wonder,&rdquo; says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to
+which an absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought poor Hippias.
+&ldquo;No wonder. Ten years of Fairy Mythology! Could anyone hope to sleep in
+peace after that? As to your digestion, no one has a digestion who is in the
+doctor&rsquo;s hands. They prescribe from dogmas, and don&rsquo;t count on the
+system. They have cut you down from two bottles to two glasses. It&rsquo;s
+absurd. You can&rsquo;t sleep, because your system is crying out for what
+it&rsquo;s accustomed to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggardly confidence, but assures Adrian that
+he really should not like to venture on a bottle now: it would be rank madness
+to venture on a bottle now, he thinks. Last night only, after partaking, under
+protest, of that rich French dish, or was it the duck?&mdash;Adrian advised him
+to throw the blame on that vulgar bird.&mdash;Say the duck, then. Last night,
+he was no sooner stretched in bed, than he seemed to be of an enormous size all
+his limbs&mdash;his nose, his mouth, his toes&mdash;were elephantine! An
+elephant was a pigmy to him. And his hugeousness seemed to increase the instant
+he shut his eyes. He turned on this side; he turned on that. He lay on his
+back; he tried putting his face to the pillow; and he continued to swell. He
+wondered the room could hold him&mdash;he thought he must burst it&mdash;and
+absolutely lit a candle, and went to the looking-glass to see whether he was
+bearable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably. He had, however,
+a genial auditor in the Eighteenth Century, who declared it to be a new
+disease, not known in her day, and deserving investigation. She was happy to
+compare sensations with him, but hers were not of the complex order, and a
+potion soon righted her. In fact, her system appeared to be a debatable ground
+for aliment and medicine, on which the battle was fought, and, when over, she
+was none the worse, as she joyfully told Hippias. Never looked ploughman on
+prince, or village belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor
+nineteenth-century Hippias expended in his gaze on the Eighteenth. He was too
+serious to note much the laughter of the young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This &lsquo;Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus,&rsquo; as Adrian designated the
+malady of Hippias, was repeated regularly ever evening. It was natural for any
+youth to escape as quick as he could from such a table of stomachs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter from the baronet,
+describing the house and maternal System of a Mrs. Caroline Grandison, and the
+rough grain of hopefulness in her youngest daughter, spurred him to think of
+his duties, and see what was going on. He gave Richard half-an-hour&rsquo;s
+start, and then put on his hat to follow his own keen scent, leaving Hippias
+and the Eighteenth Century to piquet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not unknown to him, one
+Molly Davenport by name, a buxom lass, who, on seeing him, invoked her Good
+Gracious, the generic maid&rsquo;s familiar, and was instructed by
+reminiscences vivid, if ancient, to giggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you looking for your young gentleman?&rdquo; Molly presently asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see if the coast was
+clear, and replied to her, &ldquo;I am, miss. I want you to tell me about
+him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear!&rdquo; said the buxom lass, &ldquo;was you coming for me to-night
+to know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Cause I can&rsquo;t stop out long to-night,&rdquo; Molly
+explained, taking the rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may go in when you please, miss. Is that any one coming? Come here
+in the shade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, get along!&rdquo; said Miss Molly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian spoke with resolution. &ldquo;Listen to me, Molly Davenport!&rdquo; He
+put a coin in her hand, which had a medical effect in calming her to attention.
+&ldquo;I want to know whether you have seen him at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who? Your young gentleman? I sh&rsquo;d think I did. I seen him to-night
+only. Ain&rsquo;t he grooved handsome. He&rsquo;s al&rsquo;ays about Beltharp
+now. It ain&rsquo;t to fire no more ricks. He&rsquo;s afire &rsquo;unself.
+Ain&rsquo;t you seen &rsquo;em together? He&rsquo;s after the
+missis&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine herself to
+particulars. This buxom lass then told him that her young missis and
+Adrian&rsquo;s young gentleman were a pretty couple, and met one another every
+night. The girl swore for their innocence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As for Miss Lucy, she haven&rsquo;t a bit of art in her, nor have
+he.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re all nature, I suppose,&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;How is
+it I don&rsquo;t see her at church?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s Catholic, or some think,&rdquo; said Molly. &ldquo;Her
+father was, and a leftenant. She&rsquo;ve a Cross in her bedroom. She
+don&rsquo;t go to church. I see you there last Sunday a-lookin&rsquo; so
+solemn,&rdquo; and Molly stroked her hand down her chin to give it length.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts. It was dark, and in the dark he was
+indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested by the lass, but he wanted to
+hear facts, and he again bribed her to impart nothing but facts. Upon which she
+told him further, that her young lady was an innocent artless creature who had
+been to school upwards of three years with the nuns, and had a little money of
+her own, and was beautiful enough to be a lord&rsquo;s lady, and had been in
+love with Master Richard ever since she was a little girl. Molly had got from a
+friend of hers up at the Abbey, Mary Garner, the housemaid who cleaned Master
+Richard&rsquo;s room, a bit of paper once with the young gentleman&rsquo;s
+handwriting, and had given it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy had given her a
+gold sovereign for it&mdash;just for his handwriting! Miss Lucy did not seem
+happy at the farm, because of that young Tom, who was always leering at her,
+and to be sure she was quite a lady, and could play, and sing, and dress with
+the best.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She looks like angels in her nightgown!&rdquo; Molly wound up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the first time as if there
+were a distinction of position between them, petitioned: &ldquo;Mr. Harley! you
+won&rsquo;t go for doin&rsquo; any harm to &rsquo;em &rsquo;cause of what I
+said, will you now? Do say you won&rsquo;t now, Mr. Harley! She is good, though
+she&rsquo;s a Catholic. She was kind to me when I was ill, and I wouldn&rsquo;t
+have her crossed&mdash;I&rsquo;d rather be showed up myself, I would!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth gave no positive promise to Molly, and she had to read his
+consent in a relaxation of his austerity. The noise of a lumbering foot
+plodding down the lane caused her to be abruptly dismissed. Molly took to
+flight, the lumbering foot accelerated its pace, and the pastoral appeal to her
+flying skirts was heard&mdash;&ldquo;Moll! you theyre! It be
+I&mdash;Bantam!&rdquo; But the sprightly Silvia would not stop to his wooing,
+and Adrian turned away laughing at these Arcadians.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian was a lazy dragon. All he did for the present was to hint and tease.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the Inevitable!&rdquo; he said, and asked himself why he
+should seek to arrest it. He had no faith in the System. Heavy Benson had.
+Benson of the slow thick-lidded antediluvian eye and loose-crumpled skin;
+Benson, the Saurian, the woman-hater; Benson was wide awake. A sort of rivalry
+existed between the wise youth and heavy Benson. The fidelity of the latter
+dependant had moved the baronet to commit to him a portion of the management of
+the Raynham estate, and this Adrian did not like. No one who aspires to the
+honourable office of leading another by the nose can tolerate a party in his
+ambition. Benson&rsquo;s surly instinct told him he was in the wise
+youth&rsquo;s way, and he resolved to give his master a striking proof of his
+superior faithfulness. For some weeks the Saurian eye had been on the two
+secret creatures. Heavy Benson saw letters come and go in the day, and now the
+young gentleman was off and out every night, and seemed to be on wings. Benson
+knew whither he went, and the object he went for. It was a woman&mdash;that was
+enough. The Saurian eye had actually seen the sinful thing lure the hope of
+Raynham into the shades. He composed several epistles of warning to the baronet
+of the work that was going on; but before sending one he wished to record a
+little of their guilty conversation; and for this purpose the faithful fellow
+trotted over the dews to eavesdrop, and thereby aroused the good fairy, in the
+person of Tom Bakewell, the sole confidant of Richard&rsquo;s state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom said to his young master, &ldquo;Do you know what, sir? You be
+watched!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom hung his arms, and aped
+the respectable protrusion of the butler&rsquo;s head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s he, is it?&rdquo; cried Richard. &ldquo;He shall rue it, Tom.
+If I find him near me when we&rsquo;re together he shall never forget
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hit too hard, sir,&rdquo; Tom suggested. &ldquo;You hit
+mortal hard when you&rsquo;re in earnest, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and told Tom to be within
+hail to-morrow night&mdash;he knew where. By the hour of the appointment it was
+out of the lover&rsquo;s mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian&rsquo;s pointed
+invitation. According to custom, Richard started up and off, with few excuses.
+The lady exhibited no surprise. She and Adrian likewise strolled forth to enjoy
+the air of the Summer night. They had no intention of spying. Still they may
+have thought, by meeting Richard and his inamorata, there was a chance of
+laying a foundation of ridicule to sap the passion. They may have thought
+so&mdash;they were on no spoken understanding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have seen the little girl,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish. &ldquo;She is
+pretty&mdash;she would be telling if she were well set up. She speaks well. How
+absurd it is of that class to educate their women above their station! The
+child is really too good for a farmer. I noticed her before I knew of this; she
+has enviable hair. I suppose she doesn&rsquo;t paint her eyelids. Just the sort
+of person to take a young man. I thought there was something wrong. I received,
+the day before yesterday, an impassioned poem evidently not intended for me. My
+hair was gold. My meeting him was foretold. My eyes were homes of light fringed
+with night. I sent it back, correcting the colours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which was death to the rhymes,&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;I saw her this
+morning. The boy hasn&rsquo;t bad taste. As you say, she is too good for a
+farmer. Such a spark would explode any System. She slightly affected mine. The
+Huron is stark mad about her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we must positively write and tell his father,&rdquo; said Lady
+Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a trifle. The lady said
+she would have an interview with Richard, and then write, as it was her duty to
+do. Adrian shrugged, and was for going into the scientific explanation of
+Richard&rsquo;s conduct, in which the lady had to discourage him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor boy!&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;I am really sorry for him. I hope he
+will not feel it too strongly. They feel strongly, father and son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And select wisely,&rdquo; Adrian added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s another thing,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county people, about whom,
+it seemed, there was little or no scandal afloat: of the lady&rsquo;s loss of
+the season in town, which she professed not to regret, though she complained of
+her general weariness: of whether Mr. Morton of Poer Hall would propose to Mrs.
+Doria, and of the probable despair of the hapless curate of Lobourne; and other
+gossip, partly in French.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through the park to Lobourne. The
+moon had risen. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite a lover&rsquo;s night,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I, who have none to love&mdash;pity me!&rdquo; The wise youth
+attempted a sigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And never will have,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish, curtly. &ldquo;You buy
+your loves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian protested. However, he did not plead verbally against the impeachment,
+though the lady&rsquo;s decisive insight astonished him. He began to respect
+her, relishing her exquisite contempt, and he reflected that widows could be
+terrible creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing her
+romantic. This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air of &ldquo;I know
+you men,&rdquo; with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise youth
+more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses would have done. He
+looked at the lady. Her face was raised to the moon. She knew nothing&mdash;she
+had simply spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge, and had forgotten
+her words. Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or whatever feeling it was, for
+the baronet, was sincere, and really the longing for a virtuous man. Perhaps
+she had tried the opposite set pretty much. Adrian shrugged. Whenever the wise
+youth encountered a mental difficulty he instinctively lifted his shoulders to
+equal altitudes, to show that he had no doubt there was a balance in the
+case&mdash;plenty to be said on both sides, which was the same to him as a
+definite solution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park, wrapped in themselves,
+piped to by tireless Love, Richard and Lucy sat, toying with eternal moments.
+How they seem as if they would never end! What mere sparks they are when they
+have died out! And how in the distance of time they revive, and extend, and
+glow, and make us think them full the half, and the best of the fire, of our
+lives!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so shy of
+common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that was not pure
+gold of emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham. Whoever
+had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the history of, and he
+for a kiss will do her bidding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus goes the tender duet:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.&mdash;Darling! Beloved!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My own! Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should know my cousin Austin. You shall know him. He would take to
+you best of them all, and you to him. He is in the tropics now, looking out a
+place&mdash;it&rsquo;s a secret&mdash;for poor English working-men to emigrate
+to and found a colony in that part of the world:&mdash;my white angel!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear love!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is such a noble fellow! Nobody here understands him but me.
+Isn&rsquo;t it strange? Since I met you I love him better! That&rsquo;s because
+I love all that&rsquo;s good and noble better now&mdash;Beautiful! I
+love&mdash;I love you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think I&rsquo;ve determined, Lucy? If my father&mdash;but
+no! my father does love me.&mdash;No! he will not; and we will be happy
+together here. And I will win my way with you. And whatever I win will be
+yours; for it will be owing to you. I feel as if I had no strength but
+yours&mdash;none! and you make me&mdash;O Lucy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice ebbs. Presently Lucy murmurs&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your father, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, my father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest Richard! I feel so afraid of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He loves me, and will love you, Lucy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I am so poor and humble, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think so, because you&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Love me,&rdquo; comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to
+dumb variations, performed equally in concert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is resumed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave as any of
+them.&mdash;My own bride! Oh, how I adore you! When you are gone, I could fall
+upon the grass you tread upon, and kiss it. My breast feels empty of my
+heart&mdash;Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a knight, and
+have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do nothing now. My lady-love! My
+lady-love!&mdash;A tear?&mdash;Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who dares say that? Not a lady&mdash;the angel I love!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Think, Richard, who I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has given you to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank her God,
+the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant in her pure beauty
+that the limbs of the young man tremble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tenderly her lips part&mdash;&ldquo;I do not weep for sorrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They lean together&mdash;shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their
+thrilled cheeks and brows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it. She has seen little of mankind,
+but her soul tells her this one is different from others, and at the thought,
+in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart will break&mdash;tears of
+boundless thanksgiving. And he, gazing on those soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged
+eyes, and the grace of her loose falling tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable
+holy fire streaming through his members.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is long ere they speak in open tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O happy day when we met!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O glorious heaven looking down on us!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending
+benediction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O eternity of bliss!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some
+day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what you said
+in your letter that you dreamt?&mdash;that we were floating over the shadow of
+the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the cypress, and they
+handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the best omen in the world, their
+felling the old trees. And you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet
+they are. I love the nuns for having taught you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!&rdquo; she lifts up her face
+pleadingly, as to plead against herself, &ldquo;even if your father forgives my
+birth, he will not my religion. And, dearest, though I would die for you I
+cannot change it. It would seem that I was denying God; and&mdash;oh! it would
+make me ashamed of my love.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fear nothing!&rdquo; He winds her about with his arm. &ldquo;Come! He
+will love us both, and love you the more for being faithful to your
+father&rsquo;s creed. You don&rsquo;t know him, Lucy. He seems harsh and
+stern&mdash;he is full of kindness and love. He isn&rsquo;t at all a bigot. And
+besides, when he hears what the nuns have done for you, won&rsquo;t he thank
+them, as I do? And&mdash;oh! I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared
+to see him soon, for I cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like a jewel in
+a sty. Mind! I&rsquo;m not saying a word against your uncle. I declare I love
+everybody and everything that sees you and touches you. Stay! it is a wonder
+how you could have grown there. But you were not born there, and your father
+had good blood. Desborough!&mdash;here was a Colonel Desborough&mdash;never
+mind! Come!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dreads to. She begs not to. She is drawn away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woods are silent, and then&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?&rdquo; says a very
+different voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert. Lady Blandish was
+recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through a vista of the lower
+greenwood which opened out upon the moon-lighted valley, her hands clasped
+round one knee, her features almost stern in their set hard expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be heard in
+such positions, a luminous word or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady did not answer. A movement among the ferns attracted Adrian, and he
+stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to behold heavy Benson below;
+shaking fern-seed and spidery substances off his crumpled skin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?&rdquo; called Benson, starting, as he puffed,
+and exercised his handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it you, Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon these
+Mysteries?&rdquo; Adrian called back, and coming close to him, added,
+&ldquo;You look as if you had just been well thrashed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it dreadful, sir?&rdquo; snuffled Benson. &ldquo;And his
+father in ignorance, Mr. Hadrian!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He shall know, Benson! He shall know how, you have endangered your
+valuable skin in his service. If Mr. Richard had found you there just now I
+wouldn&rsquo;t answer for the consequences.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; Benson spitefully retorted. &ldquo;This won&rsquo;t go on;
+Mr. Hadrian. It shan&rsquo;t, sir. It will be put a stop to tomorrow, sir. I
+call it corruption of a young gentleman like him, and harlotry, sir, I call it.
+I&rsquo;d have every jade flogged that made a young innocent gentleman go on
+like that, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, why didn&rsquo;t you stop it yourself, Benson? Ah, I see! you
+waited&mdash;what? This is not the first time you have been attendant on Apollo
+and Miss Dryope? You have written to headquarters?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed her of Benson&rsquo;s
+zeal. The lady&rsquo;s eyes flashed. &ldquo;I hope Richard will treat him as he
+deserves,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall we home?&rdquo; Adrian inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do me a favour;&rdquo; the lady replied. &ldquo;Get my carriage sent
+round to meet me at the park-gates.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to be alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her hands clasped round
+one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An odd creature!&rdquo; muttered the wise youth. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s as
+odd as any of them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose she&rsquo;s graduating
+for it. Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has had the impudence to
+steal a march on me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was climbing
+high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy, sang to him softly. She sang first a
+fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she had been asked to
+sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. &ldquo;Did I live?&rdquo; he
+thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic old Gregorian
+chants, that, wherever you may hear them, seem to build up cathedral walls
+about you. The young man dropped the sculls. The strange solemn notes gave a
+religious tone to his love, and wafted him into the knightly ages and the
+reverential heart of chivalry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the moon
+stepping over and through white shoals of soft high clouds above and below:
+floating to her void&mdash;no other breath abroad! His soul went out of his
+body as he listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They must part. He rows her gently shoreward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never was so happy as to-night,&rdquo; she murmurs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the lake. Look where
+you are to live.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which is your room, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He points it out to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you! I should ask
+nothing more. How happy she must be!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all shall wait on you,
+and I foremost, Lucy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! may I hope for a letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By eleven to-morrow. And I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! you will have mine, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tom shall wait for it. A long one, mind! Did you like my last
+song?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pats her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it rests. O
+love! O heaven!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against the
+shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her ashore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See!&rdquo; she says, as the blush of his embrace
+subsides&mdash;&ldquo;See!&rdquo; and prettily she mimics awe and feels it a
+little, &ldquo;the cypress does point towards us. O Richard! it does!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her arch grave
+ways&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, there&rsquo;s hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She mustn&rsquo;t
+dream, my darling! or dream only of me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! but I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you at night. O happy
+to-morrow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will be sure to be there, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I am not dead, Lucy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not survive
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die. Death or life,
+with you! Who is it yonder? I see some one&mdash;is it Tom? It&rsquo;s
+Adrian!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it Mr. Harley?&rdquo; The fair girl shivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How dares he come here!&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly circled the lake. They
+were stealing away when he called. His call was repeated. Lucy entreated
+Richard to go to him; but the young man preferred to summon his attendant, Tom,
+from within hail, and send him to know what was wanted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will he have seen me? Will he have known me?&rdquo; whispered Lucy,
+tremulously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if he does, love?&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! if he does, dearest&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know, but I feel such a
+presentiment. You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard. Is he good?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good?&rdquo; Richard clutched her hand for the innocent maiden phrase.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s very fond of eating; that&rsquo;s all I know of
+Adrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir,&rdquo; said Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do go to him, dearest! Do go!&rdquo; Lucy begs him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, how I hate Adrian!&rdquo; The young man grinds his teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do go!&rdquo; Lucy urges him. &ldquo;Tom&mdash;good Tom&mdash;will see
+me home. To-morrow, dear love! To-morrow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wish to part from me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now. It may be news of
+importance, dearest. Think, Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tom! go back!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off a dozen paces, and
+sees nothing. Then the precious charge is confided to him. A heart is cut in
+twain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard made his way to Adrian. &ldquo;What is it you want with me,
+Adrian?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?&rdquo; was Adrian&rsquo;s
+answer. &ldquo;I want nothing with you, except to know whether you have seen
+Benson.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where should I see Benson? What do I know of Benson&rsquo;s
+doings?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not&mdash;such a secret old fist as he is! I want some one to
+tell him to order Lady Blandish&rsquo;s carriage to be sent round to the
+park-gates. I thought he might be round your way over there&mdash;I came upon
+him accidentally just now in Abbey-wood. What&rsquo;s the matter, boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You saw him there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hunting Diana, I suppose. He thinks she&rsquo;s not so chaste as they
+say,&rdquo; continued Adrian. &ldquo;Are you going to knock down that
+tree?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the tough wood. He left
+it and went to an ash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll spoil that weeper,&rdquo; Adrian cried. &ldquo;Down she
+comes! But good-night, Ricky. If you see Benson mind you tell him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight on the white road while
+Adrian spoke. The wise youth chuckled and strolled round the lake, glancing
+over his shoulder every now and then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not long before he heard a bellow for help&mdash;the roar of a dragon in
+his throes. Adrian placidly sat down on the grass, and fixed his eyes on the
+water. There, as the roar was being repeated amid horrid resounding echoes, the
+wise youth mused in this wise&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,&rsquo;
+says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, or words to that effect. The heavens evidently
+love Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot. Master Ricky is a
+peppery young man. He gets it from the apt Gruffudh. I rather believe in race.
+What a noise that old ruffian makes! He&rsquo;ll require poulticing with The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip. We shall have a message to-morrow, and a hubbub, and
+perhaps all go to town, which won&rsquo;t be bad for one who&rsquo;s been a
+prey to all the desires born of dulness. Benson howls: there&rsquo;s life in
+the old dog yet! He bays the moon. Look at her. She doesn&rsquo;t care.
+It&rsquo;s the same to her whether we coo like turtle-doves or roar like twenty
+lions. How complacent she looks! And yet she has just as much sympathy for
+Benson as for Cupid. She would smile on if both were being birched. Was that a
+raven or Benson? He howls no more. It sounds guttural:
+frog-like&mdash;something between the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse raven&rsquo;s
+croak. The fellow&rsquo;ll be killing him. It&rsquo;s time to go to the rescue.
+A deliverer gets more honour by coming in at the last gasp than if he
+forestalled catastrophe.&mdash;Ho, there, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the scene of battle,
+where stood St. George puffing over the prostrate Dragon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Holloa, Ricky! is it you?&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this?
+Whom have we here?&mdash;Benson, as I live!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Make this beast get up,&rdquo; Richard returned, breathing hard, and
+shaking his great ash-branch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He seems incapable, my dear boy. What have you been up to?&mdash;Benson!
+Benson!&mdash;I say, Ricky, this looks bad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s shamming!&rdquo; Richard clamoured like a savage. &ldquo;Spy
+upon me, will he? I tell you, he&rsquo;s shamming. He hasn&rsquo;t had half
+enough. Nothing&rsquo;s too bad for a spy. Let him getup!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Insatiate youth! do throw away that enormous weapon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has written to my father,&rdquo; Richard shouted. &ldquo;The
+miserable spy! Let him get up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ooogh? I won&rsquo;t!&rdquo; huskily groaned Benson. &ldquo;Mr. Hadrian,
+you&rsquo;re a witness&mdash;he&rsquo;s my back!&rdquo;&mdash;Cavernous noises
+took up the tale of his maltreatment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I daresay you love your back better than any part of your body
+now,&rdquo; Adrian muttered. &ldquo;Come, Benson! be a man. Mr. Richard has
+thrown away the stick. Come, and get off home, and let&rsquo;s see the extent
+of the damage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ooogh! he&rsquo;s a devil! Mr. Hadrian, sir, he&rsquo;s a devil!&rdquo;
+groaned Benson, turning half over in the road to ease his aches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian caught hold of Benson&rsquo;s collar and lifted him to a sitting
+posture. He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful pupil&rsquo;s hand could do
+in wrath. The wretched butler&rsquo;s coat was slit and welted; his hat knocked
+in; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and trembled if his pitiless
+executioner stirred a foot. Richard stood over him, grasping his great stick;
+no dawn of mercy for Benson in any corner of his features.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and immediately gasped,
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t get up! I won&rsquo;t! He&rsquo;s ready to murder me
+again!&mdash;Mr. Hadrian! if you stand by and see it, you&rsquo;re liable to
+the law, sir&mdash;I won&rsquo;t get up while he&rsquo;s near.&rdquo; No
+persuasion could induce Benson to try his legs while his executioner stood by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian took Richard aside: &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve almost killed the poor devil,
+Ricky. You must be satisfied with that. Look at his face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The coward bobbed while I struck&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;I marked
+his back. He ducked. I told him he was getting it worse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At so civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his mouth wide.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you really? I admire that. You told him he was getting it
+worse?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of laughter out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;Excalibur has done his word. Pitch him into
+the lake. And see&mdash;here comes the Blandish. You can&rsquo;t be at it again
+before a woman. Go and meet her, and tell her the noise was an ox being
+slaughtered. Or say Argus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a whirr that made all Benson&rsquo;s bruises moan and quiver, the great
+ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung off to intercept Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian got Benson on his feet. The heavy butler was disposed to summon all the
+commiseration he could feel for his bruised flesh. Every half-step he attempted
+was like a dislocation. His groans and grunts were frightful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How much did that hat cost, Benson?&rdquo; said Adrian, as he put it on
+his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!&rdquo; Benson caressed
+its injuries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have heard of!&rdquo;
+said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a devil, Mr. Hadrian! He&rsquo;s a devil, sir, I do believe,
+sir. Ooogh! he&rsquo;s a devil!&mdash;I can&rsquo;t move, Mr. Hadrian. I must
+be fetched. And Dr. Clifford must be sent for, sir. I shall never be fit for
+work again. I haven&rsquo;t a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon Venus. I hope the
+maids will nurse you properly. Let me see: you are friends with the
+housekeeper, aren&rsquo;t you? All depends upon that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian,&rdquo; the miserable
+butler snarled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;ve got no friend but your bed. Get to it as quick as
+possible, Benson.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t move.&rdquo; Benson made a resolute halt. &ldquo;I must be
+fetched,&rdquo; he whinnied. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a shame to ask me to move, Mr.
+Hadrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will admit that you are heavy, Benson,&rdquo; said Adrian, &ldquo;so
+I can&rsquo;t carry you. However, I see Mr. Richard is very kindly returning to
+help me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and shambled on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been horribly frightened,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Tell me, what
+was the meaning of those cries I heard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only some one doing justice on a spy,&rdquo; said Richard, and the lady
+smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand through his hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was that all? I should have done it myself if I had been a man. Kiss
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>
+CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+By twelve o&rsquo;clock at noon next day the inhabitants of Raynham Abbey knew
+that Berry, the baronet&rsquo;s man, had arrived post-haste from town, with
+orders to conduct Mr. Richard thither, and that Mr. Richard had refused to go,
+had sworn he would not, defied his father, and despatched Berry to the Shades.
+Berry was all that Benson was not. Whereas Benson hated woman, Berry admired
+her warmly. Second to his own stately person, woman occupied his reflections,
+and commanded his homage. Berry was of majestic port, and used dictionary
+words. Among the maids of Raynham his conscious calves produced all the discord
+and the frenzy those adornments seem destined to create in tender bosoms. He
+had, moreover, the reputation of having suffered for the sex; which assisted
+his object in inducing the sex to suffer for him. What with his calves, and his
+dictionary words, and the attractive halo of the mysterious vindictiveness of
+Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the lower household was a mighty man
+below, and he moved as one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On hearing the tumult that followed Berry&rsquo;s arrival, Adrian sent for him,
+and was informed of the nature of his mission, and its result.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should come to me first,&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;I should have
+imagined you were shrewd enough for that, Berry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me, Mr. Adrian,&rdquo; Berry doubled his elbow to explain.
+&ldquo;Pardon me, sir. Acting recipient of special injunctions I was not a free
+agent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be a little confusion if he
+holds back. Perhaps you had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy. A slight
+hint will do. And here&mdash;Berry! when you return to town, you had better not
+mention anything&mdash;to quote Johnson&mdash;of Benson&rsquo;s
+spiflication.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly not, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth&rsquo;s hint had the desired effect on Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and, mounting his horse,
+galloped to the Bellingham station.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his hotel, when the Hope
+of Raynham burst into his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary, for he was singularly
+just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he had been thinking all
+day after the receipt of Benson&rsquo;s letter that he was deficient in
+cordiality, and did not, by reason of his excessive anxiety, make himself
+sufficiently his son&rsquo;s companion: was not enough, as he strove to be,
+mother and father to him; preceptor and friend; previsor and associate. He had
+not to ask his conscience where he had lately been to blame towards the System.
+He had slunk away from Raynham in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this
+young woman of the parish (as Benson had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was
+the consequence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample on them.
+To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any time&mdash;doubly
+so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it were. It gave him a
+strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth seemed to answer to it; he was
+excited. Was his love, then, beginning to correspond with his father&rsquo;s as
+in those intimate days before the Blossoming Season?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, &ldquo;My
+dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared&mdash;You are better, sir? Thank
+God!&rdquo; Sir Austin stood away from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Safe?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;What has alarmed you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand and
+kissed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those doctors are such fools!&rdquo; Richard broke out. &ldquo;I was
+sure they were wrong. They don&rsquo;t know headache from apoplexy. It&rsquo;s
+worth the ride, sir, to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.&mdash;But you
+are well! It was not an attack of real apoplexy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His father&rsquo;s brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard
+pursued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you were ill, I couldn&rsquo;t come too soon, though, if
+coroners&rsquo; inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of
+mare-slaughter. Cassandra&rsquo;ll be knocked up. I was too early for the train
+at Bellingham, and I wouldn&rsquo;t wait. She did the distance in four hours
+and three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope,&rdquo; said the baronet,
+not so well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought
+the youth to him in such haste.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m ready,&rdquo; replied Richard. &ldquo;I shall be in time to
+return by the last train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a
+rest.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with an
+eagerness that might pass for appetite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All well at Raynham?&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing new?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The same as when I left?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No change whatever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall be glad to get back to the old place,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+&ldquo;My stay in town has certainly been profitable. I have made some pleasant
+acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late
+autumn&mdash;people you may be pleased to know. They are very anxious to see
+Raynham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love the old place,&rdquo; cried Richard. &ldquo;I never wish to leave
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don&rsquo;t want to remain here. I&rsquo;ve
+seen enough of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you find your way to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick, and the
+noise, and the troops of people, concluding, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s no place like
+home!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him with a
+double-dealing sentence&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the world,
+is youth&rsquo;s foolishness, my son. Reverence time! A better maxim that than
+your Horatian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He knows all!&rdquo; thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues
+from his father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much
+briskness, &ldquo;I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you come with
+me to the station?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet did not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father&rsquo;s eyes
+fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty glass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we will have a little more claret,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Claret was brought, and they were left alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet then drew within arm&rsquo;s-reach of his son, and began:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
+years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry to be
+known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I should not have
+complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank me. Perhaps, as it
+is, I never may. Everything, save selfishness, has its recompense. I shall be
+content if you prosper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fetched a breath and continued: &ldquo;You had in your infancy a great
+loss.&rdquo; Father and son coloured simultaneously. &ldquo;To make that good
+to you I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself entirely to
+your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the son I
+have reared is one of the most hopeful of God&rsquo;s creatures. But for that
+very reason you are open to be tempted the most, and to sink the deepest. It
+was the first of the angels who made the road to hell.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck very
+easily. It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried as most
+men are not. I see it in us all. And you, my son, are compounded of two races.
+Your passions are violent. You have had a taste of revenge. You have seen, in a
+small way, that the pound of flesh draws rivers of blood. But there is now in
+you another power. You are mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic
+battles are changed to real ones. And you come upon it laden equally with force
+to create and to destroy.&rdquo; He deliberated to announce the intelligence,
+with deep meaning: &ldquo;There are women in the world, my son!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man&rsquo;s heart galloped back to Raynham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial. It is
+when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some find it, a
+gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of any human object is the
+soul&rsquo;s ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw the moon-lighted wood, and
+the vision of his beloved. He could barely hold himself down and listen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of
+belief, &ldquo;good women exist.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, if he knew Lucy!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; and he gazed on Richard intently, &ldquo;it is given to very
+few to meet them on the threshold&mdash;I may say, to none. We find them after
+hard buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness
+has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are not the end, but the
+means, of life. In youth we think them the former, and thousands, who have not
+even the excuse of youth, select a mate&mdash;or worse&mdash;with that sole
+view. I believe women punish us for so perverting their uses. They punish
+Society.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into consequences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&lsquo;Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,&rsquo;
+says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak
+with moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the
+case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold Blood said, &ldquo;It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the ripe
+fruit of our animal being.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hot Blood felt: &ldquo;It is a divinity! All that is worth living for in the
+world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold Blood said: &ldquo;It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often
+leads to perdition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hot Blood felt: &ldquo;Lead whither it will, I follow it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cold Blood said: &ldquo;It is a name men and women are much in the habit of
+employing to sanctify their appetites.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hot Blood felt: &ldquo;It is worship; religion; life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the two parallel lines ran on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet became more personal:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you cannot know; but
+you must know that it is something very deep, and&mdash;I do not wish to speak
+of it&mdash;but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude, since the only
+true expression of it is his son&rsquo;s moral good. If you care for my love,
+or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep you what I have
+made you, and guard you from the snares besetting you. It was in my hands once.
+It is ceasing to be so. Remember, my son, what my love is. It is different, I
+fear, with most fathers: but I am bound up in your welfare: what you do affects
+me vitally. You will take no step that is not intimate with my happiness, or my
+misery. And I have had great disappointments, my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in his frenzied state he
+could not without emotion hear him thus speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he was
+winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the dryness of his
+sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young men fancying
+themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green, absolutely wanting to
+be&mdash;that most awful thing, which the wisest and strongest of men undertake
+in hesitation and after self-mortification and penance&mdash;married! He
+sketched the Foolish Young Fellow&mdash;the object of general ridicule and
+covert contempt. He sketched the Woman&mdash;the strange thing made in our
+image, and with all our faculties&mdash;passing to the rule of one who in
+taking her proved that he could not rule himself, and had no knowledge of her
+save as a choice morsel which he would burn the whole world, and himself in the
+bargain, to possess. He harped upon the Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish
+young fellow felt his skin tingle and was half suffocated with shame and rage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite undone his
+work. He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might accord to her her due
+position, and paint her fair: he might be shrewd, jocose, gentle, pathetic,
+wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: &ldquo;Have you anything
+to tell me, Richard?&rdquo; and hoping for a confession, and a thorough
+re-establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him cold: &ldquo;I
+have not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window. In the
+section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining faintly,
+feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods were lifting up to her: his
+star of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set about flowers in a basket
+under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland keenly, and filled him with
+delirious longing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A succession of hard sighs brought his father&rsquo;s hand on his shoulder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard!
+Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
+untruth!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing at all, sir,&rdquo; the young man replied, meeting him with the
+full orbs of his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he said:
+&ldquo;Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return to Raynham at all
+to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His father was again falsely jocular:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes&rsquo;
+start?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cassandra will take me,&rdquo; said the young man earnestly. &ldquo;I
+needn&rsquo;t ride her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried?
+I should be down with him in little better than three hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse, and
+would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cloud cleared off Richard&rsquo;s face as he asked. At least, if he missed
+his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same air, marking what
+star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed night-talk of the trees about
+her dwelling: looking on the distances that were like hope half fulfilled and a
+bodily presence bright as Hesper, since he knew her. There were two swallows
+under the eaves shadowing Lucy&rsquo;s chamber-windows: two swallows, mates in
+one nest, blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-cheeped to the sole-lying
+beauty in her bed. Around these birds the lover&rsquo;s heart revolved, he knew
+not why. He associated them with all his close-veiled dreams of happiness.
+Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave the nest on their
+breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness of dawn. It seemed to him now
+that if he could be at Raynham to see them in to-morrow&rsquo;s dawn he would
+be compensated for his incalculable loss of to-night: he would forgive and love
+his father, London, the life, the world. Just to see those purple backs and
+white breasts flash out into the quiet morning air! He wanted no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet&rsquo;s trifling had placed this enormous boon within the young
+man&rsquo;s visionary grasp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He still went on trying the boy&rsquo;s temper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham. It is unfair to
+disturb the maids.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard overrode every objection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, my son,&rdquo; said the baronet, preserving his half-jocular
+air, &ldquo;I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you have not been ill at all, sir!&rdquo; cried Richard, as in his
+despair he seized the whole plot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been as well as you could have desired me to be,&rdquo; said his
+father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did they lie to me?&rdquo; the young man wrathfully exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think, Richard, you can best answer that,&rdquo; rejoined Sir Austin,
+kindly severe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented Richard from
+expostulating further. Sir Austin saw him grinding his passion into powder for
+future explosion, and thought it best to leave him for awhile.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>
+CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the teachings of the
+System in a new atmosphere. He had to sit and listen to men of science who came
+to renew their intimacy with his father, and whom of all men his father wished
+him to respect and study; practically scientific men being, in the
+baronet&rsquo;s estimation, the only minds thoroughly mated and enviable. He
+had to endure an introduction to the Grandisons, and meet the eyes of his kind,
+haunted as he was by the Foolish Young Fellow. The idea that he might by any
+chance be identified with him held the poor youth in silent subjection. And it
+was horrible. For it was a continued outrage on the fair image he had in his
+heart. The notion of the world laughing at him because he loved sweet Lucy
+stung him to momentary frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in his
+spirit. Also the System desired to show him whither young women of the parish
+lead us, and he was dragged about at nighttime to see the sons and daughters of
+darkness, after the fashion prescribed to Mr. Thompson; how they danced and
+ogled down the high road to perdition. But from this sight possibly the teacher
+learnt more than his pupil, since we find him seriously asking his meditative
+hours, in the Note-book: &ldquo;Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one
+gender?&rdquo; a question certainly not suggested to him at Raynham; and
+again&mdash;&ldquo;Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an
+importance?&rdquo;...to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for he gives
+it no other in the Note-book. But, as I apprehend, he had come to plead in
+behalf of women here, and had deduced something from positive observation. To
+Richard the scenes he witnessed were strange wild pictures, likely if anything
+to have increased his misanthropy, but for his love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the first two
+weeks of exile. They ceased; and now Richard fell into such despondency that
+his father in alarm had to take measures to hasten their return to Raynham. At
+the close of the third week Berry laid a pair of letters, bearing the Raynham
+post-mark, on the breakfast-table, and, after reading one attentively, the
+baronet asked his son if he was inclined to quit the metropolis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For Raynham, air?&rdquo; cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, &ldquo;As
+you will!&rdquo; aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young Fellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their instant return
+to Raynham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son&rsquo;s wishes
+was a composition of the wise youth Adrian&rsquo;s, and ran thus:
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities. Happy when
+a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household! I quite agree with you
+that our faithful fool is the best servant of great schemes. Benson is now a
+piece of history. I tell him that this is indemnity enough, and that the sweet
+Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being half-flayed before she will
+condescend to notice them; but Benson, I regret to say, rejects the comfort so
+fine a reflection should offer, and had rather keep his skin and live opaque.
+Heroism seems partly a matter of training. Faithful folly is Benson&rsquo;s
+nature: the rest has been thrust upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I had an interview with
+the fair Papist myself, and also with the man Blaize. They were both sensible,
+though one swore and the other sighed. She is pretty. I hope she does not
+paint. I can affirm that her legs are strong, for she walks to Bellingham twice
+a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having confessed and been made clean by
+the Romish unction, she walks back the brisker, of which my Protestant muscular
+system is yet aware. It was on the road to Bellingham I engaged her. She is
+well in the matter of hair. Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a
+fair match. Has it never struck you that Woman is nearer the vegetable than
+Man?&mdash;Mr. Blaize intends her for his son a junction that every lover of
+fairy mythology must desire to see consummated. Young Tom is heir to all the
+agremens of the Beast. The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very
+Proculus among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the maids. Beauty does
+not speak bad grammar&mdash;and altogether she is better out of the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady&rsquo;s letter, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability, and heartily
+sad it has made me. She is indeed very much above her station&mdash;pity that
+it is so! She is almost beautiful&mdash;quite beautiful at times, and not in
+any way what you have been led to fancy. The poor child had no story to tell. I
+have again seen her, and talked with her for an hour as kindly as I could. I
+could gather nothing more than we know. It is just a woman&rsquo;s history as
+it invariably commences. Richard is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce
+him, and sacrifice herself for his sake. Are we so bad? She asked me what she
+was to do. She would do whatever was imposed upon her&mdash;all but pretend to
+love another, and that she never would, and, I believe, never will. You know I
+am sentimental, and I confess we dropped a few tears together. Her uncle has
+sent her for the Winter to the institution where it appears she was educated,
+and where they are very fond of her and want to keep her, which it would be a
+good thing if they were to do. The man is a good sort of man. She was entrusted
+to him by her father, and he never interferes with her religion, and is very
+scrupulous about all that pertains to it, though, as he says, he is a Christian
+himself. In the Spring (but the poor child does not know this) she is to come
+back, and be married to his lout of a son. I am determined to prevent that. May
+I not reckon on your promise to aid me? When you see her, I am sure you will.
+It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing. You know, they are
+cousins. She asked me, where in the world there was one like Richard? What
+could I answer? They were your own words, and spoken with a depth of
+conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to think of him when he comes,
+and discovers what I have been doing. I hope I have been really doing right! A
+good deed, you say, never dies; but we cannot always know&mdash;I must rely on
+you. Yes, it is; I should think, easy to suffer martyrdom when one is sure of
+one&rsquo;s cause! but then one must be sure of it. I have done nothing lately
+but to repeat to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C. 7, P.S.; and it has
+consoled me, I cannot say why, except that all wisdom consoles, whether it
+applies directly or not:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;&lsquo;For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to Him;
+that they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I like to know of what you are thinking when you composed this or that
+saying&mdash;what suggested it. May not one be admitted to inspect the
+machinery of wisdom? I feel curious to know how thoughts&mdash;real
+thoughts&mdash;are born. Not that I hope to win the secret. Here is the
+beginning of one (but we poor women can never put together even two of the
+three ideas which you say go to form a thought): &lsquo;When a wise man makes a
+false step, will he not go farther than a fool?&rsquo; It has just flitted
+through me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence the
+readings. I dislike the sneering essence of his writings. I keep referring to
+his face, until the dislike seems to become personal. How different is it with
+Wordsworth! And yet I cannot escape from the thought that he is always solemnly
+thinking of himself (but I do reverence him). But this is curious; Byron was a
+greater egoist, and yet I do not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a
+beast of the desert, savage and beautiful; and the former is what one would
+imagine a superior donkey reclaimed from the heathen to be&mdash;a very
+superior donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great natural
+complacency, and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission. The
+worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior donkey, so my
+simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet
+Byron has the greater power over me. How is that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+(&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil,
+&ldquo;women are cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield
+their hearts to Excellence and Nature&rsquo;s Inspiration.&rdquo;)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter pursued:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter offends me.
+I suppose we women do not really care for humour. You are right in saying we
+have none ourselves, and &lsquo;cackle&rsquo; instead of laugh. It is true (of
+me, at least) that &lsquo;Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat
+man.&rsquo; I want to know what he illustrates. And Don Quixote&mdash;what end
+can be served in making a noble mind ridiculous?&mdash;I hear you
+say&mdash;practical. So it is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like
+wit&mdash;practical again! Or in your words (when I really think they generally
+come to my aid&mdash;perhaps it is that it is often all your thought); we
+&lsquo;prefer the rapier thrust, to the broad embrace, of
+Intelligence.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as he
+walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There are ideas
+language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to us and have a
+definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the filmy things and
+make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much less to others. Why did he
+twice throw a look into the glass in the act of passing it? He stood for a
+moment with head erect facing it. His eyes for the nonce seemed little to
+peruse his outer features; the grey gathered brows, and the wrinkles much
+action of them had traced over the circles half up his high straight forehead;
+the iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell away in the fashion of
+Richard&rsquo;s plume. His general appearance showed the tints of years; but
+none of their weight, and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was
+so far satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential
+self through the mask we wear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he presented to
+the lady&rsquo;s discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had not a suspicion.
+But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women can, when it pleases them,
+and when their feelings are not quite boiling under the noonday sun, seize all
+the sides of a character, and put their fingers on its weak point. He was
+cognizant of the total absence of the humorous in himself (the want that most
+shut him out from his fellows), and perhaps the clear-thoughted, intensely
+self-examining gentleman filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the poet,
+she gazes on as one of the superior&mdash;grey beasts!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that great-mindedness, and
+could snatch at times very luminous glances at the broad reflector which the
+world of fact lying outside our narrow compass holds up for us to see ourselves
+in when we will. Unhappily, the faculty of laughter, which is due to this gift,
+was denied him; and having seen, he, like the companion of friend Balsam, could
+go no farther. For a good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the
+blight of self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had given a healthier
+view of our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain and brilliant
+eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to feel infallible, as a man
+with a System should feel; and because he could not do so, after much mental
+conflict, he descended to entertain a personal antagonism to the young woman
+who had stepped in between his experiment and success. He did not think kindly
+of her. Lady Blandish&rsquo;s encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed
+him. Forgetful that he had in a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the
+common ground of fathers, and demanded, &ldquo;Why he was not justified in
+doing all that lay in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away
+upon the first creature with a pretty face he encountered?&rdquo; Deliberating
+thus, he lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment&mdash;the
+living, burning youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took a
+rigorous tone. It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that the uncle
+of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme of marrying her
+to his son, should not only not be thwarted in his object but encouraged and
+even assisted. At least, not thwarted. Sir Austin had no glass before him while
+these ideas hardened in his mind, and he had rather forgotten the letter of
+Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too preoccupied to
+speak. As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling the hollows of the
+country. Over the pine-hills beyond the station a last rosy streak lingered
+across a green sky. Richard eyed it while they flew along. It caught him
+forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his love, and brought tears of
+mournful longing to his eyelids. The sad beauty of that one spot in the heavens
+seemed to call out to his soul to swear to his Lucy&rsquo;s truth to him: was
+like the sorrowful visage of his fleur-de-luce as he called her, appealing to
+him for faith. That tremulous tender way she had of half-closing and catching
+light on the nether-lids, when sometimes she looked up in her lover&rsquo;s
+face&mdash;a look so mystic-sweet that it had grown to be the fountain of his
+dreams: he saw it yonder, and his blood thrilled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our grosser
+being melts; and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking, stand etherealized,
+trembling with new joy? They come but rarely; rarely even in love, when we
+fondly think them revelations. Mere sensations they are, doubtless: and we rank
+for them no higher in the spiritual scale than so many translucent glorious
+polypi that quiver on the shores, the hues of heaven running through them. Yet
+in the harvest of our days it is something for the animal to have had such mere
+fleshly polypian experiences to look back upon, and they give him an
+horizon&mdash;pale seas of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they do
+not bound him) may find the Isles of Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith
+in the upper glories is something. &ldquo;Let us remember,&rdquo; says The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, &ldquo;that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her
+best to the footstool of the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion
+of the spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that
+through Nature only can we ascend. Cherished, trained, and purified, she is
+then partly worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon saw
+the Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young man, he
+knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings vanished. The soft wand
+touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly, Richard might have
+fallen upon his heart. He could not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue his
+System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the creature who
+menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and vindictive as jealousy
+of woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about the
+Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the train, and
+drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the chest. Leaving his
+father to the felicitations of the station-master, he went into the Lobourne
+road to look for his faithful Tom, who had received private orders through
+Berry to be in attendance with his young master&rsquo;s mare, Cassandra, and
+was lurking in a plantation of firs unenclosed on the borders of the road,
+where Richard, knowing his retainer&rsquo;s zest for conspiracy too well to
+seek him anywhere but in the part most favoured with shelter and concealment,
+found him furtively whiffing tobacco.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What news, Tom? Is there an illness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old agricultural
+habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract thought or sudden
+difficulty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I don&rsquo;t want the rake, Mr. Richard,&rdquo; he whinnied with a
+false grin, as he beheld his master&rsquo;s eye vacantly following the action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak out!&rdquo; he was commanded. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t had a letter
+for a week!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only getting
+a little closer to Cassandra&rsquo;s neck, and looking very hard at Tom without
+seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making him sincerely wish
+his master would punch his head at once rather than fix him in that owl-like
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Richard, huskily. &ldquo;Yes? She&rsquo;s gone!
+Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and recited how
+he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name of Davenport,
+formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a wink from the hour she
+knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till morning crying most pitifully,
+though she never complained. Hereat the tears unconsciously streamed down
+Richard&rsquo;s cheeks. Tom said he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept
+him at work, ciphering at a terrible sum&mdash;that and nothing else all day!
+saying, it was to please his young master on his return. &ldquo;Likewise
+something in Lat&rsquo;n,&rdquo; added Tom. &ldquo;Nom&rsquo;tive
+Mouser!&mdash;&rsquo;nough to make ye mad, sir!&rdquo; he exclaimed with
+pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
+sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly along with
+young Tom Blaize. &ldquo;She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,&rdquo; said Tom,
+&ldquo;and cryin&rsquo; don&rsquo;t spoil them.&rdquo; For which his hand was
+wrenched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady had
+hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much as to say,
+Good-bye, Tom! &ldquo;And though she couldn&rsquo;t see me,&rdquo; said Tom,
+&ldquo;I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like
+me.&rdquo; He was at high-pressure sentiment&mdash;what with his education for
+a hero and his master&rsquo;s love-stricken state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You saw no more of her, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir. That was the last!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the last you saw of her, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir, I saw nothin&rsquo; more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so she went out of sight!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clean gone, that she were, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have
+they taken her to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven rather than
+to Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t she write?&rdquo; they were resumed. &ldquo;Why did she
+leave? She&rsquo;s mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her away? Why did
+she leave without writing?&mdash;Tom!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to
+the word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the change of
+tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again, &ldquo;Where
+have they taken her to?&rdquo; and this was even more perplexing to Tom than
+his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down the corners of his
+mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She had been crying&mdash;you saw that, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin&rsquo; all night and all day,
+I sh&rsquo;d say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she was crying when you saw her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She look&rsquo;d as if she&rsquo;d just done for a moment, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But her face was white?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;White as a sheet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view from
+these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the same bars, fly as he
+might. Her tears were the stars in his black night. He clung to them as golden
+orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were at least pledges of love.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the steadfast pale
+eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn. He mounted Cassandra, saying:
+&ldquo;Tell them something, Tom. I shan&rsquo;t be home to dinner,&rdquo; and
+rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe, whereat he saw the
+wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he advanced. His jewel was
+stolen,&mdash;he must gaze upon the empty box.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>
+CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded, grass-bordered lane
+leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe. The pale eye of twilight was shut. The
+wind had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was now flying broad and
+unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy&mdash;the charioted South-west at
+full charge behind his panting coursers. As he neared the farm his heart
+fluttered and leapt up. He was sure she must be there. She must have returned.
+Why should she have left for good without writing? He caught suspicion by the
+throat, making it voiceless, if it lived: he silenced reason. Her not writing
+was now a proof that she had returned. He listened to nothing but his imperious
+passion, and murmured sweet words for her, as if she were by: tender cherishing
+epithets of love in the nest. She was there&mdash;she moved somewhere about
+like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet household duties.
+His blood began to sing: O happy those within, to see her, and be about her! By
+some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort of glory round the burly
+person of Farmer Blaize himself. And oh! to have companionship with a seraph
+one must know a seraph&rsquo;s bliss, and was not young Tom to be envied? The
+smell of late clematis brought on the wind enwrapped him, and went to his
+brain, and threw a light over the old red-brick house, for he remembered where
+it grew, and the winter rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the passion-flower:
+the garden in front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the long wall
+to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a further garden
+through the wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond&mdash;the happy
+circle of her dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on the
+darkness. And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and
+inspired the momentary calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating
+delusion, wilfully building up on a groundless basis. &ldquo;For the tenacity
+of true passion is terrible,&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip: &ldquo;it
+will stand against the hosts of heaven, God&rsquo;s great array of Facts,
+rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will
+succumb&mdash;sent to the lowest pit!&rdquo; He knew she was not there; she was
+gone. But the power of a will strained to madness fought at it, kept it down,
+conjured forth her ghost, and would have it as he dictated. Poor youth! the
+great array of facts was in due order of march.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud; almost a cry for her
+escaped him. He had not noticed the opening of a door and the noise of a foot
+along the gravel walk. He was leaning over Cassandra&rsquo;s uneasy neck
+watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed him out of the
+darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be that you, young gentleman?&mdash;Mr. Fev&rsquo;rel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s trance was broken. &ldquo;Mr. Blaize!&rdquo; he said;
+recognizing the farmer&rsquo;s voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good even&rsquo;n t&rsquo; you, sir,&rdquo; returned the farmer.
+&ldquo;I knew the mare though I didn&rsquo;t know you. Rather bluff to-night it
+be. Will ye step in, Mr. Fev&rsquo;rel? it&rsquo;s beginning&rsquo; to
+spit,&mdash;going to be a wildish night, I reckon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare, and
+ushered the young man in. Once there, Richard&rsquo;s conjurations ceased.
+There was a deadness about the rooms and passages that told of her absence. The
+walls he touched&mdash;these were the vacant shells of her. He had never been
+in the house since he knew her, and now what strange sweetness, and what pangs!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in open-mouthed
+examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a summer month which had
+elapsed during his mother&rsquo;s minority. Young Tom was respectfully studying
+the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite work. He also was a thrall of
+woman, newly enrolled, and full of wonder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What, Tom!&rdquo; the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door;
+&ldquo;there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye? What good&rsquo;ll them fashens
+do to you, I&rsquo;d like t&rsquo;know? Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr.
+Fev&rsquo;rel&rsquo;s mare. He&rsquo;s al&rsquo;ays at that ther&rsquo; Folly
+now. I say there never were a better name for a book than that ther&rsquo;
+Folly! Talk about attitudes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor to do
+likewise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a comfort they&rsquo;re most on &rsquo;em females,&rdquo; he
+pursued, sounding a thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his
+seat. &ldquo;It don&rsquo;t matter much what they does, except pinchin&rsquo;
+in&mdash;waspin&rsquo; it at the waist. Give me nature, I say&mdash;woman as
+she&rsquo;s made! eh, young gentleman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem very lonely here,&rdquo; said Richard, glancing round, and at
+the ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lonely?&rdquo; quoth the farmer. &ldquo;Well, for the matter o&rsquo;
+that, we be!&mdash;jest now, so&rsquo;t happens; I&rsquo;ve got my pipe, and
+Tom&rsquo;ve got his Folly. He&rsquo;s on one side the table, and I&rsquo;m on
+t&rsquo;other. He gapes, and I gazes. We are a bit lonesome. But
+there&mdash;it&rsquo;s for the best!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard resumed, &ldquo;I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr.
+Blaize.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Y&rsquo;acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye
+honour for it!&rdquo; said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thing implied by the farmer&rsquo;s words caused Richard to take a quick
+breath. They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer thrumming on the
+arm of his chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures of
+high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation, trying their best
+not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an encouraging smile through
+plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably executed half-figure of a naval
+officer in uniform, grasping a telescope under his left arm, who stood forth
+clearly as not of their kith and kin. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his
+bearing that of a man who knows how to carry his head and shoulders. The
+artist, while giving him an epaulette to indicate his rank, had also recorded
+the juvenility which a lieutenant in the naval service can retain after
+arriving at that position, by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy
+lips. To this portrait Richard&rsquo;s eyes were directed. Farmer Blaize
+observed it, and said&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her father, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the farmer, &ldquo;pretty well. Next best to
+havin&rsquo; her, though it&rsquo;s a long way off that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An old family, Mr. Blaize&mdash;is it not?&rdquo; Richard asked in as
+careless a tone as he could assume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentlefolks&mdash;what&rsquo;s left of &rsquo;em,&rdquo; replied the
+farmer with an equally affected indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that&rsquo;s her father?&rdquo; said Richard, growing bolder to
+speak of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s her father, young gentleman!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Blaize,&rdquo; Richard turned to face him, and burst out,
+&ldquo;where is she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone, sir! packed off!&mdash;Can&rsquo;t have her here now.&rdquo; The
+farmer thrummed a step brisker, and eyed the young man&rsquo;s wild face
+resolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Blaize,&rdquo; Richard leaned forward to get closer to him. He was
+stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: &ldquo;Where has she
+gone? Why did she leave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t to ask, sir&mdash;ye know,&rdquo; said the farmer,
+with a side shot of his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But she did not&mdash;it was not her wish to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes&rsquo;t too
+well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her unhappy.
+&ldquo;Nobody can&rsquo;t accuse me. Tell ye what, sir. I wunt have the
+busybodies set to work about her, and there&rsquo;s all the matter. So let you
+and I come to an understandin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright. He forgot it the
+next minute, and said humbly: &ldquo;Am I the cause of her going?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; returned the farmer, &ldquo;to speak straight&mdash;ye
+be!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again&rdquo; the young
+hypocrite asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the farmer, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re coming to business.
+Glad to hear ye talk in that sensible way, Mr. Feverel. You may guess I wants
+her bad enough. The house ain&rsquo;t itself now she&rsquo;s away, and I
+ain&rsquo;t myself. Well, sir! This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not
+to meddle with her at all&mdash;I can&rsquo;t mak&rsquo; out how you come to be
+acquainted; not to try to get her to be meetin&rsquo; you&mdash;and if
+you&rsquo;d &rsquo;a seen her when she left, you would&mdash;when did ye
+meet?&mdash;last grass, wasn&rsquo;t it?&mdash;your word as a gentleman not to
+be writing letters, and spyin&rsquo; after her&mdash;I&rsquo;ll have her back
+at once. Back she shall come!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give her up!&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo; said the farmer. &ldquo;Give her up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You sent her away to protect her from me, then?&rdquo; he said savagely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not quite it, but that&rsquo;ll do,&rdquo; rejoined the
+farmer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think I shall harm her, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;People seem to think she&rsquo;ll harm you, young gentleman,&rdquo; the
+farmer said with some irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Harm me&mdash;she? What people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;People pretty intimate with you, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What people? Who spoke of us?&rdquo; Richard began to scent a plot, and
+would not be balked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, sir, look here,&rdquo; said the farmer. &ldquo;It ain&rsquo;t no
+secret, and if it be, I don&rsquo;t see why I&rsquo;m to keep it. It appears
+your education&rsquo;s peculiar!&rdquo; The farmer drawled out the word as if
+he were describing the figure of a snake. &ldquo;You ain&rsquo;t to be as other
+young gentlemen. All the better! You&rsquo;re a fine bold young gentleman, and
+your father&rsquo;s a right to be proud of ye. Well, sir&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure I
+thank him for&rsquo;t he comes to hear of you and Luce, and of course he
+don&rsquo;t want nothin&rsquo; o&rsquo; that&mdash;more do I. I meets him
+there! What&rsquo;s more I won&rsquo;t have nothin&rsquo; of it. She be my gal.
+She were left to my protection. And she&rsquo;s a lady, sir. Let me tell ye, ye
+won&rsquo;t find many on &rsquo;em so well looked to as she be&mdash;my Luce!
+Well, Mr. Fev&rsquo;rel, it&rsquo;s you, or it&rsquo;s her&mdash;one of ye must
+be out o&rsquo; the way. So we&rsquo;re told. And Luce&mdash;I do believe
+she&rsquo;s just as anxious about yer education as yer father&mdash;she says
+she&rsquo;ll go, and wouldn&rsquo;t write, and&rsquo;d break it off for the
+sake o&rsquo; your education. And she&rsquo;ve kep&rsquo; her word,
+haven&rsquo;t she?&mdash;She&rsquo;s a true&rsquo;n. What she says she&rsquo;ll
+do!&mdash;True blue she be, my Luce! So now, sir, you do the same, and
+I&rsquo;ll thank ye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it gradually
+brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the mind of the lover as he
+listened to this speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep. &ldquo;Mr.
+Blaize,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this is very kind of the people you allude to,
+but I am of an age now to think and act for myself&mdash;I love her,
+sir!&rdquo; His whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face
+quivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said the farmer, appeasingly, &ldquo;we all do at your
+age&mdash;somebody or other. It&rsquo;s natural!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I love her!&rdquo; the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by
+his passion to have a sense of shame in the confession. &ldquo;Farmer!&rdquo;
+his voice fell to supplication, &ldquo;will you bring her back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked&mdash;what for? and where was the
+promise required?&mdash;But was not the lover&rsquo;s argument conclusive? He
+said he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not in consequence
+immediately send for her, that they might be together. All very well, quoth the
+farmer, but what&rsquo;s to come of it?&mdash;What was to come of it? Why,
+love, and more love! And a bit too much! the farmer added grimly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you refuse me, farmer,&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;I must look to
+you for keeping her away from me, not to&mdash;to&mdash;these people. You will
+not have her back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an objection
+of his own. And it was, that her character was at stake, and God knew whether
+she herself might not be in danger. He spoke with a kindly candour, not without
+dignity. He complimented Richard personally, but young people were young
+people; baronets&rsquo; sons were not in the habit of marrying farmers&rsquo;
+nieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first the son of a System did not comprehend him. When he did, he said:
+&ldquo;Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for heaven, to marry
+her when I am of age, will you have her back?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head doubtfully
+at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly. Richard caught what
+seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these signs, and observed:
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer signified it was not that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s because my father is against me,&rdquo; Richard went on, and
+undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could
+entirely and for ever resist his son&rsquo;s inclinations. Argument being a
+cool field where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the
+tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He drew pictures of Lucy, of her
+truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death, from death to life,
+mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent. Perhaps he did move the stolid
+old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of
+his pride.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he must have.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth botheration.
+&ldquo;May smoke heer now,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not
+when&mdash;somebody&rsquo;s present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don&rsquo;t
+mind smell?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and
+lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;d a&rsquo; thought, when you sat over there once, of its
+comin&rsquo; to this?&rdquo; ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection
+from tobacco. &ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t think much of her that day, young
+gentleman! I introduced ye. Well! things comes about. Can&rsquo;t you wait till
+she returns in due course, now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another torrent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s queer,&rdquo; said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe
+to his wrinkled-up temples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as no aid in
+perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and staring at Richard
+an instant:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look, young gentleman! My word&rsquo;s gone. I&rsquo;ve spoke it.
+I&rsquo;ve given &rsquo;em the &rsquo;surance she shan&rsquo;t be back till the
+Spring, and then I&rsquo;ll have her, and then&mdash;well! I do hope, for more
+reasons than one, ye&rsquo;ll both be wiser&mdash;I&rsquo;ve got my own notions
+about her. But I an&rsquo;t the man to force a gal to marry &rsquo;gainst her
+inclines. Depend upon it I&rsquo;m not your enemy, Mr. Fev&rsquo;rel.
+You&rsquo;re jest the one to mak&rsquo; a young gal proud. So wait,&mdash;and
+see. That&rsquo;s my &rsquo;dvice. Jest tak&rsquo; and wait. I&rsquo;ve no more
+to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his notions
+concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they were serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with &ldquo;Wait
+till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!&rdquo; dinning despair in his ears,
+stood up to depart. Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly way, and
+called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions to his Folly, did
+not appear. A maid rushed by Richard in the passage, and slipped something into
+his grasp, which fixed on it without further consciousness than that of touch.
+The mare was led forth by the Bantam. A light rain was falling down strong warm
+gusts, and the trees were noisy in the night. Farmer Blaize requested Richard
+at the gate to give him his hand, and say all was well. He liked the young man
+for his earnestness and honest outspeaking. Richard could not say all was well,
+but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer&rsquo;s in a sharp squeeze,
+when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing grey image
+on the waters of the Abbey-lake. Before sunrise Tom Bakewell was abroad, and
+met the missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra leisurely along the
+Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at. Cassandra&rsquo;s flanks were
+caked with mud, her head drooped: all that was in her had been taken out by
+that wild night. On what heaths and heavy fallows had she not spent her noble
+strength, recklessly fretting through the darkness!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take the mare,&rdquo; said Richard, dismounting and patting her between
+the eyes. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s done up, poor old gal! Look to her, Tom, and then
+come to me in my room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom asked no questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard&rsquo;s birth, and though Tom
+was close, the condition of the mare, and the young gentleman&rsquo;s strange
+freak in riding her out all night becoming known, prepared everybody at Raynham
+for the usual bad-luck birthday, the prophets of which were full of sad
+gratification. Sir Austin had an unpleasant office to require of his son; no
+other than that of humbly begging Benson&rsquo;s pardon, and washing out the
+undue blood he had spilt in taking his Pound of Flesh. Heavy Benson was told to
+anticipate the demand for pardon, and practised in his mind the most melancholy
+Christian deportment he could assume on the occasion. But while his son was in
+this state, Sir Austin considered that he would hardly be brought to see the
+virtues of the act, and did not make the requisition of him, and heavy Benson
+remained drawn up solemnly expectant at doorways, and at the foot of the
+staircase, a Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a step in advance of the
+young man, while Richard heedlessly passed him, as he passed everybody else,
+his head bent to the ground, and his legs bearing him like random instruments
+of whose service he was unconscious. It was a shock to Benson&rsquo;s implicit
+belief in his patron; and he was not consoled by the philosophic explanation,
+&ldquo;That Good in a strong many-compounded nature is of slower growth than
+any other mortal thing, and must not be forced.&rdquo; Damnatory doctrines best
+pleased Benson. He was ready to pardon, as a Christian should, but he did want
+his enemy before him on his knees. And now, though the Saurian Eye saw more
+than all the other eyes in the house, and saw that there was matter in hand
+between Tom and his master to breed exceeding discomposure to the System,
+Benson, as he had not received his indemnity, and did not wish to encounter
+fresh perils for nothing, held his peace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast of his son, without
+conceiving the depths of distrust his son cherished or quite measuring the
+intensity of the passion that consumed him. He was very kind and tender with
+him. Like a cunning physician who has, nevertheless, overlooked the change in
+the disease superinduced by one false dose, he meditated his prescriptions
+carefully and confidently, sure that he knew the case, and was a match for it.
+He decreed that Richard&rsquo;s erratic behaviour should pass unnoticed. Two
+days before the birthday, he asked him whether he would object to having
+company? To which Richard said: &ldquo;Have whom you will, sir.&rdquo; The
+preparation for festivity commenced accordingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the birthday eve he dined with the rest. Lady Blandish was there, and sat
+penitently at his right. Hippias prognosticated certain indigestion for himself
+on the morrow. The Eighteenth Century wondered whether she should live to see
+another birthday. Adrian drank the two-years&rsquo; distant term of his
+tutorship, and Algernon went over the list of the Lobourne men who would cope
+with Bursley on the morrow. Sir Austin gave ear and a word to all, keeping his
+mental eye for his son. To please Lady Blandish also, Adrian ventured to make
+trifling jokes about London&rsquo;s Mrs. Grandison; jokes delicately not
+decent, but so delicately so, that it was not decent to perceive it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After dinner Richard left them. Nothing more than commonly peculiar was
+observed about him, beyond the excessive glitter of his eyes, but the baronet
+said, &ldquo;Yes, yes! that will pass.&rdquo; He and Adrian, and Lady Blandish,
+took tea in the library, and sat till a late hour discussing casuistries
+relating mostly to the Apple-disease. Converse very amusing to the wise youth,
+who could suggest to the two chaste minds situations of the shadiest character,
+with the air of a seeker after truth, and lead them, unsuspecting, where they
+dared not look about them. The Aphorist had elated the heart of his constant
+fair worshipper with a newly rounded if not newly conceived sentence, when they
+became aware that they were four. Heavy Benson stood among them. He said he had
+knocked, but received no answer. There was, however, a vestige of surprise and
+dissatisfaction on his face beholding Adrian of the company, which had not
+quite worn away, and gave place, when it did vanish, to an aspect of flabby
+severity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Benson? well?&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unmoving man replied: &ldquo;If you please, Sir Austin&mdash;Mr.
+Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s out!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With Bakewell!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a carpet-bag!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The carpet-bag might be supposed to contain that funny thing called a young
+hero&rsquo;s romance in the making.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out Richard was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell carried. He was on
+the road to Bellingham, under heavy rain, hasting like an escaped captive, wild
+with joy, while Tom shook his skin, and grunted at his discomforts. The mail
+train was to be caught at Bellingham. He knew where to find her now, through
+the intervention of Miss Davenport, and thither he was flying, an arrow loosed
+from the bow: thither, in spite of fathers and friends and plotters, to claim
+her, and take her, and stand with her against the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham, and Tom&rsquo;s
+visions were of hot drinks. He hinted the necessity for inward consolation to
+his master, who could answer nothing but &ldquo;Tom! Tom! I shall see her
+tomorrow!&rdquo; It was bad&mdash;travelling in the wet, Tom hinted again, to
+provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and furiously shaken
+into the bargain. Passing the principal inn of the place, Tom spoke plainly for
+brandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo; cried Richard, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s not a moment to be
+lost!&rdquo; and as he said it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering
+indistinctly of faintness, and that there was no time to lose. Tom lifted him
+in his arms, and got admission to the inn. Brandy, the country&rsquo;s
+specific, was advised by host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving
+him sufficiently to cry out, &ldquo;Tom! the bell&rsquo;s ringing: we shall be
+late,&rdquo; after which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they had
+stretched him. Excitement of blood and brain had done its work upon him. The
+youth suffered them to undress him and put him to bed, and there he lay,
+forgetful even of love; a drowned weed borne onward by the tide of the hours.
+There his father found him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful? He had looked forward to such a crisis
+as that point in the disease his son was the victim of, when the body would
+fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing very well that the
+seeds of the evil were not of the spirit. Moreover, to see him and have him was
+a repose after the alarm Benson had sounded. &ldquo;Mark!&rdquo; he said to
+Lady Blandish, &ldquo;when he recovers he will not care for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of
+Richard&rsquo;s seizure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an iron man you can be,&rdquo; she exclaimed, smothering her
+intuitions. She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least,
+if he would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he once was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you look on him,&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;can you look on him and
+persevere?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply. The youth lay in
+his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his cheeks, and altered
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-shaking,
+and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do
+all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that
+Richard&rsquo;s constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions
+like a piano to the musician. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he said at a family
+consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young man,
+&ldquo;drugs are not much in cases of this sort. Change! That&rsquo;s
+what&rsquo;s wanted, and as soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to see the
+world, and know what he is made of. It&rsquo;s no use my talking, I
+know,&rdquo; added the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the contrary,&rdquo; said Sir Austin, &ldquo;I am quite of your
+persuasion. And the world he shall see&mdash;now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor,&rdquo; Adrian remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, doctor,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish, &ldquo;have you known a case of
+this sort before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never, my lady,&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;they&rsquo;re not common
+in these parts. Country people are tolerably healthy-minded.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But people&mdash;and country people&mdash;have died for love,
+doctor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor had not met any of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men, or women?&rdquo; inquired the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish believed mostly women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded women,&rdquo; said the
+baronet. &ldquo;No! you are both looking at the wrong end. Between a
+highly-cultured being, and an emotionless animal, there is all the difference
+in the world. But of the two, the doctor is nearer the truth. The healthy
+nature is pretty safe. If he allowed for organization he would be right
+altogether. To feel, but not to feel to excess, that is the problem.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;If I can&rsquo;t have the one I chose,<br/>
+To some fresh maid I will propose,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Adrian hummed a country ballad.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>
+CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+When the young Experiment again knew the hours that rolled him onward, he was
+in his own room at Raynham. Nothing had changed: only a strong fist had knocked
+him down and stunned him, and he opened his eyes to a grey world: he had
+forgotten what he lived for. He was weak and thin, and with a pale memory of
+things. His functions were the same, everything surrounding him was the same:
+he looked upon the old blue hills, the far-lying fallows, the river, and the
+woods: he knew them, they seemed to have lost recollection of him. Nor could he
+find in familiar human faces the secret of intimacy of heretofore. They were
+the same faces: they nodded and smiled to him. What was lost he could not tell.
+Something had been knocked out of him! He was sensible of his father&rsquo;s
+sweetness of manner, and he was grieved that he could not reply to it, for
+every sense of shame and reproach had strangely gone. He felt very useless. In
+place of the fiery love for one, he now bore about a cold charity to all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose, and while it died
+another heart was pushing forth the Primrose of Autumn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her admirer, now positively
+proved, were exciting matters to Lady Blandish. She was rebuked for certain
+little rebellious fancies concerning him that had come across her enslaved mind
+from time to time. For was he not almost a prophet? It distressed the
+sentimental lady that a love like Richard&rsquo;s could pass off in mere smoke,
+and words such as she had heard him speak in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness.
+Nay, it humiliated her personally, and the baronet&rsquo;s shrewd
+prognostication humiliated her. For how should he know, and dare to say, that
+love was a thing of the dust that could be trodden out under the heel of
+science? But he had said so; and he had proved himself right. She heard with
+wonderment that Richard of his own accord had spoken to his father of the folly
+he had been guilty of, and had begged his pardon. The baronet told her this,
+adding that the youth had done it in a cold unwavering way, without a movement
+of his features: had evidently done it to throw off the burden of the duty, he
+had conceived. He had thought himself bound to acknowledge that he had been the
+Foolish Young Fellow, wishing, possibly, to abjure the fact by an set of
+penance. He had also given satisfaction to Benson, and was become a renovated
+peaceful spirit, whose main object appeared to be to get up his physical
+strength by exercise and no expenditure of speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In her company he was composed and courteous; even when they were alone
+together, he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy. Sober he seemed, as one who
+has recovered from a drunkenness and has determined to drink no more. The idea
+struck her that he might be playing a part, but Tom Bakewell, in a private
+conversation they had, informed her that he had received an order from his
+young master, one day while boxing with him, not to mention the young
+lady&rsquo;s name to him as long as he lived; and Tom could only suppose that
+she had offended him. Theoretically wise Lady Blandish had always thought the
+baronet; she was unprepared to find him thus practically sagacious. She fell
+many degrees; she wanted something to cling to; so she clung to the man who
+struck her low. Love, then, was earthly; its depth could be probed by science!
+A man lived who could measure it from end to end; foretell its term; handle the
+young cherub as were he a shot owl! We who have flown into cousinship with the
+empyrean, and disported among immortal hosts, our base birth as a child of Time
+is made bare to us!&mdash;our wings are cut! Oh, then, if science is this
+victorious enemy of love, let us love science! was the logic of the
+lady&rsquo;s heart; and secretly cherishing the assurance that she should
+confute him yet, and prove him utterly wrong, she gave him the fruits of
+present success, as it is a habit of women to do; involuntarily partly. The
+fires took hold of her. She felt soft emotions such as a girl feels, and they
+flattered her. It was like youth coming back. Pure women have a second youth.
+The Autumn primrose flourished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are advised by The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip that&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ways of women, which are Involution, and their practices, which are
+Opposition, are generally best hit upon by guess work, and a bold
+word;&rdquo;&mdash;it being impossible to track them and hunt them down in the
+ordinary style.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed, let us each of us
+venture a guess and say a bold word as to how it came that the lady, who
+trusted love to be eternal, grovelled to him that shattered her tender faith,
+and loved him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and gossips had maligned
+the lady. Just when the gossips grew tired of their slander, and inclined to
+look upon her charitably, she set about to deserve every word they had said of
+her; which may instruct us, if you please, that gossips have only to persist in
+lying to be crowned with verity, or that one has only to endure evil mouths for
+a period to gain impunity. She was always at the Abbey now. She was much
+closeted with the baronet. It seemed to be understood that she had taken Mrs.
+Doria&rsquo;s place. Benson in his misogynic soul perceived that she was taking
+Lady Feverel&rsquo;s: but any report circulated by Benson was sure to meet
+discredit, and drew the gossips upon himself; which made his meditations
+tragic. No sooner was one woman defeated than another took the field! The
+object of the System was no sooner safe than its great author was in danger!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t think what has come to Benson&rdquo; he said to Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of
+lead,&rdquo; returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford&rsquo;s
+manner. &ldquo;Change is what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a
+month, sir, and let Richard go with him. The two victims of woman may do each
+other good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Unfortunately I can&rsquo;t do without him,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on our
+chests all night!&rdquo; Adrian ejaculated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think while he preserves this aspect we won&rsquo;t have him at the
+dinner-table,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and added:
+&ldquo;You know, sir, what he says?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that Benson&rsquo;s
+excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety for the safety of his
+master.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must pardon a faithful fool, sir,&rdquo; he continued, for the
+baronet became red, and exclaimed:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His stupidity is past belief! I have absolutely to bolt my study-door
+against him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study, not unlike
+one that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary prophet, Benson, that
+he might have warrant for what he foretold of the future, had a care to spy
+upon the present: warned haply by The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, of which he was a
+diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically: &ldquo;Could we see
+Time&rsquo;s full face, we were wise of him.&rdquo; Now to see Time&rsquo;s
+full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the veteran
+having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek and grimacing confusion on
+the other behind the curtain. Decency and a sense of honour restrain most of us
+from being thus wise and miserable for ever. Benson&rsquo;s excuse was that he
+believed in his master, who was menaced. And moreover, notwithstanding his
+previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was sweet to him. So he peeped, and he
+saw a sight. He saw Time&rsquo;s full face; or, in other words, he saw the
+wiles of woman and the weakness of man: which is our history, as Benson would
+have written it, and a great many poets and philosophers have written it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had seen: a
+somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring one: very
+innocent! Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks she has,
+a reason or two about the roots. She is not all instinct. &ldquo;For this high
+cause, and for that I know men, and know him to be the flower of men, I give
+myself to him!&rdquo; She makes that lofty inward exclamation while the hand is
+detaching her from the roots. Even so strong a self-justification she requires.
+She has not that blind glory in excess which her younger sister can gild the
+longest leap with. And if, moth-like, she desires the star, she is nervously
+cautious of candles. Hence her circles about the dangerous human flame are wide
+and shy. She must be drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh reason. She loves to
+sentimentalize. Lady Blandish had been sentimentalizing for ten years. She
+would have preferred to pursue the game. The dark-eyed dame was pleased with
+her smooth life and the soft excitement that did not ruffle it. Not willingly
+did she let herself be won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sentimentalists,&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, &ldquo;are they
+who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing
+done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, &ldquo;a
+happy pastime and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the
+heartless; but a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, one who could set down the dying for love, as a sentimentalism, can
+hardly be accepted as a clear authority. Assuredly he was not one to avoid the
+incurring of the immense debtorship in any way: but he was a bondsman still to
+the woman who had forsaken him, and a spoken word would have made it seem his
+duty to face that public scandal which was the last evil to him. What had so
+horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard had already beheld in Daphne&rsquo;s
+Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white hand! Doubtless the keyhole somehow
+added to Benson&rsquo;s horror. The two similar performances, so very innocent,
+had wondrous opposite consequences. The first kindled Richard to adore Woman;
+the second destroyed Benson&rsquo;s faith in Man. But Lady Blandish knew the
+difference between the two. She understood why the baronet did not speak;
+excused, and respected him for it. She was content, since she must love, to
+love humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his sorrows to comfort her. A
+hundred fresh reasons for loving him arose and multiplied every day. He read to
+her the secret book in his own handwriting, composed for Richard&rsquo;s
+Marriage Guide: containing Advice and Directions to a Young Husband, full of
+the most tender wisdom and delicacy; so she thought; nay, not wanting in
+poetry, though neither rhymed nor measured. He expounded to her the distinctive
+character of the divers ages of love, giving the palm to the flower she put
+forth, over that of Spring, or the Summer rose. And while they sat and talked;
+&ldquo;My wound has healed,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;How?&rdquo; she asked.
+&ldquo;At the fountain of your eyes,&rdquo; he replied, and drew the joy of new
+life from her blushes, without incurring further debtorship for a thing done.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>
+CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero, and a
+consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at his
+chariot-wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he has made an
+actual start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us, albeit the head
+of our fates. By this you perceive the true hero, whether he be a prince or a
+pot-boy, that he does not plot; Fortune does all for him. He may be compared to
+one to whom, in an electric circle, it is given to carry the battery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We caper and grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the power.
+&rsquo;Tis all Fortune&rsquo;s, whose puppet he is. She deals her dispensations
+through him. Yea, though our capers be never so comical, he laughs not. Intent
+upon his own business, the true hero asks little services of us here and there;
+thinks it quite natural that they should be acceded to, and sees nothing
+ridiculous in the lamentable contortions we must go through to fulfil them.
+Probably he is the elect of Fortune, because of that notable faculty of being
+intent upon his own business: &ldquo;Which is,&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s
+Scrip, &ldquo;with men to be valued equal to that force which in water makes a
+stream.&rdquo; This prelude was necessary to the present chapter of
+Richard&rsquo;s history.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was busy with her
+flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang, and Hippias Feverel, the
+Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move within him. He communicated his
+delightful new sensations to the baronet, his brother, whose constant
+exclamation with regard to him, was: &ldquo;Poor Hippias! All his machinery is
+bare!&rdquo; and had no hope that he would ever be in a condition to defend it
+from view. Nevertheless Hippias had that hope, and so he told his brother,
+making great exposure of his machinery to effect the explanation. He spoke of
+all his physical experiences exultingly, and with wonder. The achievement of
+common efforts, not usually blazoned, he celebrated as triumphs, and, of
+course, had Adrian on his back very quickly. But he could bear him, or
+anything, now. It was such ineffable relief to find himself looking out upon
+the world of mortals instead of into the black phantasmal abysses of his own
+complicated frightful structure. &ldquo;My mind doesn&rsquo;t so much seem to
+haunt itself, now,&rdquo; said Hippias, nodding shortly and peering out of
+intense puckers to convey a glimpse of what hellish sufferings his had been:
+&ldquo;I feel as if I had come aboveground.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never gets sympathy,
+or experiences compassion: and it is he whose groaning petitions for charity do
+at last rout that Christian virtue. Lady Blandish, a charitable soul, could not
+listen to Hippias, though she had a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir
+Austin had also small patience with his brother&rsquo;s gleam of health, which
+was just enough to make his disease visible. He remembered his early follies
+and excesses, and bent his ear to him as one man does to another who complains
+of having to pay a debt legally incurred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias
+were received, &ldquo;that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach,
+it&rsquo;s best to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or real
+affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He advised his
+uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful impressions in
+him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made Hippias visit with him some of
+the poor old folk of the village, who bewailed the loss of his cousin Austin
+Wentworth, and did his best to waken him up, and give the outer world a
+stronger hold on him. He succeeded in nothing but in winning his uncle&rsquo;s
+gratitude. The season bloomed scarce longer than a week for Hippias, and then
+began to languish. The poor Dyspepsy&rsquo;s eager grasp at beatification
+relaxed: he went underground again. He announced that he felt &ldquo;spongy
+things&rdquo;&mdash;one of the more constant throes of his malady. His bitter
+face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he
+must give up going about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so
+uncomfortable&mdash;the birds were so noisy, pairing&mdash;the rude bare soil
+sickened him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father&rsquo;s. He asked what
+the doctors said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! the doctors!&rdquo; cried Hippias with vehement scepticism.
+&ldquo;No man of sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder. Do you happen
+to have heard of any new remedy then, Richard? No? They advertise a great many
+cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder whether one can rely
+upon the authenticity of those signatures? I see no reason why there should be
+no cure for such a disease?&mdash;Eh? And it&rsquo;s just one of the things a
+quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one who is in the beaten
+track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I&rsquo;ve often thought that if we
+could by any means appropriate to our use some of the extraordinary digestive
+power that a boa constrictor has in his gastric juices, there is really no
+manner of reason why we should not comfortably dispose of as much of an ox as
+our stomachs will hold, and one might eat French dishes without the
+wretchedness of thinking what&rsquo;s to follow. And this makes me think that
+those fellows may, after all, have got some truth in them: some secret that, of
+course, they require to be paid for. We distrust each other in this world too
+much, Richard. I&rsquo;ve felt inclined once or twice&mdash;but it&rsquo;s
+absurd!&mdash;If it only alleviated a few of my sufferings I should be
+satisfied. I&rsquo;ve no hesitation in saying that I should be quite satisfied
+if it only did away with one or two, and left me free to eat and drink as other
+people do. Not that I mean to try them. It&rsquo;s only a fancy&mdash;Eh? What
+a thing health is, my dear boy! Ah! if I were like you! I was in love
+once!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were you!&rdquo; said Richard, coolly regarding him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve forgotten what I felt!&rdquo; Hippias sighed.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve very much improved, my dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So people say,&rdquo; quoth Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias looked at him anxiously: &ldquo;If I go to town and get the
+doctor&rsquo;s opinion about trying a new course&mdash;Eh, Richard? will you
+come with me? I should like your company. We could see London together, you
+know. Enjoy ourselves,&rdquo; and Hippias rubbed his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his uncle&rsquo;s
+eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where they were&mdash;an
+answer that might mean anything. Hippias immediately became possessed by the
+beguiling project. He went to the baronet, and put the matter before him,
+instancing doctors as the object of his journey, not quacks, of course; and
+requesting leave to take Richard. Sir Austin was getting uneasy about his
+son&rsquo;s manner. It was not natural. His heart seemed to be frozen: he had
+no confidences: he appeared to have no ambition&mdash;to have lost the virtues
+of youth with the poison that had passed out of him. He was disposed to try
+what effect a little travelling might have on him, and had himself once or
+twice hinted to Richard that it would be good for him to move about, the young
+man quietly replying that he did not wish to quit Raynham at all, which was too
+strict a fulfilment of his father&rsquo;s original views in educating him there
+entirely. On the day that Hippias made his proposal, Adrian, seconded by Lady
+Blandish, also made one. The sweet Spring season stirred in Adrian as well as
+in others: not to pastoral measures: to the joys of the operatic world and
+bravura glories. He also suggested that it would be advisable to carry Richard
+to town for a term, and let him know his position, and some freedom. Sir Austin
+weighed the two proposals. He was pretty certain that Richard&rsquo;s passion
+was consumed, and that the youth was now only under the burden of its ashes. He
+had found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn: a great lock of golden
+hair. He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling about for it with faint
+hands, never asked for it. This precious lock (Miss Davenport had thrust it
+into his hand at Belthorpe as Lucy&rsquo;s last gift), what sighs and tears it
+had weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard&rsquo;s sight one day, and beheld
+him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down again calmly, as if he were
+handling any common curiosity. It pacified him on that score. The young
+man&rsquo;s love was dead. Dr. Clifford said rightly: he wanted distractions.
+The baronet determined that Richard should go. Hippias and Adrian then pressed
+their several suits as to which should have him. Hippias, when he could forget
+himself, did not lack sense. He observed that Adrian was not at present a
+proper companion for Richard, and would teach him to look on life from the
+false point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t understand a young philosopher,&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A young philosopher&rsquo;s an old fool!&rdquo; returned Hippias, not
+thinking that his growl had begotten a phrase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
+&ldquo;Excellent! worthy of your best days! You&rsquo;re wrong, though, in
+applying it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done has been
+to bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and sees. I think,
+however,&rdquo; the baronet added, &ldquo;he may want faith in the better
+qualities of men.&rdquo; And this reflection inclined him not to let his son be
+alone with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his
+father&rsquo;s wishes tended, and decided so to please him. Naturally it
+annoyed Adrian extremely. He said to his chief:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don&rsquo;t see that we
+derive any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty years
+of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional tendency to
+stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered Quackem&rsquo;s Pill. My
+uncle&rsquo;s tortures have been huge, but I would rather society were not
+intimate with them under their several headings.&rdquo; Adrian enumerated some
+of the most abhorrent. &ldquo;You know him, sir. If he conceives a duty, he
+will do it in the face of every decency&mdash;all the more obstinate because
+the conception is rare. If he feels a little brisk the morning after the pill,
+he sends the letter that makes us famous! We go down to posterity with
+heightened characteristics, to say nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing
+less than our being turned inside-out to the rabble. I confess I don&rsquo;t
+desire to have my machinery made bare to them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to Dr.
+Bairam. He softened Adrian&rsquo;s chagrin by telling him that in about two
+weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective Summer
+campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came. Madame the
+Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put into his hand a
+fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his pocket-expenses. He did not
+want it, he said, but she told him he was a young man, and would soon make that
+fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady did not at all approve of the
+System in her heart, and she gave her grandnephew to understand that, should he
+require more, he knew where to apply, and secrets would be kept. His father
+presented him with a hundred pounds&mdash;which also Richard said he did not
+want&mdash;he did not care for money. &ldquo;Spend it or not,&rdquo; said the
+baronet, perfectly secure in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up quarters at the
+hotel, Algernon&rsquo;s general run of company at the house not being
+altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of the
+imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man&rsquo;s movements, and
+letting him imagine he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as it were,
+pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom again, in
+complete independence, as far as he could feel. So did the sage decree; and we
+may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his previsions, and how successful
+they must have been, had not Fortune, the great foe to human cleverness, turned
+against him, or he against himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The departure took place on a fine March morning. The bird of Winter sang from
+the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of Summer. Adrian rode between
+Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham station, and vented his disgust on them
+after his own humorous fashion, because it did not rain and damp their ardour.
+In the rear came Lady Blandish and the baronet, conversing on the calm summit
+of success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself,&rdquo; she said,
+pointing with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure of the young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Outwardly, perhaps,&rdquo; he answered, and led to a discussion on
+Purity and Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you do not,&rdquo; said the baronet. &ldquo;And there I admire the
+always true instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form,
+and seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a
+characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted&mdash;how soon! For there are
+questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when, hunted
+by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest soul becomes a
+cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do battle. Strength indicates
+a boundless nature&mdash;like the Maker. Strength is a God to you&mdash;Purity
+a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of playing with it,&rdquo; he
+added, with unaccustomed slyness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that the
+constraint on his mind had left him. It was for women to fight their fight now;
+she only took part in it for amusement. This is how the ranks of our enemies
+are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a champion in their midst than she
+betrays them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see,&rdquo; she said archly, &ldquo;we are the lovelier vessels; you
+claim the more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women&mdash;slips! Nay, you
+have said so,&rdquo; she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I never printed it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! what you speak answers for print with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me what are your plans?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;May a woman
+know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replied, &ldquo;I have none or you would share them. I shall study him in
+the world. This indifference must wear off. I shall mark his inclinations now,
+and he shall be what he inclines to. Occupation will be his prime safety. His
+cousin Austin&rsquo;s plan of life appears most to his taste, and he can serve
+the people that way as well as in Parliament, should he have no stronger
+ambition. The clear duty of a man of any wealth is to serve the people as he
+best can. He shall go among Austin&rsquo;s set, if he wishes it, though
+personally I find no pleasure in rash imaginations, and undigested schemes
+built upon the mere instinct of principles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at him now,&rdquo; said the lady. &ldquo;He seems to care for
+nothing; not even for the beauty of the day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or Adrian&rsquo;s jokes,&rdquo; added the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a confession
+of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his chin to one, and to the
+other, with audible asides. Richard he treated as a new instrument of
+destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering metropolis; Hippias as one
+in an interesting condition; and he got so much fun out of the notion of these
+two journeying together, and the mishaps that might occur to them, that he
+esteemed it almost a personal insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise
+youth&rsquo;s dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of
+the professional joker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! the Spring! the Spring!&rdquo; he cried, as in scorn of his sallies
+they exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him.
+&ldquo;You seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles,
+rooks, and daws. Why can&rsquo;t you let them alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Wind bloweth,<br/>
+Cock croweth,<br/>
+        Doodle-doo;<br/>
+Hippy verteth,<br/>
+Ricky sterteth,<br/>
+        Sing Cuckoo!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+There&rsquo;s an old native pastoral!&mdash;Why don&rsquo;t you write a Spring
+sonnet, Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the
+strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for. What kind of berry
+was that I saw some verses of yours about once?&mdash;amatory verses to some
+kind of berry&mdash;yewberry, blueberry, glueberry! Pretty verses, decidedly
+warm. Lips, eyes, bosom, legs&mdash;legs? I don&rsquo;t think you gave her any
+legs. No legs and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste of the day. It
+shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for a chaste people.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;O might I lie where leans her lute!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+and offend no moral community. That&rsquo;s not a bad image of yours, my dear
+boy:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Her shape is like an antelope<br/>
+Upon the Eastern hills.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be considered
+correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the ballet that you are in
+error about women at present, Richard. That admirable institution which our
+venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction of our gaping
+youth, will edify and astonish you. I assure you I used, from reading The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, to imagine all sorts of things about them, till I was
+taken there, and learnt that they are very like us after all, and then they
+ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the great danger to youth, my son! Mystery is
+woman&rsquo;s redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the Ordeal! I&rsquo;m aware that
+you&rsquo;ve had your lessons in anatomy, but nothing will persuade you that an
+anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You can&rsquo;t realize the fact. Do
+you intend to publish when you&rsquo;re in town? It&rsquo;ll be better not to
+put your name. Having one&rsquo;s name to a volume of poems is as bad as to an
+advertising pill.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish,&rdquo; quoth
+Richard. &ldquo;Hark at that old blackbird, uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his
+contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, &ldquo;fine old
+fellow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July
+nightingales. You know that bird I told you of&mdash;the blackbird that had its
+mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell&rsquo;s bird from the
+tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day before yesterday, and the dame
+says her bird hasn&rsquo;t sung a note since.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extraordinary!&rdquo; Hippias muttered abstractedly. &ldquo;I remember
+the verses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s your moral?&rdquo; interposed the wrathful Adrian.
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s constancy rewarded?
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;The ouzel-cock so black of hue,<br/>
+    With orange-tawny bill;<br/>
+The rascal with his aim so true;<br/>
+    The Poet&rsquo;s little quill!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Where&rsquo;s the moral of that? except that all&rsquo;s game to the poet!
+Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who for
+three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a defunct male.
+I suppose that&rsquo;s what Ricky dwells on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As you please, my dear Adrian,&rdquo; says Richard, and points out
+larch-buds to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil&rsquo;s
+heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not believe in.
+&ldquo;Hark at this old blackbird!&rdquo; he cried, in his turn, and pretending
+to interpret his fits of song:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, what a pretty comedy!&mdash;Don&rsquo;t we wear the mask well, my
+Fiesco?&mdash;Genoa will be our own to-morrow!&mdash;Only wait until the train
+has started&mdash;jolly! jolly! jolly! We&rsquo;ll be winners yet!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a bad verse&mdash;eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do the blackbird well,&rdquo; said Richard, and looked at him in a
+manner mildly affable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian shrugged. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a young man of wonderful powers,&rdquo; he
+emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for which
+opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into Bellingham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and gala
+waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had preceded
+his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound for London. Richard,
+as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet: &ldquo;The Beast, sir,
+appears to be going to fetch Beauty;&rdquo; but he paid no heed to the words.
+Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian&rsquo;s look took the lord out of
+him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the nearest approach to the
+fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could supply to him, sat upon him more
+easily, and he was not stiffened by the eyes of the superiors whom he sought to
+rival. The baronet, Lady Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and
+received Richard&rsquo;s adieux across the palings. He shook hands with each of
+them in the same kindly cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on
+his style of doing it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle
+into one of the carriages.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at war with
+Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern life; and the
+aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant watchfulness, has
+maintained a System against those active forties, cannot be reckoned less than
+sublime, even though at the moment he but sit upon his horse, on a fine March
+morning such as this, and smile wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his
+System incarnate, wave a serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor
+morbidly unwilling to try his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At present, I
+am aware, an audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am
+putting on incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will
+come to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work: who, as
+it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds of March when
+they do not blow. To them will nothing be trivial, seeing that they will have
+in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around us, whose features a nod,
+a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes. And they will perceive, moreover,
+that in real life all hangs together: the train is laid in the lifting of an
+eyebrow, that bursts upon the field of thousands. They will see the links of
+things as they pass, and wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great
+matter came out of that small one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet&rsquo;s gratification
+at his son&rsquo;s demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience
+not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some excited
+apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went
+sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young man
+throw himself back in the carriage violently laughing. Science was at a loss to
+account for that. Sir Austin checked his mind from inquiring, that he might
+keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it odd, and the jarring sensation
+that ran along his nerves at the sight, remained with him as he rode home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish&rsquo;s tender womanly intuition bade her say: &ldquo;You see it
+was the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was,&rdquo; Adrian put in his word, &ldquo;the exact thing he wanted.
+His spirits have returned miraculously.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Something amused him,&rdquo; said the baronet, with an eye on the
+puffing train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Probably something his uncle said or did,&rdquo; Lady Blandish
+suggested, and led off at a gallop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard&rsquo;s
+laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed on
+him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells in Change;
+for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express his sudden relief
+from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the Dyspepsy bent and gave his
+hands a sharp rub between his legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian&rsquo;s
+pastoral,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Hippy verteth,<br/>
+Sing cuckoo!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized him.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Hippy verteth!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so
+immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy,&rdquo; said
+Hippias, and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest &ldquo;ha!
+ha!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; Hippias chuckled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias not only
+came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like any blithe
+creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and anecdotes of
+Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at him&mdash;he was so
+genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his own transformation,
+while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes, now and then, that it might
+not last, and that he must go underground again, lent him a look of pathos and
+humour which tickled his youthful companion irresistibly, and made his heart
+warm to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you what, uncle,&rdquo; said Richard, &ldquo;I think
+travelling&rsquo;s a capital thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The best thing in the world, my dear boy,&rdquo; Hippias returned.
+&ldquo;It makes me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before,
+instead of chaining myself to a task. We&rsquo;re quite different beings in a
+minute. I am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend to
+make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride on a railway
+every day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias remarked: &ldquo;They say it rather injures the digestion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense! see how you&rsquo;ll digest to-night and to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps I shall do something yet,&rdquo; sighed Hippias, alluding to the
+vast literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. &ldquo;I hope I shall have a
+good night to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ugh!&rdquo; Hippias grunted, &ldquo;I daresay, Richard, you sleep the
+moment you get into bed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The instant my head&rsquo;s on my pillow, and up the moment I wake.
+Health&rsquo;s everything!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Health&rsquo;s everything!&rdquo; echoed Hippias, from his immense
+distance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you&rsquo;ll put yourself in my hands,&rdquo; Richard continued,
+&ldquo;you shall do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing
+&lsquo;Jolly!&rsquo; like Adrian&rsquo;s blackbird. You shall, upon my honour,
+uncle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle&rsquo;s recovery&mdash;no less
+than twelve a day&mdash;that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness
+almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mind,&rdquo; quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, &ldquo;mind your
+dishes are not too savoury!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart to
+all, but give it to none!&rdquo; exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters,
+&ldquo;Yes! yes!&rdquo; and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his
+not following that maxim earlier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Love ruins us, my dear boy,&rdquo; he said, thinking to preach Richard a
+lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;The love of Monsieur Francatelli,<br/>
+It was the ruin of&mdash;et coetera.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias blinked, exclaiming, &ldquo;Really, my dear boy! I never saw you so
+excited.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the railway! It&rsquo;s the fun, uncle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Hippias wagged a melancholy head, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve got the
+Golden Bride! Keep her if you can. That&rsquo;s a pretty fable of your
+father&rsquo;s. I gave him the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my
+ideas!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s the idea in verse, uncle:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;O sunless walkers by the tide!<br/>
+O have you seen the Golden Bride!<br/>
+They say that she is fair beyond<br/>
+All women; faithful, and more fond!
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by the brink
+of a stream. They howl, and answer:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Faithful she is, but she forsakes:<br/>
+And fond, yet endless woe she makes:<br/>
+And fair! but with this curse she&rsquo;s cross&rsquo;d;<br/>
+To know her not till she is lost!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+&ldquo;Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the
+fabulist pursues:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;She hath a palace in the West:<br/>
+Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:<br/>
+And him the Morning Star awakes<br/>
+Whom to her charmed arms she takes.<br/>
+<br/>
+So lives he till he sees, alas!<br/>
+The maids of baser metal pass.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with one of
+them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy Maid, and others
+of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds her only twenty to the
+pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina, till he descends to the
+scullery; and the lower he goes, the less obscure become the features of his
+Bride of Gold, and all her radiance shines forth, my uncle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you&rsquo;ve got
+her,&rdquo; says Hippias.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will, uncle!&mdash;Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in
+the fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;She claims the whole, and not the part&mdash;<br/>
+The coin of an unused heart!<br/>
+To gain his Golden Bride again,<br/>
+He hunts with melancholy men,&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+&mdash;and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not if he doesn&rsquo;t sleep till an hour before it rises!&rdquo;
+Hippias interjected. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t rhyme badly. But stick to prose.
+Poetry&rsquo;s a Base-metal maid. I&rsquo;m not sure that any writing&rsquo;s
+good for the digestion. I&rsquo;m afraid it has spoilt mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fear nothing, uncle!&rdquo; laughed Richard. &ldquo;You shall ride in
+the park with me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden Bride.
+You know that little poem of Sandoe&rsquo;s?
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;She rides in the park on a prancing bay,<br/>
+    She and her squires together;<br/>
+Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,<br/>
+    And toss with the tossing feather.<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;Too calmly proud for a glance of pride<br/>
+    Is the beautiful face as it passes;<br/>
+The cockneys nod to each other aside,<br/>
+    The coxcombs lift their glasses.<br/>
+<br/>
+&lsquo;And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach<br/>
+    The ice-wall that guards her securely;<br/>
+You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,<br/>
+    As the heart that can image her purely.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Wasn&rsquo;t Sandoe once a friend of my father&rsquo;s? I suppose they
+quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make his &lsquo;Humble
+Lover&rsquo; say?
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;True, Madam, you may think to part<br/>
+    Conditions by a glacier-ridge,<br/>
+But Beauty&rsquo;s for the largest heart,<br/>
+    And all abysses Love can bridge!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Largest heart!&rdquo; he sneered. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s a
+&lsquo;glacier-ridge&rsquo;? I&rsquo;ve never seen one. I can&rsquo;t deny it
+rhymes with &lsquo;bridge.&rsquo; But don&rsquo;t go parading your admiration
+of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the subject when he
+thinks fit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought they had quarrelled,&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;What a
+pity!&rdquo; and he murmured to a pleased ear:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Beauty&rsquo;s for the largest heart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of passengers at
+a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure. All faces pleased him.
+Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and his Golden Bride. As he could
+not well talk his thoughts before them, he looked out at the windows, and
+enjoyed the changing landscape, projecting all sorts of delights for his old
+friend Ripton, and musing hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the
+world; of the great service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst
+of his reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage
+door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something curious on his mind;
+and he gave Tom the word to speak out. Tom edged his master out of hearing, and
+began sputtering a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dash&rsquo;d if I can help it, sir!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;That young
+Tom! He&rsquo;ve come to town dressed that spicy! and he don&rsquo;t know his
+way about no more than a stag. He&rsquo;s come to fetch somebody from another
+rail, and he don&rsquo;t know how to get there, and he ain&rsquo;t sure about
+which rail &rsquo;tis. Look at him, Mr. Richard! There he goes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who has he come for?&rdquo; Richard asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know, sir? You don&rsquo;t like me to mention the
+name,&rdquo; mumbled Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it for her, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Lucy, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out of
+the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him into a
+conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got his
+face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to appear at his ease.
+Even when they were seated in the conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to
+drive off. He made the excuse that he did not wish to start till there was a
+clear road. At last young Tom cast anchor by a policeman, and, doubtless at the
+official&rsquo;s suggestion, bashfully took seat in a cab, and was shot into
+the whirlpool of London. Richard then angrily asked his driver what he was
+waiting for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you ill, my boy?&rdquo; said Hippias. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s your
+colour?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow would drive
+fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hate slow motion after being in the railway,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, uncle! nothing!&rdquo; said Richard, looking fiercely candid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch from
+extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is,
+the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking
+nerves, and the sullen heart&mdash;the struggle of life and death in
+him&mdash;grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no
+thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And
+he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the
+old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten
+sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old sweet music reviving
+through his frame, and the charm of his passion filing him afresh. Still was
+fair Lucy the one woman to Richard. He had forbidden her name but from an
+instinct of self-defence. Must the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it
+is in Lucy&rsquo;s shape. Thinking of her now so near him&mdash;his darling!
+all her graces, her sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her,
+he knew her true&mdash;swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions
+pathetic, and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated it. As
+well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the violent
+emotion that began to rage in his breast. &ldquo;I shall not see her!&rdquo; he
+said to himself exultingly, and at the same instant thought, how black was
+every corner of the earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly
+cheerless the place he was going to! Then he determined to bear it; to live in
+darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom. &ldquo;For
+if I chose I could see her&mdash;this day within an hour!&mdash;I could see
+her, and touch her hand, and, oh, heaven!&mdash;But I do not choose.&rdquo; And
+a great wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only to swell again more
+stormily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Tom Bakewell&rsquo;s words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was
+uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this Babylon
+alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that they had known at
+Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of the way&mdash;they
+had been miserably plotting against him once more. &ldquo;They shall see what
+right they have to fear me. I&rsquo;ll shame them!&rdquo; was the first turn
+taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and see her safe, and
+calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not to be one of the
+conspirators. Nevertheless, after forming that resolve, he sat still, as if
+there were something fatal in the wheels that bore him away from
+it&mdash;perhaps because he knew, as some do when passion is lord, that his
+intelligence juggled with him; though none the less keenly did he feel his
+wrongs and suspicions. His Golden Bride was waning fast. But when Hippias
+ejaculated to cheer him: &ldquo;We shall soon be there!&rdquo; the spell broke.
+Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to speak to Tom, and would ride with
+him the rest of the journey. He knew well enough which line of railway his Lucy
+must come by. He had studied every town and station on the line. Before his
+uncle could express more than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom
+Bakewell, who came behind with the boxes and baggage in a companion cab, his
+head a yard beyond the window to make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle
+preceding.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is,&rdquo; said Hippias.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the very street!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to arrange
+everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his bow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Richard, sir?&mdash;evaporated?&rdquo; was Berry&rsquo;s modulated
+inquiry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Behind&mdash;among the boxes, fool!&rdquo; Hippias growled, as he
+received Berry&rsquo;s muscular assistance to alight. &ldquo;Lunch
+ready&mdash;eh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Luncheon was ordered precise at two o&rsquo;clock, sir&mdash;been in
+attendance one quarter of an hour. Heah!&rdquo; Berry sang out to the second
+cab, which, with its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces
+distant. At his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on them,
+and went off in a contrary direction.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>
+CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to consult his
+gold watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and the forthcoming
+dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk&rsquo;s office where he sat, and a
+man of a scowling countenance, who looked a villain, and whom he was afraid he
+knew, slid a letter into his hands, nodding that it would be prudent for him to
+read, and be silent. Ripton obeyed in alarm. Apparently the contents of the
+letter relieved his conscience; for he reached down his hat, and told Mr.
+Beazley to inform his father that he had business of pressing importance in the
+West, and should meet him at the station. Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the
+paternal Thompson without delay, and together making their observations from
+the window, they beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton darted and was
+followed by one in groom&rsquo;s dress. It was Saturday, the day when Ripton
+gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself upon his family, and
+Mr. Thompson liked to have his son&rsquo;s arm as he walked down to the
+station; but that third glass of Port which always stood for his second, and
+the groom&rsquo;s suggestion of aristocratic acquaintances, prevented Mr.
+Thompson from interfering: so Ripton was permitted to depart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It had the preciseness of
+an imperial mandate.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;Dear Ripton,&mdash;You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately. Not a
+word to a soul. Then come along with Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+R.D.F.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lodgings for a lady!&rdquo; Ripton meditated aloud: &ldquo;What sort of
+lodgings? Where am I to get lodgings? Who&rsquo;s the lady?&mdash;I say!&rdquo;
+he addressed the mysterious messenger. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;re Tom Bakewell, are
+you, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom grinned his identity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you remember the rick, Tom? Ha! ha! We got out of that neatly. We
+might all have been transported, though. I could have convicted you, Tom, safe!
+It&rsquo;s no use coming across a practised lawyer. Now tell me.&rdquo; Ripton
+having flourished his powers, commenced his examination: &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s
+this lady?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir,&rdquo; Tom resumed his scowl
+to reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Ripton acquiesced. &ldquo;Is she young, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom said she was not old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Handsome, Tom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some might think one thing, some another,&rdquo; Tom said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where does she come from now?&rdquo; asked Ripton, with the friendly
+cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Comes from the country, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look. Tom&rsquo;s face
+was a dead blank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him.
+&ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;re quite a scholar, Tom! Mr. Richard is well. All right
+at home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come to town this mornin&rsquo; with his uncle,&rdquo; said Tom.
+&ldquo;All well, thank ye, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, &ldquo;now I see. You
+all came to town to-day, and these are your boxes outside. So, so! But Mr.
+Richard writes for me to get lodgings for a lady. There must be some
+mistake&mdash;he wrote in a hurry. He wants lodgings for you
+all&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;M sure I d&rsquo;n know what he wants,&rdquo; said Tom.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better go by the letter, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton re-consulted that document. &ldquo;&lsquo;Lodgings for a lady, and then
+come along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.&rsquo; I say! that looks
+like&mdash;but he never cared for them. You don&rsquo;t mean to say, Tom,
+he&rsquo;s been running away with anybody?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom fell back upon his first reply: &ldquo;Better wait till ye see Mr. Richard,
+sir,&rdquo; and Ripton exclaimed: &ldquo;Hanged if you ain&rsquo;t the tightest
+witness I ever saw! I shouldn&rsquo;t like to have you in a box. Some of you
+country fellows beat any number of cockneys. You do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as nothing was
+to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform his friend&rsquo;s
+injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the country ought to
+lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the cabman to drive. Thus,
+unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the hero, and accepted his character
+in the New Comedy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have beneficent omens
+to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in full career, so that they
+really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and to check him in his course, had they
+that signal courage. For instance, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, a ripe and wholesome
+landlady of advertised lodgings, on the borders of Kensington, noted, as she
+sat rocking her contemplative person before the parlour fire this very March
+afternoon, a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which
+signifies that a wedding approaches the house. Why&mdash;who shall say? Omens
+are as impassable as heroes. It may be because in these affairs the fire is
+thought to be all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its
+solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was known as a
+certificated lecturer against the snares of matrimony. Still that was no reason
+why she should not like a wedding. Expectant, therefore, she watched the one
+glowing cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing tremours beheld a cab of many boxes
+draw up by her bit of garden, and a gentleman emerge from it in the set of
+consulting an advertisement paper. The gentleman required lodgings for a lady.
+Lodgings for a lady Mrs. Berry could produce, and a very roseate smile for a
+gentleman; so much so that Ripton forgot to ask about the terms, which made the
+landlady in Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as the happy man. But her
+experienced woman&rsquo;s eye checked her enthusiasm. He had not the air of a
+bridegroom: he did not seem to have a weight on his chest, or an itch to
+twiddle everything with his fingers. At any rate, he was not the bridegroom for
+whom omens fly abroad. Promising to have all ready for the lady within an hour,
+Mrs. Berry fortified him with her card, curtsied him back to his cab, and
+floated him off on her smiles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of intrigue through London
+streets, now proceeded sedately to finish its operations. Ripton was landed at
+a hotel in Westminster. Ere he was halfway up the stairs, a door opened, and
+his old comrade in adventure rushed down. Richard allowed no time for
+salutations. &ldquo;Have you done it?&rdquo; was all he asked. For answer
+Ripton handed him Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s card. Richard took it, and left him
+standing there. Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard the gracious rustle
+of feminine garments above. Richard came a little in advance, leading and
+half-supporting a figure in a black-silk mantle and small black straw bonnet;
+young&mdash;that was certain, though she held her veil so close he could hardly
+catch the outlines of her face; girlishly slender, and sweet and simple in
+appearance. The hush that came with her, and her soft manner of moving, stirred
+the silly youth to some of those ardours that awaken the Knight of Dames in our
+bosoms. He felt that he would have given considerable sums for her to lift her
+veil. He could see that she was trembling&mdash;perhaps weeping. It was the
+master of her fate she clung to. They passed him without speaking. As she went
+by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a glimpse of noble tresses and a lovely
+neck; great golden curls hung loosely behind, pouring from under her bonnet.
+She looked a captive borne to the sacrifice. What Ripton, after a sight of
+those curls, would have given for her just to lift her veil an instant and
+strike him blind with beauty, was, fortunately for his exchequer, never
+demanded of him. And he had absolutely been composing speeches as he came along
+in the cab! gallant speeches for the lady, and sly congratulatory ones for his
+friend, to be delivered as occasion should serve, that both might know him a
+man of the world, and be at their ease. He forgot the smirking immoralities he
+had revelled in. This was clearly serious. Ripton did not require to be told
+that his friend was in love, and meant that life and death business called
+marriage, parents and guardians consenting or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly, &ldquo;I want you now to
+go to my uncle at our hotel. Keep him quiet till I come. Say I had to see
+you&mdash;say anything. I shall be there by the dinner hour. Rip! I must talk
+to you alone after dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home. He was very curious
+to hear the plot of the New Comedy; and besides, there was Richard&rsquo;s face
+questioning him sternly and confidently for signs of unhesitating obedience. He
+finished his grimaces by asking the name and direction of the hotel. Richard
+pressed his hand. It is much to obtain even that recognition of our devotion
+from the hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by his chuckles and
+grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work cut out for him. In a few minutes they
+had driven to their separate destinations; Ripton was left to the unusual
+exercise of his fancy. Such is the nature of youth and its thirst for romance,
+that only to act as a subordinate is pleasant. When one unfurls the standard of
+defiance to parents and guardians, he may be sure of raising a lawless troop of
+adolescent ruffians, born rebels, to any amount. The beardless crew know that
+they have not a chance of pay; but what of that when the rosy prospect of
+thwarting their elders is in view? Though it is to see another eat the
+Forbidden Fruit, they will run all his risks with him. Gaily Ripton took rank
+as lieutenant in the enterprise, and the moment his heart had sworn the oaths,
+he was rewarded by an exquisite sense of the charms of existence. London
+streets wore a sly laugh to him. He walked with a dandified heel. The generous
+youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and glanced intimately at the ladies,
+overflowingly happy. The crossing-sweepers blessed him. He hummed lively tunes,
+he turned over old jokes in his mouth unctuously, he hugged himself, he had a
+mind to dance down Piccadilly, and all because a friend of his was running away
+with a pretty girl, and he was in the secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only when he stood on the doorstep of Richard&rsquo;s hotel, that his
+jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering that he had then to commence the
+duties of his office, and must fabricate a plausible story to account for what
+he knew nothing about&mdash;a part that the greatest of sages would find it
+difficult to perform. The young, however, whom sages well may envy, seldom fail
+in lifting their inventive faculties to the level of their spirits, and two
+minutes of Hippias&rsquo;s angry complaints against the friend he serenely
+inquired for, gave Ripton his cue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in the very street&mdash;within a stone&rsquo;s-throw of the
+house, and he jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be
+mad&mdash;that boy&rsquo;s got madness in him!&mdash;and carries off all the
+boxes&mdash;my dinner-pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day, though
+he promised to go to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me,&rdquo;
+said Hippias, venting an enraged snarl to sum up his grievances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you don&rsquo;t mean to say he&rsquo;s been to the doctor?&rdquo;
+Hippias cried out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has called on him twice, sir,&rdquo; said Ripton, expressively.
+&ldquo;On leaving me he was going a third time. I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder
+that&rsquo;s what detains him&mdash;he&rsquo;s so determined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By fine degrees Ripton ventured to grow circumstantial, saying that
+Richard&rsquo;s case was urgent and required immediate medical advice; and that
+both he and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose an hour in
+obtaining it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s alarmed about himself,&rdquo; said Ripton, and tapped his
+chest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his nephew of any physical
+affliction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was afraid of making you anxious, I think, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering at the alphabet to
+recollect the first letter of the doctor&rsquo;s name. They had met in the hall
+below, and were laughing heartily as they entered the room. Ripton jumped up to
+get the initiative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you seen the doctor?&rdquo; he asked, significantly plucking at
+Richard&rsquo;s fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard was all abroad at the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Algernon clapped him on the back. &ldquo;What the deuce do you want with
+doctor, boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they were. &ldquo;Oh, ay! the
+doctor!&rdquo; he said, smiling frankly at his lieutenant. &ldquo;Why, he tells
+me he&rsquo;d back me to do Milo&rsquo;s trick in a week from the present
+day.&mdash;Uncle,&rdquo; he came forward to Hippias, &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll
+excuse me for running off as I did. I was in a hurry. I left something at the
+railway. This stupid Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself. The fact
+was, I wanted to fetch the doctor to see you here&mdash;so that you might have
+no trouble, you know. You can&rsquo;t bear the sight of his instruments and
+skeletons&mdash;I&rsquo;ve heard you say so. You said it set all your marrow in
+revolt&mdash;&lsquo;fried your marrow,&rsquo; I think were the words, and made
+you see twenty thousand different ways of sliding down to the chambers of the
+Grim King. Don&rsquo;t you remember?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not believe the story.
+Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him incredulous. As
+he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he could do safely to express his
+disbelief in him, was to utter petulant remarks on his powerlessness to appear
+at the dinner-table that day: upon which&mdash;Berry just then trumpeting
+dinner&mdash;Algernon seized one arm of the Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and
+the laughing couple bore him into the room where dinner was laid, Ripton
+sniggering in the rear, the really happy man of the party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have it; and his gaiety, his
+by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic promise of overriding all
+our laws, his handsome face, the lord and possessor of beauty that he looked,
+as it were a star shining on his forehead, gained the old complete mastery over
+Ripton, who had been, mentally at least, half patronizing him till then,
+because he knew more of London and life, and was aware that his friend now
+depended upon him almost entirely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his lieutenant&rsquo;s eye
+across the table, and said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go. Do
+you think the old lady has any chance?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a bit!&rdquo; said Ripton, authoritatively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it&rsquo;s worth fighting&mdash;eh, Rip?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, certainly!&rdquo; was Ripton&rsquo;s mature opinion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard observed that Ripton&rsquo;s father seemed doubtful. Ripton cited his
+father&rsquo;s habitual caution. Richard made a playful remark on the necessity
+of sometimes acting in opposition to fathers. Ripton agreed to it&mdash;in
+certain cases.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes! in certain cases,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!&rdquo; Algernon interjected; Hippias
+adding: &ldquo;And lay, too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious dialogue, well kept up on
+both sides, and in the end desired a statement of the old lady&rsquo;s
+garrulous case; Hippias offering to decide what her chances were in law, and
+Algernon to give a common-sense judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rip will tell you,&rdquo; said Richard, deferentially signalling the
+lawyer. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a bad hand at these matters. Tell them how it stands,
+Rip.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours to right his
+position on his chair, and, inwardly praying speed to the claret jug to come
+and strengthen his wits, began with a careless aspect: &ldquo;Oh, nothing!
+She&mdash;very curious old character! She&mdash;a&mdash;wears a wig.
+She&mdash;a&mdash;very curious old character indeed! She&mdash;a&mdash;quite
+the old style. There&rsquo;s no doing anything with her!&rdquo; and Ripton took
+a long breath to relieve himself after his elaborate fiction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it appears,&rdquo; Hippias commented, and Algernon asked:
+&ldquo;Well? and about her wig? Somebody stole it?&rdquo; while Richard, whose
+features were grim with suppressed laughter, bade the narrator continue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton lunged for the claret jug. He had got an old lady like an oppressive
+bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless as she was. In the pangs of
+ineffectual authorship his ideas shot at her wig, and then at her one
+characteristic of extreme obstinacy, and tore back again at her wig, but she
+would not be animated. The obstinate old thing would remain a bundle. Law
+studies seemed light in comparison with this tremendous task of changing an old
+lady from a doll to a human creature. He flung off some claret, perspired
+freely, and, with a mental tribute to the cleverness of those author fellows,
+recommenced: &ldquo;Oh, nothing! She&mdash;Richard knows her better than I
+do&mdash;an old lady&mdash;somewhere down in Suffolk. I think we had better
+advise her not to proceed. The expenses of litigation are enormous! She&mdash;I
+think we had better advise her to stop short, and not make any scandal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And not make any scandal!&rdquo; Algernon took him up. &ldquo;Come,
+come! there&rsquo;s something more than a wig, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no. The luckless fictionist
+looked straight at his pitiless leader, and blurted out dubiously,
+&ldquo;She&mdash;there&rsquo;s a daughter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Born with effort!&rdquo; ejaculated Hippias. &ldquo;Must give her pause
+after that! and I&rsquo;ll take the opportunity to stretch my length on the
+sofa. Heigho! that&rsquo;s true what Austin says: &lsquo;The general prayer
+should be for a full stomach, and the individual for one that works well; for
+on that basis only are we a match for temporal matters, and able to contemplate
+eternal.&rsquo; Sententious, but true. I gave him the idea, though! Take care
+of your stomachs, boys! and if ever you hear of a monument proposed to a
+scientific cook or gastronomic doctor, send in your subscriptions. Or say to
+him while he lives, Go forth, and be a Knight! Ha! They have a good cook at
+this house. He suits me better than ours at Raynham. I almost wish I had
+brought my manuscript to town, I feel so much better. Aha! I didn&rsquo;t
+expect to digest at all without my regular incentive. I think I shall give it
+up.&mdash;What do you say to the theatre to-night, boys!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard shouted, &ldquo;Bravo, uncle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let Mr. Thompson finish first,&rdquo; said Algernon. &ldquo;I want to
+hear the conclusion of the story. The old girl has a wig and a daughter.
+I&rsquo;ll swear somebody runs away with one of the two! Fill your glass, Mr.
+Thompson, and forward!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So somebody does,&rdquo; Ripton received his impetus. &ldquo;And
+they&rsquo;re found in town together,&rdquo; he made a fresh jerk.
+&ldquo;She&mdash;a&mdash;that is, the old lady&mdash;found them in
+company.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She finds him with her wig on in company!&rdquo; said Algernon.
+&ldquo;Capital! Here&rsquo;s matter for the lawyers!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances of
+aggravation?&rdquo; Hippias observed, humorously twinkling with his stomachic
+contentment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the daughter,&rdquo; Ripton sighed, and surrendering to
+pressure, hurried on recklessly, &ldquo;A runaway match&mdash;beautiful
+girl!&mdash;the only son of a baronet&mdash;married by special licence.
+A&mdash;the point is,&rdquo; he now brightened and spoke from his own element,
+&ldquo;the point is whether the marriage can be annulled, as she&rsquo;s of the
+Catholic persuasion and he&rsquo;s a Protestant, and they&rsquo;re both married
+under age. That&rsquo;s the point.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and saw things more
+distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader&rsquo;s horrified face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when Richard sent his
+chair to the floor, crying, &ldquo;What a muddle you&rsquo;re in, Rip!
+You&rsquo;re mixing half-a-dozen stories together. The old lady I told you
+about was old Dame Bakewell, and the dispute was concerning a neighbour of hers
+who encroached on her garden, and I said I&rsquo;d pay the money to see her
+righted!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Ripton, humbly, &ldquo;I was thinking of the other. Her
+garden! Cabbages don&rsquo;t interest me&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, come along,&rdquo; Richard beckoned to him savagely.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be back in five minutes, uncle,&rdquo; he nodded coolly to
+either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young men left the room. In the hall-passage they met Berry, dressed to
+return to Raynham. Richard dropped a helper to the intelligence into his hand,
+and warned him not to gossip much of London. Berry bowed perfect discreetness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and Catholics
+marrying, Rip?&rdquo; said Richard, as soon as they were in the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; Ripton answered, &ldquo;I was so hard pushed for it,
+&rsquo;pon my honour, I didn&rsquo;t know what to say. I ain&rsquo;t an author,
+you know; I can&rsquo;t make a story. I was trying to invent a point, and I
+couldn&rsquo;t think of any other, and I thought that was just the point likely
+to make a jolly good dispute. Capital dinners they give at those crack hotels.
+Why did you throw it all upon me? I didn&rsquo;t begin on the old lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero mused, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s odd! It&rsquo;s impossible you could have
+known! I&rsquo;ll tell you why, Rip! I wanted to try you. You fib well at long
+range, but you don&rsquo;t do at close quarters and single combat. You&rsquo;re
+good behind walls, but not worth a shot in the open. I just see what
+you&rsquo;re fit for. You&rsquo;re staunch&mdash;that I am certain of. You
+always were. Lead the way to one of the parks&mdash;down in that direction. You
+know?&mdash;where she is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton led the way. His dinner had prepared this young Englishman to defy the
+whole artillery of established morals. With the muffled roar of London around
+them, alone in a dark slope of green, the hero, leaning on his henchman, and
+speaking in a harsh clear undertone, delivered his explanations. Doubtless the
+true heroic insignia and point of view will be discerned, albeit in common
+private&rsquo;s uniform.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve been plotting against me for a year, Rip! When you see
+her, you&rsquo;ll know what it was to have such a creature taken away from you.
+It nearly killed me. Never mind what she is. She&rsquo;s the most perfect and
+noble creature God ever made! It&rsquo;s not only her beauty&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t care so much about that!&mdash;but when you&rsquo;ve once seen her,
+she seems to draw music from all the nerves of your body; but she&rsquo;s such
+an angel. I worship her. And her mind&rsquo;s like her face. She&rsquo;s pure
+gold. There, you&rsquo;ll see her to-night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous
+prospect, &ldquo;they got her away, and I recovered. It was Mister
+Adrian&rsquo;s work. What&rsquo;s my father&rsquo;s objection to her? Because
+of her birth? She&rsquo;s educated; her manners are beautiful&mdash;full of
+refinement&mdash;quick and soft! Can they show me one of their ladies like
+her?&mdash;she&rsquo;s the daughter of a naval lieutenant! Because she&rsquo;s
+a Catholic? What has religion to do with&rdquo;&mdash;he pronounced
+&ldquo;Love!&rdquo; a little modestly&mdash;as it were a blush in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her. It shows how we
+know ourselves! And I cared for nothing. I felt as if I had no blood. I tried
+to imitate my dear Austin. I wish to God he were here. I love Austin. He would
+understand her. He&rsquo;s coming back this year, and then&mdash;but
+it&rsquo;ll be too late then.&mdash;Well, my father&rsquo;s always scheming to
+make me perfect&mdash;he has never spoken to me a word about her, but I can see
+her in his eyes&mdash;he wanted to give me a change, he said, and asked me to
+come to town with my uncle Hippy, and I consented. It was another plot to get
+me out of the way! As I live, I had no more idea of meeting her than of flying
+to heaven!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He lifted his face. &ldquo;Look at those old elm branches! How they seem to mix
+among the stars!&mdash;glittering fruits of Winter!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty bound to say, Yes!
+though he observed no connection between them and the narrative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; the hero went on, &ldquo;I came to town. There I heard she
+was coming, too&mdash;coming home. It must have been fate, Ripton! Heaven
+forgive me! I was angry with her, and I thought I should like to see her
+once&mdash;only once&mdash;and reproach her for being false&mdash;for she never
+wrote to me. And, oh, the dear angel! what she must have suffered!&mdash;I gave
+my uncle the slip, and got to the railway she was coming by. There was a fellow
+going to meet her&mdash;a farmer&rsquo;s son&mdash;and, good God! they were
+going to try and make her marry him! I remembered it all then. A servant of the
+farm had told me. That fellow went to the wrong station, I suppose, for we saw
+nothing of him. There she was&mdash;not changed a bit!&mdash;looking lovelier
+than ever! And when she saw me, I knew in a minute that she must love me till
+death!&mdash;You don&rsquo;t know what it is yet, Rip!&mdash;Will you believe,
+it?&mdash;Though I was as sure she loved me and had been true as steel, as that
+I shall see her to-night, I spoke bitterly to her. And she bore it
+meekly&mdash;she looked like a saint. I told her there was but one hope of life
+for me&mdash;she must prove she was true, and as I give up all, so must she. I
+don&rsquo;t know what I said. The thought of losing her made me mad. She tried
+to plead with me to wait&mdash;it was for my sake, I know. I pretended, like a
+miserable hypocrite, that she did not love me at all. I think I said shameful
+things. Oh what noble creatures women are! She hardly had strength to move. I
+took her to that place where you found us, Rip! she went down on her knees to
+me, I never dreamed of anything in life so lovely as she looked then. Her eyes
+were thrown up, bright with a crowd of tears&mdash;her dark brows bent
+together, like Pain and Beauty meeting in one; and her glorious golden hair
+swept off her shoulders as she hung forward to my hands.&mdash;Could I lose
+such a prize.&mdash;If anything could have persuaded me, would not
+that?&mdash;I thought of Dante&rsquo;s Madonna&mdash;Guido&rsquo;s
+Magdalen.&mdash;Is there sin in it? I see none! And if there is, it&rsquo;s all
+mine! I swear she&rsquo;s spotless of a thought of sin. I see her very soul?
+Cease to love her? Who dares ask me? Cease to love her? Why, I live on
+her!&mdash;To see her little chin straining up from her throat, as she knelt to
+me!&mdash;there was one curl that fell across her throat&rdquo;....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton listened for more. Richard had gone off in a muse at the picture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said Ripton, &ldquo;and how about that young farmer
+fellow?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero&rsquo;s head was again contemplating the starry branches. His
+lieutenant&rsquo;s question came to him after an interval.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Young Tom? Why, it&rsquo;s young Tom Blaize&mdash;son of our old enemy,
+Rip! I like the old man now. Oh! I saw nothing of the fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord!&rdquo; cried Ripton, &ldquo;are we going to get into a mess with
+Blaizes again? I don&rsquo;t like that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But when he goes to the train, and finds she&rsquo;s not there?&rdquo;
+Ripton suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve provided for that. The fool went to the South-east instead of
+the South-west. All warmth, all sweetness, comes with the
+South-west!&mdash;I&rsquo;ve provided for that, friend Rip. My trusty Tom
+awaits him there, as if by accident. He tells him he has not seen her, and
+advises him to remain in town, and go for her there to-morrow, and the day
+following. Tom has money for the work. Young Tom ought to see London, you know,
+Rip!&mdash;like you. We shall gain some good clear days. And when old Blaize
+hears of it&mdash;what then? I have her! she&rsquo;s mine!&mdash;Besides, he
+won&rsquo;t hear for a week. This Tom beats that Tom in cunning, I&rsquo;ll
+wager. Ha! ha!&rdquo; the hero burst out at a recollection. &ldquo;What do you
+think, Rip? My father has some sort of System with me, it appears, and when I
+came to town the time before, he took me to some people&mdash;the
+Grandisons&mdash;and what do you think? one of the daughters is a little
+girl&mdash;a nice little thing enough very funny&mdash;and he wants me to wait
+for her! He hasn&rsquo;t said so, but I know it. I know what he means. Nobody
+understands him but me. I know he loves me, and is one of the best of
+men&mdash;but just consider!&mdash;a little girl who just comes up to my elbow.
+Isn&rsquo;t it ridiculous? Did you ever hear such nonsense?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was foolish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! The die&rsquo;s cast!&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;They&rsquo;ve
+been plotting for a year up to this day, and this is what comes of it! If my
+father loves me, he will love her. And if he loves me, he&rsquo;ll forgive my
+acting against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done. Come! step
+out! what a time we&rsquo;ve been!&rdquo; and away he went, compelling Ripton
+to the sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a column of grenadiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man with wind so
+that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a tremendous pace, and
+experience no sensation of fatigue. The hero was communing with the elements,
+his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he pleased. Some keen-eyed Kensington
+urchins, noticing the discrepancy between the pedestrian powers of the two,
+aimed their wit at Mr. Thompson junior&rsquo;s expense. The pace, and nothing
+but the pace, induced Ripton to proclaim that they had gone too far, when they
+discovered that they had over shot the mark by half a mile. In the street over
+which stood love&rsquo;s star, the hero thundered his presence at a door, and
+evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs. Berry. The hero attached
+significance to the fact that his instincts should have betrayed him, for he
+could have sworn to that house. The door being shut he stood in dead silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got her card?&rdquo; Ripton inquired, and heard that
+it was in the custody of the cabman. Neither of them could positively bring to
+mind the number of the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty
+Thieves,&rdquo; Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love! The hero heavily descended
+the steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton murmured that they were done for. His commander turned on him, and said:
+&ldquo;Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after another. I&rsquo;ll
+take these.&rdquo; With a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether subdued
+by Richard&rsquo;s native superiority to adverse circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then were families aroused. Then did mortals dimly guess that something
+portentous was abroad. Then were labourers all day in the vineyard, harshly
+wakened from their evening&rsquo;s nap. Hope and Fear stalked the street, as
+again and again the loud companion summonses resounded. Finally Ripton sang out
+cheerfully. He had Mrs. Berry before him, profuse of mellow curtsies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard ran to her and caught her hands: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s
+well?&mdash;upstairs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and
+fluttering-like,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone. The lover had flown
+aloft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour, there to
+wait till he was wanted.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>
+CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one of
+the two lightly,&rdquo; is the dictum of The Pilgrim&rsquo;s&rsquo;s Scrip.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action, and
+occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses that are ever
+fretting to gallop off with them. But when they have given the reins and the
+whip to another, what are they to do? They may go down on their knees, and beg
+and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or moderate his pace. Alas! each fresh
+thing they do redoubles his ardour: There is a power in their troubled beauty
+women learn the use of, and what wonder? They have seen it kindle Ilium to
+flames so often! But ere they grow matronly in the house of Menelaus, they
+weep, and implore, and do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their
+gift of loveliness. They resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy;
+pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive love. And so the very
+sensible things which they can and do say, are vain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest. Are not those their own
+horses in yonder team? Certainly, if they were quite in earnest, they might
+soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter. A hundred different ways of
+disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will point you out one or two that shall be
+instantly efficacious. For Love, the charioteer, is easily tripped, while
+honest jog-trot Love keeps his legs to the end. Granted dear women are not
+quite in earnest, still the mere words they utter should be put to their good
+account. They do mean them, though their hearts are set the wrong way.
+&rsquo;Tis a despairing, pathetic homage to the judgment of the majority, in
+whose faces they are flying. Punish Helen, very young, lightly. After a certain
+age you may select her for special chastisement. An innocent with Theseus, with
+Paris she is an advanced incendiary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to recall her
+stunned senses. Her bonnet was un-removed, her hands clasped on her knees; dry
+tears in her eyes. Like a dutiful slave, she rose to him. And first he claimed
+her mouth. There was a speech, made up of all the pretty wisdom her wild
+situation and true love could gather, awaiting him there; but his kiss
+scattered it to fragments. She dropped to her seat weeping, and hiding her
+shamed cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew it to her
+lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep your eyes so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you fear me, Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A throbbing pressure answered him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you love me, darling?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She trembled from head to foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why do you turn from me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wept: &ldquo;O Richard, take me home! take me home!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at me, Lucy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head shrank timidly round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep your eyes on me, darling! Now speak!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she could not look and speak too. The lover knew his mastery when he had
+her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You wish me to take you home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faltered: &ldquo;O Richard? it is not too late.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You regret what you have done for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! it is ruin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You weep because you have consented to be mine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not for me! O Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For me you weep? Look at me! For me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How will it end! O Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You weep for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! I would die for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you see me indifferent to everything in the world? Would you have
+me lost? Do you think I will live another day in England without you? I have
+staked all I have on you, Lucy. You have nearly killed me once. A second time,
+and the earth will not be troubled by me. You ask me to wait, when they are
+plotting against us on all sides? Darling Lucy! look on me. Fix&mdash;your fond
+eyes on me. You ask me to wait when here you are given to me when you have
+proved my faith&mdash;when we know we love as none have loved. Give me your
+eyes! Let them tell me I have your heart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where was her wise little speech? How could she match such mighty eloquence?
+She sought to collect a few more of the scattered fragments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and by, and
+then&mdash;oh! if you take me home now&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lover stood up. &ldquo;He who has been arranging that fine scheme to
+disgrace and martyrize you? True, as I live! that&rsquo;s the reason of their
+having you back. Your old servant heard him and your uncle discussing it.
+He!&mdash;Lucy! he&rsquo;s a good man, but he must not step in between you and
+me. I say God has given you to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning, and she was weaker
+and softer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first law to her? Why
+should she not believe that she would wreck him by resisting? And if she
+suffered, oh sweet to think it was for his sake! Sweet to shut out wisdom;
+accept total blindness, and be led by him!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further. She rustled her garments ominously,
+and vanished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my own Richard!&rdquo; the fair girl just breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He whispered, &ldquo;Call me that name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She blushed deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call me that name,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;You said it once
+today.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O darling!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Husband!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was won. The rosy gate from which the word had issued was closed with a
+seal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of beauty that night.
+He received a lesson in the art of pumping from the worthy landlady below, up
+to an hour when she yawned, and he blinked, and their common candle wore with
+dignity the brigand&rsquo;s hat of midnight, and cocked a drunken eye at them
+from under it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>
+CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not always he on whom
+beauty works its most conquering influence. It is the dull commonplace man into
+whose slow brain she drops like a celestial light, and burns lastingly. The
+poet, for instance, is a connoisseur of beauty: to the artist she is a model.
+These gentlemen by much contemplation of her charms wax critical. The days when
+they had hearts being gone, they are haply divided between the blonde and the
+brunette; the aquiline nose and the Proserpine; this shaped eye and that. But
+go about among simple unprofessional fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here and
+there you shall find some barbarous intelligence which has had just strength
+enough to conceive, and has taken Beauty as its Goddess, and knows but one form
+to worship, in its poor stupid fashion, and would perish for her. Nay, more:
+the man would devote all his days to her, though he is dumb as a dog. And,
+indeed, he is Beauty&rsquo;s Dog. Almost every Beauty has her Dog. The hero
+possesses her; the poet proclaims her; the painter puts her upon canvas; and
+the faithful Old Dog follows her: and the end of it all is that the faithful
+Old Dog is her single attendant. Sir Hero is revelling in the wars, or in
+Armida&rsquo;s bowers; Mr. Poet has spied a wrinkle; the brush is for the rose
+in its season. She turns to her Old Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has
+subsisted on a bone and a pat till there he squats decrepit, he turns his
+grateful old eyes up to her, and has not a notion that she is hugging sad
+memories in him: Hero, Poet, Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is she buried,
+and the village hears languid howls, and there is a paragraph in the newspapers
+concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an Old Dog.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair Persian, and the
+change in the obscure monotony of his life by his having quarters in a crack
+hotel, and living familiarly with West-End people&mdash;living on the fat of
+the land (which forms a stout portion of an honest youth&rsquo;s romance),
+Ripton Thompson breakfasted next morning with his chief at half-past eight. The
+meal had been fixed overnight for seven, but Ripton slept a great deal more
+than the nightingale, and (to chronicle his exact state) even half-past eight
+rather afflicted his new aristocratic senses and reminded him too keenly of law
+and bondage. He had preferred to breakfast at Algernon&rsquo;s hour, who had
+left word for eleven. Him, however, it was Richard&rsquo;s object to avoid, so
+they fell to, and Ripton no longer envied Hippias in bed. Breakfast done, they
+bequeathed the consoling information for Algernon that they were off to hear a
+popular preacher, and departed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How happy everybody looks!&rdquo; said Richard, in the quiet Sunday
+streets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;jolly!&rdquo; said Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When I&rsquo;m&mdash;when this is over, I&rsquo;ll see that they are,
+too&mdash;as many as I can make happy,&rdquo; said the hero; adding softly:
+&ldquo;Her blind was down at a quarter to six. I think she slept well!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been there this morning?&rdquo; Ripton exclaimed; and an
+idea of what love was dawned upon his dull brain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will she see me, Ricky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. She&rsquo;ll see you to-day. She was tired last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Positively?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said, coming under some trees in the park,
+&ldquo;here&rsquo;s where I talked to you last night. What a time it seems! How
+I hate the night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him, Ripton hinted
+decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious acquaintance with the sex.
+Headings of certain random adventures he gave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; said his chief, &ldquo;why not marry her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; and had a taste of the
+feeling of superiority, destined that day to be crushed utterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s charge for a term that caused him
+dismal fears that the Fair Persian still refused to show her face, but Richard
+called out to him, and up Ripton went, unaware of the transformation he was to
+undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together to receive him. From the bottom of the
+stairs he had his vivaciously agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time
+he entered the room his cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained
+beyond their exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover, welcomed
+him kindly. He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely silly. They sat
+down, and tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little master of
+his tongue as he was of his eyes. After an interval, the Fair Persian having
+done duty by showing herself, was glad to quit the room. Her lord and possessor
+then turned inquiringly to Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t wonder now, Rip?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Richard!&rdquo; Ripton waited to reply with sufficient solemnity,
+&ldquo;indeed I don&rsquo;t!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke differently; he looked differently. He had the Old Dog&rsquo;s eyes in
+his head. They watched the door she had passed through; they listened for her,
+as dogs&rsquo; eyes do. When she came in, bonneted for a walk, his agitation
+was dog-like. When she hung on her lover timidly, and went forth, he followed
+without an idea of envy, or anything save the secret raptures the sight of her
+gave him, which are the Old Dog&rsquo;s own. For beneficent Nature requites
+him: His sensations cannot be heroic, but they have a fulness and a wagging
+delight as good in their way. And this capacity for humble unaspiring worship
+has its peculiar guerdon. When Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what
+will he think of himself? Let no one despise the Old Dog. Through him doth
+Beauty vindicate her sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of beholding her,
+and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her offensively, and
+stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged comments on her, and
+became in a minute madly in love with her, he had to smother low growls. They
+strolled about the pleasant gardens of Kensington all the morning, under the
+young chestnut buds, and round the windless waters, talking, and soothing the
+wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked up his ears.
+She, too, made the remark that everybody seemed to look happy, and he heard it
+with thrills of joy. &ldquo;So everybody is, where you are!&rdquo; he would
+have wished to say, if he dared, but was restrained by fears that his burning
+eloquence would commit him. Ripton knew the people he met twice. It would have
+been difficult to persuade him they were the creatures of accident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton&rsquo;s frowned protest, Richard boldly
+struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning to perform the
+circuit. Here Ripton had some justification for his jealous pangs. The young
+girl&rsquo;s golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily sad, face; her
+gentle graceful figure in the black straight dress she wore; a sort of
+half-conventual air she had&mdash;a mark of something not of class, that was
+partly beauty&rsquo;s, partly maiden innocence growing conscious, partly
+remorse at her weakness and dim fear of the future it was sowing&mdash;did
+attract the eye-glasses. Ripton had to learn that eyes are bearable, but
+eye-glasses an abomination. They fixed a spell upon his courage; for somehow
+the youth had always ranked them as emblems of our nobility, and hearing two
+exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to front and rear several times, drawl in
+gibberish generally imputed to lords, that his heroine was a charming little
+creature, just the size, but had no style,&mdash;he was abashed; he did not fly
+at them and tear them. He became dejected. Beauty&rsquo;s dog is affected by
+the eye-glass in a manner not unlike the common animal&rsquo;s terror of the
+human eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that he heard. He repeated
+to Lucy Diaper Sandoe&rsquo;s verses&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;The cockneys nod to each other aside,<br/>
+The coxcombs lift their glasses,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the park, and shine
+among the highest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering through the bare trees
+across the water, and the bright-edged rack. The lover, his imagination just
+then occupied in clothing earthly glories in celestial, felt where his senses
+were sharpest the hand of his darling falter, and instinctively looked ahead.
+His uncle Algernon was leisurely jolting towards them on his one sound leg. The
+dismembered Guardsman talked to a friend whose arm supported him, and
+speculated from time to time on the fair ladies driving by. The two white faces
+passed him unobserved. Unfortunately Ripton, coming behind, went plump upon the
+Captain&rsquo;s live toe&mdash;or so he pretended, crying, &ldquo;Confound it,
+Mr. Thompson! you might have chosen the other.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered that it was
+extraordinary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Algernon. &ldquo;Everybody makes up to that
+fellow. Instinct, I suppose!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not to ask for his nephew. Richard turned to face the matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sorry I couldn&rsquo;t wait for you this morning, uncle,&rdquo; he said,
+with the coolness of relationship. &ldquo;I thought you never walked so
+far.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His voice was in perfect tone&mdash;the heroic mask admirable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and contrived to allude to
+the popular preacher. He was instantly introduced to Ripton&rsquo;s sister,
+Miss Thompson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his nephew&rsquo;s choice of
+a minister. After a few stray remarks, and an affable salute to Miss Thompson,
+he hobbled away, and then the three sealed volcanoes breathed, and Lucy&rsquo;s
+arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to the heroic pitch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This incident quickened their steps homeward to the sheltering wings of Mrs.
+Berry. All that passed between them on the subject comprised a stammered excuse
+from Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured rejoinder from Richard, that
+he had gained a sister by it: at which Ripton ventured to wish aloud Miss
+Desborough would only think so, and a faint smile twitched poor Lucy&rsquo;s
+lips to please him. She hardly had strength to reach her cage. She had none to
+eat of Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s nice little dinner. To be alone, that she might cry
+and ease her heart of its accusing weight of tears, was all she prayed for.
+Kind Mrs. Berry, slipping into her bedroom to take off her things, found the
+fair body in a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing her completely and
+putting her to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just an hour&rsquo;s sleep, or so,&rdquo; the mellifluous woman
+explained the case to the two anxious gentlemen. &ldquo;A quiet sleep and a cup
+of warm tea goes for more than twenty doctors, it do&mdash;when there&rsquo;s
+the flutters,&rdquo; she pursued. &ldquo;I know it by myself. And a good cry
+beforehand&rsquo;s better than the best of medicine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired to her softer charge
+and sweeter babe, reflecting, &ldquo;Lord! Lord! the three of &rsquo;em
+don&rsquo;t make fifty! I&rsquo;m as old as two and a half of &rsquo;em, to say
+the least.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry used her apron, and by virtue of their tender
+years took them all three into her heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a morsel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you see the change come over her?&rdquo; Richard whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lover flung down his knife and fork: &ldquo;What could I do? If I had said
+nothing, we should have been suspected. I was obliged to speak. And she hates a
+lie! See! it has struck her down. God forgive me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton affected a serene mind: &ldquo;It was a fright, Richard,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what Mrs. Berry means by flutters. Those old women talk in
+that way. You heard what she said. And these old women know. I&rsquo;ll tell
+you what it is. It&rsquo;s this, Richard!&mdash;it&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve
+got a fool for your friend!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She regrets it,&rdquo; muttered the lover. &ldquo;Good God! I think she
+fears me.&rdquo; He dropped his face in his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort:
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s because you&rsquo;ve got a fool for your friend!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused. The sun was buried alive in
+cloud. Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window. He watched the
+deplorable objects passing on the pavement. His aristocratic visions had gone
+like his breakfast. Beauty had been struck down by his egregious folly, and
+there he stood&mdash;a wretch!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard came to him: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mumble on like that, Rip!&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;Nobody blames you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! you&rsquo;re very kind, Richard,&rdquo; interposed the wretch, moved
+at the face of misery he beheld.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night. Yes! If she&rsquo;s
+happier away from me!&mdash;do you think me a brute, Ripton? Rather than have
+her shed a tear, I&rsquo;d!&mdash;I&rsquo;ll take her home to-night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience, people
+perhaps might talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he said:
+&ldquo;If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue? If no one sees or
+hears of me, what can they say? O Rip! I&rsquo;ll give her up. I&rsquo;m
+wrecked for ever! What of that? Yes&mdash;let them take her! The world in arms
+should never have torn her from me, but when she cries&mdash;Yes! all&rsquo;s
+over. I&rsquo;ll find him at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve. Ripton looked on,
+wretcheder than ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The idea struck him:&mdash;&ldquo;Suppose, Richard, she doesn&rsquo;t want to
+go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians and the
+old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their righteous wretched
+course, and have given small Cupid a smack and sent him home to his naughty
+Mother. Alas! (it is The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip interjecting) women are the born
+accomplices of mischief! In bustles Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and
+finds the two knights helmed, and sees, though &rsquo;tis dusk, that they wear
+doubtful brows, and guesses bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear! dear!&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;and neither of you eaten a
+scrap! And there&rsquo;s my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you
+ever see!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha?&rdquo; cried the lover, illuminated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Soft as a baby!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry averred. &ldquo;I went to look at her
+this very moment, and there&rsquo;s not a bit of trouble in her breath. It come
+and it go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made. The Black Ox
+haven&rsquo;t trod on her foot yet! Most like it was the air of London. But
+only fancy, if you had called in a doctor! Why, I shouldn&rsquo;t have let her
+take any of his quackery. Now, there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with a curious
+caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s
+speech, he drew forth a little glove&mdash;dropped there by some freak of
+chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep me, keep me, now you have me!&rdquo; sang the little glove, and
+amused the lover with a thousand conceits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! we mustn&rsquo;t go for disturbing her,&rdquo; said the guileful
+good creature. &ldquo;Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you young
+gentlemen was to take my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a
+appetite&mdash;everybody should eat! it&rsquo;s their sacred duty, no matter
+what their feelings be! and I say it who&rsquo;m no chicken!&mdash;I&rsquo;ll
+frickashee this&mdash;which is a chicken&mdash;against your return. I&rsquo;m a
+cook, I can assure ye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lover seized her two hands. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the best old soul in the
+world!&rdquo; he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him. &ldquo;We
+won&rsquo;t disturb her. Let her sleep. Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you?
+And we&rsquo;ll call to inquire after her this evening, and come and see her
+to-morrow. I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;ll be kind to her. There! there!&rdquo;
+Mrs. Berry was preparing to whimper. &ldquo;I trust her to you, you see.
+Good-bye, you dear old soul.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with his
+uncles, happy and hungry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry into their
+confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save their names, so that
+they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of that trump of a woman, and yet
+have nothing to fear from her. Lucy was to receive the name of Letitia,
+Ripton&rsquo;s youngest and best-looking sister. The heartless fellow proposed
+it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Letitia!&rdquo; mused Richard. &ldquo;I like the name. Both begin with
+L. There&rsquo;s something soft&mdash;womanlike&mdash;in the L.&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper. The lover
+roamed through his golden groves. &ldquo;Lucy Feverel! that sounds better! I
+wonder where Ralph is. I should like to help him. He&rsquo;s in love with my
+cousin Clare. He&rsquo;ll never do anything till he marries. No man can.
+I&rsquo;m going to do a hundred things when it&rsquo;s over. We shall travel
+first. I want to see the Alps. One doesn&rsquo;t know what the earth is till
+one has seen the Alps. What a delight it will be to her! I fancy I see her eyes
+gazing up at them.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance<br/>
+    With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,<br/>
+    Past weeping for mortality&rsquo;s distress&mdash;<br/>
+Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.<br/>
+        And fills, but does not fall;<br/>
+        Softly I hear it call<br/>
+At heaven&rsquo;s gate, till Sister Seraphs press<br/>
+To look on you their old love from the skies:<br/>
+Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a friend of my
+father&rsquo;s. I intend to find him and make them friends again. You
+don&rsquo;t care for poetry. It&rsquo;s no use your trying to swallow it,
+Rip!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It sounds very nice,&rdquo; said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East,&rdquo; the hero
+continued. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave
+heart! Oh, the glorious golden East! I dream of the desert. I dream I&rsquo;m
+chief of an Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our mares, and
+hurry to the rescue of my darling! And we push the spears, and we scatter them,
+and I come to the tent where she crouches, and catch her to my saddle, and
+away!&mdash;Rip! what a life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin&rsquo;s life, with
+her to help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country heart and
+soul. A wise man told me that. I think I shall do something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover. Now life was a
+narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged, flew illimitably. An hour
+ago and food was hateful. Now he manfully refreshed his nature, and joined in
+Algernon&rsquo;s encomiums on Miss Letitia Thompson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the hero&rsquo;s
+band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the reality which was a
+dream. She awoke calling for some friend, &ldquo;Margaret!&rdquo; and heard one
+say, &ldquo;My name is Bessy Berry, my love! not Margaret.&rdquo; Then she
+asked piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her dear friend, and
+Mrs. Berry whispered, &ldquo;Sure you&rsquo;ve got a dearer!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the
+strangeness of her state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the bedclothes
+quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her name was breathed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, my love?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s gone, my dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone?&mdash;Oh, where?&rdquo; The young girl started up in disorder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry
+chanted: &ldquo;Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?&rdquo; Lucy wept for the
+famine-struck hero, who was just then feeding mightily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of his heart
+like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of women; and on this
+deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle. She wanted one to
+pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand from under the bedclothes, and took
+Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s, and kissed it. The good creature required no further avowal
+of her secret, but forthwith leaned her consummate bosom to the pillow, and
+petitioned heaven to bless them both!&mdash;Then the little bride was alarmed,
+and wondered how Mrs. Berry could have guessed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;your love is out of your eyes, and
+out of everything ye do.&rdquo; And the little bride wondered more. She thought
+she had been so very cautious not to betray it. The common woman in them made
+cheer together after their own April fashion. Following which Mrs. Berry probed
+for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match; but the little
+bride&rsquo;s lips were locked. She only said her lover was above her in
+station.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re a Catholic, my dear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And him a Protestant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear, dear!&mdash;And why shouldn&rsquo;t ye be?&rdquo; she ejaculated,
+seeing sadness return to the bridal babe. &ldquo;So as you was born, so shall
+ye be! But you&rsquo;ll have to make your arrangements about the children. The
+girls to worship with you, the boys with him. It&rsquo;s the same God, my dear!
+You mustn&rsquo;t blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If my young
+gentleman could see you now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo; Lucy murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, he will, you know, my dear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you that can&rsquo;t bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do wish there
+was fathers and mothers on both sides and dock-ments signed, and bridesmaids,
+and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in spite of them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she drew up
+pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for. The one fact that hung as a
+fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her; she would not, in fealty to
+her lover, reveal its growth and history, however sadly she yearned to pour out
+all to this dear old Mother Confessor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of matrimony,
+generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when you see your ticket,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;you
+shan&rsquo;t know whether it&rsquo;s a prize or a blank. And, Lord knows! some
+go on thinking it&rsquo;s a prize when it turns on &rsquo;em and tears
+&rsquo;em. I&rsquo;m one of the blanks, my dear! I drew a blank in Berry. He
+was a black Berry to me, my dear! Smile away! he truly was, and I
+a-prizin&rsquo; him as proud as you can conceive! My dear!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry
+pressed her hands flat on her apron. &ldquo;We hadn&rsquo;t been a three months
+man and wife, when that man&mdash;it wasn&rsquo;t the honeymoon, which some
+can&rsquo;t say&mdash;that man&mdash;Yes! he kicked me. His wedded wife he
+kicked! Ah!&rdquo; she sighed to Lucy&rsquo;s large eyes, &ldquo;I could have
+borne that. A blow don&rsquo;t touch the heart,&rdquo; the poor creature tapped
+her sensitive side. &ldquo;I went on loving of him, for I&rsquo;m a soft one.
+Tall as a Grenadier he is, and when out of service grows his moustache. I used
+to call him my body-guardsman like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools we
+women are. For, take my word for it, my dear, there&rsquo;s nothing here below
+so vain as a man! That I know. But I didn&rsquo;t deserve it.... I&rsquo;m a
+superior cook.... I did not deserve that noways.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry thumped her
+knee, and accentuated up her climax: &ldquo;I mended his linen. I saw to his
+adornments&mdash;he called his clothes, the bad man! I was a servant to him, my
+dear! and there&mdash;it was nine months&mdash;nine months from the day he
+swear to protect and cherish and that&mdash;nine calendar months, and my
+gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!&mdash;pish!&rdquo;
+exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s my
+ring. A pretty ornament! What do it mean? I&rsquo;m for tearin&rsquo; it off my
+finger a dozen times in the day. It&rsquo;s a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery
+for the dead-alive to wear it, that&rsquo;s a widow and not a widow, and
+haven&rsquo;t got a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I&rsquo;ve looked, my
+dear, and&rdquo;&mdash;she spread out her arms&mdash;&ldquo;Johnson
+haven&rsquo;t got a name for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s voice quavered into sobs. Lucy spoke
+gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of Autumn have no
+warning for April. The little bride, for all her tender pity, felt happier when
+she had heard her landlady&rsquo;s moving tale of the wickedness of man, which
+cast in bright relief the glory of that one hero who was hers. Then from a
+short flight of inconceivable bliss, she fell, shot by one of her hundred
+Argus-eyed fears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mrs. Berry! I&rsquo;m so young! Think of me&mdash;only just
+seventeen!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. &ldquo;Young, my dear!
+Nonsense! There&rsquo;s no so much harm in being young, here and there. I knew
+an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married close over
+fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man began, she used
+to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore. They&rsquo;d stare! Bless you!
+the grandmother could have married over and over again. It was her
+daughter&rsquo;s fault, not hers, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was three years younger,&rdquo; mused Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her father&rsquo;s
+bailiff&rsquo;s son. &lsquo;Ah, Berry!&rsquo; she&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;if I
+hadn&rsquo;t been foolish, I should be my lady now&mdash;not Granny!&rsquo; Her
+father never forgave her&mdash;left all his estates out of the family.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did her husband always love her?&rdquo; Lucy preferred to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In his way, my dear, he did,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
+matrimonial wisdom. &ldquo;He couldn&rsquo;t help himself. If he left off, he
+began again. She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable. Cook! there
+wasn&rsquo;t such another cook out of a Alderman&rsquo;s kitchen; no, indeed!
+And she a born lady! That tells ye it&rsquo;s the duty of all women! She had
+her saying &lsquo;When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen
+fire!&rsquo; and a good saying it is to treasure. Such is man! no use in
+havin&rsquo; their hearts if ye don&rsquo;t have their stomachs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: &ldquo;You know
+nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don&rsquo;t neglect
+your cookery. Kissing don&rsquo;t last: cookery do!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, she broke
+off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well; very eager to be
+allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come. Mrs. Berry, in her
+loving considerateness for the little bride, positively commanded her to lie
+down, and be quiet, and submit to be nursed and cherished. For Mrs. Berry well
+knew that ten minutes alone with the hero could only be had while the little
+bride was in that unattainable position.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained. The night did
+not pass before she learnt, from the hero&rsquo;s own mouth, that Mr. Richards,
+the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his union with this
+young lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress to an immense property,
+whom he desired his son to espouse; and because his darling Letitia was a
+Catholic&mdash;Letitia, the sole daughter of a brave naval officer deceased,
+and in the hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a
+brute of a son. Mrs. Berry listened credulously to the emphatic narrative, and
+spoke to the effect that the wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the
+wildness of young ones. The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and
+devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero&rsquo;s band, which now numbered
+three, and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no
+conspirators like women. Ripton&rsquo;s lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank
+merely titular. He had never been married&mdash;he knew nothing about licences,
+except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult&mdash;he had not an
+idea that so many days&rsquo; warning must be given to the clergyman of the
+parish where one of the parties was resident. How should he? All his
+forethought was comprised in the ring, and whenever the discussion of
+arrangements for the great event grew particularly hot and important, he would
+say, with a shrewd nod: &ldquo;We mustn&rsquo;t forget the ring, you know, Mrs.
+Berry!&rdquo; and the new member was only prevented by natural complacence from
+shouting: &ldquo;Oh, drat ye! and your ring too.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry had acted
+conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns, and by licence, and to have such
+an obvious requisite dinned in her ears was exasperating. They could not have
+contracted alliance with an auxiliary more invaluable, an authority so
+profound; and they acknowledged it to themselves. The hero marched like an
+automaton at her bidding; Lieutenant Thompson was rejoiced to perform services
+as errand-boy in the enterprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s in hopes you&rsquo;ll be happier than me, I do it,&rdquo;
+said the devout and charitable Berry. &ldquo;Marriages is made in heaven, they
+say; and if that&rsquo;s the case, I say they don&rsquo;t take much account of
+us below!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her own woeful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for his story
+of cruel parents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt out the
+wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and suppliant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;ll come!&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic
+wrinkles: &ldquo;he&rsquo;ll come of his own accord. Never anywhere will he
+meet such a cook as Bessy Berry! And he know her value in his heart of hearts.
+And I do believe, when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to him again,
+and not slapping his impidence in the face&mdash;I&rsquo;m that soft! I always
+was&mdash;in matrimony, Mr. Richards!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and arsenals hammer
+night and day, and busy contractors measure time by inches, and the air hums
+around for leagues as it were myriads of bees, so the house and neighbourhood
+of the matrimonial soft one resounded in the heroic style, and knew little of
+the changes of light decreed by Creation. Mrs. Berry was the general of the
+hour. Down to Doctors&rsquo; Commons she expedited the hero, instructing him
+how boldly to face the Law, and fib: for that the Law never could mist a fib
+and a bold face. Down the hero went, and proclaimed his presence. And lo! the
+Law danced to him its sedatest lovely bear&rsquo;s-dance. Think ye the Law less
+susceptible to him than flesh and blood? With a beautiful confidence it put the
+few familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the
+bond, and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart that can permit the
+irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is
+petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so easily! That small
+archway of Doctors&rsquo; Commons seems the eye of a needle, through which the
+lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more readily than the portly; but
+once through, all are camels alike, the lean purse an especially big camel.
+Dispensing tremendous marriage as it does, the Law can have no conscience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hadn&rsquo;t the slightest difficulty,&rdquo; said the exulting hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not!&rdquo; returns Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as easy, if
+ye&rsquo;re in earnest, as buying a plum bun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the Church to
+be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and there hear oath of
+eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its forces: which the Church,
+receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously engaged to do, for less than the
+price of a plum-cake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry, were
+toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,&mdash;the former
+soundly; and one day was as another to them. Regularly every morning a letter
+arrived from Richard to his father, containing observations on the phenomena of
+London; remarks (mainly cynical) on the speeches and acts of Parliament; and
+reasons for not having yet been able to call on the Grandisons. They were
+certainly rather monotonous and spiritless. The baronet did not complain. That
+cold dutiful tone assured him there was no internal trouble or distraction.
+&ldquo;The letters of a healthful physique!&rdquo; he said to Lady Blandish,
+with sure insight. Complacently he sat and smiled, little witting that his
+son&rsquo;s ordeal was imminent, and that his son&rsquo;s ordeal was to be his
+own. Hippias wrote that his nephew was killing him by making appointments which
+he never kept, and altogether neglecting him in the most shameless way, so that
+his ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse state than when he left Raynham.
+He wrote very bitterly, but it was hard to feel compassion for his offended
+stomach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had despatched no
+tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening after evening, vastly
+disturbed. London was a large place&mdash;young Tom might be lost in it, he
+thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses. A wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely
+to be a sheep in London, as yokels have proved. But what had become of Lucy?
+This consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would
+have gone had not his pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant
+and get into a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard
+of, unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had
+behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he had
+the chance. It was a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable way of
+accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the farmer held to it
+that he had done the deed. He argued as modern men do who think the hero, the
+upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from us. So, after despatching a
+letter to a friend in town to be on the outlook for son Tom, he continued
+awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated than not, and mused on the shrewd
+manner he should adopt when Master Honeymoon did appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward the middle of the second week of Richard&rsquo;s absence, Tom Bakewell
+came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the Eighteenth
+Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum. The Eighteenth
+Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in return, enclosing a
+cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the heroic engine in motion at a
+moderate pace. Tom went back, and Raynham and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of
+the morrow. The System, wedded to Time, slept, and knew not how he had been
+outraged&mdash;anticipated by seven pregnant seasons. For Time had heard the
+hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had also registered an oath. Ah
+me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of
+the world comes of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who
+have once done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive it.
+The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business of men
+to discover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs. Berry has a new satin gown,
+a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves, presented to her by the
+hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the altar to-morrow; and, instead of
+being an old wary hen, she is as much a chicken as any of the party, such has
+been the magic of these articles. Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced
+for them by their children; a world content to be carved out as it pleases the
+hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor. The final
+arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry lights the
+little bride to her bed. Lucy stops on the landing where there is an old clock
+eccentrically correct that night. &rsquo;Tis the palpitating pause before the
+gates of her transfiguration. Mrs. Berry sees her put her rosy finger on the
+One about to strike, and touch all the hours successively till she comes to the
+Twelve that shall sound &ldquo;Wife&rdquo; in her ears on the morrow, moving
+her lips the while, and looking round archly solemn when she has done; and that
+sight so catches at Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s heart that, not guessing Time to be the
+poor child&rsquo;s enemy, she endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in
+her arms, whimpering; &ldquo;Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb! You
+shall be happy! You shall!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Time gazes grimly ahead.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>
+CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of that
+river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his fare, the
+ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls with a will, and
+heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they stand on the opposite bank,
+do they see what a leap they have taken. The shores they have relinquished
+shrink to an infinite remoteness. There they have dreamed: here they must act.
+There lie youth and irresolution: here manhood and purpose. They are veritably
+in another land: a moral Acheron divides their life. Their memories scarce seem
+their own! The Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes that
+each man has, one time or other, a little Rubicon&mdash;a clear or a foul water
+to cross. It is asked him: &ldquo;Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all
+behind thee?&rdquo; And &ldquo;I will,&rdquo; firmly pronounced, speeds him
+over. The above-named manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater
+number of carcasses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are
+those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim back to
+the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may be a hero for
+one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day&rsquo;s march even: and who
+wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the features of the terrible
+Universal Fate to him? Fail before her, either in heart or in act, and lo, how
+the alluring loves in her visage wither and sicken to what it is modelled on!
+Be your Rubicon big or small, clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not
+return. On&mdash;or to Acheron!&mdash;I subscribe to that saying of The
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware the
+little knowledge of one&rsquo;s self!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already the mists
+were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in two, and he
+breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His father, his father&rsquo;s
+love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy. His poetic dreams had taken a
+living attainable shape. He had a distincter impression of the Autumnal Berry
+and her household than of anything at Raynham. And yet the young man loved his
+father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar loved Rome: but whether he did or
+no, Caesar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are
+dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know
+what he was made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion has an
+instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the
+head, flying from the bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not
+strike him as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning
+and securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and in that
+case, were not the means justified? Not that he took trouble to argue thus, as
+older heroes and self-convicting villains are in the habit of doing; to deduce
+a clear conscience. Conscience and Lucy went together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One of those
+days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops forth all its
+babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early alive with the cries
+of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and organ boys with military
+monkeys, and systematic bands very determined in tone if not in tune, filled
+the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing procession of omnibuses, freighted with
+business men, Cityward, where a column of reddish brown smoke,&mdash;blown
+aloft by the South-west, marked the scene of conflict to which these persistent
+warriors repaired. Richard had seen much of early London that morning. His
+plans were laid. He had taken care to ensure his personal liberty against
+accidents, by leaving his hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at sunrise.
+To-day or to-morrow his father was to arrive. Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell
+reported to him, was raging in town. Another day and she might be torn from
+him: but to-day this miracle of creation would be his, and then from those
+glittering banks yonder, let them summon him to surrender her who dared! The
+position of things looked so propitious that he naturally thought the powers
+waiting on love conspired in his behalf. And she, too&mdash;since she must
+cross this river, she had sworn to him to be brave, and do him honour, and wear
+the true gladness of her heart in her face. Without a suspicion of folly in his
+acts, or fear of results, Richard strolled into Kensington Gardens,
+breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great joy, now with a vision of his
+bride, now of the new life opening to him. Mountain masses of clouds, rounded
+in sunlight, swung up the blue. The flowering chestnut pavilions overhead
+rustled and hummed. A sound in his ears as of a banner unfolding in the joyful
+distance lulled him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven. His watch said
+a quarter to ten. He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed trees toward the well
+dedicated to a saint obscure. Some people were drinking at the well. A florid
+lady stood by a younger one, who had a little silver mug half-way to her mouth,
+and evinced undisguised dislike to the liquor of the salutary saint.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drink, child!&rdquo; said the maturer lady. &ldquo;That is only your
+second mug. I insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning
+we&rsquo;re in town. Your constitution positively requires iron!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, mama,&rdquo; the other expostulated, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s so nasty. I
+shall be sick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drink!&rdquo; was the harsh injunction. &ldquo;Nothing to the German
+waters, my dear. Here, let me taste.&rdquo; She took the mug and gave it a
+flying kiss. &ldquo;I declare I think it almost nice&mdash;not at all
+objectionable. Pray, taste it,&rdquo; she said to a gentleman standing below
+them to act as cup-bearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: &ldquo;Certainly, if it&rsquo;s good
+fellowship; though I confess I don&rsquo;t think mutual sickness a very
+engaging ceremony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Can one never escape from one&rsquo;s relatives? Richard ejaculated inwardly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian. He had them
+under his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man was near to
+see the possible consequence of it, was the first to perceive him. Her hand
+dropped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mama!&rdquo; Clare gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was out of the
+question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: &ldquo;My own boy! My dear
+Richard!&rdquo; profuse of exclamations. Clare shyly greeted him. Adrian kept
+in the background.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria,
+smiling effusion; and rattled on, &ldquo;We want another cavalier. This is
+delightful! My dear nephew! You have grown from a boy to a man. And
+there&rsquo;s down on his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in the
+morning? Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child.&mdash;Clare! finish that
+mug and thank your cousin for sparing you the third. I always bring her, when
+we are by a chalybeate, to take the waters before breakfast. We have to get up
+at unearthly hours. Think, my dear boy! Mothers are sacrifices! And so
+you&rsquo;ve been alone a fortnight with your agreeable uncle! A charming time
+of it you must have had! Poor Hippias! what may be his last nostrum?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nephew!&rdquo; Adrian stretched his head round to the couple.
+&ldquo;Doses of nephew taken morning and night fourteen days! And he guarantees
+that it shall destroy an iron constitution in a month.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard mechanically shook Adrian&rsquo;s hand as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite well, Ricky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes: well enough,&rdquo; Richard answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo; resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare
+and Adrian followed. &ldquo;I really never saw you looking so handsome.
+There&rsquo;s something about your face&mdash;look at me&mdash;you
+needn&rsquo;t blush. You&rsquo;ve grown to an Apollo. That blue buttoned-up
+frock coat becomes you admirably&mdash;and those gloves, and that easy
+neck-tie. Your style is irreproachable, quite a style of your own! And nothing
+eccentric. You have the instinct of dress. Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as
+much as anything else. Boy!&mdash;you see, I can&rsquo;t forget old habits. You
+were a boy when I left, and now!&mdash;Do you see any change in him,
+Clare?&rdquo; she turned half round to her daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard is looking very well, mama,&rdquo; said Clare, glancing at him
+under her eyelids.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.&mdash;Take my arm, Richard.
+Are you afraid of your aunt? I want to get used to you. Won&rsquo;t it be
+pleasant, our being all in town together in the season? How fresh the Opera
+will be to you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come to the Forey&rsquo;s
+box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys close by here. I think
+it&rsquo;s a little too far out, you know; but they like the neighbourhood.
+This is what I have always said: Give him more liberty! Austin has seen it at
+last. How do you think Clare looking?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his cousin hastily, and
+praised her looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pale!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather pale, aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grown very much&mdash;don&rsquo;t you think, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very tall girl indeed, aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard! I&rsquo;m sure I
+give her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues. I think
+she does not prosper away from her old companion. She was accustomed to look up
+to you, Richard&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you get Ralph&rsquo;s letter, aunt?&rdquo; Richard interrupted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Absurd!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. &ldquo;The nonsense of a boy!
+Why did you undertake to forward such stuff?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m certain he loves her,&rdquo; said Richard, in a serious way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maternal eyes narrowed on him. &ldquo;Life, my dear Richard, is a game of
+cross-purposes,&rdquo; she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather
+angered to hear him laugh. He excused himself by saying that she spoke so like
+his father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You breakfast with us,&rdquo; she freshened off again. &ldquo;The Foreys
+wish to see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have a
+reputation on account of that&rdquo;&mdash;she crushed an intruding
+adjective&mdash;&ldquo;System you were brought up on. You mustn&rsquo;t mind
+it. For my part, I think you look a credit to it. Don&rsquo;t be bashful with
+young women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know how to
+behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! I&rsquo;m sure I
+shall be proud of you. Am I not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to spare, in
+pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along, he pulled out his
+watch to note the precise number of minutes he could dedicate to this
+charitable office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;You want manners, my dear boy.
+I think it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my
+presence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour, up to
+which he was her servant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fiddlededee!&rdquo; the vivacious lady sang. &ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ve got
+you, I mean to keep you. Oh! I&rsquo;ve heard all about you. This ridiculous
+indifference that your father makes so much of! Why, of course, you wanted to
+see the world! A strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely
+house&mdash;no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics! Of
+course you were indifferent! Your intelligence and superior mind alone saved
+you from becoming a dissipated country boor.&mdash;Where are the others?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My damozel dropped something,&rdquo; Adrian explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother asked what it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing, mama,&rdquo; said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Overborne by his aunt&rsquo;s fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute
+calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he edged in a
+word for Ralph. When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank
+idiotcy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nothing of the kind, aunt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The fancy of a boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a boy. He&rsquo;s half-a-year older than I am!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all think yourselves
+men.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he tell you so, child?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men don&rsquo;t speak openly of those things,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Boys do,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind to Ralph.
+Don&rsquo;t drive him to&mdash;You maybe sorry for it. Let him&mdash;do let him
+write to her, and see her. I believe women are as cruel as men in these
+things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never encourage absurdity, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, they&rsquo;re both good families. It&rsquo;s not that absurdity,
+Richard. It will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn&rsquo;t
+a dairymaid.&rdquo; Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly. It did not touch
+her nephew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you want Clare ever to marry?&rdquo; He put the last point
+of reason to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria laughed. &ldquo;I hope so, child. We must find some comfortable old
+gentleman for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What infamy!&rdquo; mutters Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a
+hearty breakfast&mdash;We don&rsquo;t dance at weddings now, and very properly.
+It&rsquo;s a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.&mdash;Is that
+his regiment?&rdquo; she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled
+gardens. &ldquo;Tush, tush, child! Master Ralph will recover, as&mdash;hem!
+others have done. A little headache&mdash;you call it heartache&mdash;and up
+you rise again, looking better than ever. No doubt, to have a grain of sense
+forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be painful.. Girls suffer
+as much as boys, I assure you. More, for their heads are weaker, and their
+appetites less constant. Do I talk like your father now? Whatever makes the boy
+fidget at his watch so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard stopped short. Time spoke urgently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face did not seem good for trifling. Mrs. Doria would trifle in spite.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an engagement. What
+possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o&rsquo;clock in the
+morning?&mdash;unless it&rsquo;s to be married!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria laughed at
+the ingenuity of her suggestion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is the church handy, Ricky?&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;You can still
+give us half-an-hour if it is. The celibate hours strike at Twelve.&rdquo; And
+he also laughed in his fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you stay with us, Richard?&rdquo; Clare asked. She blushed
+timidly, and her voice shook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something indefinite&mdash;a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the burning
+bridegroom speak gently to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a most
+imperative appointment&mdash;that is, I promised&mdash;I must go. I shall see
+you again&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria, took forcible possession of him. &ldquo;Now, do come, and
+don&rsquo;t waste words. I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and
+then, if you really must go, you shall. Look! there&rsquo;s the house. At least
+you will accompany your aunt to the door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard conceded this. She little imagined what she required of him. Two of his
+golden minutes melted into nothingness. They were growing to be jewels of
+price, one by one more and more precious as they ran, and now so
+costly-rare&mdash;rich as his blood! not to kindest relations, dearest friends,
+could he give another. The die is cast! Ferryman! push off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and
+fled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the house. He
+looked like resolution on the march. Mrs. Doria, as usual with her out of her
+brother&rsquo;s hearing, began rating the System.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See what becomes of that nonsensical education! The boy really does not
+know how to behave like a common mortal. He has some paltry appointment, or is
+mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and everything must be sacrificed to
+it! That&rsquo;s what Austin calls concentration of the faculties. I think
+it&rsquo;s more likely to lead to downright insanity than to greatness of any
+kind. And so I shall tell Austin. It&rsquo;s time he should be spoken to
+seriously about him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s an engine, my dear aunt,&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;He
+isn&rsquo;t a boy, or a man, but an engine. And he appears to have been at high
+pressure since he came to town&mdash;out all day and half the night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s mad!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria interjected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all. Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and carries as open an eye
+ahead of him as the ships before Troy. He&rsquo;s more than a match for any of
+us. He is for me, I confess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, &ldquo;he does astonish me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right season, which would
+not be long arriving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the Foreys of their hopeful
+relative&rsquo;s ungracious behaviour. Clare had left them. When Mrs. Doria
+went to her room her daughter was there, gazing down at something in her hand,
+which she guiltily closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off her things, Clare said
+she was not hungry. Mrs. Doria lamented the obstinacy of a constitution that no
+quantity of iron could affect, and eclipsed the looking-glass, saying:
+&ldquo;Take them off here, child, and learn to assist yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading hair, talking of
+Richard, and his handsome appearance, and extraordinary conduct. Clare kept
+opening and shutting her hand, in an attitude half-pensive, half-listless. She
+did not stir to undress. A joyless dimple hung in one pale cheek, and she drew
+long even breaths.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to show, came to her
+daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, really,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you are too helpless, my dear. You
+cannot do a thing without a dozen women at your elbow. What will become of you?
+You will have to marry a millionaire.&mdash;What&rsquo;s the matter with you,
+child?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction of her eyes, and
+displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of a green glove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A wedding-ring!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the curiosity
+most daintily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There on Clare&rsquo;s pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found, beset Clare, who replied:
+&ldquo;In the Gardens, mama. This morning. When I was walking behind
+Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, mama! he did not give it me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course not! only he does such absurd things! I thought,
+perhaps&mdash;these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria had
+an idea that it might have been concerted between the two young gentlemen,
+Richard and Ralph, that the former should present this token of hymeneal
+devotion from the latter to the young lady of his love; but a moment&rsquo;s
+reflection exonerated boys even from such preposterous behaviour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, I wonder,&rdquo; she speculated on Clare&rsquo;s cold face,
+&ldquo;I do wonder whether it&rsquo;s lucky to find a wedding-ring. What very
+quick eyes you have, my darling!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria kissed her. She thought it
+must be lucky, and the circumstance made her feel tender to her child. Her
+child did not move to the kiss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s see whether it fits,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, almost
+infantine with surprise and pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off. The ring slid down her long thin
+finger, and settled comfortably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria whispered. To find a wedding ring is open to
+any woman; but to find a wedding-ring that fits may well cause a superstitious
+emotion. Moreover, that it should be found while walking in the neighbourhood
+of the identical youth whom a mother has destined for her daughter, gives
+significance to the gentle perturbation of ideas consequent on such a hint from
+Fortune.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It really fits!&rdquo; she pursued. &ldquo;Now I never pay any attention
+to the nonsense of omens and that kind of thing&rdquo; (had the ring been a
+horseshoe Mrs. Doria would have pinked it up and dragged it obediently home),
+&ldquo;but this, I must say, is odd&mdash;to find a ring that
+fits!&mdash;singular! It never happened to me. Sixpence is the most I ever
+discovered, and I have it now. Mind you keep it, Clare&mdash;this ring:
+And,&rdquo; she laughed, &ldquo;offer it to Richard when he comes; say, you
+think he must have dropped it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dimple in Clare&rsquo;s cheek quivered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard. Mrs. Doria, by
+exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one side there would be
+no obstacle to her project of general happiness, without, as she thought,
+compromising her daughter&rsquo;s feelings unnecessarily. It could do no harm
+to an obedient young girl to hear that there was no youth in the world like a
+certain youth. He the prince of his generation, she might softly consent, when
+requested, to be his princess; and if never requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged
+failure), she might easily transfer her softness to squires of lower degree.
+Clare had always been blindly obedient to her mother (Adrian called them Mrs.
+Doria Battledoria and the fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother accepted in
+this blind obedience the text of her entire character. It is difficult for
+those who think very earnestly for their children to know when their children
+are thinking on their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe
+as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed from its command,
+and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of
+her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the kinder of
+the two, though sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at these
+unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now, excess
+of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection.
+Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter&rsquo;s manner save a want of
+iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited an
+imperious requirement of the mineral.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
+disappointing,&rdquo; we learn from The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, &ldquo;is, that
+we will read them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading
+ourselves from theirs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she laughed
+with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined in his jocose
+assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal auspices betrothed to
+the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and must, whenever he should choose
+to come and claim her, give her hand to him (for everybody agreed the owner
+must be masculine, as no woman would drop a wedding-ring), and follow him
+whither he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called
+Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first
+strophe of Clare&rsquo;s fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy
+twang. Her aunt Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her
+grandpapa Forey pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected from
+grandpapas.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe. The
+finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the palpitating
+accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous instrument. In the
+midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable want of iron by
+bursting into tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then enacting? Perhaps,
+dimly, as we say: that is, without eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths. They are
+asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so. If there is hesitation at
+the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly. She conceives as little mental
+doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over them hangs a cool young curate in
+his raiment of office. Behind are two apparently lucid people, distinguished
+from each other by sex and age: the foremost a bunch of simmering black satin;
+under her shadow a cock-robin in the dress of a gentleman, big joy swelling out
+his chest, and pert satisfaction cocking his head. These be they who stand here
+in place of parents to the young couple. All is well. The service proceeds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour of the complacent giant
+at least is his, and that he means to hold him bound through the eternities,
+men may hear. Clearly, and with brave modesty, speaks she: no less firmly,
+though her body trembles: her voice just vibrating while the tone travels on,
+like a smitten vase.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands bind his huge limbs and
+lock the chains. He is used to it: he lets them do as they will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each other. The Man
+with his right hand takes the Woman by her right hand: the Woman with her right
+hand takes the Man by his right hand.&mdash;Devils dare not laugh at whom
+Angels crowd to contemplate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their hands are joined; their blood flows as one stream. Adam and fair Eve
+front the generations. Are they not lovely? Purer fountains of life were never
+in two bosoms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the Man to put a
+ring on the Woman&rsquo;s fourth finger, counting thumb. And the Man thrusts
+his hand into one pocket, and into another, forward and back many times into
+all his pockets. He remembers that he felt for it, and felt it in his waistcoat
+pocket, when in the Gardens. And his hand comes forth empty. And the Man is
+ghastly to look at!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh! The curate deliberates. The
+black satin bunch ceases to simmer. He in her shadow changes from a beaming
+cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow. Eyes multiply questions: lips have no
+reply. Time ominously shakes his chain, and in the pause a sound of mockery
+stings their ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Think ye a hero is one to be defeated in his first battle? Look at the clock!
+there are but seven minutes to the stroke of the celibate hours: the veteran is
+surely lifting his two hands to deliver fire, and his shot will sunder them in
+twain so nearly united. All the jewellers of London speeding down with sacks
+full of the nuptial circlet cannot save them!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The battle must be won on the field, and what does the hero now? It is an
+inspiration! For who else would dream of such a reserve in the rear? None see
+what he does; only that the black-satin bunch is remonstratingly agitated,
+stormily shaken, and subdued: and as though the menacing cloud had opened, and
+dropped the dear token from the skies at his demand, he produces the symbol of
+their consent, and the service proceeds: &ldquo;With this ring I thee
+wed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are prayed over and blest. For good, or for ill, this deed is done. The
+names are registered; fees fly right and left: they thank, and salute, the
+curate, whose official coolness melts into a smile of monastic gallantry: the
+beadle on the steps waves off a gaping world as they issue forth bridegroom and
+bridesman recklessly scatter gold on him: carriage doors are banged to: the
+coachmen drive off, and the scene closes, everybody happy.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>
+CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<p>
+And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would dissolve to one of
+Dian&rsquo;s Virgin Fountains from the clasp of the Sun-God. She has nobly
+preserved the mask imposed by comedies, till the curtain has fallen, and now
+she weeps, streams with tears. Have patience, O impetuous young man! It is your
+profession to be a hero. This poor heart is new to it, and her duties involve
+such wild acts, such brigandage, such terrors and tasks, she is quite unnerved.
+She did you honour till now. Bear with her now. She does not cry the cry of
+ordinary maidens in like cases. While the struggle went on her tender face was
+brave; but, alas! Omens are against her: she holds an ever-present dreadful one
+on that fatal fourth finger of hers, which has coiled itself round her dream of
+delight, and takes her in its clutch like a horrid serpent. And yet she must
+love it. She dares not part from it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its
+strange honey, and all the bliss it gives her casts all the deeper shadow on
+what is to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Say: Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension, for a woman to be married
+in another woman&rsquo;s ring?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand citadels&mdash;wherever
+there is strife, and Time is to be taken by the throat. Then shall few men
+match your sublime fury. But what if you see a vulture, visible only to
+yourselves, hovering over the house you are gaily led by the torch to inhabit?
+Will you not crouch and be cowards?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to omens. He does his
+best to win his darling to confidence by caresses. Is she not his? Is he not
+hers? And why, when the battle is won, does she weep? Does she regret what she
+has done?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast love seen swimming
+on clear depths of faith in them, through the shower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed waiting for the
+shower to pass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue to her distress, and a
+second character in the comedy changed her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what has happened!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darlin&rsquo; child!&rdquo; The bridal Berry gazed at the finger of
+doleful joy. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d forgot all about it! And that&rsquo;s
+what&rsquo;ve made me feel so queer ever since, then! I&rsquo;ve been
+seemin&rsquo; as if I wasn&rsquo;t myself somehow, without my ring. Dear! dear!
+what a wilful young gentleman! We ain&rsquo;t a match for men in that
+state&mdash;Lord help us!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge of the bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry? Is it not terrible?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I should &rsquo;a liked it myself, my dear,&rdquo;
+Mrs. Berry candidly responded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! why, why, why did it happen!&rdquo; the young bride bent to a flood
+of fresh tears, murmuring that she felt already old&mdash;forsaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you got a comfort in your religion for all
+accidents?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None for this. I know it&rsquo;s wrong to cry when I am so happy. I hope
+he will forgive me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest, beautifulest thing in
+life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll cry no more,&rdquo; said Lucy. &ldquo;Leave me, Mrs. Berry,
+and come back when I ring.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees to the bed. Mrs.
+Berry left the room tiptoe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless, and smiled kindly to
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s over now,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have prepared, Mrs.
+Berry. I begged to be excused. I cannot eat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a superior nuptial
+breakfast, but with her mind on her ring she nodded assentingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, my dear. It&rsquo;s pretty well all done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a very suitable spot ye&rsquo;ve chose, my dear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He loves the sea. He wishes to be near it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ye cross to-night, if it&rsquo;s anyways rough, my dear. It
+isn&rsquo;t advisable.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say,
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ye be soft and give way to him there, or you&rsquo;ll both
+be repenting it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had to speak. She saw
+Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s eyes pursuing her ring, and screwed up her courage at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, my dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Another, my dear?&rdquo; Berry did not comprehend. &ldquo;One&rsquo;s
+quite enough for the objeck,&rdquo; she remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; Lucy touched her fourth finger, &ldquo;I cannot part with
+this.&rdquo; She looked straight at Mrs. Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring, till she had thoroughly
+exhausted the meaning of the words, and then exclaimed, horror-struck:
+&ldquo;Deary me, now! you don&rsquo;t say that? You&rsquo;re to be married
+again in your own religion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young wife repeated: &ldquo;I can never part with it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my dear!&rdquo; the wretched Berry wrung her hands, divided between
+compassion and a sense of injury. &ldquo;My dear!&rdquo; she kept expostulating
+like a mute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry. I am very grieved to pain
+you. It is mine now, and must be mine. I cannot give it back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible little heroine in the
+three Kingdoms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From her first perception of the meaning of the young bride&rsquo;s words, Mrs.
+Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew that her case was hopeless, unless she
+treated her as she herself had been treated, and seized the ring by force of
+arms; and that she had not heart for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What!&rdquo; she gasped faintly, &ldquo;one&rsquo;s own lawful
+wedding-ring you wouldn&rsquo;t give back to a body?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry. It was yours, but it is mine now. You
+shall have whatever you ask for but that. Pray, forgive me! It must be
+so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands together. It amazed her
+that this soft little creature could be thus firm. She tried argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ye know, my dear, it&rsquo;s the fatalest thing you&rsquo;re
+inflictin&rsquo; upon me, reelly! Don&rsquo;t ye know that bein&rsquo; bereft
+of one&rsquo;s own lawful wedding-ring&rsquo;s the fatalest thing in life, and
+there&rsquo;s no prosperity after it! For what stands in place o&rsquo; that,
+when that&rsquo;s gone, my dear? And what could ye give me to compensate a body
+for the loss o&rsquo; that? Don&rsquo;t ye know&mdash;Oh, deary me!&rdquo; The
+little bride&rsquo;s face was so set that poor Berry wailed off in despair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; said Lucy. &ldquo;I know it all. I know what I do to
+you. Dear, dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me! If I parted with my ring I know it
+would be fatal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument as well as her
+ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my child,&rdquo; she counter-argued, &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t
+understand. It ain&rsquo;t as you think. It ain&rsquo;t a hurt to you now. Not
+a bit, it ain&rsquo;t. It makes no difference now! Any ring does while the
+wearer&rsquo;s a maid. And your Mr. Richard will find the very ring he intended
+for ye. And, of course, that&rsquo;s the one you&rsquo;ll wear as his wife.
+It&rsquo;s all the same now, my dear. It&rsquo;s no shame to a maid. Now
+do&mdash;now do&mdash;there&rsquo;s a darlin&rsquo;!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wheedling availed as little as argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; said Lucy, &ldquo;you know what my&mdash;he spoke:
+&lsquo;With this ring I thee wed.&rsquo; It was with this ring. Then how could
+it be with another?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that was logic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hit upon an artful conjecture:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it be unlucky your wearin&rsquo; of the ring which served me
+so? Think o&rsquo; that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It may! it may! it may!&rdquo; cried Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And arn&rsquo;t you rushin&rsquo; into it, my dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; Lucy said again, &ldquo;it was this ring. It
+cannot&mdash;it never can be another. It was this. What it brings me I must
+bear. I shall wear it till I die!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what am I to do?&rdquo; the ill-used woman groaned. &ldquo;What
+shall I tell my husband when he come back to me, and see I&rsquo;ve got a new
+ring waitin&rsquo; for him? Won&rsquo;t that be a welcome?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Quoth Lucy: &ldquo;How can he know it is not the same; in a plain gold
+ring?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my Berry!&rdquo; returned
+his solitary spouse. &ldquo;Not know, my dear? Why, any one would know
+that&rsquo;ve got eyes in his head. There&rsquo;s as much difference in
+wedding-rings as there&rsquo;s in wedding people! Now, do pray be reasonable,
+my own sweet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, do not ask me,&rdquo; pleads Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, do think better of it,&rdquo; urges Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo; pleads Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when you&rsquo;re
+so happy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!&rdquo; Lucy faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry thought she had her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just when you&rsquo;re going to be the happiest wife on earth&mdash;all
+you want yours!&rdquo; she pursued the tender strain. &ldquo;A handsome young
+gentleman! Love and Fortune smilin&rsquo; on ye!&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy rose up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I think we must not lose time in
+getting ready, or he will be impatient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge of her chair. Dignity
+and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto folded under her wing. In
+an hour the heroine had risen to the measure of the hero. Without being exactly
+aware what creature she was dealing with, Berry acknowledged to herself it was
+not one of the common run, and sighed, and submitted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s like a divorce, that it is!&rdquo; she sobbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry bustled humbly about
+the packing. Then Lucy, whose heart was full to her, came and kissed her, and
+Berry bumped down and regularly cried. This over, she had recourse to fatalism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it was to be, my dear! It&rsquo;s my punishment for
+meddlin&rsquo; wi&rsquo; such matters. No, I&rsquo;m not sorry. Bless ye both.
+Who&rsquo;d &rsquo;a thought you was so wilful?&mdash;you that any one might
+have taken for one of the silly-softs! You&rsquo;re a pair, my dear! indeed you
+are! You was made to meet! But we mustn&rsquo;t show him we&rsquo;ve been
+crying.&mdash;Men don&rsquo;t like it when they&rsquo;re happy. Let&rsquo;s
+wash our faces and try to bear our lot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge. She deserved some
+sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another person&rsquo;s ring, how
+much sadder to have one&rsquo;s own old accustomed lawful ring violently torn
+off one&rsquo;s finger and eternally severed from one! But where you have
+heroes and heroines, these terrible complications ensue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal honour and
+success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last directions. Though
+it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared a sumptuous breakfast.
+Chickens offered their breasts: pies hinted savoury secrets: things mystic, in
+a mash, with Gallic appellatives, jellies, creams, fruits, strewed the table:
+as a tower in the midst, the cake colossal: the priestly vesture of its nuptial
+white relieved by hymeneal splendours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon this
+breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts that have their basis
+in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are careful to provide against:
+who will speak, and whose hateful voice must somehow be silenced while the
+feast is going on. This personage is The Philosopher. Mrs. Berry knew him. She
+knew that he would come. She provided against him in the manner she thought
+most efficacious: that is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience
+with the due and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate,
+mothers collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family
+lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her return from
+the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and
+emptiness, and repented her work. The Philosopher would have laid hold of her
+by the ear, and called her bad names. Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so
+legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him. In the presence of that cake he
+dared not speak above a whisper. And there were wines to drown him in, should
+he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and cool: claret sent purposely by
+the bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb. Ripton
+was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the world as well,
+till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with delight. He had
+already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly flushed, to his emphatic
+and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to do but to listen, and to drink.
+The hero would not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and
+as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural
+force in his bosom, the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis
+of suppressed emotion. At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously
+into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded
+instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short
+behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: &ldquo;On my soul, I
+don&rsquo;t think you know a word I&rsquo;m saying.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Every word, Ricky!&rdquo; Ripton spirted through the opening.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going down to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin!
+Here&rsquo;s your only chance of being a happy father&mdash;no, no!&mdash;Oh!
+don&rsquo;t you fear me, Ricky! I shall talk the old gentleman over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His chief said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first thing
+to-morrow, by the six o&rsquo;clock train. Give him my letter. Listen to
+me&mdash;give him my letter, and don&rsquo;t speak a word till he speaks. His
+eyebrows will go up and down, he won&rsquo;t say much. I know him. If he asks
+you about her, don&rsquo;t be a fool, but say what you think of her
+sensibly&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to. He shouted:
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s an angel!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard checked him: &ldquo;Speak sensibly, I say&mdash;quietly. You can say
+how gentle and good she is&mdash;my fleur-de-luce! And say, this was not her
+doing. If any one&rsquo;s to blame, it&rsquo;s I. I made her marry me. Then go
+to Lady Blandish, if you don&rsquo;t find her at the house. You may say
+whatever you please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want to hear
+from her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know what she thinks of her. You
+will then go to Farmer Blaize. I told you Lucy happens to be his
+niece&mdash;she has not lived long there. She lived with her aunt Desborough in
+France while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to the
+farmer&mdash;there&rsquo;s not a point of likeness between them. Poor darling!
+she never knew her mother. Go to Mr. Blaize, and tell him. You will treat him
+just as you would treat any other gentleman. If you are civil, he is sure to
+be. And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will still treat him with
+respect. You hear? And then write me a full account of all that has been said
+and done. You will have my address the day after to-morrow. By the way, Tom
+will be here this afternoon. Write out for him where to call on you the day
+after to-morrow, in case you have heard anything in the morning you think I
+ought to know at once, as Tom will join me that night. Don&rsquo;t mention to
+anybody about my losing the ring, Ripton. I wouldn&rsquo;t have Adrian get hold
+of that for a thousand pounds. How on earth I came to lose it! How well she
+bore it, Rip! How beautifully she behaved!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton again shouted: &ldquo;An angel!&rdquo; Throwing up the heels of his
+second bottle, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may trust your friend, Richard. Aha! when you pulled at old Mrs.
+Berry I didn&rsquo;t know what was up. I do wish you&rsquo;d let me drink her
+health?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to Penelope!&rdquo; said Richard, just wetting his mouth.
+The carriage was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the same
+tune, and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the secretest veiled
+wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in the production of discord,
+and the noise acting on his nervous state made him begin to fume and send in
+messages for his bride by the maid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her journey, and
+smiling from stained eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out for her,
+enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom, on the
+plea of her softness. Lucy gave Ripton her hand, with a musical
+&ldquo;Good-bye, Mr. Thompson,&rdquo; and her extreme graciousness made him
+just sensible enough to sit down before he murmured his fervent hopes for her
+happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall take good care of him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, focussing her
+eyes to the comprehension of the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Farewell, Penelope!&rdquo; cried Richard. &ldquo;I shall tell the police
+everywhere to look out for your lord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching
+loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up the rear
+to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an old shoe
+precipitated by Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s enthusiastic female domestic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they were off.
+Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that she telegraphed,
+hand in air, awakening Ripton&rsquo;s lungs, for the coachman to stop, and ran
+back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone, but at his bride&rsquo;s
+intercession he consented to wait. Presently they beheld the old black-satin
+bunch stream through the street-door, down the bit of garden, and up the
+astonished street; halting, panting, capless at the carriage door, a book in
+her hand,&mdash;a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book, which; at the
+same time calling out in breathless jerks, &ldquo;There! never ye mind looks! I
+ain&rsquo;t got a new one. Read it, and don&rsquo;t ye forget it!&rdquo; she
+discharged into Lucy&rsquo;s lap, and retreated to the railings, a signal for
+the coachman to drive away for good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How Richard laughed at the Berry&rsquo;s bridal gift! Lucy, too, lost the omen
+at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume. It was Dr. Kitchener on
+Domestic Cookery!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<p>
+General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs and
+bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s abode,
+proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh regions.
+With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton&rsquo;s arm to regulate his steps, and
+returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In the interval he had
+stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which altitude he shook a
+dolorous head at the guilty woman. She smoothed her excited apron, sighing. Let
+no one imagine that she regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry
+torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall
+conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her
+wickedness the more&mdash;such is the born Pagan&rsquo;s tenacity! Mrs. Berry
+sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident
+creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the
+thing she had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist&rsquo;s reply.
+He sounded a bogey&rsquo;s alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated to
+the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s done!&rdquo; she exclaimed. How could she regret what she
+felt comfort to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark
+on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on
+the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton&rsquo;s incision there, showing a
+crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eloquent indication was understood. &ldquo;Dear! dear!&rdquo; cried Mrs.
+Berry, &ldquo;what a heap o&rsquo; cake, and no one to send it to!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret. Clear
+ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling geysir of
+indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and waggled, and nodded amicably to
+nothing, and successfully, though not without effort, preserved his uppermost
+member from the seductions of the nymph, Gravitation, who was on the look-out
+for his whole length shortly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken,
+and almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s words
+had just reached his wits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you laugh, young man?&rdquo; she inquired, familiar and motherly
+on account of his condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and his
+nose on a chicken. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s goo&rsquo;!&rdquo; he said, recovering,
+and rocking under Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s eyes. &ldquo;No friend!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not say, no friend,&rdquo; she remarked. &ldquo;I said, no one;
+meanin&rsquo;, I know not where for to send it to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton&rsquo;s response to this was: &ldquo;You put a Griffin on that cake.
+Wheatsheaves each side.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His crest?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oldest baronetcy &rsquo;n England!&rdquo; waved Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You think he&rsquo;s Richards. We&rsquo;re oblige&rsquo; be very close.
+And she&rsquo;s the most lovely!&mdash;If I hear man say thing &rsquo;gainst
+her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t for to cry over her, young man,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Berry. &ldquo;I wanted for to drink their right healths by their right names,
+and then go about my day&rsquo;s work, and I do hope you won&rsquo;t keep
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do?&rdquo; he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
+articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and Lucy
+Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an expeditious
+example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained his bumper at a
+gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his reason leapt and expired.
+He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some minutes subsequent to Ripton&rsquo;s signalization of his devotion to the
+bridal pair, Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s maid entered the room to say that a gentleman
+was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her
+mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of
+unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the
+swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done it,
+as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable,
+access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words
+that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without
+delay; and she had already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when
+the maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which
+Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be shown
+upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She repeated the injunction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see herself as
+she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to look a very little
+better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was settled, smoothing her agitation
+when her visitor was announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had put him on
+the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its white-vestured
+cake, made him whistle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A fine morning, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It have been!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at
+the window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A very fine Spring,&rdquo; pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her
+countenance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to &ldquo;weather&rdquo; on a deep sigh. Her
+wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful and
+brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some strange
+intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing hysterics
+before him; and as he was never more in his element than when he had a sinner,
+and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his affable countenance might
+well deceive poor Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I presume these are Mr. Thompson&rsquo;s lodgings?&rdquo; he remarked,
+with a look at the table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were
+not Mr. Thompson&rsquo;s lodgings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No?&rdquo; said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about
+him. &ldquo;Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on her
+knees, formed Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Feverel&rsquo;s man,&rdquo; continued Adrian, &ldquo;told me I
+should be certain to find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr.
+Thompson. I&rsquo;m too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I fancy
+you have been having a party of them here, ma&rsquo;am?&mdash;a
+bachelors&rsquo; breakfast!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so shrewd
+that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She felt she must speak. Making
+her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she began:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir, may I beg for to know your name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Harley accorded her request.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you are Mr. Harley, that was&mdash;oh! and you&rsquo;ve come for
+Mr.?&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! and it&rsquo;s no mistake, and he&rsquo;s of Raynham Abbey?&rdquo;
+Mrs. Berry inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His father&rsquo;s Sir Austin?&rdquo; wailed the black-satin bunch from
+behind her handkerchief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian verified Richard&rsquo;s descent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, then, what have I been and done!&rdquo; she cried, and stared
+blankly at her visitor. &ldquo;I been and married my baby! I been and married
+the bread out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you
+was a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it&rsquo;s my
+softness that&rsquo;s my ruin, for I never can resist a man&rsquo;s asking.
+Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. &ldquo;Wedding-cake,
+ma&rsquo;am!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you make it yourself, ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that train of
+symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him guess the
+catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley,&rdquo; she replied.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bought cake, and I&rsquo;m a lost woman. Little I dreamed
+when I had him in my arms a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of
+my own house! I little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don&rsquo;t you
+remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden,
+and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin&rsquo; after the night you
+got into Mr. Benson&rsquo;s cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary&mdash;I
+remember it as clear as yesterday!&mdash;and Mr. Benson was that angry he
+threatened to use the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed. I&rsquo;m that
+very woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am! well?&rdquo; he said. He would bring her to the
+furnace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you see it all, kind sir?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry appealed to him
+in pathetic dumb show.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing at
+Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked uninstructed,
+his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable full-bodied posture
+was the same. &ldquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo; he spurred her on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry burst forth: &ldquo;It were done this mornin&rsquo;, Mr. Harley, in
+the church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he
+said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved:
+&ldquo;Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr.
+Feverel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him, saying:
+&ldquo;Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This young gentleman was at church this morning?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! quite reasonable and proper then,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry begged him to
+understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo; Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid
+inanimate limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. &ldquo;You
+were all reasonable and proper, ma&rsquo;am. The principal male performer,
+then, is my cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by
+licence at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and
+left intoxicated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry flew out. &ldquo;He never drink a drop, sir. A more moderate young
+gentleman you never see. Oh! don&rsquo;t ye think that now, Mr. Harley. He was
+as upright and master of his mind as you be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay!&rdquo; the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison,
+&ldquo;I mean the other form of intoxication.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him
+circumstantially what had been done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical woman who
+once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his mask, and had ever
+since lived in exile from the Raynham world on a little pension regularly paid
+to her as an indemnity. She was that woman, and the thought of it made her
+almost accuse Providence for the betraying excess of softness it had endowed
+her with. How was she to recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a feigned
+name; not a word of the family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal,
+though she felt something more than ordinary to him&mdash;she knew she did. He
+came bringing a beautiful young lady, and on what grounds could she turn her
+back on them? Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, why should she
+interfere to make them unhappy&mdash;so few the chances of happiness in this
+world! Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One wrench,&rdquo; said the sobbing culprit, &ldquo;one, and my ring was
+off!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the vestry-book had
+been too enacting for a thought upon the other signatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done,&rdquo; said
+Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, sir,&rdquo; moaned Berry, &ldquo;I were, and am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And would do your best to rectify the mischief&mdash;eh,
+ma&rsquo;am?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would,&rdquo; she protested solemnly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;As, of course, you should&mdash;knowing the family. Where may
+these lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: &ldquo;To the Isle&mdash;I don&rsquo;t quite
+know, sir!&rdquo; she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit
+she had fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be
+pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss! &ldquo;To-morrow, if you
+please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pleasant spot,&rdquo; Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought his
+bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this was enough to
+satisfy Adrian&rsquo;s mind that there had been concoction and chicanery.
+Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance certainly had not
+brought him to the young one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; he said, in answer to her petitions for
+his favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and the
+bridal pair, &ldquo;I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the affair,
+being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the consummation. He
+will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two must see him to-night. An
+emetic kindly administered will set our friend here on his legs. A bath and a
+clean shirt, and he might go. I don&rsquo;t see why your name should appear at
+all. Brush him up, and send him to Bellingham by the seven o&rsquo;clock train.
+He will find his way to Raynham; he knows the neighbourhood best in the dark.
+Let him go and state the case. Remember, one of you must go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the couple
+of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtues over, Adrian
+said, &ldquo;Good morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t refuse a piece of
+his cake, Mr. Harley?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, dear, no, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; Adrian turned to the cake with
+alacrity. &ldquo;I shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many
+friends who will rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs.
+Berry. Put it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it to
+them, and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of
+relationship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the sweetness and
+hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and she launched into
+eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she regretted her conduct. She
+vowed that they seemed made for each other; that both, were beautiful; both had
+spirit; both were innocent; and to part them, or make them unhappy, would be,
+Mrs. Berry wrought herself to cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion. He took
+the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and left Mrs. Berry to
+bless his good heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So dies the System!&rdquo; was Adrian&rsquo;s comment in the street.
+&ldquo;And now let prophets roar! He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which
+is more than I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime,&rdquo; he gave
+the cake a dramatic tap, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go sow nightmares.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and
+admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one
+has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to
+be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does
+not marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their
+frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had
+built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period. Astonishment
+never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to
+relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he saw none. Jugglers he saw
+running up ladders that overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the empyrean;
+but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy
+of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground,
+fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his comfort
+to his conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows: on
+the contrary, his sole amusement was their society. Alone he was rather dull,
+as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the animated
+varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant
+play; and the faculties he had forfeited to hold his elevated position he could
+serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others. Thus:&mdash;wonder at Master
+Richard&rsquo;s madness: though he himself did not experience it, he was eager
+to mark the effect on his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive
+hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment,
+horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the prospect. For his patron had
+projected a journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps, and
+lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of History
+and tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit
+might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been planned
+during Richard&rsquo;s absence to surprise him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the race of
+young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance, as we say; that
+buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax
+older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an
+obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the
+sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly
+and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by
+his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord
+in the foreground: he must recline on Mammon&rsquo;s imperial cushions in order
+to moralize becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the
+expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the
+shelter of a but and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the bitterness of
+beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and splendour due
+to his superior emotions, or not at all. Consequently the wise youth had long
+nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that at the
+moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with such slight
+touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian cookery and
+Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very few even
+of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly to meaner delights
+the moment after.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He had fought down his
+breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to his dinner
+at the Foreys&rsquo; with less than usual timidity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! glad you&rsquo;ve come, Adrian,&rdquo; he said, and expanded his
+chest. &ldquo;I was afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you.
+We&rsquo;ll walk down together through the park. It&rsquo;s absolutely
+dangerous to walk alone in these streets. My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts
+all through the year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it. I give
+you my word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in
+Piccadilly, and I thought I was down! I saved myself by a miracle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have an appetite, I hope?&rdquo; asked Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk,&rdquo; chirped Hippias.
+&ldquo;Yes. I think I feel hungry now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Charmed to hear it,&rdquo; said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel
+on his knees. &ldquo;How should you define Folly?&rdquo; he checked the process
+to inquire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hm!&rdquo; Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when
+such questions were addressed to him. &ldquo;I think I should define it to be a
+slide.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on
+it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle. You must
+present that to the Pilgrim. And the monument of folly, what would that
+be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias meditated anew. &ldquo;All the human race on one another&rsquo;s
+shoulders.&rdquo; He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very good,&rdquo; Adrian applauded, &ldquo;or in default of that, some
+symbol of the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a
+chip.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is the monument made portable&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cake!&rdquo; cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his
+intense disgust. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re right of them that eat it. If I&mdash;if I
+don&rsquo;t mistake,&rdquo; he peered at it, &ldquo;the noxious composition
+bedizened in that way is what they call wedding-cake. It&rsquo;s arrant poison!
+Who is it you want to kill? What are you carrying such stuff about for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian rang the bell for a knife. &ldquo;To present you with your due and
+proper portion. You will have friends and relatives, and can&rsquo;t be saved
+from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps, the
+unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who consider that
+they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to distribute this token of
+esteem to their friends, with the object probably&rdquo; (he took the knife
+from a waiter and went to the table to slice the cake) &ldquo;of enabling those
+friends (these edifices require very delicate incision&mdash;each particular
+currant and subtle condiment hangs to its neighbour&mdash;a wedding-cake is
+evidently the most highly civilized of cakes, and partakes of the evils as well
+as the advantages of civilization!)&mdash;I was saying, they send us these
+love-tokens, no doubt (we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to
+have his fair share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by
+passing some hours in purgatory. This, as far as I can apportion it without
+weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get away!&rdquo; Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his
+chair. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have none of it, I tell you! It&rsquo;s death!
+It&rsquo;s fifty times worse than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What
+fool has been doing this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It&rsquo;s an
+insult.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not compelled to eat any before dinner,&rdquo; said Adrian,
+pointing the corner of the table after him, &ldquo;but your share you must
+take, and appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the
+marriage cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I
+hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
+therefrom&mdash;said to be of a lighter class, taken that way. It&rsquo;s a
+capital cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it&mdash;you have
+indeed! So here it is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung himself on a
+sofa exhausted, crying: &ldquo;There!... My appetite&rsquo;s gone for
+to-day!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then shall I tell Richard that you won&rsquo;t touch a morsel of his
+cake?&rdquo; said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking
+at his uncle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you&rsquo;ve
+been in town. He&rsquo;s married, you know. Married this morning at Kensington
+parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to.
+Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight, a very
+delectable place for a month&rsquo;s residence. I have to announce to you that,
+thanks to your assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard married!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the wits of
+poor Hippias were softened by the shock. His hand travelled half-way to his
+forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that seat of reason, and then
+fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in town
+under your charge....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Married?&rdquo; Hippias jumped up&mdash;he had it. &ldquo;Why,
+he&rsquo;s under age! he&rsquo;s an infant.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib like a man and pay
+your fee&mdash;what does it matter? Any one who is breeched can obtain a
+licence in our noble country. And the interests of morality demand that it
+should not be difficult. Is it true&mdash;can you persuade anybody that you
+have known nothing about it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on somebody
+else,&rdquo; said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve done me up for the day, I can assure you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic finish
+to the work. He had the gratification of passing his uncle through varied
+contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in conviction, and exclaimed,
+&ldquo;This accounts for his conduct to me. That boy must have a cunning
+nothing short of infernal! I feel. . . I feel it just here,&rdquo; he drew a
+hand along his midriff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not equal to this world of fools,&rdquo; he added faintly, and
+shut his eyes. &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t dine. Eat? ha!... no. Go without
+me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after, Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed,
+&ldquo;See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!&rdquo; and as the
+pillow swelled over his ears, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not sure that a day&rsquo;s fast
+won&rsquo;t do me good.&rdquo; The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a
+heavy price; he had a right to use it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the Row, and
+looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged. The Captain did not
+pass with out querying the ungainly parcel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?&rdquo; said Adrian.
+&ldquo;Enclosed is wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the
+maids and wives of Merry England sleep secure. I had half a mind to fix it on a
+pole, and engage a band to parade it. This is our dear Richard&rsquo;s
+wedding-cake. Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at the
+Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed the ring of his
+beautiful bride&rsquo;s lachrymose land-lady, she standing adjacent by the
+altar. His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers as a maid, you can claim on
+the spot if you think proper, and digest according to your powers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Algernon let off steam in a whistle. &ldquo;Thompson, the solicitor&rsquo;s
+daughter!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I met them the other day, somewhere about
+here. He introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo; Adrian set him right. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a Miss Desborough, a
+Roman Catholic dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the
+Plantagenets! He&rsquo;s quite equal to introducing her as Thompson&rsquo;s
+daughter, and himself as Beelzebub&rsquo;s son. However, the wild animal is in
+Hymen&rsquo;s chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, by all means!&mdash;not now.&rdquo; Algernon had an unwonted air of
+reflection.&mdash;&ldquo;Father know it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not yet. He will to-night by nine o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I must see him by seven. Don&rsquo;t say you met me.&rdquo; He
+nodded, and pricked his horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wants money!&rdquo; said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once
+more in motion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had reserved them
+for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures! Dyspepsia would not
+weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest check their fainting fits. On
+the generic woman one could calculate. Well might The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip say
+of her that, &ldquo;She is always at Nature&rsquo;s breast&rdquo;; not
+intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve throughout the ages; whereas
+the Pilgrim would have us believe that the Adam in men has become warier, if
+not wiser; and weak as he is, has learnt a lesson from time. Probably the
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s meaning may be taken to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the nursery
+when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s maternal
+predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form of
+filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian
+humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty, and they would proclaim
+the diverse ways with which maidenhood and womanhood took disappointment, while
+the surrounding Forey girls and other females of the family assembly were
+expected to develop the finer shades and tapering edges of an agitation to
+which no woman could be cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in a
+conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to dinner. Much of
+the conversation adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria asked him if he had seen the
+youth, or heard of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;I have heard
+of him. I heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a breakfast
+that dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake and&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cake at breakfast!&rdquo; they all interjected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That seems to be his fancy just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What an extraordinary taste!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, he is educated on a System.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun.
+Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he
+were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from
+the conversation in a blush, extinguished by his own spark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, &ldquo;Oh! fish-cake, I suppose! I wish he
+understood a little better the obligations of relationship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whether he understands them, I can&rsquo;t say,&rdquo; observed Adrian,
+&ldquo;but I assure you he is very energetic in extending them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that his dear
+relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by at the aspect of
+the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly mysterious and deep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?&rdquo; Mrs.
+Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, &ldquo;Do they keep a beadle
+at the door?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece
+of satirical ingenuousness. &ldquo;I daresay they do,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And a curate on hand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I should think a dozen!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house a wide
+berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment&rsquo;s notice,
+and the scent ran off at a jest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent old
+fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon as they had
+taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the flowers and the
+dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord, and the gallant males
+breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled to the business of the table,
+sure that an hour for unbosoming and imbibing was their own. Adrian took a
+chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of standing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to ask you,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;whether an infant in law can
+legally bind himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he&rsquo;s old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I
+suppose he can,&rdquo; yawned Brandon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he responsible for his acts?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve no doubt we could hang him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite so much; pretty near.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For instance, he can marry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not a criminal case, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the marriage is valid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can dispute it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both water and fire!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the vigorous
+circulation of the claret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me, sir!&rdquo; said Adrian, &ldquo;I beg pardon. The circumstances
+must excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid this
+morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement was
+taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than, &ldquo;Deuce he has!&rdquo; and,
+&ldquo;A dairymaid!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace,&rdquo; Adrian
+continued. &ldquo;I wanted to be able to console my aunt&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, but&mdash;well, but,&rdquo; the old gentleman, much the most
+excited, puffed&mdash;&ldquo;eh, Brandon? He&rsquo;s a boy, this young ass! Do
+you mean to tell me a boy can go and marry when he pleases, and any troll he
+pleases, and the marriage is good? If I thought that I&rsquo;d turn every woman
+off my premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid. I&rsquo;d
+have no woman near him till&mdash;till&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?&rdquo; suggested Brandon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Till he knew what women are made of, sir!&rdquo; the old gentleman
+finished his sentence vehemently. &ldquo;What, d&rsquo;ye think, will Feverel
+say to it, Mr. Adrian?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has been trying the very System you have proposed sir&mdash;one that
+does not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile
+intelligence. I&rsquo;m afraid it&rsquo;s the very worst way of solving the
+problem.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course it is,&rdquo; said Clarence. &ldquo;None but a
+fool!&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At your age,&rdquo; Adrian relieved his embarrassment, &ldquo;it is
+natural, my dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or
+imprisoned manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to see what
+amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme, and we the other. I
+don&rsquo;t say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our
+painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into
+asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty
+little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness,
+does a foolish little man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself from
+naughtiness?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at Mr.
+Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian, in a
+low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with him. Adrian
+preferred not to go in alone. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, and sipped his
+coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of law in Brandon Forey, and
+receiving nought but hollow echoes from that profound cavity. He would not
+affirm that the marriage was invalid: he would not affirm that it could not be
+annulled. He thought not: still he thought it would be worth trying. A
+consummated and a non-consummated union were two different things....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said Adrian, &ldquo;does the Law recognize that? Why,
+that&rsquo;s almost human!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Forey very particularly
+wished to speak with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can be the matter?&rdquo; he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith
+in woman strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society. All the younger
+ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood displayed, gaps being left
+for those sitting to feast their vision, and intrude the comments and
+speculations continually arising from fresh shocks of wonder at the
+unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty air of men who know
+they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the gallant males also ranged
+themselves round the common object of curiosity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here! Adrian!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria cried. &ldquo;Where is Adrian? Pray,
+come here. Tell me! Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do
+here? You know all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring it into
+the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer. Now do not make me
+impatient, Adrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated rapidity and
+volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was really bound to bring it,&rdquo; Adrian protested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Answer me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth bowed: &ldquo;Categorically. This cake came from the house of a
+person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you partly, partly to me,
+partly to Clare, and to the rest of our family, on the principle of equal
+division for which purpose it is present....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! Speak!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian! where is
+Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling hope sank.
+&ldquo;The wretched boy has ruined himself!&rdquo; she said, and sat down
+trembling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead of oaths,
+Mrs. Doria showered on that System. She hesitated not to say that her brother
+had got what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice had overtaken him.
+Now he would see! but at what a price! at what a sacrifice!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria, commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry&rsquo;s words. &ldquo;He was married
+this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve, by licence,
+at the Kensington parish church.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then that was his appointment!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was the cake for breakfast!&rdquo; breathed a second of her sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And it was his ring!&rdquo; exclaimed a third.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men were silent, and made long faces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other&rsquo;s
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid,&rdquo; said
+Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried,
+&ldquo;Brandon!&rdquo; She was a woman of energy. Her thoughts resolved to
+action spontaneously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Brandon,&rdquo; she drew the barrister a little aside, &ldquo;can they
+not be followed, and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate them? A
+boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the toils of a
+designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not, Brandon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her entreaties:
+&ldquo;From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the office
+perilous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one
+of your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This evening?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to a man slept
+heavily after dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you
+promise me to do so, Brandon?&mdash;Or a magistrate! A magistrate would send a
+policeman after them. My dear Brandon! I beg&mdash;I beg you to assist us in
+this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I believe he
+would forgive anything but this. You have no idea what his notions are of
+blood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it, aunt?&rdquo; asked the wise youth. &ldquo;You want them
+followed and torn asunder by wild policemen?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; Brandon queerly interposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t that be&mdash;just too late?&rdquo; Adrian suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria, sighed out her last spark of hope.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see,&rdquo; said Adrian....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! yes!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations.
+&ldquo;Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be!
+it&rsquo;s quite impossible! Can you stand there and tell me that boy is
+legally married? I never will believe it! The law cannot be so shamefully bad
+as to permit a boy&mdash;a mere child&mdash;to do such absurd things.
+Grandpapa!&rdquo; she beckoned to the old gentleman. &ldquo;Grandpapa! pray do
+make Brandon speak. These lawyers never will. He might stop it, if he would. If
+I were a man, do you think I would stand here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, my dear,&rdquo; the old gentleman toddled to compose her,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m quite of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or
+I. My belief is they none of them know anything till they join issue and go
+into Court. I want to see a few female lawyers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?&rdquo; said Adrian.
+&ldquo;They would have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you can jest, Adrian!&rdquo; his aunt reproached him. &ldquo;But I
+will not be beaten. I know&mdash;I am firmly convinced that no law would ever
+allow a boy to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and nothing
+shall persuade me that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak in
+answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealing with a woman. Can
+my nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly? Is what he has done
+legitimate? Is he bound for life by what he has done while a boy?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;a,&rdquo; Brandon breathed through his teeth.
+&ldquo;A&mdash;hm! the matter&rsquo;s so very delicate, you see, Helen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re to forget that,&rdquo; Adrian remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A&mdash;hm! well!&rdquo; pursued Brandon. &ldquo;Perhaps if you could
+arrest and divide them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain
+facts&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well...hm! a...in that case...a... Or if a lunatic, you could prove him
+to have been of unsound mind.&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! there&rsquo;s no doubt of his madness on my mind, Brandon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! well! in that case... Or if of different religious
+persuasions&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is a Catholic!&rdquo; Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! well! in that case...objections might be taken to the form of the
+marriage... Might be proved fictitious... Or if he&rsquo;s under, say, eighteen
+years&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He can&rsquo;t be much more,&rdquo; cried Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;I
+think,&rdquo; she appeared to reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian,
+&ldquo;What is Richard&rsquo;s age?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the phantom
+straw she caught at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! about that, I should fancy,&rdquo; he muttered; and found it
+necessary at the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment. Mrs.
+Doria surpassed his expectations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes I well, then...&rdquo; Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was
+meant to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare&rsquo;s voice was
+heard from out the buzzing circle of her cousins: &ldquo;Richard is nineteen
+years and six months old to-day, mama.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense, child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is, mama.&rdquo; Clare&rsquo;s voice was very steadfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense, I tell you. How can you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Clare was too strong
+for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Singular child!&rdquo; she mentally apostrophized the girl who
+scornfully rejected straws while drowning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s the religion still!&rdquo; she comforted herself, and
+sat down to cogitate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The men smiled and looked vacuous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms; when it is
+put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar&rsquo;s dust and is taken to fill horrid
+pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a laughing
+Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!&rdquo; Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary Branksburne
+wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people to Haste to the
+bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the world; but the wise
+ones of the world were in a majority there, and very few places of assembly
+will be found where they are not; so the glowing appeal of the British
+ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed. Clare was
+asked to entertain the company. The singular child calmly marched to the
+instrument, and turned over the appropriate illustrations to the
+ballad-monger&rsquo;s repertory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the piano.
+Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters; but Clare
+deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling an agony of pity
+for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity herself&mdash;a not
+uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the
+ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly. Remember that she saw years of
+self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered fruitless in a minute, and by
+the System which had almost reduced her to the condition of constitutional
+hypocrite. She had enough of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for
+self-pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s energetic nature prevented
+her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the harder
+she clutched them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adrian,&rdquo; she said, turning upon him in the passage, &ldquo;you
+mentioned a house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning. I
+desire you to take me to that woman immediately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped he should
+be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after enjoying the comedy
+of real life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear aunt&rdquo;...he was beginning to insinuate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the
+Pilgrim&rsquo;s dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected
+on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation and a
+nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly know;
+but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other, and her
+instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath. She
+wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse. She dared not abuse her
+brother to his face: him she would have to console. Adrian was a
+fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she was aware, bring her into
+painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion of the
+case. So she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had
+flown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a woman of
+energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy. Bessy
+Berry&rsquo;s creditor came to her in female form that night. She then beheld
+it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a disembodied
+spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes, and the peculiar male
+characteristic of being moved, and ultimately silenced, by tears. As female,
+her creditor was terrible indeed. Still, had it not been a late hour, Bessy
+Berry would have died rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to make
+their nest in the Isle of Wight. They had a long start, they were out of the
+reach of pursuers, they were safe, and she told what she had to tell. She told
+more than was wise of her to tell. She made mention of her early service in the
+family, and of her little pension. Alas! her little pension! Her creditor had
+come expecting no payment&mdash;come; as creditors are wont in such moods, just
+to take it out of her&mdash;to employ the familiar term. At once Mrs. Doria
+pounced upon the pension.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That, of course, you know is at an end,&rdquo; she said in the calmest
+manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her. She only
+asked a little consideration for her feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene. Undoubtedly it
+was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it. Mrs. Doria was not
+generous. The Pilgrim may be wrong about the sex not growing; but its fashion
+of conducting warfare we must allow to be barbarous, and according to what is
+deemed the pristine, or wild cat, method. Ruin, nothing short of it,
+accompanied poor Berry to her bed that night, and her character bled till
+morning on her pillow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had been at the
+cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and gentlemen present put it on
+the greedy mice, who were accused of having gorged and gone to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure they&rsquo;re quite welcome,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a farce, this marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way
+of thinking. I would not touch an atom of it. Why, they were married in a
+married woman&rsquo;s ring! Can that be legal, as you call it? Oh, I&rsquo;m
+convinced! Don&rsquo;t tell me. Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is
+true to his principles, he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from
+infamy. I want no legal advice. I go upon common sense, common decency. This
+marriage is false.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that she
+could not give it up. She took Clare to her bed, and caressed and wept over
+her, as she would not have done had she known the singular child, saying,
+&ldquo;Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him, Clare! we must save
+him!&rdquo; Of the two the mother showed the greater want of iron on this
+occasion. Clare lay in her arms rigid and emotionless, with one of her hands
+tight-locked. All she said was: &ldquo;I knew it in the morning, mama.&rdquo;
+She slept clasping Richard&rsquo;s nuptial ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time all specially concerned in the System knew it. The honeymoon was
+shoring placidly above them. Is not happiness like another circulating medium?
+When we have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for what is
+taken away from them. When we have gone out and seized it on the highways,
+certain inscrutable laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal
+bar, sooner or later. Who knows the honeymoon that did not steal
+somebody&rsquo;s sweetness? Richard Turpin went forth, singing &ldquo;Money or
+life&rdquo; to the world: Richard Feverel has done the same, substituting
+&ldquo;Happiness&rdquo; for &ldquo;Money,&rdquo; frequently synonyms. The coin
+he wanted he would have, and was just as much a highway robber as his fellow
+Dick, so that those who have failed to recognize him as a hero before, may now
+regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks exceedingly
+patient and beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature and the
+order of things on earth have no warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a young
+man made happy by the Jews.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the lady who
+loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous, those soft
+watchful woman&rsquo;s eyes. If you are below the measure they have made of
+you, you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot but show you that she
+took you for a giant, and has had to come down a bit. You feel yourself
+strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they drop on you
+complacently level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing enamoured of that
+wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected in her adoring upcast
+orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her! A woman who is not quite a fool will
+forgive your being but a man, if you are surely that: she will haply learn to
+acknowledge that no mortal tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you
+respectably, and that practically (though she sighs to think it) her ideal of
+you was on the pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation jacket and
+breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor, and then
+smiles at herself. But shouldst thou, when the hour says plainly, Be thyself,
+and the woman is willing to take thee as thou art, shouldst thou still aspire
+to be that thing of shanks and wrests, wilt thou not seem contemptible as well
+as ridiculous? And when the fall comes, will it not be flat on thy face,
+instead of to the common height of men? You may fall miles below her measure of
+you, and be safe: nothing is damaged save an overgrown charity-boy; but if you
+fall below the common height of men, you must make up your mind to see her
+rustle her gown, spy at the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance. The
+moral of which is, that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for whose
+amusement the farce is performed, will find us out and punish us for it. And it
+is usually the end of a sentimental dalliance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he should feel,
+he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses, and, however much he lowered his
+reputation as a sage, Lady Blandish would have excused him: she would not have
+loved him less for seeing him closer. But the poor gentleman tasked his soul
+and stretched his muscles to act up to her conception of him. He, a man of
+science in life, who was bound to be surprised by nothing in nature, it was not
+for him to do more than lift his eyebrows and draw in his lips at the news
+delivered by Ripton Thompson, that ill bird at Raynham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his penitential
+headache to bed, was: &ldquo;You see, Emmeline, it is useless to base any
+system on a human being.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work building for
+nearly twenty years. Too philosophical to seem genuine. It revealed where the
+blow struck sharpest. Richard was no longer the Richard of his
+creation&mdash;his pride and his joy&mdash;but simply a human being with the
+rest. The bright star had sunk among the mass.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet, what had the young man done? And in what had the System failed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled with the offended
+father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she said, tenderly taking his hand before she retired,
+&ldquo;I know how deeply you must be grieved. I know what your disappointment
+must be. I do not beg of you to forgive him now. You cannot doubt his love for
+this young person, and according to his light, has he not behaved honourably,
+and as you would have wished, rather than bring her to shame? You will think of
+that. It has been an accident&mdash;a misfortune&mdash;a terrible
+misfortune&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The God of this world is in the machine&mdash;not out of it,&rdquo; Sir
+Austin interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good-night over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the phrase; now
+it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to turn the meaning that
+was in it against himself, much as she pitied him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, Emmeline,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;I believe very little in the
+fortune, or misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and reverses.
+They are useful impersonations to novelists; but my opinion is sufficiently
+high of flesh and blood to believe that we make our own history without
+intervention. Accidents?&mdash;Terrible misfortunes?&mdash;What are
+they?&mdash;Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; she said, looking sad and troubled. &ldquo;When I
+said, &lsquo;misfortune,&rsquo; I meant, of course, that he is to blame;
+but&mdash;shall I leave you his letter to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I have enough to meditate upon,&rdquo; he replied, coldly
+bowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God bless you,&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;And&mdash;may I say it? do
+not shut your heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He assured her that he hoped not to do so and the moment she was gone he set
+about shutting it as tight as he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said, Never
+experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of his own case.
+He had experimented on humanity in the person of the son he loved as his life,
+and at once, when the experiment appeared to have failed, all humanity&rsquo;s
+failings fell on the shoulders of his son. Richard&rsquo;s parting laugh in the
+train&mdash;it was explicable now: it sounded in his ears like the mockery of
+this base nature of ours at every endeavour to exalt and chasten it. The young
+man had plotted this. From step to step Sir Austin traced the plot. The curious
+mask he had worn since his illness; the selection of his incapable uncle
+Hippias for a companion in preference to Adrian; it was an evident,
+well-perfected plot. That hideous laugh would not be silenced: Base, like the
+rest, treacherous, a creature of passions using his abilities solely to gratify
+them&mdash;never surely had humanity such chances as in him! A Manichaean
+tendency, from which the sententious eulogist of nature had been struggling for
+years (and which was partly at the bottom of the System), now began to cloud
+and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his
+library, he saw the devil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates of them we
+love?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There by the springs of Richard&rsquo;s future, his father sat: and the devil
+said to him: &ldquo;Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely do nothing: your
+object now is to keep a brave face to the world, so that all may know you
+superior to this human nature that has deceived you. For it is the shameless
+deception, not the marriage, that has wounded you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay!&rdquo; answered the baronet, &ldquo;the shameless deception, not the
+marriage: wicked and ruinous as it must be; a destroyer of my tenderest hopes!
+my dearest schemes! Not the marriage&mdash;the shameless deception!&rdquo; and
+he crumpled up his son&rsquo;s letter to him, and tossed it into the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he talks our
+own thoughts to us?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further he whispered, &ldquo;And your System:&mdash;if you would be brave to
+the world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you: relinquish an
+impossible project; see it as it is&mdash;dead: too good for men!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay!&rdquo; muttered the baronet: &ldquo;all who would save them perish
+on the Cross!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so he sat nursing the devil.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and went to gaze
+at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth without a destiny slept a dead
+sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and his helpless sunken
+chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him look absurdly piteous.
+The baronet remembered how often he had compared his boy with this one: his own
+bright boy! And where was the difference between them?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mere outward gilding!&rdquo; said his familiar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he responded, &ldquo;I daresay this one never positively
+plotted to deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked, and is
+internally the sounder of the two.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the light of the lamp,
+stood for human nature, honest, however abject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!&rdquo;
+whispered the monitor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the
+whole?&rdquo; ejaculated Sir Austin. &ldquo;And is no angel of avail till that
+is drawn off? And is that our conflict&mdash;to see whether we can escape the
+contagion of its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The world is wise in its way,&rdquo; said the voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Though it look on itself through Port wine?&rdquo; he suggested,
+remembering his lawyer Thompson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wise in not seeking to be too wise,&rdquo; said the voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Human nature is weak.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an
+institution!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It always has been so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And always will be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And leads&mdash;whither? And ends&mdash;where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it were through
+the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin asking again
+if there were no actual difference between the flower of his hopes and yonder
+drunken weed, and receiving for answer that there was a decided dissimilarity
+in the smell of the couple; becoming cognizant of which he retreated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him into his bosom at once,
+as if he had been ripe for him, and received his suggestions and bowed to his
+dictates. Because he suffered, and decreed that he would suffer silently, and
+be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was great-minded in his
+calamity. He had stood against the world. The world had beaten him. What then?
+He must shut his heart and mask his face; that was all. To be far in advance of
+the mass, is as fruitless to mankind, he reflected, as straggling in the rear.
+For how do we know that they move behind us at all, or move in our track? What
+we win for them is lost; and where we are overthrown we lie!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a nature not
+great, chose to colour his retrogression and countenance his shortcoming; and
+it was thus that he set about ruining the work he had done. He might well say,
+as he once did, that there are hours when the clearest soul becomes a cunning
+fox. For a grief that was private and peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the
+blame upon humanity; just as he had accused it in the period of what he termed
+his own ordeal. How had he borne that? By masking his face. And he prepared the
+ordeal for his son by doing the same. This was by no means his idea of a
+man&rsquo;s duty in tribulation, about which he could be strenuously eloquent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was his instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures alone
+are not at the mercy of their instincts. Moreover it would cost him pain to
+mask his face; pain worse than that he endured when there still remained an
+object for him to open his heart to in proportion; and he always reposed upon
+the Spartan comfort of bearing pain and being passive. &ldquo;Do
+nothing,&rdquo; said the devil he nursed; which meant in his case, &ldquo;Take
+me into you and don&rsquo;t cast me out.&rdquo; Excellent and sane is the
+outburst of wrath to men, when it stops short of slaughter. For who that locks
+it up to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed? Sir Austin had as weak a
+digestion for wrath, as poor Hippias for a green duckling. Instead of eating
+it, it ate him. The wild beast in him was not the less deadly because it did
+not roar, and the devil in him not the less active because he resolved to do
+nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat at the springs of Richard&rsquo;s future, in the forlorn dead-hush of
+his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished fire, and that
+humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears the midnight Fates busily
+stirring their embryos. The lamp glowed mildly on the bust of Chatham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady Blandish glided in. With
+hasty step she came straight to him, and took both his hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling, &ldquo;I
+feared I should find you here. I could not sleep. How is it with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! Emmeline, well!&rdquo; he replied, torturing his brows to fix the
+mask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He had an extraordinary
+longing for Adrian&rsquo;s society. He knew that the wise youth would divine
+how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to just enough weakness to demand a
+certain kind of management. Besides, Adrian, he had not a doubt, would accept
+him entirely as he seemed, and not pester him in any way by trying to unlock
+his heart; whereas a woman, he feared, would be waxing too womanly, and
+swelling from tears and supplications to a scene, of all things abhorred by him
+the most. So he rapped the floor with his foot, and gave the lady no very
+welcome face when he said it was well with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly detaining
+the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my friend! may I believe you? May I speak to you?&rdquo; She leaned
+close to him. &ldquo;You know my heart. I have no better ambition than to be
+your friend. Surely I divide your grief, and may I not claim your confidence?
+Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows? I would not have come
+to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared relieves the burden, and it is now
+that you may feel a woman&rsquo;s aid, and something of what a woman could be
+to you....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be assured,&rdquo; he gravely said, &ldquo;I thank you, Emmeline, for
+your intentions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me. Think of him...think
+of your dear boy... Our Richard, as we have called him.&mdash;Oh! do not think
+it a foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a thought this night that has
+kept me in torment till I rose to speak to you... Tell me first you have
+forgiven him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your heart has forgiven him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My heart has taken what he gave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And quite forgiven him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will hear no complaints of mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a wistful manner, saying
+with a sigh, &ldquo;Yes! I know how noble you are, and different from
+others!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to be in bed, Emmeline.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot sleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go, and talk to me another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a
+clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have had a
+thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless him...it will end
+miserably. My friend, have you done so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of his
+mask.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you done so, Austin?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
+their sons, Emmeline!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before the
+day comes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:&mdash;&ldquo;And I must do
+this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him from the
+seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has repeated his
+cousin&rsquo;s sin. You see the end of that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor
+Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And he&mdash;be
+just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person has great
+beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she&mdash;indeed I think, had
+she been in another position, you would not have looked upon her
+unfavourably.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She may be too good for my son!&rdquo; The baronet spoke with sublime
+bitterness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pass her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We
+thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her, he
+thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her for ever,
+and in the madness of an hour he did this....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as young
+men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that fathers must fold their arms, and
+either submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not mean that,&rdquo; exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did
+mean, and how to express it. &ldquo;I mean that he loved her. Is it not a
+madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is&mdash;save him from the
+consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride, his
+sensitiveness, his great wild nature&mdash;wild when he is set wrong: think how
+intense it is, set upon love; think, my friend, do not forget his love for
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking more
+than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is not in the
+disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the natural offspring of
+acts. My child, you are talking sentiment, which is the distraction of our
+modern age in everything&mdash;a phantasmal vapour distorting the image of the
+life we live. You ask me to give him a golden age in spite of himself. All that
+could be done, by keeping him in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He is
+become a man, and as a man he must reap his own sowing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as if wisdom
+were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did love his son. Feeling
+sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily, she reverenced him still,
+baffled as she was, and sensible that she had been quibbled with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All I ask of you is to open your heart to him,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He kept silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call him a man,&mdash;he is, and must ever be the child of your
+education, my friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins
+himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is something!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her eyes, and
+respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show what he felt. Nor
+did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his elevation in her soft soul,
+by simulating supreme philosophy over offended love. Nor did he know that he
+had an angel with him then: a blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck
+upon his chance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I pardoned for coming to you?&rdquo; she said, after a pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely I can read my Emmeline&rsquo;s intentions,&rdquo; he gently
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been
+thinking. Oh, if I could!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You speak very well, Emmeline.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At least, I am pardoned!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Surely so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?&mdash;may I
+beg it?&mdash;will you bless him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was again silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him, he
+pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s day already!&rdquo; he said with assumed vivacity, throwing
+open the shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and glanced up
+silently at Richard&rsquo;s moon standing in wane toward the West. She hoped it
+was because of her having been premature in pleading so earnestly, that she had
+failed to move him, and she accused herself more than the baronet. But in
+acting as she had done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was
+compelled to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the
+hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently
+serene his wisdom. From that moment she grew critical of him, and began to
+study her idol&mdash;a process dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to
+have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to
+smooth a foregone roughness, murmured: &ldquo;God&rsquo;s rarest blessing is,
+after all, a good woman! My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does
+not shame the day.&rdquo; He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could bear many, many!&rdquo; she replied, meeting his eyes,
+&ldquo;and you would see me look better and better, if... if only...&rdquo; but
+she had no encouragement to end the sentence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome placid
+features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their Platonism was
+advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the arm and talked of the
+morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan behind
+them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady Blandish smiled, but the
+baronet&rsquo;s discomposure was not to be concealed. By a strange fatality
+every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have a human beholder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m sure I beg pardon,&rdquo; Benson mumbled, arresting his
+head in a melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks,&rdquo; said
+Lady Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet then called in Benson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get me my breakfast as soon as you can,&rdquo; he said, regardless of
+the aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. &ldquo;I am
+going to town early. And, Benson,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;you will also go to
+town this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with you
+to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made for you.
+You can go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
+baronet&rsquo;s gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort which
+shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably. An impatient signal sent him out
+dumb,&mdash;and Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great Shaddock
+dogma.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap34"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green waves before a full-blowing
+South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and flashed their sails,
+light as sea-nymphs. A crown of deep Summer blue topped the flying mountains of
+cloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses, our young
+bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of them. Had the
+Scientific Humanist observed them, he could not have contested the fact, that
+as a couple who had set up to be father and mother of Britons, they were doing
+their duty. Files of egg-cups with disintegrated shells bore witness to it, and
+they were still at work, hardly talking from rapidity of exercise. Both were
+dressed for an expedition. She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat. His
+sleeves were turned over at the wrists, and her gown showed its lining on her
+lap. At times a chance word might spring a laugh, but eating was the business
+of the hour, as I would have you to know it always will be where Cupid is in
+earnest. Tribute flowed in to them from the subject land. Neglected lies
+Love&rsquo;s penny-whistle on which they played so prettily and charmed the
+spheres to hear them. What do they care for the spheres, who have one another?
+Come, eggs! come, bread and butter! come, tea with sugar in it and milk! and
+welcome, the jolly hours. That is a fair interpretation of the music in them
+just now. Yonder instrument was good only for the overture. After all, what
+finer aspiration can lovers have, than to be free man and woman in the heart of
+plenty? And is it not a glorious level to have attained? Ah, wretched
+Scientific Humanist! not to be by and mark the admirable sight of these young
+creatures feeding. It would have been a spell to exorcise the Manichee,
+methinks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a flourish of his
+table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who met him on the confident budding of
+her mouth. The poetry of mortals is their daily prose. Is it not a glorious
+level to have attained? A short, quick-blooded kiss, radiant, fresh, and honest
+as Aurora, and then Richard says without lack of cheer, &ldquo;No letter
+to-day, my Lucy!&rdquo; whereat her sweet eyes dwell on him a little seriously,
+but he cries, &ldquo;Never mind! he&rsquo;ll be coming down himself some
+morning. He has only to know her, and all&rsquo;s well! eh?&rdquo; and so
+saying he puts a hand beneath her chin, and seems to frame her fair face in
+fancy, she smiling up to be looked at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But one thing I do want to ask my darling,&rdquo; says Lucy, and dropped
+into his bosom with hands of petition. &ldquo;Take me on board his yacht with
+him to-day&mdash;not leave me with those people! Will he? I&rsquo;m a good
+sailor, he knows!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The best afloat!&rdquo; laughs Richard, hugging her, &ldquo;but, you
+know, you darling bit of a sailor, they don&rsquo;t allow more than a certain
+number on board for the race, and if they hear you&rsquo;ve been with me,
+there&rsquo;ll be cries of foul play! Besides, there&rsquo;s Lady Judith to
+talk to you about Austin, and Lord Mountfalcon&rsquo;s compliments for you to
+listen to, and Mr. Morton to take care of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy&rsquo;s eyes fixed sideways an instant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope I don&rsquo;t frown and blush as I did?&rdquo; she said, screwing
+her pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers, and
+murmured something delicious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And we shall be separated for&mdash;how many hours? one, two, three
+hours!&rdquo; she pouted to his flatteries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then I shall come on board to receive my bride&rsquo;s
+congratulations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then my husband will talk all the time to Lady Judith.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at Lord
+Mountfalcon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Am I so foolish, Richard?&rdquo; she forgot her trifling to ask in an
+earnest way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on her lips,
+for answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy sinners had wandered
+forth one day to look on men and marvel at them, and had chanced to meet Mr.
+Morton of Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth&rsquo;s friend, and Ralph&rsquo;s uncle.
+Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the baronet, but had given him up for
+many years as impracticable and hopeless, for which reason he was the more
+inclined to regard Richard&rsquo;s misdemeanour charitably, and to lay the
+faults of the son on the father; and thinking society to be the one thing
+requisite to the young man, he had introduced him to the people he knew in the
+island; among others to the Lady Judith Felle, a fair young dame, who
+introduced him to Lord Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman; who introduced him to
+the yachtsmen beginning to congregate; so that in a few weeks he found himself
+in the centre of a brilliant company, and for the first time in his life tasted
+what it was to have free intercourse with his fellow-creatures of both sexes.
+The son of a System was, therefore, launched; not only through the surf, but in
+deep waters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now the baronet had so far compromised between the recurrence of his softer
+feelings and the suggestions of his new familiar, that he had determined to act
+toward Richard with justness. The world called it magnanimity, and even Lady
+Blandish had some thoughts of the same kind when she heard that he had decreed
+to Richard a handsome allowance, and had scouted Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s proposal
+for him to contest the legality of the marriage; but Sir Austin knew well he
+was simply just in not withholding money from a youth so situated. And here
+again the world deceived him by embellishing his conduct. For what is it to be
+just to whom we love! He knew it was not magnanimous, but the cry of the world
+somehow fortified him in the conceit that in dealing perfect justice to his son
+he was doing all that was possible, because so much more than common fathers
+would have done. He had shut his heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Consequently Richard did not want money. What he wanted more, and did not get,
+was a word from his father, and though he said nothing to sadden his young
+bride, she felt how much it preyed upon him to be at variance with the man
+whom, now that he had offended him and gone against him, he would have fallen
+on his knees to; the man who was as no other man to him. She heard him of
+nights when she lay by his side, and the darkness, and the broken mutterings,
+of those nights clothed the figure of the strange stern man in her mind. Not
+that it affected the appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of
+Cupid enthroned and in condition; under the influence of sea-air, too. The
+files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still the worm did gnaw them. Judge,
+then, of their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they were issuing
+from the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they caught sight of
+Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some
+distance behind him, discerned Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right!&rdquo; shouted Richard, and ran off to meet him,
+and never left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing questions at him all
+the way, to where Lucy stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t he an
+angel?&rdquo; his eyes seemed to add; while Lucy&rsquo;s clearly answered,
+&ldquo;That he is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and acted with reserved
+unction the benefactor he saw in their greetings. &ldquo;I think we are not
+strangers,&rdquo; he was good enough to remark, and very quickly let them know
+he had not breakfasted; on hearing which they hurried him into the house, and
+Lucy put herself in motion to have him served.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear old Rady,&rdquo; said Richard, tugging at his hand again,
+&ldquo;how glad I am you&rsquo;ve come! I don&rsquo;t mind telling you
+we&rsquo;ve been horridly wretched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Six, seven, eight, nine eggs,&rdquo; was Adrian&rsquo;s comment on a
+survey of the breakfast-table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why wouldn&rsquo;t he write? Why didn&rsquo;t he answer one of my
+letters? But here you are, so I don&rsquo;t mind now. He wants to see us, does
+he? We&rsquo;ll go up to-night. I&rsquo;ve a match on at eleven; my little
+yacht&mdash;I&rsquo;ve called her the &lsquo;Blandish&rsquo;&mdash;against Fred
+Cuirie&rsquo;s &lsquo;Begum.&rsquo; I shall beat, but whether I do or not,
+we&rsquo;ll go up to-night. What&rsquo;s the news? What are they all
+doing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear boy!&rdquo; Adrian returned, sitting comfortably down,
+&ldquo;let me put myself a little more on an equal footing with you before I
+undertake to reply. Half that number of eggs will be sufficient for an
+unmarried man, and then we&rsquo;ll talk. They&rsquo;re all very well, as well
+as I can recollect after the shaking my total vacuity has had this morning. I
+came over by the first boat, and the sea, the sea has made me love mother
+earth, and desire of her fruits.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it? I want to know exactly what
+words he said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well says the sage, my son! &lsquo;Speech is the small change of
+Silence.&rsquo; He said less than I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s how he took it!&rdquo; cried Richard, and plunged in
+meditation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy preceded the maid
+bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down unbonneted, and like a thorough-bred
+housewife, to pour out the tea for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we&rsquo;ll commence,&rdquo; said Adrian, tapping his egg with
+meditative cheerfulness; but his expression soon changed to one of pain, all
+the more alarming for his benevolent efforts to conceal it. Could it be
+possible the egg was bad? oh, horror! Lucy watched him, and waited in
+trepidation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This egg has boiled three minutes and three-quarters,&rdquo; he
+observed, ceasing to contemplate it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear, dear!&rdquo; said Lucy, &ldquo;I boiled them myself exactly that
+time. Richard likes them so. And you like them hard, Mr. Harley?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the contrary, I like them soft. Two minutes and a half, or
+three-quarters at the outside. An egg should never rashly verge upon
+hardness&mdash;never. Three minutes is the excess of temerity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If Richard had told me! If I had only known!&rdquo; the lovely little
+hostess interjected ruefully, biting her lip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We mustn&rsquo;t expect him to pay attention to such matters,&rdquo;
+said Adrian, trying to smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hang it! there are more eggs in the house,&rdquo; cried Richard, and
+pulled savagely at the bell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy jumped up, saying, &ldquo;Oh, yes! I will go and boil some exactly the
+time you like. Pray let me go, Mr. Harley.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his hand. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;I will be ruled by Richard&rsquo;s tastes, and heaven grant me his
+digestion!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a sofa, and left the burden
+of the entertainment entirely to her. The eggs were a melancholy beginning, but
+her ardour to please Adrian would not be damped, and she deeply admired his
+resignation. If she failed in pleasing this glorious herald of peace, no matter
+by what small misadventure, she apprehended calamity; so there sat this fair
+dove with brows at work above her serious smiling blue eyes, covertly studying
+every aspect of the plump-faced epicure, that she might learn to propitiate
+him. &ldquo;He shall not think me timid and stupid,&rdquo; thought this brave
+girl, and indeed Adrian was astonished to find that she could both chat and be
+useful, as well as look ornamental. When he had finished one egg, behold, two
+fresh ones came in, boiled according to his prescription. She had quietly given
+her orders to the maid, and he had them without fuss. Possibly his look of
+dismay at the offending eggs had not been altogether involuntary, and her
+woman&rsquo;s instinct, inexperienced as she was, may have told her that he had
+come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything in Love&rsquo;s
+cottage. There was mental faculty in those pliable brows to see through, and
+combat, an unwitting wise youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How much she had achieved already she partly divined when Adrian said: &ldquo;I
+think now I&rsquo;m in case to answer your questions, my dear boy&mdash;thanks
+to Mrs. Richard,&rdquo; and he bowed to her his first direct acknowledgment of
+her position. Lucy thrilled with pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; cried Richard, and settled easily on his back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been persuaded to
+offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder thereof in an asylum for
+life. Benson&mdash;superlative Benson&mdash;has turned his shoulders upon
+Raynham. None know whither he has departed. It is believed that the sole
+surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is under a total
+eclipse of Woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Benson gone?&rdquo; Richard exclaimed. &ldquo;What a tremendous time it
+seems since I left Raynham!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So it is, my dear boy. The honeymoon is Mahomet&rsquo;s minute; or say,
+the Persian King&rsquo;s water-pail that you read of in the story: You dip your
+head in it, and when you draw it out, you discover that you have lived a life.
+To resume your uncle Algernon still roams in pursuit of the lost one&mdash;I
+should say, hops. Your uncle Hippias has a new and most perplexing symptom; a
+determination of bride-cake to the nose. Ever since your generous present to
+him, though he declares he never consumed a morsel of it, he has been under the
+distressing illusion that his nose is enormous, and I assure you he exhibits
+quite a maidenly timidity in following it&mdash;through a doorway, for
+instance. He complains of its terrible weight. I have conceived that Benson
+invisible might be sitting on it. His hand, and the doctor&rsquo;s, are in
+hourly consultation with it, but I fear it will not grow smaller. The Pilgrim
+has begotten upon it a new Aphorism: that Size is a matter of opinion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor uncle Hippy!&rdquo; said Richard, &ldquo;I wonder he doesn&rsquo;t
+believe in magic. There&rsquo;s nothing supernatural to rival the wonderful
+sensations he does believe in. Good God! fancy coming to that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;m very sorry,&rdquo; Lucy protested, &ldquo;but I
+can&rsquo;t help laughing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard. Whom does he not forestall?
+&lsquo;Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,&rsquo; and he accuses
+the Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which may have
+been the case, owing to their infamous cookery. He says again, if you remember,
+that our own Age is travelling back to darkness and ignorance through
+dyspepsia. He lays the seat of wisdom in the centre of our system, Mrs.
+Richard: for which reason you will understand how sensible I am of the vast
+obligation I am under to you at the present moment, for your especial care of
+mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard looked on at Lucy&rsquo;s little triumph, attributing Adrian&rsquo;s
+subjugation to her beauty and sweetness. She had latterly received a great many
+compliments on that score, which she did not care to hear, and Adrian&rsquo;s
+homage to a practical quality was far pleasanter to the young wife, who
+shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not help her much in the struggle she
+had now to maintain. Adrian continuing to lecture on the excelling virtues of
+wise cookery, a thought struck her: Where, where had she tossed Mrs.
+Berry&rsquo;s book?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that&rsquo;s all about the home-people?&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All!&rdquo; replied Adrian. &ldquo;Or stay: you know Clare&rsquo;s going
+to be married? Not? Your Aunt Helen&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had the impertinence to
+write&mdash;but never mind! Is it to Ralph?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary
+woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call the
+female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know. The Pilgrim&rsquo;s
+Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives. Well, your Aunt
+Helen&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Doria Battledoria!&rdquo; laughed Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own&mdash;call it a
+System if you like&mdash;of some ten or fifteen years&rsquo; standing, with
+regard to Miss Clare!&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The fair Shuttlecockiana!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&mdash;instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence, and
+turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing the world upside
+down, what does the practical animal do? She wanted to marry her to somebody
+she couldn&rsquo;t marry her to, so she resolved instantly to marry her to
+somebody she could marry her to: and as old gentlemen enter into these
+transactions with the practical animal the most readily, she fixed upon an old
+gentleman; an unmarried old gentleman, a rich old gentleman, and now a captive
+old gentleman. The ceremony takes place in about a week from the present time.
+No doubt you will receive your invitation in a day or two.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old
+man!&rdquo; groaned Richard. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll put a stop to that when I go to
+town.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard got up and strode about the room. Then he bethought him it was time to
+go on board and make preparations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m off,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Adrian, you&rsquo;ll take her. She
+goes in the Empress, Mountfalcon&rsquo;s vessel. He starts us. A little
+schooner-yacht&mdash;such a beauty! I&rsquo;ll have one like her some day.
+Good-bye, darling!&rdquo; he whispered to Lucy, and his hand and eyes lingered
+on her, and hers on him, seeking to make up for the priceless kiss they were
+debarred from. But she quickly looked away from him as he held
+her:&mdash;Adrian stood silent: his brows were up, and his mouth dubiously
+contracted. He spoke at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go on the water?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. It&rsquo;s only to St. Helen&rsquo;s. Short and sharp.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has just received, my
+son?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, bother your system! Put on your hat, and come along. I&rsquo;ll put
+you on board in my boat.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard! I have already paid the penalty of them who are condemned to
+come to an island. I will go with you to the edge of the sea, and I will meet
+you there when you return, and take up the Tale of the Tritons: but, though I
+forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard&rsquo;s company, I refuse to quit the
+land.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!&rdquo; Lucy broke from her husband, &ldquo;and I
+will stay with you, if you please. I don&rsquo;t want to go among those people,
+and we can see it all from the shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! I don&rsquo;t want to go. You don&rsquo;t mind? Of course, I
+will go if you wish, but I would so much rather stay;&rdquo; and she lengthened
+her plea in her attitude and look to melt the discontent she saw gathering.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he could amuse himself very
+well till their return, and so forth; but she had schemes in her pretty head,
+and held to it to be allowed to stay in spite of Lord Mountfalcon&rsquo;s
+disappointment, cited by Richard, and at the great risk of vexing her darling,
+as she saw. Richard pished, and glanced contemptuously at Adrian. He gave way
+ungraciously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There, do as you like. Get your things ready to leave this evening. No,
+I&rsquo;m not angry.&rdquo;&mdash;Who could be? he seemed as he looked up from
+her modest fondling to ask Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a kiss on her
+forehead, which, however, did not immediately disperse the shade of annoyance
+he felt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Such a day as this, and a
+fellow refuses to come on the water! Well, come along to the edge of the
+sea.&rdquo; Adrian&rsquo;s angelic quality had quite worn off to him. He never
+thought of devoting himself to make the most of the material there was: but
+somebody else did, and that fair somebody succeeded wonderfully in a few short
+hours. She induced Adrian to reflect that the baronet had only to see her, and
+the family muddle would be smoothed at once. He came to it by degrees; still
+the gradations were rapid. Her manner he liked; she was certainly a nice
+picture: best of all, she was sensible. He forgot the farmer&rsquo;s niece in
+her, she was so very sensible. She appeared really to understand that it was a
+woman&rsquo;s duty to know how to cook.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could be brought to consent
+to see her. He had not yet consented to see his son, and Adrian, spurred by
+Lady Blandish, had ventured something in coming down. He was not inclined to
+venture more. The small debate in his mind ended by his throwing the burden on
+time. Time would bring the matter about. Christians as well as Pagans are in
+the habit of phrasing this excuse for folding their arms;
+&ldquo;forgetful,&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, &ldquo;that the
+devil&rsquo;s imps enter into no such armistice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion, Lucy had many
+things to think of. There was her darling&rsquo;s match. The yachts were
+started by pistol-shot by Lord Mountfalcon on board the Empress, and her little
+heart beat after Richard&rsquo;s straining sails. Then there was the
+strangeness of walking with a relative of Richard&rsquo;s, one who had lived by
+his side so long. And the thought that perhaps this night she would have to
+appear before the dreaded father of her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mr. Harley!&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is it true&mdash;are we to go
+tonight? And me,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;will he see me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+&ldquo;I made some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted.
+Our second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind. I said
+&lsquo;see you,&rsquo; and he supposed&mdash;now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you
+will understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be advisable&mdash;when
+the father and son have settled their accounts, the daughter-in-law can&rsquo;t
+be a debtor.&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy threw up her blue eyes. A half-cowardly delight at the chance of a respite
+from the awful interview made her quickly apprehensive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that is my notion. But the fact is, he is such an excellent
+husband that I fancy it will require more than a man&rsquo;s power of
+persuasion to get him to go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps, if you would...&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is nothing I would not do for his happiness,&rdquo; murmured Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation. They walked on till
+the yachts had rounded the point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?&rdquo; she asked with some trouble in her
+voice now that her darling was out of sight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you
+to-night,&rdquo; Adrian replied gallantly. &ldquo;Besides, I must speak for
+myself. To achieve the passage to an island is enough for one day. No necessity
+exists for any hurry, except in the brain of that impetuous boy. You must
+correct it, Mrs. Richard. Men are made to be managed, and women are born
+managers. Now, if you were to let him know that you don&rsquo;t want to go
+to-night, and let him guess, after a day or two, that you would very much
+rather... you might affect a peculiar repugnance. By taking it on yourself, you
+see, this wild young man will not require such frightful efforts of persuasion.
+Both his father and he are exceedingly delicate subjects, and his father
+unfortunately is not in a position to be managed directly. It&rsquo;s a strange
+office to propose to you, but it appears to devolve upon you to manage the
+father through the son. Prodigal having made his peace, you, who have done all
+the work from a distance, naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile,
+knowing it due to you. I see no other way. If Richard suspects that his father
+objects for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities will be
+continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to worse, and I see no end
+to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are you capable of this piece
+of heroism? And it did seem hard to her that she should have to tell Richard
+she shrank from any trial. But the proposition chimed in with her fears and her
+wishes: she thought the wise youth very wise: the poor child was not insensible
+to his flattery, and the subtler flattery of making herself in some measure a
+sacrifice to the home she had disturbed. She agreed to simulate as Adrian had
+suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came on shore
+proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven minutes and
+three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated by his bride with her
+fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and anxiously questioned about wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks we
+ought not to go immediately&mdash;that is, before he has had some letters, and
+I feel... I would so much rather...&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! that&rsquo;s it, you coward!&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;Well, then,
+to-morrow. We had a splendid race. Did you see us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes! I saw you and was sure my darling would win.&rdquo; And again
+she threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine. &ldquo;Mr.
+Harley must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I&rsquo;m so
+silly, I don&rsquo;t know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can get
+good wine. I have seen to the dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So that&rsquo;s why you didn&rsquo;t come to meet me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pardon me, darling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn&rsquo;t, and Lady Judith thinks you
+ought to have been there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but my heart was with you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her eyelids softened, and
+she ran away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault with it, and was in
+perfect good-humour at the conclusion of the service. He did not abuse the wine
+they were able to procure for him, which was also much. The coffee, too, had
+the honour of passing without comment. These were sound first steps toward the
+conquest of an epicure, and as yet Cupid did not grumble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith&rsquo;s
+grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the zenith, and
+ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and land: Titanic
+crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion falling. There hung
+Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows, stretching all his hands
+up to unattainable blue summits. North-west the range had a rich white glow, as
+if shining to the moon, and westward, streams of amber, melting into upper
+rose, shot out from the dipping disk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven,&rdquo; said Richard
+under his breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters, and
+answered, in the swing of the caesura, &ldquo;He might as well have said
+cauliflower.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met them in the walk.
+She was tall and dark; dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet and persuasive in her
+accent and manner. &ldquo;A second edition of the Blandish,&rdquo; thinks
+Adrian. She welcomed him as one who had claims on her affability. She kissed
+Lucy protectingly, and remarking on the wonders of the evening, appropriated
+her husband. Adrian and Lucy found themselves walking behind them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sun was under. All the spaces of the sky were alight, and Richard&rsquo;s
+fancy flamed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you&rsquo;re not intoxicated with your immense triumph this
+morning?&rdquo; said Lady Judith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh at me. When it&rsquo;s over I feel ashamed of the
+trouble I&rsquo;ve taken. Look at that glory!&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure you despise
+me for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was I not there to applaud you? I only think such energies should be
+turned into some definitely useful channel. But you must not go into the
+Army.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else can I do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are fit for so much that is better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never can be anything like Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I think you can do more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith. Something I will do. A
+man must deserve to live, as you say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sauces,&rdquo; Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the rear,
+&ldquo;Sauces are the top tree of this science. A woman who has mastered sauces
+sits on the apex of civilization.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Briareus reddened duskily seaward. The West was all a burning rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?&rdquo; Richard
+resumed. &ldquo;I feel ashamed of asking my men to work for me.&mdash;Or I feel
+so now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not when you&rsquo;re racing the Begum, I think. There&rsquo;s no
+necessity for you to turn democrat like Austin. Do you write now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. What is writing like mine? It doesn&rsquo;t deceive me. I know
+it&rsquo;s only the excuse I&rsquo;m making to myself for remaining idle. I
+haven&rsquo;t written a line since&mdash;lately.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because you are so happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, not because of that. Of course I&rsquo;m very happy...&rdquo; He did
+not finish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder skies. No Scientific
+Humanist was by to study the natural development, and guide him. This lady
+would hardly be deemed a very proper guide to the undirected energies of the
+youth, yet they had established relations of that nature. She was five years
+older than he, and a woman, which may explain her serene presumption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder smouldered over the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll work together in town, at all events,&rdquo; said Richard,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t we go about together at night and find out people who
+want help?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by saying, &ldquo;I think
+we mustn&rsquo;t be too romantic. You will become a knight-errant, I suppose.
+You have the characteristics of one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Especially at breakfast,&rdquo; Adrian&rsquo;s unnecessarily emphatic
+gastronomical lessons to the young wife here came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must be our champion,&rdquo; continued Lady Judith: &ldquo;the
+rescuer and succourer of distressed dames and damsels. We want one
+badly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do,&rdquo; said Richard, earnestly: &ldquo;from what I hear: from
+what I know!&rdquo; His thoughts flew off with him as knight-errant hailed
+shrilly at exceeding critical moment by distressed dames and damsels. Images of
+airy towers hung around. His fancy performed miraculous feats. The towers
+crumbled. The stars grew larger, seemed to throb with lustre. His fancy
+crumbled with the towers of the air, his heart gave a leap, he turned to Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darling! what have you been doing?&rdquo; And as if to compensate her
+for his little knight-errant infidelity, he pressed very tenderly to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have been engaged in a charming conversation on domestic
+cookery,&rdquo; interposed Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cookery! such an evening as this?&rdquo; His face was a handsome
+likeness of Hippias at the presentation of bridecake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dearest! you know it&rsquo;s very useful,&rdquo; Lucy mirthfully
+pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I quite agree with you, child,&rdquo; said Lady Judith,
+&ldquo;and I think you have the laugh of us. I certainly will learn to cook
+some day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Woman&rsquo;s mission, in so many words,&rdquo; ejaculated Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And pray, what is man&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us give it up to them,&rdquo; said Lady Judith to Richard.
+&ldquo;You and I never will make so delightful and beautifully balanced a world
+of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give everything up to the
+fair face, his bridal Hesper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and, as she did so, her heart sank to
+see how painfully it affected him that she should hesitate to go with him to
+his father. He was patient, gentle; he sat down by her side to appeal to her
+reason, and used all the arguments he could think of to persuade her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees he has nothing to
+be ashamed of in you&mdash;rather everything to be proud of; if you are only
+near him, you will not have to speak a word, and I&rsquo;m certain&mdash;as
+certain as that I live&mdash;that in a week we shall be settled happily at
+Raynham. I know my father so well, Lucy. Nobody knows him but I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adrian? Not a bit. Adrian only knows a part of people, Lucy; and not the
+best part.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of her conquest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, Richard; oh, dear no!&rdquo; she cried, and looked at him more
+tenderly because she was not quite truthful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He doesn&rsquo;t know my father at all,&rdquo; said Richard. But Lucy
+had another opinion of the wise youth, and secretly maintained it. She could
+not be won to imagine the baronet a man of human mould, generous, forgiving,
+full of passionate love at heart, as Richard tried to picture him, and thought
+him, now that he beheld him again through Adrian&rsquo;s embassy. To her he was
+that awful figure, shrouded by the midnight. &ldquo;Why are you so
+harsh?&rdquo; she had heard Richard cry more than once. She was sure that
+Adrian must be right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I tell you I won&rsquo;t go without you,&rdquo; said Richard, and
+Lucy begged for a little more time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause. Adrian positively refused to go on
+the water unless that element were smooth as a plate. The South-west still
+joked boisterously at any comparison of the sort; the days were magnificent;
+Richard had yachting engagements; and Lucy always petitioned to stay to keep
+Adrian company, conceiving it her duty as hostess. Arguing with Adrian was an
+absurd idea. If Richard hinted at his retaining Lucy, the wise youth would
+remark: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a wholesome interlude to your extremely Cupidinous
+behaviour, my dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to talk about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All manner of things,&rdquo; said Lucy; &ldquo;not only cookery. He is
+so amusing, though he does make fun of The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, and I think
+he ought not. And then, do you know, darling&mdash;you won&rsquo;t think me
+vain?&mdash;I think he is beginning to like me a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t everybody like you, admire you? Doesn&rsquo;t Lord
+Mountfalcon, and Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he is one of your family, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And they all will, if she isn&rsquo;t a coward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, no!&rdquo; she sighs, and is chidden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife&rsquo;s conquest beyond her
+husband, however loyally devised for their mutual happiness, may be costly to
+her. Richard in his hours of excitement was thrown very much with Lady Judith.
+He consulted her regarding what he termed Lucy&rsquo;s cowardice. Lady Judith
+said: &ldquo;I think she&rsquo;s wrong, but you must learn to humour little
+women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then would you advise me to go up alone?&rdquo; he asked, with a cloudy
+forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What else can you do? Be reconciled yourself as quickly as you can. You
+can&rsquo;t drag her like a captive, you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride the peerless flower
+of Creation, to learn that he must humour a little woman in her. It was
+revolting to Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I fear,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is, that my father will make it
+smooth with me, and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall
+have to leave her, and tit for tat&mdash;an abominable existence, like a ball
+on a billiard-table. I won&rsquo;t bear that ignominy. And this I know, I know!
+she might prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it. You,
+you, Lady Judith, you wouldn&rsquo;t be a coward?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where my old lord tells me to go, I go,&rdquo; the lady coldly replied.
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s not much merit in that. Pray, don&rsquo;t cite me. Women
+are born cowards, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I love the women who are not cowards.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The little thing&mdash;your wife has not refused to go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;but tears! Who can stand tears?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy had come to drop them. Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted, and urgent
+where he saw the thing to do so clearly, the young husband had spoken strong
+words: and she, who knew that she would have given her life by inches for him;
+who knew that she was playing a part for his happiness, and hiding for his sake
+the nature that was worthy his esteem; the poor little martyr had been weak a
+moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had Adrian&rsquo;s support. The wise youth was very comfortable. He liked
+the air of the Island, and he liked being petted. &ldquo;A nice little woman! a
+very nice little woman!&rdquo; Tom Bakewell heard him murmur to himself
+according to a habit he had; and his air of rather succulent patronage as he
+walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty, with his head thrown back and a smile
+that seemed always to be in secret communion with his marked abdominal
+prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played for. Wise
+youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try
+and obtain the commodity for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for some
+occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian
+waxed now and then Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say:
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s worse than Lord Mountfalcon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ&mdash;allow
+that?&rdquo; quoth Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is very kind,&rdquo; said Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To all, save to our noble vernacular,&rdquo; added Adrian. &ldquo;He
+seems to scent a rival to his dignity there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are at our ease here in excellent society,&rdquo; he wrote to Lady
+Blandish. &ldquo;I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune, or a
+superlative instinct. Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable mate. She can
+look at a lord, and cook for an epicure. Besides Dr. Kitchener, she reads and
+comments on The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip. The &lsquo;Love&rsquo; chapter, of
+course, takes her fancy. That picture of Woman, &lsquo;Drawn by Reverence and
+coloured by Love,&rsquo; she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up
+pretty eyes. Also the lover&rsquo;s petition: &lsquo;Give me purity to be
+worthy the good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.&rsquo;
+&rsquo;Tis quite taking to hear her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the
+petition! I make her read me her choice passages. She has not a bad voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin&rsquo;s Miss Menteith, married to
+the incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him. Lord
+Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her&mdash;what? She has been trying to find out,
+but they have both got over their perplexity, and act respectively the bad man
+reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which our young couple found
+them, and haply diverted its perils. They had quite taken them in hand. Lady
+Judith undertakes to cure the fair Papist of a pretty, modest trick of frowning
+and blushing when addressed, and his lordship directs the exuberant energies of
+the original man. &rsquo;Tis thus we fulfil our destinies, and are content.
+Sometimes they change pupils; my lord educates the little dame, and my lady the
+hope of Raynham. Joy and blessings unto all! as the German poet sings. Lady
+Judith accepted the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent
+service to her fellow-creatures. Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study. I
+think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a yeoman&rsquo;s
+niece. The language of the two social extremes is similar. I find it to consist
+in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and adjectives. My lord and Farmer
+Blaize speak the same tongue, only my lord&rsquo;s has lost its backbone, and
+is limp, though fluent. Their pursuits are identical; but that one has money,
+or, as the Pilgrim terms it, vantage, and the other has not. Their ideas seem
+to have a special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping where they have
+begun. Young Tom Blaize with vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon. Even in the
+character of their parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound to confess
+that the Hon. Peter Brayder, who is my lord&rsquo;s parasite, is by no means
+noxious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This sounds dreadfully democrat. Pray, don&rsquo;t be alarmed. The
+discovery of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal British Oak has
+made me thrice conservative. I see now that the national love of a lord is less
+subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one&rsquo;s
+image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of our
+system:&mdash;could there be a finer balance of power than in a community where
+men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How
+soothing it is to intellect&mdash;that noble rebel, as the Pilgrim has
+it&mdash;to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite
+compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period anticipated by the
+Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an intellectual aristocracy, is
+indeed horrible to contemplate. For what despotism is so black as one the mind
+cannot challenge? &rsquo;Twill be an iron Age. Wherefore, madam, I cry, and
+shall continue to cry, &lsquo;Vive Lord Mountfalcon! long may he sip his
+Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed carry him on their shoulders!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and
+Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a scrape. Our
+Richard has just been elected member of a Club for the promotion of nausea. Is
+he happy? you ask. As much so as one who has had the misfortune to obtain what
+he wanted can be. Speed is his passion. He races from point to point. In
+emulation of Leander and Don Juan, he swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the
+other day, or some world-shaking feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he
+went to meet: or, as they who pun say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty little
+domestic episode occurred this morning. He finds her abstracted in the fire of
+his caresses: she turns shy and seeks solitude: green jealousy takes hold of
+him: he lies in wait, and discovers her with his new rival&mdash;a veteran
+edition of the culinary Doctor! Blind to the Doctor&rsquo;s great national
+services, deaf to her wild music, he grasps the intruder, dismembers him, and
+performs upon him the treatment he has recommended for dressed cucumber. Tears
+and shrieks accompany the descent of the gastronome. Down she rushes to secure
+the cherished fragments: he follows: they find him, true to his character,
+alighted and straggling over a bed of blooming flowers. Yet ere a fairer flower
+can gather him, a heel black as Pluto stamps him into earth, flowers and
+all:&mdash;happy burial! Pathetic tribute to his merit is watering his grave,
+when by saunters my Lord Mountfalcon. &lsquo;What&rsquo;s the mattah?&rsquo;
+says his lordship, soothing his moustache. They break apart, and &rsquo;tis
+left to me to explain from the window. My lord looks shocked, Richard is angry
+with her for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty dries her eyes, and after
+a pause of general foolishness, the business of life is resumed. I may add that
+the Doctor has just been dug up, and we are busy, in the enemy&rsquo;s absence,
+renewing old Aeson with enchanted threads. By the way, a Papist priest has
+blest them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He was very comfortable; so
+of course he thought Time was doing his duty. Not a word did he say of
+Richard&rsquo;s return, and for some reason or other neither Richard nor Lucy
+spoke of it now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish wrote back: &ldquo;His father thinks he has refused to come to
+him. By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must be so. Make him
+come. Bring him by force. Insist on his coming. Is he mad? He must come at
+once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a day or
+two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady&rsquo;s advice,
+&ldquo;The point is that the half man declines to come without the whole man.
+The terrible question of sex is our obstruction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive assurance that the baronet
+would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but she thought she saw
+in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at least when the opening to come
+and make his peace seemed to be before him, should let days and weeks go by.
+She saw through the mask sufficiently not to have any hope of his consenting to
+receive the couple at present; she was sure that his equanimity was fictitious;
+but she pierced no farther, or she might have started and asked herself, Is
+this the heart of a woman?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady at last wrote to Richard. She said: &ldquo;Come instantly, and come
+alone.&rdquo; Then Richard, against his judgment, gave way. &ldquo;My father is
+not the man I thought him!&rdquo; he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy felt his eyes
+saying to her: &ldquo;And you, too, are not the woman I thought you.&rdquo;
+Nothing could the poor little heart reply but strain to his bosom and
+sleeplessly pray in his arms all the night.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap35"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+<p>
+Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin Clare was married, under
+the blessings of her energetic mother, and with the approbation of her
+kinsfolk, to the husband that had been expeditiously chosen for her. The
+gentleman, though something more than twice the age of his bride, had no idea
+of approaching senility for many long connubial years to come. Backed by his
+tailor and his hairdresser, he presented no such bad figure at the altar, and
+none would have thought that he was an ancient admirer of his bride&rsquo;s
+mama, as certainly none knew he had lately proposed for Mrs. Doria before there
+was any question of her daughter. These things were secrets; and the elastic
+and happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter did not betray them at the altar.
+Perhaps he would rather have married the mother. He was a man of property, well
+born, tolerably well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for the
+first time, the reputation of being a fool&mdash;which a wealthy man may have
+in his youth; but as he lived on, and did not squander his money&mdash;amassed
+it, on the contrary, and did not seek to go into Parliament, and did other
+negative wise things, the world&rsquo;s opinion, as usual, veered completely
+round, and John Todhunter was esteemed a shrewd, sensible man&mdash;only not
+brilliant; that he was brilliant could not be said of him. In fact, the man
+could hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu
+deliveries were required of him in the marriage-service.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She had discovered
+something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any confession
+of Clare&rsquo;s, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes are not
+resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had fallen into the
+pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain she entreated the
+baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she said, illegal alliance his son
+had contracted. Sir Austin would not even stop the little pension to poor
+Berry. &ldquo;At least you will do that, Austin,&rdquo; she begged
+pathetically. &ldquo;You will show your sense of that horrid woman&rsquo;s
+conduct?&rdquo; He refused to offer up any victim to console her. Then Mrs.
+Doria told him her thoughts,&mdash;and when an outraged energetic lady is
+finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded treasures, she does not use
+half words as a medium. His System, and his conduct generally were denounced to
+him, without analysis. She let him understand that the world laughed at him;
+and he heard this from her at a time when his mask was still soft and liable to
+be acted on by his nerves. &ldquo;You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell
+you!&rdquo; she said, and, like all angry and self-interested people, prophecy
+came easy to her. In her heart she accused him of her own fault, in imputing to
+him the wreck of her project. The baronet allowed her to revel in the
+proclamation of a dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep apart from
+him, which his sister assured him she would do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman. Mark the race at any
+hour. &ldquo;What revolution and hubbub does not that little instrument, the
+needle, avert from us!&rdquo; says The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip. Alas, that in
+calamity women cannot stitch! Now that she saw Clare wanted other than iron, it
+struck her she must have a husband, and be made secure as a woman and a wife.
+This seemed the thing to do: and, as she had forced the iron down Clare&rsquo;s
+throat, so she forced the husband, and Clare gulped at the latter as she had at
+the former. On the very day that Mrs. Doria had this new track shaped out
+before her, John Todhunter called at the Foreys&rsquo;. &ldquo;Old John!&rdquo;
+sang out Mrs. Doria, &ldquo;show him up to me. I want to see him
+particularly.&rdquo; He sat with her alone. He was a man multitudes of women
+would have married&mdash;whom will they not?&mdash;and who would have married
+any presentable woman: but women do want asking, and John never had the word.
+The rape of such men is left to the practical animal. So John sat alone with
+his old flame. He had become resigned to her perpetual lamentation and living
+Suttee for his defunct rival. But, ha! what meant those soft glances
+now&mdash;addressed to him? His tailor and his hairdresser gave youth to John,
+but they had not the art to bestow upon him distinction, and an undistinguished
+man what woman looks at? John was an indistinguishable man. For that reason he
+was dry wood to a soft glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now she said: &ldquo;It is time you should marry; and you are the man to be
+the guide and helper of a young woman, John. You are well
+preserved&mdash;younger than most of the young men of our day. You are
+eminently domestic, a good son, and will be a good husband and good father.
+Some one you must marry.&mdash;What do you think of Clare for a wife for
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much like his marrying a baby.
+However, he listened to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went down to John&rsquo;s mother, and consulted with her on the propriety
+of the scheme of wedding her daughter to John in accordance with his
+proposition. Mrs. Todhunter&rsquo;s jealousy of any disturbing force in the
+influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria knew to be one of the causes of
+John&rsquo;s remaining constant to the impression she had afore-time produced
+on him. She spoke so kindly of John, and laid so much stress on the ingrained
+obedience and passive disposition of her daughter, that Mrs. Todhunter was led
+to admit she did think it almost time John should be seeking a mate, and that
+he&mdash;all things considered&mdash;would hardly find a fitter one. And this,
+John Todhunter&mdash;old John no more&mdash;heard to his amazement when, a day
+or two subsequently, he instanced the probable disapproval of his mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The match was arranged. Mrs. Doria did the wooing. It consisted in telling
+Clare that she had come to years when marriage was desirable, and that she had
+fallen into habits of moping which might have the worse effect on her future
+life, as it had on her present health and appearance, and which a husband would
+cure. Richard was told by Mrs. Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented
+to accept Mr. John Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than
+obedience&mdash;with alacrity. At all events, when Richard spoke to Clare, the
+strange passive creature did not admit constraint on her inclinations. Mrs.
+Doria allowed Richard to speak to her. She laughed at his futile endeavours to
+undo her work, and the boyish sentiments he uttered on the subject. &ldquo;Let
+us see, child,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;let us see which turns out the best; a
+marriage of passion, or a marriage of common sense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union. Richard made repeated
+journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph was quartered, and if Ralph could have been
+persuaded to carry off a young lady who did not love him, from the bridegroom
+her mother averred she did love, Mrs. Doria might have been defeated. But Ralph
+in his cavalry quarters was cooler than Ralph in the Bursley meadows.
+&ldquo;Women are oddities, Dick,&rdquo; he remarked, running a finger right and
+left along his upper lip. &ldquo;Best leave them to their own freaks.
+She&rsquo;s a dear girl, though she doesn&rsquo;t talk: I like her for that. If
+she cared for me I&rsquo;d go the race. She never did. It&rsquo;s no use asking
+a girl twice. She knows whether she cares a fig for a fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero quitted him with some contempt. As Ralph Morton was a young man, and
+he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he sought another private
+interview with Clare, and getting her alone, said: &ldquo;Clare, I&rsquo;ve
+come to you for the last time. Will you marry Ralph Morton?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To which Clare replied, &ldquo;I cannot marry two husbands, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you refuse to marry this old man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must do as mama wishes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re going to marry an old man&mdash;a man you don&rsquo;t
+love, and can&rsquo;t love! Oh, good God! do you know what you&rsquo;re
+doing?&rdquo; He flung about in a fury. &ldquo;Do you know what it is?
+Clare!&rdquo; he caught her two hands violently, &ldquo;have you any idea of
+the horror you&rsquo;re going to commit?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed nor stammered:
+answering: &ldquo;I see nothing wrong in doing what mama thinks right,
+Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your mother! I tell you it&rsquo;s an infamy, Clare! It&rsquo;s a
+miserable sin! I tell you, if I had done such a thing I would not live an hour
+after it. And coldly to prepare for it! to be busy about your dresses! They
+told me when I came in that you were with the milliner. To be smiling over the
+horrible outrage! decorating yourself!&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear Richard,&rdquo; said Clare, &ldquo;you will make me very
+unhappy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That one of my blood should be so debased!&rdquo; he cried, brushing
+angrily at his face. &ldquo;Unhappy! I beg you to feel for yourself, Clare. But
+I suppose,&rdquo; and he said it scornfully, &ldquo;girls don&rsquo;t feel this
+sort of shame.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She grew a trifle paler.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you no will of your own?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he detested in
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I believe you have none!&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;And what can I do?
+I can&rsquo;t step forward and stop this accursed marriage. If you would but
+say a word I would save you; but you tie my hands. And they expect me to stand
+by and see it done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you not be there, Richard?&rdquo; said Clare, following the
+question with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that had so thrilled him on
+his marriage morn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my darling Clare!&rdquo; he cried in the kindest way he had ever
+used to her, &ldquo;if you knew how I feel this!&rdquo; and now as he wept she
+wept, and came insensibly into his arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darling Clare!&rdquo; he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So lovely as you are,
+too!... Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to you, and tell you
+all.... Look up. Can you still consent?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must not disobey mama,&rdquo; Clare murmured, without looking up from
+the nest her cheek had made on his bosom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then kiss me for the last time,&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+never kiss you after it, Clare.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly round him,
+and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips, shutting her eyes, her face
+suffused with a burning red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a stone wall. To
+her indeed the young married hero spoke almost indecorously, and that which his
+delicacy withheld him from speaking to Clare. He could provoke nothing more
+responsive from the practical animal than &ldquo;Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and
+Fiddlededee!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really,&rdquo; Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, &ldquo;that boy&rsquo;s
+education acts like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything sensibly. He is
+for ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come to at last
+heaven only knows! I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not very well
+worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical controversy, as it were,
+with her brother. Doubtless she did trust he would be able to bear his sorrows
+to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can barely help hoping to see it
+fulfilled: she had prophecied much grief to the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and had none of
+your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love in marriage, moved as
+one guiltless of offence, and deserving his happiness. Mrs. Doria shielded him
+from the hero. To see him smile at Clare&rsquo;s obedient figure, and try not
+to look paternal, was touching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meantime Clare&rsquo;s marriage served one purpose. It completely occupied
+Richard&rsquo;s mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of not
+finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A letter had awaited
+Adrian at the hotel, which said, &ldquo;Detain him till you hear further from
+me. Take him about with you into every form of society.&rdquo; No more than
+that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone down to Wales on
+pressing business, and would be back in a week or so. For ulterior inventions
+and devices wherewith to keep the young gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs.
+Doria. &ldquo;Leave him to me,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll manage
+him.&rdquo; And she did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who can say,&rdquo; asks The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip, &ldquo;when he is
+not walking a puppet to some woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. &ldquo;I believe,&rdquo; she observed,
+as Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,&mdash;&ldquo;it is my
+firm opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her little
+finger&mdash;only give her time and opportunity.&rdquo; By dwelling on the arts
+of women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to divide the
+young husband from his wife till it pleased his father they should live their
+unhallowed union again. Without compunction, or a sense of incongruity, she
+abused her brother and assisted the fulfilment of his behests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or indifferent.
+Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his feelings, Richard found
+himself standing behind Clare in the church&mdash;the very edifice that had
+witnessed his own marriage, and heard, &ldquo;I, Clare Doria, take thee John
+Pemberton,&rdquo; clearly pronounced. He stood with black brows dissecting the
+arts of the tailor and hairdresser on unconscious John. The back, and much of
+the middle, of Mr. Todhunter&rsquo;s head was bald; the back shone like an
+egg-shell, but across the middle the artist had drawn two long dabs of hair
+from the sides, and plastered them cunningly, so that all save wilful eyes
+would have acknowledged the head to be covered. The man&rsquo;s only pretension
+was to a respectable juvenility. He had a good chest, stout limbs, a face
+inclined to be jolly. Mrs. Doria had no cause to be put out of countenance at
+all by the exterior of her son-in-law: nor was she. Her splendid hair and
+gratified smile made a light in the church. Playing puppets must be an immense
+pleasure to the practical animal. The Forey bridesmaids, five in number, and
+one Miss Doria, their cousin, stood as girls do stand at these sacrifices,
+whether happy, sad, or indifferent; a smile on their lips and tears in
+attendance. Old Mrs. Todhunter, an exceedingly small ancient woman, was also
+there. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t have my boy John married without seeing it
+done,&rdquo; she said, and throughout the ceremony she was muttering audible
+encomiums on her John&rsquo;s manly behaviour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ring was affixed to Clare&rsquo;s finger; there was no ring lost in this
+common-sense marriage. The instant the clergyman bade him employ it, John drew
+the ring out, and dropped it on the finger of the cold passive hand in a
+businesslike way, as one who had studied the matter. Mrs. Doria glanced aside
+at Richard. Richard observed Clare spread out her fingers that the operation
+might be the more easily effected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to his aunt:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ll go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll come to the breakfast, child? The Foreys&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cut her short. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve stood for the family, and I&rsquo;ll do no
+more. I won&rsquo;t pretend to eat and make merry over it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-bye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had attained her object and she wisely gave way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well. Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand. Pray, pray be civil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned to Adrian, and said: &ldquo;He is going. You must go with him, and
+find some means of keeping him, or he&rsquo;ll be running off to that woman.
+Now, no words&mdash;go!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to him humbly, but he kissed
+her on the forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do not cease to love me,&rdquo; she said in a quavering whisper in his
+ear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the hairdresser with his
+pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively was married, he thought he would rather
+have the daughter than the mother, which is a reverse of the order of human
+thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard, my boy!&rdquo; he said heartily, &ldquo;congratulate me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should be happy to, if I could,&rdquo; sedately replied the hero, to
+the consternation of those around. Nodding to the bridesmaids and bowing to the
+old lady, he passed out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
+unpleasantness, just hinted to John: &ldquo;You know, poor fellow, he has got
+into a mess with his marriage.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! ah! yes!&rdquo; kindly said John, &ldquo;poor fellow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of mind. Not to
+be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted him. However, he
+remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong disgust he felt was only
+expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly matter engendered by the
+conversation. They walked side by side into Kensington Gardens. The hero was
+mouthing away to himself, talking by fits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently he faced Adrian, crying: &ldquo;And I might have stopped it! I see it
+now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking him if he
+dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I never thought of it. Good
+heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; groaned Adrian. &ldquo;An unpleasant cargo for the
+conscience, that! I would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple.
+Do you purpose going to him now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero soliloquized: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s not a bad sort of man.&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he&rsquo;s not a Cavalier,&rdquo; said Adrian, &ldquo;and
+that&rsquo;s why you wonder your aunt selected him, no doubt? He&rsquo;s
+decidedly of the Roundhead type, with the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if
+latent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s the double infamy!&rdquo; cried Richard, &ldquo;that a man
+you can&rsquo;t call bad, should do this damned thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s hard we can&rsquo;t find a villain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would have listened to me, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It&rsquo;s not yet too
+late. Who knows? If he really has a noble elevated superior mind&mdash;though
+not a Cavalier in person, he may be one at heart&mdash;he might, to please you,
+and since you put such stress upon it, abstain...perhaps with some loss of
+dignity, but never mind. And the request might be singular, or seem so, but
+everything has happened before in this world, you know, my dear boy. And what
+an infinite consolation it is for the eccentric, that reflection!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero was impervious to the wise youth. He stared at him as if he were but a
+speck in the universe he visioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian&rsquo;s best subject for cynical
+pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies he started, and his worst in the way
+he took it; and the wise youth, against his will, had to feel as conscious of
+the young man&rsquo;s imaginative mental armour, as he was of his muscular
+physical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The same sort of day!&rdquo; mused Richard, looking up. &ldquo;I suppose
+my father&rsquo;s right. We make our own fates, and nature has nothing to do
+with it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian yawned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some difference in the trees, though,&rdquo; Richard continued
+abstractedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Growing bald at the top,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the conduct of that
+wretched slave Clare to Lucy&rsquo;s, who, she had the cruel insolence to say,
+entangled me into marriage?&rdquo; the hero broke out loudly and rapidly.
+&ldquo;You know&mdash;I told you, Adrian&mdash;how I had to threaten and
+insist, and how she pleaded, and implored me to wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! hum!&rdquo; mumbled Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You remember my telling you?&rdquo; Richard was earnest to hear her
+exonerated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pleaded and implored, my dear boy? Oh, no doubt she did. Where&rsquo;s
+the lass that doesn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call my wife by another name, if you please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The generic title can&rsquo;t be cancelled because of your having
+married one of the body, my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did all she could to persuade me to wait!&rdquo; emphasized Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard bellowed: &ldquo;What more could she have done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She could have shaved her head, for instance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This happy shaft did stick. With a furious exclamation Richard shot in front,
+Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his assumption verified),
+whether he did not think she might have shaved her head? and, presuming her to
+have done so, whether, in candour, he did not think he would have
+waited&mdash;at least till she looked less of a rank lunatic?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about
+Richard&rsquo;s head. Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement
+deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear lovely home-face. He
+told Adrian it was his intention to go down that night. Adrian immediately
+became serious. He was at a loss what to invent to detain him, beyond the stale
+fiction that his father was coming to-morrow. He rendered homage to the genius
+of woman in these straits. &ldquo;My aunt,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;would have
+the lie ready; and not only that, but she would take care it did its
+work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them, proving to be
+the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon&rsquo;s parasite. He greeted
+them very cordially; and Richard, remembering some fun they had in the Island,
+asked him to dine with them; postponing his return till the next day. Lucy was
+his. It was even sweet to dally with the delight of seeing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to. Though not so
+tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and he had a power of
+making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the exigencies of his
+profession. He had not a rap of money in the world; yet he rode a horse, lived
+high, expended largely. The world said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his
+Lordship, and that, in common with that of Parasite, he exercised the ancient
+companion profession. This the world said, and still smiled at the Hon. Peter;
+for he was an engaging fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon would not
+go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian, and made a square at
+the table, Ripton Thompson being the fourth. Richard sent down to his office to
+fetch him, and the two friends shook hands for the first time since the great
+deed had been executed. Deep was the Old Dog&rsquo;s delight to hear the
+praises of his Beauty sounded by such aristocratic lips as the Hon. Peter
+Brayder&rsquo;s. All through the dinner he was throwing out hints and small
+queries to get a fuller account of her; and when the claret had circulated, he
+spoke a word or two himself, and heard the Hon. Peter eulogize his taste, and
+wish him a bride as beautiful; at which Ripton blushed, and said, he had no
+hope of that, and the Hon. Peter assured him marriage did not break the mould.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the wine this gentleman took his cigar on the balcony, and found occasion
+to get some conversation with Adrian alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our young friend here&mdash;made it all right with the governor?&rdquo;
+he asked carelessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes!&rdquo; said Adrian. But it struck him that Brayder might be of
+assistance in showing Richard a little of the &lsquo;society in every
+form&rsquo; required by his chief&rsquo;s prescript. &ldquo;That is,&rdquo; he
+continued, &ldquo;we are not yet permitted an interview with the august author
+of our being, and I have rather a difficult post. &rsquo;Tis mine both to keep
+him here, and also to find him the opportunity to measure himself with his
+fellow-man. In other words, his father wants him to see something of life
+before he enters upon housekeeping. Now I am proud to confess that I&rsquo;m
+hardly equal to the task. The demi, or damnedmonde&mdash;if it&rsquo;s that he
+wants him to observe&mdash;is one that I have not got the walk to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; laughed Brayder. &ldquo;You do the keeping, I offer to
+parade the demi. I must say, though, it&rsquo;s a queer notion of the old
+gentleman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the continuation of a philosophic plan,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar with his eyes, and
+ejaculated, &ldquo;Infernally philosophic!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?&rdquo; Adrian inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mount? to tell the truth I don&rsquo;t know where he is. Chasing some
+light craft, I suppose. That&rsquo;s poor Mount&rsquo;s weakness. It&rsquo;s
+his ruin, poor fellow! He&rsquo;s so confoundedly in earnest at the
+game.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true,&rdquo; remarked
+Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a baby about women, and always will be,&rdquo; said Brayder.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s been once or twice wanting to marry them. Now there&rsquo;s a
+woman&mdash;you&rsquo;ve heard of Mrs. Mount? All the world knows her.&mdash;If
+that woman hadn&rsquo;t scandalized.&rdquo;&mdash;The young man joined them,
+and checked the communication. Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully
+indicated the presence of an innocent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A married man, you know,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes!&mdash;we won&rsquo;t shock him,&rdquo; Brayder observed. He
+appeared to study the young man while they talked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his aunt. Mrs. Doria took a
+seat by his side and spoke as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear nephew. Now you know I have always loved you, and thought of
+your welfare as if you had been my own child. More than that, I fear. Well,
+now, you are thinking of returning to&mdash;to that place&mdash;are you not?
+Yes. It is as I thought. Very well now, let me speak to you. You are in a much
+more dangerous position than you imagine. I don&rsquo;t deny your
+father&rsquo;s affection for you. It would be absurd to deny it. But you are of
+an age now to appreciate his character. Whatever you may do he will always give
+you money. That you are sure of; that you know. Very well. But you are one to
+want more than money: you want his love. Richard, I am convinced you will never
+be happy, whatever base pleasures you may be led into, if he should withhold
+his love from you. Now, child, you know you have grievously offended him. I
+wish not to animadvert on your conduct.&mdash;You fancied yourself in love, and
+so on, and you were rash. The less said of it the better now. But you must
+now&mdash;it is your duty now to do something&mdash;to do everything that lies
+in your power to show him you repent. No interruptions! Listen to me. You must
+consider him. Austin is not like other men. Austin requires the most delicate
+management. You must&mdash;whether you feel it or no&mdash;present an
+appearance of contrition. I counsel it for the good of all. He is just like a
+woman, and where his feelings are offended he wants utter subservience. He has
+you in town, and he does not see you:&mdash;now you know that he and I are not
+in communication: we have likewise our differences:&mdash;Well, he has you in
+town, and he holds aloof:&mdash;he is trying you, my dear Richard. No: he is
+not at Raynham: I do not know where he is. He is trying you, child, and you
+must be patient. You must convince him that you do not care utterly for your
+own gratification. If this person&mdash;I wish to speak of her with respect,
+for your sake&mdash;well, if she loves you at all&mdash;if, I say, she loves
+you one atom, she will repeat my solicitations for you to stay and patiently
+wait here till he consents to see you. I tell you candidly, it&rsquo;s your
+only chance of ever getting him to receive her. That you should know. And now,
+Richard, I may add that there is something else you should know. You should
+know that it depends entirely upon your conduct now, whether you are to see
+your father&rsquo;s heart for ever divided from you, and a new family at
+Raynham. You do not understand? I will explain. Brothers and sisters are
+excellent things for young people, but a new brood of them can hardly be
+acceptable to a young man. In fact, they are, and must be, aliens. I only tell
+you what I have heard on good authority. Don&rsquo;t you understand now?
+Foolish boy! if you do not humour him, he will marry her. Oh! I am sure of it.
+I know it. And this you will drive him to. I do not warn you on the score of
+your prospects, but of your feelings. I should regard such a contingency,
+Richard, as a final division between you. Think of the scandal! but alas, that
+is the least of the evils.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s object to produce an impression, and avoid an
+argument. She therefore left him as soon as she had, as she supposed, made her
+mark on the young man. Richard was very silent during the speech, and save for
+an exclamation or so, had listened attentively. He pondered on what his aunt
+said. He loved Lady Blandish, and yet he did not wish to see her Lady Feverel.
+Mrs. Doria laid painful stress on the scandal, and though he did not give his
+mind to this, he thought of it. He thought of his mother. Where was she? But
+most his thoughts recurred to his father, and something akin to jealousy slowly
+awakened his heart to him. He had given him up, and had not latterly felt
+extremely filial; but he could not bear the idea of a division in the love of
+which he had ever been the idol and sole object. And such a man, too! so good!
+so generous! If it was jealousy that roused the young man&rsquo;s heart to his
+father, the better part of love was also revived in it. He thought of old days:
+of his father&rsquo;s forbearance, his own wilfulness. He looked on himself,
+and what he had done, with the eyes of such a man. He determined to do all he
+could to regain his favour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her nephew intended waiting
+in town another week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will do,&rdquo; smiled Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;He will be more patient
+at the end of a week.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! does patience beget patience?&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;I was not
+aware it was a propagating virtue. I surrender him to you. I shan&rsquo;t be
+able to hold him in after one week more. I assure you, my dear aunt, he&rsquo;s
+already&rdquo;...
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you, no explanation,&rdquo; Mrs. Doria begged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Richard saw her next, he was informed that she had received a most
+satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter: quite a glowing account of
+John&rsquo;s behaviour: but on Richard&rsquo;s desiring to know the words Clare
+had written, Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and shot into worldly gossip.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Clare seldom glows,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I mean for her,&rdquo; his aunt remarked. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t look
+like your father, child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like to have seen the letter,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap36"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+
+<p>
+A Lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides and walks.
+She passed him rather obviously and often. She was very handsome; a bold
+beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes not afraid of men. The hair
+was brushed from her temples, leaving one of those fine reckless outlines which
+the action of driving, and the pace, admirably set off. She took his fancy. He
+liked the air of petulant gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture, rare
+to him, of a glorious dashing woman. He thought, too, she looked at him. He was
+not at the time inclined to be vain, or he might have been sure she did. Once
+it struck him she nodded slightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He asked Adrian one day in the park&mdash;who she was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know her,&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;Probably a superior
+priestess of Paphos.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that&rsquo;s my idea of Bellona,&rdquo; Richard exclaimed.
+&ldquo;Not the fury they paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking
+creature like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bellona?&rdquo; returned the wise youth. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think her
+hair was black. Red, wasn&rsquo;t it? I shouldn&rsquo;t compare her to Bellona;
+though, no doubt, she&rsquo;s as ready to spill blood. Look at her! She does
+seem to scent carnage. I see your idea. No; I should liken her to Diana emerged
+from the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play among the gods. Depend
+upon it&mdash;they tell us nothing of the matter&mdash;Olympus shrouds the
+story&mdash;but you may be certain that when she left the pretty shepherd she
+had greater vogue than Venus up aloft.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brayder joined them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See Mrs. Mount go by?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s Mrs. Mount!&rdquo; cried Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s Mrs. Mount?&rdquo; Richard inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Like to know her?&rdquo; drawled the Hon. Peter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard replied indifferently, &ldquo;No,&rdquo; and Mrs. Mount passed out of
+sight and out of the conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man wrote submissive letters to his father. &ldquo;I have remained
+here waiting to see you now five weeks,&rdquo; he wrote. &ldquo;I have written
+to you three letters, and you do not reply to them. Let me tell you again how
+sincerely I desire and pray that you will come, or permit me to come to you and
+throw myself at your feet, and beg my forgiveness, and hers. She as earnestly
+implores it. Indeed, I am very wretched, sir. Believe me, there is nothing I
+would not do to regain your esteem and the love I fear I have unhappily
+forfeited. I will remain another week in the hope of hearing from you, or
+seeing you. I beg of you, sir, not to drive me mad. Whatever you ask of me I
+will consent to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing he would not do!&rdquo; the baronet commented as he read.
+&ldquo;There is nothing he would not do! He will remain another week and give
+me that final chance! And it is I who drive him mad! Already he is beginning to
+cast his retribution on my shoulders.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way. A
+Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it, and the
+author of The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip in trouble found London too hot for him. He
+quitted London to take refuge among the mountains; living there in solitary
+commune with a virgin Note-book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son. Had he
+construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a vague principle
+that the young man should be tried and tested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live with his equals
+for a term. If he loves me he will read my wishes.&rdquo; Thus he explained his
+principle to Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady wrote: &ldquo;You speak of a term. Till when? May I name one to him?
+It is the dreadful uncertainty that reduces him to despair. That, and nothing
+else. Pray be explicit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In return, he distantly indicated Richard&rsquo;s majority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away from his
+wife? Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she worshipped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in deceiving
+and imposing upon others. Not only was Lady Blandish mystified; Mrs. Doria, who
+pierced into the recesses of everybody&rsquo;s mind, and had always been in the
+habit of reading off her brother from infancy, and had never known herself to
+be once wrong about him, she confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend
+Austin&rsquo;s principle. &ldquo;For principle he has,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria;
+&ldquo;he never acts without one. But what it is, I cannot at present perceive.
+If he would write, and command the boy to await his return, all would be clear.
+He allows us to go and fetch him, and then leaves us all in a quandary. It must
+be some woman&rsquo;s influence. That is the only way to account for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Singular!&rdquo; interjected Adrian, &ldquo;what pride women have in
+their sex! Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow
+I hand my charge over to your keeping. I can&rsquo;t hold him in an hour
+longer. I&rsquo;ve had to leash him with lies till my invention&rsquo;s
+exhausted. I petition to have them put down to the chief&rsquo;s account, but
+when the stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I had heard from
+him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready for him on Tuesday
+proximate. &lsquo;So!&rsquo; says my son, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll wait till
+then,&rsquo; and from the gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I doubt
+any human power&rsquo;s getting him to wait longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must, we must detain him,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;If we do
+not, I am convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever repent.
+He will marry that woman, Adrian. Mark my words. Now with any other young
+man!... But Richard&rsquo;s education! that ridiculous System!... Has he no
+distraction? nothing to amuse him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?&mdash;If he had but a
+profession!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
+profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure you I have served a month&rsquo;s
+apprenticeship with him. We sally forth on the tenth hour of the night. A
+female passes. I hear him groan. &lsquo;Is she one of them, Adrian?&rsquo; I am
+compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the portion of every
+creature wearing petticoats to be. Another groan; an evident internal,
+&lsquo;It cannot be&mdash;and yet!&rsquo;...that we hear on the stage. Rollings
+of eyes: impious questionings of the Creator of the universe; savage mutterings
+against brutal males; and then we meet a second young person, and repeat the
+performance&mdash;of which I am rather tired. It would be all very well, but he
+turns upon me, and lectures me because I don&rsquo;t hire a house, and furnish
+it for all the women one meets to live in in purity. Now that&rsquo;s too much
+to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has latterly relieved me, I&rsquo;m
+happy to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has Austin written to you since you were in town?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not an Aphorism!&rdquo; returned Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must see Richard to-morrow morning,&rdquo; Mrs. Doria ended the
+colloquy by saying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made no allusion
+to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days afterward he appeared to have
+an absorbing business on his hands: but what it was Adrian did not then learn,
+and his admiration of Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s genius for management rose to a very
+high pitch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of the Hon.
+Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable
+manner, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come to propose to you to join us in a little
+dinner-party at Richmond. Nobody&rsquo;s in town, you know. London&rsquo;s as
+dead as a stock-fish. Nothing but the scrapings to offer you. But the
+weather&rsquo;s fine: I flatter myself you&rsquo;ll find the company agreeable,
+What says my friend Feverel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard begged to be excused.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no: positively you must come,&rdquo; said the Hon. Peter.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had some trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness
+of your incarceration. Richmond&rsquo;s within the rules of your prison. You
+can be back by night. Moonlight on the water&mdash;lovely woman. We&rsquo;ve
+engaged a city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars&mdash;I&rsquo;m not sure it
+isn&rsquo;t sixteen. Come&mdash;the word!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment with Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re in for another rick, you two,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+&ldquo;Arrange that we go. You haven&rsquo;t seen the cockney&rsquo;s Paradise.
+Abjure Blazes, and taste of peace, my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw aside the
+care that was on him, saying, &ldquo;Very well. Just as you like. We&rsquo;ll
+take old Rip with us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian consulted Brayder&rsquo;s eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly declared
+he should be delighted to have Feverel&rsquo;s friend, and offered to take them
+all down in his drag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t get a match on to swim there with the tide&mdash;eh,
+Feverel, my boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which Brayder
+communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape, bathed in
+Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red horizon haze. The day was
+like none that Richard vividly remembered. It touched no link in the chain of
+his recollection. It was quiet, and belonged to the spirit of the season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet. Brayder
+introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather an undervoice,
+as a thing to get over. They made their bow to the first knot of ladies they
+encountered. Propriety was observed strictly, even to severity. The general
+talk was of the weather. Here and there a lady would seize a button-hole or any
+little bit of the habiliments, of the man she was addressing; and if it came to
+her to chide him, she did it with more than a forefinger. This, however, was
+only here and there, and a privilege of intimacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may be known by
+her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering leaned against a corner
+of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in whom a practised eye
+would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton, with a sinking of the heart,
+apprehended lords. They were fine men, offering inanimate homage. The trim of
+their whiskerage, the cut of their coats, the high-bred indolence in their
+aspect, eclipsed Ripton&rsquo;s sense of self-esteem. But they kindly looked
+over him. Occasionally one committed a momentary outrage on him with an
+eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a voice of scathing scorn, &ldquo;Who&rsquo;s
+this?&rdquo; and Ripton got closer to his hero to justify his humble
+pretensions to existence and an identity in the shadow of him. Richard gazed
+about. Heroes do not always know what to say or do; and the cold bath before
+dinner in strange company is one of the instances. He had recognized his superb
+Bellona in the lady by the garden window. For Brayder the men had nods and
+yokes, the ladies a pretty playfulness. He was very busy, passing between the
+groups, chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and sometimes
+returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down and crossed his legs, looking
+amused and benignant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whose dinner is it?&rdquo; Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a
+cavalier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mount&rsquo;s, I suppose,&rdquo; was the answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is he? Why don&rsquo;t he come?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An affaire, I fancy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She don&rsquo;t seem to cry over it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of her Court,
+who appeared to be Fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites. Brayder
+posted his three friends. Ripton found himself under the lee of a dame with a
+bosom. On the other side of him was the mignonne. Adrian was at the lower end
+of the table. Ladies were in profusion, and he had his share. Brayder drew
+Richard from seat to seat. A happy man had established himself next to Mrs.
+Mount. Him Brayder hailed to take the head of the table. The happy man
+objected, Brayder continued urgent, the lady tenderly insisted, the happy man
+grimaced, dropped into the post of honour, strove to look placable. Richard
+usurped his chair, and was not badly welcomed by his neighbour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company, till the
+flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a hum began to spread.
+Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and displayeth the verity, hath also
+the quality of colouring it. The ladies laughed high; Richard only thought them
+gay and natural. They flung back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton
+thought only of the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks
+continued a regular file-firing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where have you been lately? I haven&rsquo;t seen you in the park,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Mount to Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve not been there.&rdquo; The
+question seemed odd: she spoke so simply that it did not impress him. He
+emptied his glass, and had it filled again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to horses, yachting,
+opera, and sport generally: who was ruined; by what horse, or by what woman. He
+told one or two of Richard&rsquo;s feats. Fair smiles rewarded the hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you bet?&rdquo; said Mrs. Mount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only on myself,&rdquo; returned Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
+sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure you&rsquo;re a safe one to back,&rdquo; she added, and
+seemed to scan his points approvingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s cheeks mounted bloom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you adore champagne?&rdquo; quoth the dame with a bosom to
+Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy,
+&ldquo;I always drink it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you indeed?&rdquo; said the enraptured bosom, ogling him. &ldquo;You
+would be a friend, now! I hope you don&rsquo;t object to a lady joining you now
+and then. Champagne&rsquo;s my folly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre; first low,
+and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till those excluded from
+the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned behind gentlemen to take it up, and
+formed an electric chain of laughter. Each one, as her ear received it, caught
+up her handkerchief, and laughed, and looked shocked afterwards, or looked
+shocked and then spouted laughter. The anecdote might have been communicated to
+the bewildered cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a demurer cast, she looked
+shocked without laughing, and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it
+was consigned to burial: but here and there a man&rsquo;s head was seen bent,
+and a lady&rsquo;s mouth moved, though her face was not turned toward him, and
+a man&rsquo;s broad laugh was presently heard, while the lady gazed
+unconsciously before her, and preserved her gravity if she could escape any
+other lady&rsquo;s eyes; failing in which, handkerchiefs were simultaneously
+seized, and a second chime arose, till the tickling force subsided to a few
+chance bursts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought Richard. He says
+they can&rsquo;t laugh, and don&rsquo;t understand humour. It comes, he
+reflected, of his shutting himself from the world. And the idea that he was
+seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him. He talked fluently to his
+dangerous Bellona. He gave her some reminiscences of Adrian&rsquo;s whimsies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s your tutor, is it!&rdquo; She
+eyed the young man as if she thought he must go far and fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton felt a push. &ldquo;Look at that,&rdquo; said the bosom, fuming utter
+disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the mignonne.
+&ldquo;Now that&rsquo;s what I don&rsquo;t like in company,&rdquo; the bosom
+inflated to observe with sufficient emphasis. &ldquo;She always will allow it
+with everybody. Give her a nudge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, &ldquo;Then I
+will&rdquo;; and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing wine in
+his face, and gave the nudge. The mignonne turned an inquiring eye on Ripton; a
+mischievous spark shot from it. She laughed, and said; &ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you
+satisfied with the old girl?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Impudence!&rdquo; muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet&mdash;she drinks port when
+there&rsquo;s no more champagne,&rdquo; said the mignonne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the mignonne, and
+between them he was enabled to form a correcter estimate of the company, and
+quite recovered from his original awe: so much so as to feel a touch of
+jealousy at seeing his lively little neighbour still held in absolute
+possession.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner in the
+bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures accord not save to
+clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk with three or four at the head
+of the table while she still had passages aside with Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The port and claret went very well after the champagne. The ladies here did not
+ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen; they maintained their
+position with honour. Silver was seen far out on Thames. The wine ebbed, and
+the laughter. Sentiment and cigars took up the wondrous tale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, what a lovely night!&rdquo; said the ladies, looking above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Charming,&rdquo; said the gentlemen, looking below.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast. Fragrant weeds
+burned bright about the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are split into couples,&rdquo; said Adrian to Richard, who was
+standing alone, eying the landscape. &ldquo;Tis the influence of the moon!
+Apparently we are in Cyprus. How has my son enjoyed himself? How likes he the
+society of Aspasia? I feel like a wise Greek to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked. Ripton had been carried
+off by the sentimental bosom. He came up to them and whispered: &ldquo;By Jove,
+Ricky! do you know what sort of women these are?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Puritan!&rdquo; exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back.
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you get tipsy, sir? Don&rsquo;t you ever intoxicate
+yourself except at lawful marriages? Reveal to us what you have done with the
+portly dame?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and watch over
+him. He was jealous of his innocent Beauty&rsquo;s husband being in proximity
+with such women. Murmuring couples passed them to and fro.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove, Ricky!&rdquo; Ripton favoured his friend with another hard
+whisper, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s a woman smoking!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why not, O Riptonus?&rdquo; said Adrian. &ldquo;Art unaware that
+woman cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small price
+for the splendid gem?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t like women to smoke,&rdquo; said plain Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why mayn&rsquo;t they do what men do?&rdquo; the hero cried impetuously.
+&ldquo;I hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It&rsquo;s that makes the
+ruin and horrors I see. Why mayn&rsquo;t they do what men do? I like the women
+who are brave enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women are bad, I
+like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show, and
+deceive you in the end.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bravo!&rdquo; shouted Adrian. &ldquo;There speaks the
+regenerator.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no argument. He still
+thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far away, lonely by the
+sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Scrip remarks that: &ldquo;Young men take joy in nothing so
+much as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of experience more
+than knowing that all are not quite so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random extravagance,
+had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of feminine goodness
+Richard&rsquo;s young bride had inspired in the breast of the youth. It might
+possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in our nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He wandered about the
+grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and threw himself down among
+some bushes on the slope of the hill. Lying there, and meditating, he became
+aware of voices conversing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does he want?&rdquo; said a woman&rsquo;s voice. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+another of his villanies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what
+I have to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tragic!&rdquo; said the Hon. Peter. &ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t you revenged
+yourself, Bella, pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a commercial
+transaction. You ask for money, and you are to have it&mdash;on the conditions:
+double the sum, and debts paid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He applies to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you. I think
+Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows. He&rsquo;s not easily
+hoodwinked, you know. He resigns himself to his fate and follows other
+game.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk. I didn&rsquo;t say
+seduce. Hold him in&mdash;play with him. Amuse him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t understand half-measures.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Women seldom do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How I hate you, Brayder!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thank your ladyship.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two walked farther. Ripton had heard some little of the colloquy. He left
+the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of something dark to the people he
+loved, though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter&rsquo;s stipulation
+involved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs. Mount.
+Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of parasites got on extremely
+well together. Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the moonlight curled
+around them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies were in a state of high
+sentiment. They sang without request. All deemed the British ballad-monger an
+appropriate interpreter of their emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof,
+fair throats will make men of taste swallow that remarkable composer. Eyes,
+lips, hearts; darts and smarts and sighs; beauty, duty; bosom, blossom; false
+one, farewell! To this pathetic strain they melted. Mrs. Mount, though strongly
+requested, declined to sing. She preserved her state. Under the tall aspens of
+Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in their wake. Richard&rsquo;s
+hand lay open by his side. Mrs. Mount&rsquo;s little white hand by misadventure
+fell into it. It was not pressed, or soothed for its fall, or made intimate
+with eloquent fingers. It lay there like a bit of snow on the cold ground. A
+yellow leaf wavering down from the aspens struck Richard&rsquo;s cheek, and he
+drew away the very hand to throw back his hair and smooth his face, and then
+folded his arms, unconscious of offence. He was thinking ambitiously of his
+life: his blood was untroubled, his brain calmly working.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which is the more perilous?&rdquo; is a problem put by the Pilgrim:
+&ldquo;To meet the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to flirt with
+one of her Court. The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental. One or two rattled,
+and one was such a good-humoured fellow that Adrian could not make him
+ridiculous. The others seemed to give themselves up to a silent waxing in
+length of limb. However far they sat removed, everybody was entangled in their
+legs. Pursuing his studies, Adrian came to the conclusion, that the same close
+intellectual and moral affinity which he had discovered to exist between our
+nobility and our yeomanry, is to be observed between the Guardsman class, and
+that of the corps de ballet: they both live by the strength of their legs,
+where also their wits, if they do not altogether reside there, are principally
+developed: both are volage; wine, tobacco, and the moon, influence both alike;
+and admitting the one marked difference that does exist, it is, after all,
+pretty nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two legs as on the
+point of a toe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about the twining
+tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required urgent persuasions and
+heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the end: before he had accomplished it,
+Adrian had contrived to raise a laugh in his neighbourhood, so that the company
+was divided, and the camp split: jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment
+held the other. Ripton, blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing a
+higher degree of heat than was possible for the rest. &ldquo;Are you
+cold?&rdquo; she would ask, smiling charitably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am,&rdquo; said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You always appear to be,&rdquo; the fat one sniffed and snapped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?&rdquo; said the naughty little
+woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those familiar with the ladies
+enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent. The mignonne was heard to whisper:
+&ldquo;That poor fellow will certainly be stewed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the water was
+chill and misty. Adrian had beside him the demure one who had stopped the
+circulation of his anecdote. She in nowise objected to the fair exchange, but
+said &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; betweenwhiles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney reach;
+through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and the shadows of
+great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted on land.
+Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs. Mount to her home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brougham&rsquo;s here; I shall go alone,&rdquo; said Mrs. Mount.
+&ldquo;Some one arrange my shawl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as he
+manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which way are you going?&rdquo; she asked carelessly, and, to his reply
+as to the direction, said: &ldquo;Then I can give you a lift,&rdquo; and she
+took his arm with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow: the portly dame retained
+him, and desired him to get her a cab.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you happy fellow!&rdquo; said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get into it
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try and let him come in too?&rdquo; said the persecuting creature, again
+passing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take liberties with your men&mdash;you shan&rsquo;t with me,&rdquo;
+retorted the angry bosom, and drove off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So she&rsquo;s been and gone and run away and left him after all his
+trouble!&rdquo; cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton&rsquo;s eyes.
+&ldquo;Now you&rsquo;ll never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women
+again. There! he shall be made happy another time.&rdquo; She gave his nose a
+comical tap, and tripped away with her possessor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts laid hold of
+him. Cabs and carriages rattled past. He was sure he had been among members of
+the nobility that day, though when they went by him now they only recognized
+him with an effort of the eyelids. He began to think of the day with
+exultation, as an event. Recollections of the mignonne were captivating.
+&ldquo;Blue eyes&mdash;just what I like! And such a little impudent nose, and
+red lips, pouting&mdash;the very thing I like! And her hair? darkish, I
+think&mdash;say brown. And so saucy, and light on her feet. And kind she is, or
+she wouldn&rsquo;t have talked to me like that.&rdquo; Thus, with a groaning
+soul, he pictured her. His reason voluntarily consigned her to the aristocracy
+as a natural appanage: but he did amorously wish that Fortune had made a lord
+of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the conversation
+he had heard on the hill. He was not one to suspect anybody positively. He was
+timid of fixing a suspicion. It hovered indefinitely, and clouded people,
+without stirring him to any resolve. Still the attentions of the lady toward
+Richard were queer. He endeavoured to imagine they were in the nature of
+things, because Richard was so handsome that any woman must take to him.
+&ldquo;But he&rsquo;s married,&rdquo; said Ripton, &ldquo;and he mustn&rsquo;t
+go near these people if he&rsquo;s married.&rdquo; Not a high morality, perhaps
+better than none at all: better for the world were it practised more. He
+thought of Richard along with that sparkling dame, alone with her. The adorable
+beauty of his dear bride, her pure heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking of
+her, he lost sight of the mignonne who had made him giddy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked to Richard&rsquo;s hotel, and up and down the street there, hoping
+every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might have returned and
+gone to bed. Two o&rsquo;clock struck. Ripton could not go away. He was sure he
+should not sleep if he did. At last the cold sent him homeward, and leaving the
+street, on the moonlight side of Piccadilly he met his friend patrolling with
+his head up and that swing of the feet proper to men who are chanting verses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Rip!&rdquo; cried Richard, cheerily. &ldquo;What on earth are you
+doing here at this hour of the morning?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. &ldquo;I wanted to shake your
+hand before I went home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. &ldquo;That all? You may shake
+my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip! I&rsquo;ve been speaking
+about you. Do you know, that&mdash;Mrs. Mount&mdash;never saw you all the time
+at Richmond, or in the boat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf &ldquo;you saw
+her safe home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I&rsquo;ve been there for the last couple of hours&mdash;talking.
+She talks capitally: she&rsquo;s wonderfully clever. She&rsquo;s very like a
+man, only much nicer. I like her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Richard, excuse me&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure I don&rsquo;t mean to
+offend you&mdash;but now you&rsquo;re married...perhaps you couldn&rsquo;t help
+seeing her home, but I think you really indeed oughtn&rsquo;t to have gone
+upstairs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; said Richard. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t suppose I
+care for any woman but my little darling down there.&rdquo; He laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; of course not. That&rsquo;s absurd. What I mean is, that people
+perhaps will&mdash;you know, they do&mdash;they say all manner of things, and
+that makes unhappiness; and I do wish you were going home to-morrow, Ricky. I
+mean, to your dear wife.&rdquo; Ripton blushed and looked away as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hero gave one of his scornful glances. &ldquo;So you&rsquo;re anxious about
+my reputation. I hate that way of looking on women. Because they have been once
+misled&mdash;look how much weaker they are!&mdash;because the world has given
+them an ill fame, you would treat them as contagious and keep away from them
+for the sake of your character!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would be different with me,&rdquo; quoth Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How?&rdquo; asked the hero.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m worse than you,&rdquo; was all the logical explanation
+Ripton was capable of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do hope you will go home soon,&rdquo; he added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Richard, &ldquo;and I, so do I hope so. But I&rsquo;ve
+work to do now. I dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy would be the last to ask
+me;&mdash;you saw her letter yesterday. Now listen to me, Rip. I want to make
+you be just to women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as if he had
+known them and studied them for years. Clever, beautiful, but betrayed by love,
+it was the first duty of all true men to cherish and redeem them. &ldquo;We
+turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures.&rdquo; And the world
+suffered for it. That&mdash;that was the root of all the evil in the world!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip! It&rsquo;s
+strange. I knew what they were when we came home in the boat. But I do&mdash;it
+tears my heart to see a young girl given over to an old man&mdash;a man she
+doesn&rsquo;t love. That&rsquo;s shame!&mdash;Don&rsquo;t speak of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women are betrayed by
+love, Ripton was quite silenced. He, like most young men, had pondered somewhat
+on this matter, and was inclined to be sentimental when he was not hungry. They
+walked in the moonlight by the railings of the park. Richard harangued at
+leisure, while Ripton&rsquo;s teeth chattered. Chivalry might be dead, but
+still there was something to do, went the strain. The lady of the day had not
+been thrown in the hero&rsquo;s path without an object, he said; and he was
+sadly right there. He did not express the thing clearly; nevertheless Ripton
+understood him to mean, he intended to rescue that lady from further
+transgressions, and show a certain scorn of the world. That lady, and then
+other ladies unknown, were to be rescued. Ripton was to help. He and Ripton
+were to be the knights of this enterprise. When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced,
+and shivered. Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be Titans,
+for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods, would have to be
+defied and overthrown. And Titan number one flung up his handsome bold face as
+if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and Titan number two strained the upper
+button of his coat to meet across his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and
+warmed his fingers under his coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high seat
+and was in the mists of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets, and
+the cold acting on his friend&rsquo;s eloquence made Ripton&rsquo;s flesh very
+contrite. The poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was
+good. By the time he had got a little warmth about him, his heart gratefully
+strove to encourage him in the conception of becoming a knight and a Titan; and
+so striving Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap37"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXVII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alas!&rdquo; writes the Pilgrim at this very time to Lady Blandish,
+&ldquo;I cannot get that legend of the Serpent from me, the more I think. Has
+he not caught you, and ranked you foremost in his legions? For see: till you
+were fashioned, the fruits hung immobile on the boughs. They swayed before us,
+glistening and cold. The hand must be eager that plucked them. They did not
+come down to us, and smile, and speak our language, and read our thoughts, and
+know when to fly, when to follow! how surely to have us!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of the Serpent. What
+shall be done with her? I fear the world is wiser than its judges! Turn from
+her, says the world. By day the sons of the world do. It darkens, and they
+dance together downward. Then comes there one of the world&rsquo;s elect who
+deems old counsel devilish; indifference to the end of evil worse than its
+pursuit. He comes to reclaim her. From deepest bane will he bring her back to
+highest blessing. Is not that a bait already? Poor fish! &rsquo;tis wondrous
+flattering. The Serpent has slimed her so to secure him! With slow weary steps
+he draws her into light: she clings to him; she is human; part of his work, and
+he loves it. As they mount upward, he looks on her more, while she, it may be,
+looks above. What has touched him? What has passed out of her, and into him?
+The Serpent laughs below. At the gateways of the Sun they fall together!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This alliterative production was written without any sense of the peril that
+makes prophecy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It suited Sir Austin to write thus. It was a channel to his acrimony moderated
+through his philosophy. The letter was a reply to a vehement entreaty from Lady
+Blandish for him to come up to Richard and forgive him thoroughly:
+Richard&rsquo;s name was not mentioned in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He tries to be more than he is,&rdquo; thought the lady: and she began
+insensibly to conceive him less than he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification in his son&rsquo;s
+apparent obedience to his wishes and complete submission; a gratification he
+chose to accept as his due, without dissecting or accounting for it. The
+intelligence reiterating that Richard waited, and still waited; Richard&rsquo;s
+letters, and more his dumb abiding and practical penitence; vindicated humanity
+sufficiently to stop the course of virulent aphorisms. He could speak, we have
+seen, in sorrow for this frail nature of ours, that he had once stood forth to
+champion. &ldquo;But how long will this last?&rdquo; he demanded, with the air
+of Hippias. He did not reflect how long it had lasted. Indeed, his indigestion
+of wrath had made of him a moral Dyspepsy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his young wife:
+nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to undertake. Hero as
+he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of hot blood, he was not a fool.
+There had been talk between him and Mrs. Doria of his mother. Now that he had
+broken from his father, his heart spoke for her. She lived, he knew: he knew no
+more. Words painfully hovering along the borders of plain speech had been
+communicated to him, filling him with moody imaginings. If he thought of her,
+the red was on his face, though he could not have said why. But now, after
+canvassing the conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a terrible
+riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent. As softly as she
+could she told the story. To her the shame was past: she could weep for the
+poor lady. Richard dropped no tears. Disgrace of this kind is always present to
+a son, and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a vivid fire in his
+brain. He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from the man. Here was work
+set to his hand. All her dear husband did was right to Lucy. She encouraged him
+to stay for that purpose, thinking it also served another. There was Tom
+Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there was work for him to do. Whether it would
+please his father he did not stop to consider. As to the justice of the act,
+let us say nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe&rsquo;s place of
+residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet now went
+in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful. The friends met in
+the evening at Lady Blandish&rsquo;s town-house, or at the Foreys&rsquo;, where
+Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr, and staunch conservative,
+a favourable reception. Pity, deep pity for Richard&rsquo;s conduct Ripton saw
+breathing out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of
+rough commiseration, as a young fellow who had run off the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pity was in Lady Blandish&rsquo;s eyes, though for a different cause. She
+doubted if she did well in seconding his father&rsquo;s unwise
+scheme&mdash;supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the young husband
+encompassed by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount had been
+breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life. She touched on
+delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he understood her well
+enough. &ldquo;If he loves this person to whom he has bound himself, what fear
+for him? Or are you coming to think it something that bears the name of love
+because we have to veil the rightful appellation?&rdquo; So he responded,
+remote among the mountains. She tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he
+came to say that he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially,
+that he for a time might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread. This was
+almost too much for Lady Blandish. Love&rsquo;s charity boy so loftily serene
+now that she saw him half denuded&mdash;a thing of shanks and wrists&mdash;was
+a trial for her true heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his marriage.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I&rsquo;ll do it
+alone&mdash;what there is to do.&rdquo; He slightly adverted to a natural want
+of courage in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was
+deficient in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure there
+never was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She&rsquo;s as brave as
+she&rsquo;s lovely, I&rsquo;ll swear she is! Look how she behaved that day! How
+her voice sounded! She was trembling... Brave? She&rsquo;d follow you into
+battle, Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Richard rejoined: &ldquo;Talk on, dear old Rip! She&rsquo;s my darling
+love, whatever she is! And she is gloriously lovely. No eyes are like hers.
+I&rsquo;ll go down to-morrow morning the first thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain apart from it.
+So thought Richard for a space.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if I go, Rip,&rdquo; he said despondently, &ldquo;if I go for a day
+even I shall have undone all my work with my father. She says it
+herself&mdash;you saw it in her last letter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; Ripton assented, and the words &ldquo;Please remember me to
+dear Mr. Thompson,&rdquo; fluttered about the Old Dog&rsquo;s heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led her through
+Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once dandled in long clothes,
+and helped make a man of, if ever woman did. He was walking under the trees
+beside a lady, talking to her, not indifferently. The gentleman was her
+bridegroom and her babe. &ldquo;I know his back,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, as if
+she had branded a mark on it in infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs.
+Berry diverged from the path, and got before them on the left flank; she
+stared, retreated, and came round upon the right. There was that in the
+lady&rsquo;s face which Mrs. Berry did not like. Her innermost question was,
+why he was not walking with his own wife? She stopped in front of them. They
+broke, and passed about her. The lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he
+turned to look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She had to bob a second time, and then
+he remembered the worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand so
+that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely agitated. He
+dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening. She heard the lady
+slip out something from a side of her lip, and they both laughed as she toddled
+off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of each eye. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+like the looks of that woman,&rdquo; she said, and repeated it resolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why doesn&rsquo;t he walk arm-in-arm with her?&rdquo; was her neat
+inquiry. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s his wife?&rdquo; succeeded it. After many
+interrogations of the sort, she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing;
+adding subsequently, brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she
+wished to get rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her emotions on the
+breast of her babe. &ldquo;I know a lady when I see one,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Berry. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t lived with &rsquo;em for nothing; and if
+she&rsquo;s a lady bred and born, I wasn&rsquo;t married in the church
+alive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know:
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s imitation lady, I&rsquo;m sure she is!&rdquo; Berry vowed.
+&ldquo;I say she don&rsquo;t look proper.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was one to think
+of a married man in company with such? &ldquo;Oh no! it ain&rsquo;t
+that!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack.
+&ldquo;Belike it&rsquo;s some one of his acquaintance &rsquo;ve married her for
+her looks, and he&rsquo;ve just met her.... Why it&rsquo;d be as bad as my
+Berry!&rdquo; the relinquished spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the
+idea of a second man being so monstrous in wickedness. &ldquo;Just coupled,
+too!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry groaned on the suspicious side of the debate. &ldquo;And
+such a sweet young thing for his wife! But no, I&rsquo;ll never believe it. Not
+if he tell me so himself! And men don&rsquo;t do that,&rdquo; she whimpered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters; soft women
+exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are rapid beyond
+measure. Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she pronounced distinctly and
+without a shadow of dubiosity: &ldquo;My opinion is&mdash;married or not
+married, and wheresomever he pick her up&mdash;she&rsquo;s nothin&rsquo; more
+nor less than a Bella Donna!&rdquo; as which poisonous plant she forthwith
+registered the lady in the botanical note-book of her brain. It would have
+astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately hit off at a
+glance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied by Ripton. Mrs. Berry
+opened the door to them. She could not wait to get him into the parlour.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re my own blessed babe; and I&rsquo;m as good as your mother,
+though I didn&rsquo;t suck ye, bein&rsquo; a maid!&rdquo; she cried, falling
+into his arms, while Richard did his best to support the unexpected burden.
+Then reproaching him tenderly for his guile&mdash;at mention of which Ripton
+chuckled, deeming it his own most honourable portion of the plot&mdash;Mrs.
+Berry led them into the parlour, and revealed to Richard who she was, and how
+she had tossed him, and hugged him, and kissed him all over, when he was only
+that big&mdash;showing him her stumpy fat arm. &ldquo;I kissed ye from head to
+tail, I did,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;and you needn&rsquo;t be ashamed of
+it. It&rsquo;s be hoped you&rsquo;ll never have nothin&rsquo; worse come
+t&rsquo;ye, my dear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned her that she must not
+do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it was out of the question now, and now that he
+had a wife, moreover. The young men laughed, and Ripton laughing over-loudly
+drew on himself Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s attention: &ldquo;But that Mr. Thompson
+there&mdash;however he can look me in the face after his inn&rsquo;cence!
+helping blindfold an old woman! though I ain&rsquo;t sorry for what I
+did&mdash;that I&rsquo;m free for to say, and its&rsquo; over, and blessed be
+all! Amen! So now where is she and how is she, Mr. Richard, my
+dear&mdash;it&rsquo;s only cuttin&rsquo; off the &lsquo;s&rsquo; and you are as
+you was.&mdash;Why didn&rsquo;t ye bring her with ye to see her old
+Berry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of Wight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! and you&rsquo;ve left her for a day or two?&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God! I wish it had been a day or two,&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! and how long have it been?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Berry, her heart
+beginning to beat at his manner of speaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t talk about it,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! you never been dudgeonin&rsquo; already? Oh! you haven&rsquo;t been
+peckin&rsquo; at one another yet?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then how long ha&rsquo; you been divided?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a guilty voice Ripton stammered &ldquo;since September.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;September!&rdquo; breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her fingers,
+&ldquo;September, October, Nov&mdash;two months and more! nigh three! A young
+married husband away from the wife of his bosom nigh three months! Oh my! Oh
+my! what do that mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father sent for me&mdash;I&rsquo;m waiting to see him,&rdquo; said
+Richard. A few more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend the condition of
+affairs. Then Mrs. Berry spread her lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her
+eyes, and spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear young gentleman!&mdash;I&rsquo;d like to call ye my
+darlin&rsquo; babe! I&rsquo;m going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye
+likes it or no; and what old Berry says, you won&rsquo;t mind, for she&rsquo;s
+had ye when there was no conventionals about ye, and she has the feelin&rsquo;s
+of a mother to you, though humble her state. If there&rsquo;s one that know
+matrimony it&rsquo;s me, my dear, though Berry did give me no more but nine
+months of it and I&rsquo;ve known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants
+to be woeful wise, there it is for ye. For what have been my gain? That man
+gave me nothin&rsquo; but his name; and Bessy Andrews was as good as Bessy
+Berry, though both is &lsquo;Bs,&rsquo; and says he, you was &lsquo;A,&rsquo;
+and now you&rsquo;s &lsquo;B,&rsquo; so you&rsquo;re my A B, he says, write
+yourself down that, he says, the bad man, with his jokes!&mdash;Berry went to
+service.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s softness came upon her. &ldquo;So I tell ye,
+Berry went to service. He left the wife of his bosom forlorn and he went to
+service; because he were allays an ambitious man, and wasn&rsquo;t, so to
+speak, happy out of his uniform&mdash;which was his livery&mdash;not even in my
+arms: and he let me know it. He got among them kitchen sluts, which was my
+mournin&rsquo; ready made, and worse than a widow&rsquo;s cap to me, which is
+no shame to wear, and some say becoming. There&rsquo;s no man as ever lived
+known better than my Berry how to show his legs to advantage, and gals look at
+&rsquo;em. I don&rsquo;t wonder now that Berry was prostrated. His temptations
+was strong, and his flesh was weak. Then what I say is, that for a young
+married man&mdash;be he whomsoever he may be&mdash;to be separated from the
+wife of his bosom&mdash;a young sweet thing, and he an innocent young
+gentleman!&mdash;so to sunder, in their state, and be kep&rsquo; from each
+other, I say it&rsquo;s as bad as bad can be! For what is matrimony, my dears?
+We&rsquo;re told it&rsquo;s a holy Ordnance. And why are ye so comfortable in
+matrimony? For that ye are not a sinnin&rsquo;! And they that severs ye they
+tempts ye to stray: and you learn too late the meanin&rsquo; o&rsquo; them
+blessin&rsquo;s of the priest&mdash;as it was ordained. Separate&mdash;what
+comes? Fust it&rsquo;s like the circulation of your blood
+a-stoppin&rsquo;&mdash;all goes wrong. Then there&rsquo;s
+misunderstandings&mdash;ye&rsquo;ve both lost the key. Then, behold ye,
+there&rsquo;s birds o&rsquo; prey hoverin&rsquo; over each on ye, and
+it&rsquo;s which&rsquo;ll be snapped up fust. Then&mdash;Oh, dear! Oh, dear! it
+be like the devil come into the world again.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry struck her hands
+and moaned. &ldquo;A day I&rsquo;ll give ye: I&rsquo;ll go so far as a week:
+but there&rsquo;s the outside. Three months dwellin&rsquo; apart! That&rsquo;s
+not matrimony, it&rsquo;s divorcin&rsquo;! what can it be to her but widowhood?
+widowhood with no cap to show for it! And what can it be to you, my dear?
+Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor man,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry
+shook her head most dolefully, &ldquo;he ain&rsquo;t widow woman. I don&rsquo;t
+go to compare you to Berry, my dear young gentleman. Some men&rsquo;s hearts is
+vagabonds born&mdash;they must go astray&mdash;it&rsquo;s their natur&rsquo;
+to. But all men are men, and I know the foundation of &rsquo;em, by reason of
+my woe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon. The truth
+in the good creature&rsquo;s address was not to be disputed, or despised,
+notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her quaint way of putting
+it. Ripton nodded encouragingly at every sentence, for he saw her drift, and
+wished to second it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry solemnly continued:
+&ldquo;We all know what checked prespiration is.&rdquo; But neither of the
+young gentlemen could resist this. Out they burst in a roar of laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Laugh away,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind ye. I say
+again, we all do know what checked prespiration is. It fly to the lungs, it
+gives ye mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off. Then I say checked
+matrimony is as bad. It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue
+that&rsquo;s in ye, and you might as well be dead! Them that is joined
+it&rsquo;s their salvation not to separate! It don&rsquo;t so much matter
+before it. That Mr. Thompson there&mdash;if he go astray, it ain&rsquo;t from
+the blessed fold. He hurt himself alone&mdash;not double, and belike treble,
+for who can say now what may be? There&rsquo;s time for it. I&rsquo;m for
+holding back young people so that they knows their minds, howsomever they
+rattles about their hearts. I ain&rsquo;t a speeder of matrimony, and
+good&rsquo;s my reason! but where it&rsquo;s been done&mdash;where
+they&rsquo;re lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do say this, that
+to put division between &rsquo;em then, it&rsquo;s to make wanderin&rsquo;
+comets of &rsquo;em&mdash;creatures without a objeck, and no soul can say what
+they&rsquo;s good for but to rush about!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost for the
+time being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear old girl,&rdquo; Richard went up to her and, applauding her on
+the shoulder, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re a very wise old woman. But you mustn&rsquo;t
+speak to me as if I wanted to stop here. I&rsquo;m compelled to. I do it for
+her good chiefly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s your father that&rsquo;s doin&rsquo; it, my dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m waiting his pleasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A pretty pleasure! puttin&rsquo; a snake in the nest of young
+turtle-doves! And why don&rsquo;t she come up to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that you must ask her. The fact is, she&rsquo;s a little timid
+girl&mdash;she wants me to see him first, and when I&rsquo;ve made all right,
+then she&rsquo;ll come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A little timid girl!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;Oh, lor&rsquo;, how
+she must ha&rsquo; deceived ye to make ye think that! Look at that ring,&rdquo;
+she held out her finger, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s a stranger: he&rsquo;s not my
+lawful! You know what ye did to me, my dear. Could I get my own wedding-ring
+back from her? &lsquo;No!&rsquo; says she, firm as a rock, &lsquo;he said, with
+this ring I thee wed&rsquo;&mdash;I think I see her now, with her pretty eyes
+and lovesome locks&mdash;a darlin&rsquo;!&mdash;And that ring she&rsquo;d keep
+to, come life, came death. And she must ha&rsquo; been a rock for me to give in
+to her in that. For what&rsquo;s the consequence? Here am I,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry
+smoothed down the back of her hand mournfully, &ldquo;here am I in a strange
+ring, that&rsquo;s like a strange man holdin&rsquo; of me, and me
+a-wearin&rsquo; of it just to seem decent, and feelin&rsquo; all over no better
+than a b&mdash;a big&mdash;that nasty name I can&rsquo;t abide!&mdash;I tell
+you, my dear, she ain&rsquo;t soft, no!&mdash;except to the man of her heart;
+and the best of women&rsquo;s too soft there&mdash;more&rsquo;s our
+sorrow!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well!&rdquo; said Richard, who thought he knew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree with you, Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; Ripton struck in, &ldquo;Mrs.
+Richard would do anything in the world her husband asked her, I&rsquo;m quite
+sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson! Why, see her! she
+ain&rsquo;t frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in the eyes; she
+ain&rsquo;t one of your hang-down misses. Look how she behaved at the
+ceremony!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; sighed Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if you&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; seen her when she spoke to me about my
+ring! Depend upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she blinded you about the nerve
+she&rsquo;ve got, it was somethin&rsquo; she thought she ought to do for your
+sake, and I wish I&rsquo;d been by to counsel her, poor blessed babe!&mdash;And
+how much longer, now, can ye stay divided from that darlin&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard paced up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A father&rsquo;s will,&rdquo; urged Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s a
+son&rsquo;s law; but he mustn&rsquo;t go again&rsquo; the laws of his nature to
+do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just be quiet at present&mdash;talk of other things, there&rsquo;s a
+good woman,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How strange, now, our meetin&rsquo; like this! meetin&rsquo; at all,
+too!&rdquo; she remarked contemplatively. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s them
+advertisements! They brings people together from the ends of the earth, for
+good or for bad. I often say, there&rsquo;s more lucky accidents, or unlucky
+ones, since advertisements was the rule, than ever there was before. They make
+a number of romances, depend upon it! Do you walk much in the Gardens, my
+dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now and then,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers and titled
+people,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;That was a handsome woman you was
+a-walkin&rsquo; beside, this mornin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her day ain&rsquo;t
+past, and she know it. I thought at first&mdash;by her back&mdash;it might
+ha&rsquo; been your aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do step out well and hold up her
+shoulders: straight as a dart she be! But when I come to see her face&mdash;Oh,
+dear me! says I, this ain&rsquo;t one of the family. They none of &rsquo;em got
+such bold faces&mdash;nor no lady as I know have. But she&rsquo;s a fine
+woman&mdash;that nobody can gainsay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman. It was a liberty she took to speak
+in this disrespectful tone of her, and Mrs. Berry was quite aware that she was
+laying herself open to rebuke. She had her end in view. No rebuke was uttered,
+and during her talk she observed intercourse passing between the eyes of the
+young men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look here, Penelope,&rdquo; Richard stopped her at last. &ldquo;Will it
+make you comfortable if I tell you I&rsquo;ll obey the laws of my nature and go
+down at the end of the week?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, then&mdash;be happy&mdash;I will. Now listen. I want you to
+keep your rooms for me&mdash;those she had. I expect, in a day or two, to bring
+a lady here&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A lady?&rdquo; faltered Mrs. Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. A lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I make so bold as to ask what lady?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may not. Not now. Of course you will know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s short neck made the best imitation it could of an offended
+swan&rsquo;s action. She was very angry. She said she did not like so many
+ladies, which natural objection Richard met by saying that there was only one
+lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; he added, dropping his voice. &ldquo;You will
+treat her as you did my dear girl, for she will require not only shelter but
+kindness. I would rather leave her with you than with any one. She has been
+very unfortunate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated the softness of Berry,
+and it was not until he had gone that she spoke out. &ldquo;Unfort&rsquo;nate!
+He&rsquo;s going to bring me an unfort&rsquo;nate female! Oh! not from my babe
+can I bear that! Never will I have her here! I see it. It&rsquo;s that
+bold-faced woman he&rsquo;s got mixed up in, and she&rsquo;ve been and made the
+young man think he&rsquo;ll go for to reform her. It&rsquo;s one o&rsquo; their
+arts&mdash;that is; and he&rsquo;s too innocent a young man to mean
+anythin&rsquo; else. But I ain&rsquo;t a house of Magdalens no! and sooner than
+have her here I&rsquo;d have the roof fall over me, I would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In love, Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s charity was all on the side of the law, and this is
+the case with many of her sisters. The Pilgrim sneers at them for it, and would
+have us credit that it is their admirable instinct which, at the expense of
+every virtue save one, preserves the artificial barrier simply to impose upon
+us. Men, I presume, are hardly fair judges, and should stand aside and mark.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard&rsquo;s hotel to let him know
+her determination. She did not find him there. Returning homeward through the
+park, she beheld him on horseback riding by the side of the identical lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of this public exposure shocked her more than the secret walk under
+the trees... &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t look near your reform yet,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Berry apostrophized her. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t look to me one that&rsquo;d
+come the Fair Penitent till you&rsquo;ve left off bein&rsquo; fair&mdash;if
+then you do, which some of ye don&rsquo;t. Laugh away and show yet airs! Spite
+o&rsquo; your hat and feather, and your ridin&rsquo; habit, you&rsquo;re a
+Bella Donna.&rdquo; Setting her down again absolutely for such, whatever it
+might signify, Mrs. Berry had a virtuous glow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at the door.
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; she rose from her chair to exclaim. &ldquo;He ain&rsquo;t
+rided her out in the mornin&rsquo;, and been and made a Magdalen of her afore
+dark?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard. Mrs. Berry feebly tried to
+bar his progress in the passage. He pushed past her, and conducted the lady
+into the parlour without speaking. Mrs. Berry did not follow. She heard him
+murmur a few sentences within. Then he came out. All her crest stood up, as she
+whispered vigorously, &ldquo;Mr. Richard! if that woman stay here, I go forth.
+My house ain&rsquo;t a penitentiary for unfort&rsquo;nate females,
+sir&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing her
+indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and spoke words in her
+ear that had awful import to her. She trembled, breathing low: &ldquo;My God,
+forgive, me!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard?&rdquo; And her virtue was humbled. &ldquo;Lady Feverel is it?
+Your mother, Mr. Richard?&rdquo; And her virtue was humbled.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap38"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXVIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad
+circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand, will
+not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when a robust
+young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in her person. The
+colloquy was short between Diaper Sandoe and Richard. The question was referred
+to the poor spiritless lady, who, seeing that her son made no question of it,
+cast herself on his hands. Small loss to her was Diaper; but he was the loss of
+habit, and that is something to a woman who has lived. The blood of her son had
+been running so long alien from her that the sense of her motherhood smote her
+now with strangeness, and Richard&rsquo;s stern gentleness seemed like dreadful
+justice come upon her. Her heart had almost forgotten its maternal functions.
+She called him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her son. Her voice sounded
+to him like that of a broken-throated lamb, so painful and weak it was, with
+the plaintive stop in the utterance. When he kissed her, her skin was cold. Her
+thin hand fell out of his when his grasp related. &ldquo;Can sin hunt one like
+this?&rdquo; he asked, bitterly reproaching himself for the shame she had
+caused him to endure, and a deep compassion filled his breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all he had
+sacrificed for this woman&mdash;the comfortable quarters, the friend, the happy
+flights. He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving him in his
+old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. He wrote as pathetically of
+the break of habit as men feel at the death of love, and when we are old and
+have no fair hope tossing golden locks before us, a wound to this our second
+nature is quite as sad. I know not even if it be not actually sadder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day by day Richard visited his mother. Lady Blandish and Ripton alone were in
+the secret. Adrian let him do as he pleased. He thought proper to tell him that
+the public recognition he accorded to a particular lady was, in the present
+state of the world, scarcely prudent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but the world
+will not think so. No one character is sufficient to cover two&mdash;in a
+Protestant country especially. The divinity that doth hedge a Bishop would have
+no chance, in contact with your Madam Danae. Drop the woman, my son. Or permit
+me to speak what you would have her hear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard listened to him with disgust. &ldquo;Well, you&rsquo;ve had my
+doctorial warning,&rdquo; said Adrian; and plunged back into his book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations Mrs. Berry
+perpetually opened on the subject of Richard&rsquo;s matrimonial duty, another
+chain was cast about him. &ldquo;Do not, oh, do not offend your father!&rdquo;
+was her one repeated supplication. Sir Austin had grown to be a vindictive
+phantom in her mind. She never wept but when she said this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady Blandish as the
+only friend he had among women, bundled off in her black-satin dress to obtain
+an interview with her, and an ally. After coming to an understanding on the
+matter of the visit, and reiterating many of her views concerning young married
+people, Mrs. Berry said: &ldquo;My lady, if I may speak so bold, I&rsquo;d say
+the sin that&rsquo;s bein&rsquo; done is the sin o&rsquo; the lookers-on. And
+when everybody appear frightened by that young gentleman&rsquo;s father,
+I&rsquo;ll say&mdash;hopin&rsquo; your pardon&mdash;they no cause be frighted
+at all. For though it&rsquo;s nigh twenty year since I knew him, and I knew him
+then just sixteen months&mdash;no more&mdash;I&rsquo;ll say his heart&rsquo;s
+as soft as a woman&rsquo;s, which I&rsquo;ve cause for to know. And
+that&rsquo;s it. That&rsquo;s where everybody&rsquo;s deceived by him, and I
+was. It&rsquo;s because he keeps his face, and makes ye think you&rsquo;re
+dealin&rsquo; with a man of iron, and all the while there&rsquo;s a woman
+underneath. And a man that&rsquo;s like a woman he&rsquo;s the puzzle o&rsquo;
+life! We can see through ourselves, my lady, and we can see through men, but
+one o&rsquo; that sort&mdash;he&rsquo;s like somethin&rsquo; out of nature.
+Then I say&mdash;hopin&rsquo; be excused&mdash;what&rsquo;s to do is for to
+treat him like a woman, and not for to let him have his own way&mdash;which he
+don&rsquo;t know himself, and is why nobody else do. Let that sweet young
+couple come together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say; and then give
+him time to come round, just like a woman; and round he&rsquo;ll come, and give
+&rsquo;em his blessin&rsquo;, and we shall know we&rsquo;ve made him
+comfortable. He&rsquo;s angry because matrimony have come between him and his
+son, and he, woman-like, he&rsquo;s wantin&rsquo; to treat what is as if it
+isn&rsquo;t. But matrimony&rsquo;s a holier than him. It began long long before
+him, and it&rsquo;s be hoped will endoor longs the time after, if the
+world&rsquo;s not coming to rack&mdash;wishin&rsquo; him no harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish&rsquo;s thoughts in bad English. The lady
+took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his wife. He wrote,
+bidding her come. Lucy, however, had wits, and inexperienced wits are as a
+little knowledge. In pursuance of her sage plan to make the family feel her
+worth, and to conquer the members of it one by one, she had got up a
+correspondence with Adrian, whom it tickled. Adrian constantly assured her all
+was going well: time would heal the wound if both the offenders had the
+fortitude to be patient: he fancied he saw signs of the baronet&rsquo;s
+relenting: they must do nothing to arrest those favourable symptoms. Indeed the
+wise youth was languidly seeking to produce them. He wrote, and felt, as
+Lucy&rsquo;s benefactor. So Lucy replied to her husband a cheerful rigmarole he
+could make nothing of, save that she was happy in hope, and still had fears.
+Then Mrs. Berry trained her fist to indite a letter to her bride. Her bride
+answered it by saying she trusted to time. &ldquo;You poor marter&rdquo; Mrs.
+Berry wrote back, &ldquo;I know what your sufferin&rsquo;s be. They is the only
+kind a wife should never hide from her husband. He thinks all sorts of things
+if she can abide being away. And you trusting to time, why it&rsquo;s like
+trusting not to catch cold out of your natural clothes.&rdquo; There was no
+shaking Lucy&rsquo;s firmness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying behind him was the
+life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick and got married! He
+associated the two acts of his existence. Where was the hero he was to have
+carved out of Tom Bakewell!&mdash;a wretch he had taught to lie and chicane:
+and for what? Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash from the light of his
+aspirations make his marriage appear! The young man sought amusement. He
+allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and sick of that he made late
+evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the purpose he had in visiting her at
+all. Her man-like conversation, which he took for honesty, was a refreshing
+change on fair lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call me Bella: I&rsquo;ll call you Dick,&rdquo; said she. And it came to
+be Bella and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in Richard&rsquo;s
+letters to Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. &ldquo;I pretend to be no better than
+I am,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I know I&rsquo;m no worse than many a woman
+who holds her head high.&rdquo; To back this she told him stories of blooming
+dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Also she understood him. &ldquo;What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
+do. You went and got married like a&mdash;hum!&mdash;friends must be
+respectful. Go into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or
+two&mdash;friends should make themselves useful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him what she liked in him. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re the only man I was ever
+alone with who don&rsquo;t talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I hate men
+who can&rsquo;t speak to a woman sensibly.&mdash;Just wait a minute.&rdquo; She
+left him and presently returned with, &ldquo;Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are
+you?&rdquo;&mdash;arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat
+jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the costume.
+&ldquo;What do you think of me? Wasn&rsquo;t it a shame to make a woman of me
+when I was born to be a man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know that,&rdquo; said Richard, for the contrast in her
+attire to those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! you think I don&rsquo;t do it well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Charming! but I can&rsquo;t forget...&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that is too bad!&rdquo; she pouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets arm-in-arm,
+and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her impertinent manner of
+using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of the supreme dandy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They take up men, Dick, for going about in women&rsquo;s clothes, and
+vice versaw, I suppose. You&rsquo;ll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my
+bow to the beak, won&rsquo;t you? Say it&rsquo;s becas I&rsquo;m an honest
+woman and don&rsquo;t care to hide the&mdash;a&mdash;unmentionables when I wear
+them&mdash;as the t&rsquo;others do,&rdquo; sprinkled with the dandy&rsquo;s
+famous invocations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a wopper, my brave Dick! won&rsquo;t let any peeler take
+me? by Jove!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent her thin
+fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed upon it more. There was
+delicacy in her dandyism. She was a graceful cavalier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sir Julius,&rdquo; as they named the dandy&rsquo;s attire, was
+frequently called for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount. When he beheld Sir
+Julius he thought of the lady, and &ldquo;vice versaw,&rdquo; as Sir Julius was
+fond of exclaiming.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius. Or she would sit, and
+talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that worthy fop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her the
+cleverest woman he had ever met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold as ice, she hated talk
+about love, and she was branded by the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s ears. She rushed to Adrian
+first. The wise youth believed there was nothing in it. She sailed down upon
+Richard. &ldquo;Is this true? that you have been seen going publicly about with
+an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray, relieve me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt&rsquo;s description in whose
+company he could have been seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me, I say! Don&rsquo;t quibble. Do you know any woman of bad
+character?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the world,
+Richard admitted to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew, both from the moral and the
+worldly point of view, mentally ejaculating all the while: &ldquo;That
+ridiculous System! That disgraceful marriage!&rdquo; Sir Austin in his mountain
+solitude was furnished with serious stuff to brood over.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rumour came to Lady Blandish. She likewise lectured Richard, and with her
+he condescended to argue. But he found himself obliged to instance something he
+had quite neglected. &ldquo;Instead of her doing me harm, it&rsquo;s I that
+will do her good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger. &ldquo;This person must be
+very clever to have given you that delusion, dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is clever. And the world treats her shamefully.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She complains of her position to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a word. But I will stand by her. She has no friend but me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My poor boy! has she made you think that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How unjust you all are!&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be tempted so!&rdquo;
+thought Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to address her publicly.
+The world that condemned her and cast her out was no better&mdash;worse for its
+miserable hypocrisy. He knew the world now, the young man said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My child! the world may be very bad. I am not going to defend it. But
+you have some one else to think of. Have you forgotten you have a wife,
+Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay! you all speak of her now. There&rsquo;s my aunt: &lsquo;Remember you
+have a wife!&rsquo; Do you think I love any one but Lucy? poor little thing!
+Because I am married am I to give up the society of women?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t she a woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Too much so!&rdquo; sighed the defender of her sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings. Richard laughed at him. The wise
+youth sneered at Mrs. Mount. The hero then favoured him with a warning equal to
+his own in emphasis, and surpassing it in sincerity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t quarrel, my dear boy,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a man of peace. Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a
+combat. Ride your steed to virtue&rsquo;s goal! All I say is, that I think
+he&rsquo;ll upset you, and it&rsquo;s better to go at a slow pace and in
+companionship with the children of the sun. You have a very nice little woman
+for a wife&mdash;well, good-bye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was unendurable to Richard;
+he associated them somewhat after the manner of the rick and the marriage.
+Charming Sir Julius, always gay, always honest, dispersed his black moods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you&rsquo;re taller,&rdquo; Richard made the discovery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I am. Don&rsquo;t you remember you said I was such a little
+thing when I came out of my woman&rsquo;s shell?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how have you done it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grown to please you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, if you can do that, you can do anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so I would do anything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Honour!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then&rdquo;...his project recurred to him. But the incongruity of
+speaking seriously to Sir Julius struck him dumb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then what?&rdquo; asked she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you&rsquo;re a gallant fellow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it enough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite. You were going to say something. I saw it in your
+eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You saw that I admired you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but a man mustn&rsquo;t admire a man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose I had an idea you were a woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an inch,&rdquo; Sir
+Julius turned one heel, and volleyed out silver laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t come much above your shoulder even now,&rdquo; she said,
+and proceeded to measure her height beside him with arch up-glances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must grow more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Fraid I can&rsquo;t, Dick! Bootmakers can&rsquo;t do it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show you how,&rdquo; and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and
+bore the fair gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him there exactly on a
+level with his head. &ldquo;Will that do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! Oh but I can&rsquo;t stay here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He should have known then&mdash;it was thundered at a closed door in him, that
+he played with fire. But the door being closed, he thought himself internally
+secure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their eyes met. He put her down instantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue. Seeing that, the wily woman
+resumed her shell. The memory, of Sir Julius breathing about her still, doubled
+the feminine attraction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ought to have been an actress,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar wish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! Ah! then! if I had been!&rdquo; sighed Mrs. Mount, gazing on the
+pattern of the carpet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took her hand, and pressed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not happy as you are?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I speak to you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion, slid to the corner
+toward her ear, as she sat with her head sideways to him, listening. When he
+had gone, she said to herself: &ldquo;Old hypocrites talk in that way; but I
+never heard of a young man doing it, and not making love at the same
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one who had been set
+thinking. He lauded her fair looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t make me thrice ashamed,&rdquo; she petitioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was not only that mood with her. Dauntless defiance, that splendidly
+befitted her gallant outline and gave a wildness to her bright bold eyes, when
+she would call out: &ldquo;Happy? who dares say I&rsquo;m not happy?
+D&rsquo;you think if the world whips me I&rsquo;ll wince? D&rsquo;you think I
+care for what they say or do? Let them kill me! they shall never get one cry
+out of me!&rdquo; and flashing on the young man as if he were the congregated
+enemy, add: &ldquo;There! now you know me!&rdquo;&mdash;that was a mood that
+well became her, and helped the work. She ought to have been an actress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This must not go on,&rdquo; said Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria in unison.
+A common object brought them together. They confined their talk to it, and did
+not disagree. Mrs. Doria engaged to go down to the baronet. Both ladies knew it
+was a dangerous, likely to turn out a disastrous, expedition. They agreed to it
+because it was something to do, and doing anything is better than doing
+nothing. &ldquo;Do it,&rdquo; said the wise youth, when they made him a third,
+&ldquo;do it, if you want him to be a hermit for life. You will bring back
+nothing but his dead body, ladies&mdash;a Hellenic, rather than a Roman,
+triumph. He will listen to you&mdash;he will accompany you to the
+station&mdash;he will hand you into the carriage&mdash;and when you point to
+his seat he will bow profoundly, and retire into his congenial mists.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian spoke their thoughts. They fretted; they relapsed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak to him, you, Adrian,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria. &ldquo;Speak to the
+boy solemnly. It would be almost better he should go back to that little thing
+he has married.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Almost?&rdquo; Lady Blandish opened her eyes. &ldquo;I have been
+advising it for the last month and more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A choice of evils,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria&rsquo;s sour-sweet face and
+shake of the head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed, with heroic effort,
+to avoid it by shutting their mouths. What was more, they preserved the peace
+in spite of Adrian&rsquo;s artifices.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll talk to him again,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+try to get the Engine on the conventional line.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Command him!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard,&rdquo; said Lady
+Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke to Richard. &ldquo;You
+want to reform this woman. Her manner is open&mdash;fair and free&mdash;the
+traditional characteristic. We won&rsquo;t stop to canvass how that particular
+honesty of deportment that wins your approbation has been gained. In her
+college it is not uncommon. Girls, you know, are not like boys. At a certain
+age they can&rsquo;t be quite natural. It&rsquo;s a bad sign if they
+don&rsquo;t blush, and fib, and affect this and that. It wears off when
+they&rsquo;re women. But a woman who speaks like a man, and has all those
+excellent virtues you admire&mdash;where has she learned the trick? She tells
+you. You don&rsquo;t surely approve of the school? Well, what is there in it,
+then? Reform her, of course. The task is worthy of your energies. But, if you
+are appointed to do it, don&rsquo;t do it publicly, and don&rsquo;t attempt it
+just now. May I ask you whether your wife participates in this
+undertaking?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard walked away from the interrogation. The wise youth, who hated long
+unrelieved speeches and had healed his conscience, said no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear tender Lucy! Poor darling! Richard&rsquo;s eyes moistened. Her letters
+seemed sadder latterly. Yet she never called to him to come, or he would have
+gone. His heart leapt up to her. He announced to Adrian that he should wait no
+longer for his father. Adrian placidly nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded brow and an absent
+voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard&mdash;I can&rsquo;t call you Dick now, I really don&rsquo;t know
+why&rdquo;&mdash;she said, &ldquo;I want to beg a favour of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Name it. I can still call you Bella, I suppose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you care to. What I want to say is this: when you meet me
+out&mdash;to cut it short&mdash;please not to recognize me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you ask to be told that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then look: I won&rsquo;t compromise you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see no harm, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she caressed his hand, &ldquo;and there is none. I know that.
+But,&rdquo; modest eyelids were drooped, &ldquo;other people do,&rdquo;
+struggling eyes were raised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do we care for other people?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. I don&rsquo;t. Not that!&rdquo; snapping her finger, &ldquo;I
+care for you, though.&rdquo; A prolonged look followed the declaration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re foolish, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not quite so giddy&mdash;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity. Adrian&rsquo;s abrupt inquiry
+had sunk in his mind, as the wise youth intended it should. He had
+instinctively refrained from speaking to Lucy of this lady. But what a noble
+creature the woman was!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they met in the park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him; and secresy added a new
+sense to their intimacy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his eloquence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was not mistaken in her
+cleverness. She could make evenings pass gaily, and one was not the fellow to
+the other. She could make you forget she was a woman, and then bring the fact
+startlingly home to you. She could read men with one quiver of her half-closed
+eye-lashes. She could catch the coming mood in a man, and fit herself to it.
+What does a woman want with ideas, who can do thus much? Keenness of
+perception, conformity, delicacy of handling, these be all the qualities
+necessary to parasites.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from her tongue. It may also
+have been true that it sickened her. She played on his higher nature. She
+understood spontaneously what would be most strange and taking to him in a
+woman. Various as the Serpent of old Nile, she acted fallen beauty, humorous
+indifference, reckless daring, arrogance in ruin. And acting thus, what think
+you?&mdash;She did it so well because she was growing half in earnest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You will not give me up
+quite?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not so bad as I&rsquo;m painted!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are only unfortunate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to throw
+heaven&rsquo;s twilight across it. A woman&rsquo;s history, you know: certain
+chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you love the man?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;You say you love no one
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman&rsquo;s daughter.
+No. I did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate him, if
+I did not despise him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you be deceived in love?&rdquo; said Richard, more to himself than
+to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. When we&rsquo;re young we can be very easily deceived. If there is
+such a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed it.
+Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:&mdash;and then it&rsquo;s
+too late! we can&rsquo;t have him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Singular!&rdquo; murmured Richard, &ldquo;she says just what my father
+said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke aloud: &ldquo;I could forgive you if you had loved him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had some affection for him? He was the first?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She chose to admit that. &ldquo;Yes. And the first who talks of love to a girl
+must be a fool if he doesn&rsquo;t blind her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That makes what is called first love nonsense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He repelled the insinuation. &ldquo;Because I know it is not, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder. He
+thought poorly of girls. A woman a sensible, brave, beautiful woman seemed, on
+comparison, infinitely nobler than those weak creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul injustice.
+&ldquo;What am I to do? You tell me to be different. How can I? What am I to
+do? Will virtuous people let me earn my bread? I could not get a
+housemaid&rsquo;s place! They wouldn&rsquo;t have me&mdash;I see their noses
+smelling! Yes I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen! Do you expect
+me to bury myself alive? Why, man, I have blood: I can&rsquo;t become a stone.
+You say I am honest, and I will be. Then let me tell you that I have been used
+to luxuries, and I can&rsquo;t do without them. I might have married
+men&mdash;lots would have had me. But who marries one like me but a fool? and I
+could not marry a fool. The man I marry I must respect. He could not respect
+me&mdash;I should know him to be a fool, and I should be worse off than I am
+now. As I am now, they may look as pious as they like&mdash;I laugh at
+them!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives: horrible exultation at the
+universal peccancy of husbands. This lovely outcast almost made him think she
+had the right on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows pierced the holy
+centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount&rsquo;s house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred to
+shock him there. The young man would ask himself where the difference was
+between her and the Women of society? How base, too, was the army of banded
+hypocrites! He was ready to declare war against them on her behalf. His casus
+belli, accurately worded, would have read curiously. Because the world refused
+to lure the lady to virtue with the offer of a housemaid&rsquo;s place, our
+knight threw down his challenge. But the lady had scornfully rebutted this
+prospect of a return to chastity. Then the form of the challenge must be:
+Because the world declined to support the lady in luxury for nothing! But what
+did that mean? In other words: she was to receive the devil&rsquo;s wages
+without rendering him her services. Such an arrangement appears hardly fair on
+the world or on the devil. Heroes will have to conquer both before they will
+get them to subscribe to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of war at
+all. Lance in rest they challenge and they charge. Like women they trust to
+instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men. Wide fly the
+leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are scattered, they know not
+wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why. &rsquo;Tis
+instinct strikes! Surely there is something divine in instinct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero could not charge down on
+the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille. He had
+sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the Law Courts; nor
+could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a trumpet, though to come
+to a tussle with the nation&rsquo;s direct representatives did seem the
+likelier method. It was likewise out of the question that he should enter every
+house and shop, and battle with its master in the cause of Mrs. Mount. Where,
+then, was his enemy? Everybody was his enemy, and everybody was nowhere! Shall
+he convoke multitudes on Wimbledon Common? Blue Policemen, and a distant dread
+of ridicule, bar all his projects. Alas for the hero in our day!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at empty air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What can I do for this poor woman?&rdquo; cried Richard, after fighting
+his phantom enemy till he was worn out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Rip! old Rip!&rdquo; he addressed his friend, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+distracted. I wish I was dead! What good am I for? Miserable! selfish! What
+have I done but make every soul I know wretched about me? I follow my own
+inclinations&mdash;I make people help me by lying as hard as they can&mdash;and
+I&rsquo;m a liar. And when I&rsquo;ve got it I&rsquo;m ashamed of myself. And
+now when I do see something unselfish for me to do, I come upon grins&mdash;I
+don&rsquo;t know where to turn&mdash;how to act&mdash;and I laugh at myself
+like a devil!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only friend Ripton&rsquo;s ear that was required, so his words went for
+little: but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to be ashamed of
+in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth. Richard added his customary comment
+of &ldquo;Poor little thing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted. A last letter
+written to his father procured him no reply. Then, said he, I have tried my
+utmost. I have tried to be dutiful&mdash;my father won&rsquo;t listen to me.
+One thing I can do&mdash;I can go down to my dear girl, and make her happy, and
+save her at least from some of the consequences of my rashness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing better for me!&rdquo; he groaned. His great
+ambition must be covered by a house-top: he and the cat must warm themselves on
+the domestic hearth! The hero was not aware that his heart moved him to this.
+His heart was not now in open communion with his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going&mdash;would go. She knew he was
+going to his wife. Far from discouraging him, she said nobly: &ldquo;Go&mdash;I
+believe I have kept you. Let us have an evening together, and then go: for
+good, if you like. If not, then to meet again another time. Forget me. I
+shan&rsquo;t forget you. You&rsquo;re the best fellow I ever knew, Richard. You
+are, on my honour! I swear I would not step in between you and your wife to
+cause either of you a moment&rsquo;s unhappiness. When I can be another woman I
+will, and I shall think of you then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively going to his wife.
+The wise youth modestly veiled his own merit in bringing it about by saying:
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t see that poor little woman left alone down there any
+longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! Yes!&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest speech was
+repeated, &ldquo;I suppose, poor boy, it&rsquo;s the best he can do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last evening with Mrs. Mount.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The enchantress received him in state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know this dress? No? It&rsquo;s the dress I wore when I first met
+you&mdash;not when I first saw you. I think I remarked you, sir, before you
+deigned to cast an eye upon humble me. When we first met we drank champagne
+together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in the same liquor. Will you
+liquor with me, old boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was gay. She revived Sir Julius occasionally. He, dispirited, left the
+talking all to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mount kept a footman. At a late hour the man of calves dressed the table
+for supper. It was a point of honour for Richard to sit down to it and try to
+eat. Drinking, thanks to the kindly mother nature, who loves to see her
+children made fools of, is always an easier matter. The footman was diligent;
+the champagne corks feebly recalled the file-firing at Richmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll drink to what we might have been, Dick,&rdquo; said the
+enchantress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! down, my boy?&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;They shall never see me
+hoist signals of distress. We must all die, and the secret of the thing is to
+die game, by Jove! Did you ever hear of Laura Fern? a superb girl! handsomer
+than your humble servant&mdash;if you&rsquo;ll believe it&mdash;a
+&lsquo;Miss&rsquo; in the bargain, and as a consequence, I suppose, a much
+greater rake. She was in the hunting-field. Her horse threw her, and she fell
+plump on a stake. It went into her left breast. All the fellows crowded round
+her, and one young man, who was in love with her&mdash;he sits in the House of
+Peers now&mdash;we used to call him &lsquo;Duck&rsquo; because he was such a
+dear&mdash;he dropped from his horse to his knees: &lsquo;Laura! Laura! my
+darling! speak a word to me!&mdash;the last!&rsquo; She turned over all white
+and bloody! &lsquo;I&mdash;I shan&rsquo;t be in at the death!&rsquo; and gave
+up the ghost! Wasn&rsquo;t that dying game? Here&rsquo;s to the example of
+Laura Fenn! Why, what&rsquo;s the matter? See! it makes a man turn pale to hear
+how a woman can die. Fill the glasses, John. Why, you&rsquo;re as bad!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s give me a turn, my lady,&rdquo; pleaded John, and the
+man&rsquo;s hand was unsteady as he poured out the wine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought not to listen. Go, and, drink some brandy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John footman went from the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you&rsquo;ve got!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you bear to hear of blood? You know, it was only one naughty
+woman out of the world. The clergyman of the parish didn&rsquo;t refuse to give
+her decent burial. We Christians! Hurrah!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She cheered, and laughed. A lurid splendour glanced about her like lights from
+the pit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pledge me, Dick! Drink, and recover yourself. Who minds? We must all
+die&mdash;the good and the bad. Ashes to ashes&mdash;dust to dust&mdash;and
+wine for living lips! That&rsquo;s poetry&mdash;almost. Sentiment: &lsquo;May
+we never say die till we&rsquo;ve drunk our fill!&rsquo; Not bad&mdash;eh? A
+little vulgar, perhaps, by Jove! Do you think me horrid?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the wine?&rdquo; Richard shouted. He drank a couple of
+glasses in succession, and stared about. Was he in hell, with a lost soul
+raving to him?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick! Now we&rsquo;ll be
+companions.&rdquo; She wished that heaven had made her such a man. &ldquo;Ah!
+Dick! Dick! too late! too late!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Softly fell her voice. Her eyes threw slanting beams.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you see this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with gems and coiled with a
+rope of hair in her bosom. It was a gift of his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know when I stole the lock? Foolish Dick! you gave me an anchor
+without a rope. Come and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you recognize your own hair! I should know a thread of mine
+among a million.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as he inspected his hair on
+the bosom of Delilah.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you knew nothing of it! You hardly know it now you see it! What
+couldn&rsquo;t a woman steal from you? But you&rsquo;re not vain, and
+that&rsquo;s a protection. You&rsquo;re a miracle, Dick: a man that&rsquo;s not
+vain! Sit here.&rdquo; She curled up her feet to give him place on the sofa.
+&ldquo;Now let us talk like friends that part to meet no more. You found a ship
+with fever on board, and you weren&rsquo;t afraid to come alongside and keep
+her company. The fever isn&rsquo;t catching, you see. Let us mingle our tears
+together. Ha! ha! a man said that once to me. The hypocrite wanted to catch the
+fever, but he was too old. How old are you, Dick?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard pushed a few months forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Twenty-one? You just look it, you blooming boy. Now tell me my age,
+Adonis!&mdash;Twenty&mdash;what?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had given the lady twenty-five years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She laughed violently. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t pay compliments, Dick. Best to be
+honest; guess again. You don&rsquo;t like to? Not twenty-five, or twenty-four,
+or twenty-three, or see how he begins to stare!&mdash;-twenty-two. Just
+twenty-one, my dear. I think my birthday&rsquo;s somewhere in next month. Why,
+look at me, close&mdash;closer. Have I a wrinkle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And when, in heaven&rsquo;s name!&rdquo;...he stopped short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I understand you. When did I commence for to live? At the ripe age of
+sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair because of my beauty. He vowed he&rsquo;d
+die. I didn&rsquo;t want him to do that. So to save the poor man for his
+family, I ran away with him, and I dare say they didn&rsquo;t appreciate the
+sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did. It&rsquo;s the way of the
+world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard seized some dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a tumbler, and
+drank it off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John footman entered to clear the table, and they were left without further
+interruption.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bella! Bella!&rdquo; Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as he walked
+the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened cheek, her eyes
+half-shut and dreamy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bella!&rdquo; he dropped beside her. &ldquo;You are unhappy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She blinked and yawned, as one who is awakened suddenly. &ldquo;I think you
+spoke,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are unhappy, Bella. You can&rsquo;t conceal it. Your laugh sounds
+like madness. You must be unhappy. So young, too! Only twenty-one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it matter? Who cares for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole shape. She did not
+mistake it for tenderness, as another would have done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who cares for you, Bella? I do. What makes my misery now, but to see you
+there, and know of no way of helping you? Father of mercy! it seems too much to
+have to stand by powerless while such ruin is going on!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment with which his frame
+quaked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids. She glanced up at him
+quickly, then looked down, drew her hand from his, and smoothed it, eying it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bella! you have a father alive!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A linendraper, dear. He wears a white neck-cloth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone of the conversation,
+for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed the lady&rsquo;s lap-dog, whose
+squeaks and howls were piteous, and demanded the most fervent caresses of its
+mistress. It was: &ldquo;Oh, my poor pet Mumpsy, and he didn&rsquo;t like a
+nasty great big ugly heavy foot an his poor soft
+silky&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;back, he didn&rsquo;t, and he soodn&rsquo;t
+that he&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;soodn&rsquo;t; and he cried out and knew the
+place to come to, and was oh so sorry for what had happened to
+him&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;and now he was going to be made happy,
+his mistress make him
+happy&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;mum&mdash;moo-o-o-o.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes!&rdquo; said Richard, savagely, from the other end of the room,
+&ldquo;you care for the happiness of your dog.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A course se does,&rdquo; Mumpsy was simperingly assured in the thick of
+his silky flanks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard looked for his hat. Mumpsy was deposited on the sofa in a twinkling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the lady, &ldquo;you must come and beg Mumpsy&rsquo;s
+pardon, whether you meant to do it or no, because little doggies can&rsquo;t
+tell that&mdash;how should they? And there&rsquo;s poor Mumpsy thinking
+you&rsquo;re a great terrible rival that tries to squash him all flat to
+nothing, on purpose, pretending you didn&rsquo;t see; and he&rsquo;s trembling,
+poor dear wee pet! And I may love my dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I
+won&rsquo;t have him ill-treated, for he&rsquo;s never been jealous of you, and
+he is a darling, ten times truer than men, and I love him fifty times better.
+So come to him with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First a smile changed Richard&rsquo;s face; then laughing a melancholy laugh,
+he surrendered to her humour, and went through the form of begging
+Mumpsy&rsquo;s pardon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The dear dog! I do believe he saw we were getting dull,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And immolated himself intentionally? Noble animal!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll act as if we thought so. Let us be gay, Richard, and
+not part like ancient fogies. Where&rsquo;s your fun? You can rattle; why
+don&rsquo;t you? You haven&rsquo;t seen me in one of my characters&mdash;not
+Sir Julius: wait a couple of minutes.&rdquo; She ran out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her black hair was
+scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She moved slowly,
+and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a finger at the
+region of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the representation. He did
+not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly charming and exquisitely horrid
+witch she was. Something in the way her underlids worked seemed to remind him
+of a forgotten picture; but a veil hung on the picture. There could be no
+analogy, for this was beautiful and devilish, and that, if he remembered
+rightly, had the beauty of seraphs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His reflections and her performance were stayed by a shriek. The spirits of
+wine had run over the plate she held to the floor. She had the coolness to put
+the plate down on the table, while he stamped out the flame on the carpet.
+Again she shrieked: she thought she was on fire. He fell on his knees and
+clasped her skirts all round, drawing his arms down them several times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, &ldquo;Do you feel safe now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair touched his cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said she, &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was she a witch verily? There was sorcery in her breath; sorcery in her hair:
+the ends of it stung him like little snakes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do I do it, Dick?&rdquo; she flung back, laughing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Like you do everything, Bella,&rdquo; he said, and took breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There! I won&rsquo;t be a witch; I won&rsquo;t be a witch: they may burn
+me to a cinder, but I won&rsquo;t be a witch!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose I look a figure. I must go and tidy myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, don&rsquo;t change. I like to see you so.&rdquo; He gazed at her
+with a mixture of wonder and admiration. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t think you the
+same person&mdash;not even when you laugh.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard,&rdquo; her tone was serious, &ldquo;you were going to speak to
+me of my parents.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How wild and awful you looked, Bella!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father, Richard, was a very respectable man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bella, you&rsquo;ll haunt me like a ghost.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My mother died in my infancy, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put up your hair, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was an only child!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons. He followed the
+abstracted intentness of her look, and came upon her words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella. Speak of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry, &lsquo;&rsquo;Tis
+time&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go to him. He
+shall receive you. He shall not refuse&mdash;he shall forgive you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I haunt you, you can&rsquo;t forget me, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me go to your father, Bella let me go to him to-morrow. I&rsquo;ll
+give you my time. It&rsquo;s all I can give. O Bella! let me save you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty boy! Ha! ha!&rdquo;
+and away she burst from him, and up flew her hair, as she danced across the
+room, and fell at full length on the sofa.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He felt giddy: bewitched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll talk of everyday things, Dick,&rdquo; she called to him from
+the sofa. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s our last evening. Our last? Heigho! It makes me
+sentimental. How&rsquo;s that Mr. Ripson, Pipson, Nipson?&mdash;it&rsquo;s not
+complimentary, but I can&rsquo;t remember names of that sort. Why do you have
+friends of that sort? He&rsquo;s not a gentleman. Better is he? Well,
+he&rsquo;s rather too insignificant for me. Why do you sit off there? Come to
+me instantly. There&mdash;I&rsquo;ll sit up, and be proper, and you&rsquo;ll
+have plenty of room. Talk, Dick!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown. They had a haughty
+sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft languor circled them.
+Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red. He was a youth, and she an
+enchantress. He a hero; she a female will-o&rsquo;-the-wisp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had no thought of departing:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s our last night&mdash;I suppose it&rsquo;s our last hour
+together in this world&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t want to meet you in the next,
+for poor Dick will have to come to such a very, very disagreeable place to make
+the visit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He grasped her hand at this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, he will! too true! can&rsquo;t be helped: they say I&rsquo;m
+handsome.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re lovely, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drank in his homage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll admit it. His Highness below likes lovely women, I
+hear say. A gentleman of taste! You don&rsquo;t know all my accomplishments
+yet, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shan&rsquo;t be astonished at anything new, Bella.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then hear, and wonder.&rdquo; Her voice trolled out some lively
+roulades. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think he&rsquo;ll make me his prima donna
+below? It&rsquo;s nonsense to tell me there&rsquo;s no singing there. And the
+atmosphere will be favourable to the voice. No damp, you know. You saw the
+piano&mdash;why didn&rsquo;t you ask me to sing before? I can sing Italian. I
+had a master&mdash;who made love to me. I forgave him because of the
+music-stool&mdash;men can&rsquo;t help it on a music-stool, poor dears!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;&lsquo;My heart, my heart&mdash;I think &rsquo;twill break.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I&rsquo;m such a rake. I don&rsquo;t know any other reason. No;
+I hate sentimental songs. Won&rsquo;t sing that.
+Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy&mdash;a...e! How ridiculous those women were, coming home
+from Richmond!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Once the sweet romance of story<br/>
+    Clad thy moving form with grace;<br/>
+Once the world and all its glory<br/>
+    Was but framework to thy face.<br/>
+Ah, too fair!&mdash;what I remember<br/>
+    Might my soul recall&mdash;but no!<br/>
+To the winds this wretched ember<br/>
+    Of a fire that falls so low!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hum! don&rsquo;t much like that. Tum-te-tum-tum&mdash;accanto al
+fuoco&mdash;heigho! I don&rsquo;t want to show off, Dick&mdash;or to break
+down&mdash;so I won&rsquo;t try that.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;Oh! but for thee, oh! but for thee,<br/>
+    I might have been a happy wife,<br/>
+And nursed a baby on my knee,<br/>
+    And never blushed to give it life.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn&rsquo;t
+know at all, at all, what it meant. Mustn&rsquo;t sing that sort of song in
+company. We&rsquo;re oh! so proper&mdash;even we!
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&lsquo;If I had a husband, what think you I&rsquo;d do?<br/>
+    I&rsquo;d make it my business to keep him a lover;<br/>
+For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,<br/>
+    Some other amusement he&rsquo;ll quickly discover.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For such are young gentlemen made of&mdash;made of: such are young
+gentlemen made of!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He was in the mood when
+imagination intensely vivifies everything. Mere suggestions of music sufficed.
+The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was the lady before him; and
+soft horns blew; he smelt the languid night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd
+large and close above the arid plain this lady leaning at her window desolate,
+pouring out her abandoned heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In Venice she
+was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any woman anywhere. But, oh!
+to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion through throbbing street; past
+houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends; under storied bridges; past
+palaces charged with full life in dead quietness; past grand old towers,
+colossal squares, gleaming quays, and out, and on with her, on into the silver
+infinity shaking over seas!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two former,
+perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many instruments cannot
+clever women play upon at the same moment! And this enchantress was not too
+clever, or he might have felt her touch. She was no longer absolutely bent on
+winning him, or he might have seen a manoeuvre. She liked him&mdash;liked none
+better. She wished him well. Her pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome,
+and he was going. What she liked him for, she rather&mdash;very
+slightly&mdash;wished to do away with, or see if it could be done away with:
+just as one wishes to catch a pretty butterfly, without hurting its patterned
+wings. No harm intended to the innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it
+thoroughly, and enjoy the marvel of it, in one&rsquo;s tender possession, and
+have the felicity of thinking one could crush it, if one would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in Venice, the spot was on
+her. Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not celestial light that illumined
+her beauty. Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save, he was soft to her
+sin&mdash;drowned it in deep mournfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing. She swam
+wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of course I meant it.
+I must be happy with my best friend going to leave me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those witch underlids were working brightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not forget me? and I shall try...try...&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome fellow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I change&mdash;if I can change... Oh! if you could know what a net
+I&rsquo;m in, Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not divine
+sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast, and set him
+rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale beseeching face. Her eyes
+still drew him down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cried: &ldquo;I never will!&rdquo; and strained her in his arms, and kissed
+her passionately on the lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head with a
+kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping, clinging to him.
+It was wicked truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a word of love between them!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was ever hero in this fashion won?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap39"></a>
+CHAPTER XXXIX</h2>
+
+<p>
+At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions to other
+than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the potent nobleman, Lord
+Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust of his friends and special
+parasite. &ldquo;Mount&rsquo;s in for it again,&rdquo; they said among
+themselves. &ldquo;Hang the women!&rdquo; was a natural sequence. For,
+don&rsquo;t you see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling
+such a very inflammable subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged his bow,
+and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but none would
+perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent oaths, that this was
+a totally different case from the antecedent ones. So it had been sworn to them
+too frequently before. He was as a man with mighty tidings, and no language:
+intensely communicative, but inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly
+compassed and expounded his noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the
+comprehension of blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord
+divinely felt the case was different. There is something impressive in a great
+human hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot
+contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible words. At
+first he took refuge in the depths of his contempt for women. Cupid gave him
+line. When he had come to vent his worst of them, the fair face now stamped on
+his brain beamed the more triumphantly: so the harpooned whale rose to the
+surface, and after a few convulsions, surrendered his huge length. My lord was
+in love with Richard&rsquo;s young wife. He gave proofs of it by burying
+himself beside her. To her, could she have seen it, he gave further proofs of a
+real devotion, in affecting, and in her presence feeling, nothing beyond a
+lively interest in her well-being. This wonder, that when near her he should be
+cool and composed, and when away from her wrapped in a tempest of desires, was
+matter for what powers of cogitation the heavy nobleman possessed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press the
+business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than his parasite.
+Almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little wife apprehended no
+harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had commended her to the care of Lord
+Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith. Lady Judith had left the Island for London: Lord
+Mountfalcon remained. There could be no harm. If she had ever thought so, she
+no longer did. Secretly, perhaps, she was flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as
+well educated as it is the fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he
+could talk and instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand that he was
+wicked, very wicked, and that she improved him. The heroine, in common with the
+hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world&mdash;to do some good: and the
+task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women. Dear to
+their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending! Lord
+Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his title, and his
+person had hitherto preserved him from having long to sigh in vain, or sigh at
+all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villanies for him. No alarm was given to
+Lucy&rsquo;s pure instinct, as might have been the case had my lord been
+over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom to have a true friend to support her,
+and really to be able to do something for that friend. Too simple-minded to
+think much of his lordship&rsquo;s position, she was yet a woman. &ldquo;He, a
+great nobleman, does not scorn to acknowledge me, and think something of
+me,&rdquo; may have been one of the half-thoughts passing through her now and
+then, as she reflected in self-defence on the proud family she had married
+into.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon. Peter
+travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had no sooner
+broached his lordship&rsquo;s immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon began to
+plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He swore by this and that he had
+come across an angel for his sins, and would do her no hurt. The next moment he
+swore she must be his, though she cursed like a cat. His lordship&rsquo;s
+illustrations were not choice. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t advanced an inch,&rdquo;
+he groaned. &ldquo;Brayder! upon my soul, that little woman could do anything
+with me. By heaven! I&rsquo;d marry her to-morrow. Here I am, seeing her every
+day in the week out or in, and what do you think she gets me to talk
+about?&mdash;history! Isn&rsquo;t it enough to make a fellow mad? and there am
+I lecturing like a prig, and by heaven! while I&rsquo;m at it I feel a pleasure
+in it; and when I leave the house I should feel an immense gratification in
+shooting somebody. What do they say in town?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not much,&rdquo; said Brayder, significantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When&rsquo;s that fellow&mdash;her husband&mdash;coming down?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I rather hope we&rsquo;ve settled him for life, Mount.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How d&rsquo;ye mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s in for Don Juan
+at a gallop, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The deuce! Has Bella got him?&rdquo; Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the Sussex coast, signed
+&ldquo;Richard,&rdquo; and was worded thus:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My beautiful Devil&mdash;!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since we&rsquo;re both devils together, and have found each other out,
+come to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry. Come, my bright
+hell-star! I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come to me! You have
+taught me how devils love, and I can&rsquo;t do without you. Come an hour after
+you receive this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
+&ldquo;Complimentary love-epistle!&rdquo; he remarked, and rising from his
+chair and striding about, muttered, &ldquo;The dog! how infamously he treats
+his wife!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very bad,&rdquo; said Brayder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How did you get hold of this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strolled into Bella&rsquo;s dressing-room, waiting for her turned over
+her pincushion hap-hazard. You know her trick.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank heaven, I
+haven&rsquo;t written her any letters for an age. Is she going to him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not she! But it&rsquo;s odd, Mount!&mdash;did you ever know her refuse
+money before? She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the fragments
+with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt at your Academy. I
+rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter could be made
+to serve. Both conscientiously agreed that Richard&rsquo;s behaviour to his
+wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no mercy. &ldquo;But,&rdquo;
+said his lordship, &ldquo;it won&rsquo;t do to show the letter. At first
+she&rsquo;ll be swearing it&rsquo;s false, and then she&rsquo;ll stick to him
+closer. I know the sluts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The rule of contrary,&rdquo; said Brayder, carelessly. &ldquo;She must
+see the trahison with her eyes. They believe their eyes. There&rsquo;s your
+chance, Mount. You step in: you give her revenge and consolation&mdash;two
+birds at one shot. That&rsquo;s what they like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re an ass, Brayder,&rdquo; the nobleman exclaimed.
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re an infernal blackguard. You talk of this little woman as if
+she and other women were all of a piece. I don&rsquo;t see anything I gain by
+this confounded letter. Her husband&rsquo;s a brute&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+clear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you leave it to me, Mount?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Be damned before I do!&rdquo; muttered my lord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank you. Now see how this will end: You&rsquo;re too soft, Mount.
+You&rsquo;ll be made a fool of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you, Brayder, there&rsquo;s nothing to be done. If I carry her
+off&mdash;I&rsquo;ve been on the point of doing it every
+day&mdash;what&rsquo;ll come of that? She&rsquo;ll look&mdash;I can&rsquo;t
+stand her eyes&mdash;I shall be a fool&mdash;worse off with her than I am
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mountfalcon yawned despondently. &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo; he
+pursued. &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth?
+She&rsquo;s&rdquo;...he mentioned something in an underbreath, and turned red
+as he said it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hm!&rdquo; Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on
+his chin. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s disagreeable, Mount. You don&rsquo;t exactly want
+to act in that character. You haven&rsquo;t got a diploma. Bother!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think I love her a bit less?&rdquo; broke out my lord in a
+frenzy. &ldquo;By heaven! I&rsquo;d read to her by her bedside, and talk that
+infernal history to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do they say in town?&rdquo; he asked again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or widow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to her this evening,&rdquo; Mountfalcon resumed,
+after&mdash;to judge by the cast of his face&mdash;reflecting deeply.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to her this evening. She shall know what infernal torment
+she makes me suffer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to say she don&rsquo;t know it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hasn&rsquo;t an idea&mdash;thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven!
+I&rsquo;ll be to her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A&mdash;hm!&rdquo; went the Honourable Peter. &ldquo;This way to the
+sign of the Green Man, ladies!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong. I may have forgotten
+the trick of alighting on my feet. There&mdash;there! I&rsquo;ll be sworn
+she&rsquo;s excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested friend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go to her this evening,&rdquo; Mountfalcon repeated.
+&ldquo;She shall know what damned misery it is to see her in such a position. I
+can&rsquo;t hold out any longer. Deceit&rsquo;s horrible to such a girl as
+that. I&rsquo;d rather have her cursing me than speaking and looking as she
+does. Dear little girl!&mdash;she&rsquo;s only a child. You haven&rsquo;t an
+idea how sensible that little woman is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you?&rdquo; inquired the cunning one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women,&rdquo; said
+Mountfalcon, evading his parasite&rsquo;s eye as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his parasite
+simply ingeniously dissipated. Full many a man of God had thought it the easier
+task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat much in the
+shade. She offered to have the candles brought in. He begged her to allow the
+room to remain as it was. &ldquo;I have something to say to you,&rdquo; he
+observed with a certain solemnity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;to me?&rdquo; said Lucy, quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it, and what
+it exactly was, he did not know.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You conceal it admirably,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;but you must be very
+lonely here&mdash;I fear, unhappy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord,&rdquo; said
+Lucy. &ldquo;I am not unhappy.&rdquo; Her face was in shade and could not belie
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might give
+you, Mrs. Feverel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None indeed that I know of,&rdquo; Lucy replied. &ldquo;Who can help us
+to pay for our sins?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you have
+helped me to wash out some of any sins.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, my lord!&rdquo; said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet for a woman
+to believe she has drawn the serpent&rsquo;s teeth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you the truth,&rdquo; Lord Mountfalcon went on. &ldquo;What
+object could I have in deceiving you? I know you quite above flattery&mdash;so
+different from other women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, pray, do not say that,&rdquo; interposed Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;According to my experience, then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you say you have met such&mdash;such very bad women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, and I might say more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His lordship held impressively mute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How strange men are!&rdquo; thought Lucy. &ldquo;He had some unhappy
+secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various pretences
+during the nobleman&rsquo;s visits, put a stop to the revelation, if his
+lordship intended to make any.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: &ldquo;Do you know, I am always
+ashamed to ask you to begin to read.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mountfalcon stared. &ldquo;To read?&mdash;oh! ha! yes!&rdquo; he remembered his
+evening duties. &ldquo;Very happy, I&rsquo;m sure. Let me see. Where were
+we?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask
+you to read, my lord. It&rsquo;s new to me; like a new world&mdash;hearing
+about Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we
+walk upon. It fills my mind. But it must have ceased to interest you, and I was
+thinking that I would not tease you any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. &rsquo;Pon my honour, I&rsquo;d
+read till I was hoarse, to hear your remarks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you laughing at me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I look so?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he could
+appear to endow them with mental expression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, you are not,&rdquo; said Lucy. &ldquo;I must thank you for your
+forbearance.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now it was an object of Lucy&rsquo;s to have him reading; for his sake, for her
+sake, and for somebody else&rsquo;s sake; which somebody else was probably
+considered first in the matter. When he was reading to her, he seemed to be
+legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no doubts or suspicions
+whatever, she was easier in her heart while she had him employed in that
+office. So she rose to fetch the book, laid it open on the table at his
+lordship&rsquo;s elbow, and quietly waited to ring for candles when he should
+be willing to commence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce, and he
+felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with anguish hanging
+over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak, or insinuate. He sat
+silent and did nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I do not like him for,&rdquo; said Lucy, meditatively, &ldquo;is
+his changing his religion. He would have been such a hero, but for that. I
+could have loved him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?&rdquo; Lord Mountfalcon
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Emperor Julian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate but then, you know, he
+meant what he was about. He didn&rsquo;t even do it for a woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For a woman!&rdquo; cried Lucy. &ldquo;What man would for a
+woman?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You, Lord Mountfalcon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I&rsquo;d turn Catholic to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll unsay it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell to ring for lights.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?&rdquo; said the nobleman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes! yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience I would not
+have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy&rsquo;s hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful light with
+one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken in this way
+before. He spoke better, too. She missed the aristocratic twang in his voice,
+and the hesitation for words, and the fluid lordliness with which he rolled
+over difficulties in speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and presented Tom
+Bakewell. There was a double knock at the same instant at the street door. Lucy
+delayed to give orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can it be a letter, Tom!&mdash;so late?&rdquo; she said, changing
+colour. &ldquo;Pray run and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That an&rsquo;t powst&rdquo; Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?&rdquo; Lord Mountfalcon
+inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no!&mdash;yes, I am, very,&rdquo; said Lucy. Her quick ear caught
+the tones of a voice she remembered. &ldquo;That dear old thing has come to see
+me,&rdquo; she cried, starting up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry!&rdquo; said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Me, my darlin&rsquo;!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her
+journey, returned the salute. &ldquo;Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for
+I ain&rsquo;t one to stand by and give the devil his
+licence&mdash;roamin&rsquo;! and the salt sure enough have spilte my bride-gown
+at the beginnin&rsquo;, which ain&rsquo;t the best sign. Bless ye!&mdash;Oh,
+here he is.&rdquo; She beheld a male figure in a chair by the half light, and
+swung around to address him. &ldquo;You bad man!&rdquo; she held aloft one of
+her fat fingers, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come on ye like a bolt, I have, and
+goin&rsquo; to make ye do your duty, naughty boy! But you&rsquo;re my
+darlin&rsquo; babe,&rdquo; she melted, as was her custom, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll
+never meet you and not give to ye the kiss of a mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft woman had him
+by the neck, and was down among his luxurious whiskers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back. &ldquo;What
+hair&rsquo;s that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my gracious!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, &ldquo;I been
+and kiss a strange man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord to excuse
+the woful mistake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I&rsquo;m sure;&rdquo; said his
+lordship, re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; &ldquo;may I beg the
+pleasure of an introduction?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My husband&rsquo;s dear old nurse&mdash;Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; said Lucy,
+taking her hand to lend her countenance. &ldquo;Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs.
+Berry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic bobs, and
+wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her passage
+over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars, by which it was
+revealed that the softness of her heart was only equalled by the weakness of
+her stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, and where&rsquo;s my&mdash;where&rsquo;s Mr. Richard? yer husband,
+my dear?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry turned from her tale to question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you expect to see him here?&rdquo; said Lucy, in a broken voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And where else, my love? since he haven&rsquo;t been seen in London a
+whole fortnight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy did not speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think,&rdquo; said
+Lord Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly, embraced Mrs.
+Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house by Tom Bakewell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. &ldquo;Did ye ever know
+sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!&rdquo; she exclaimed.
+&ldquo;I could cry at it, I could! To be goin&rsquo; and kissin&rsquo; a
+strange hairy man! Oh dear me! what&rsquo;s cornin&rsquo; next, I wonder?
+Whiskers! thinks I&mdash;for I know the touch o&rsquo; whiskers&mdash;&rsquo;t
+ain&rsquo;t like other hair&mdash;what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I
+says to myself; and it flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the
+lights come in, and I see that great hairy man&mdash;beggin&rsquo; his
+pardon&mdash;nobleman, and if I could &rsquo;a dropped through the floor out
+o&rsquo; sight o&rsquo; men, drat &rsquo;em! they&rsquo;re al&rsquo;ays in the
+way, that they are!&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Berry,&rdquo; Lucy checked her, &ldquo;did you expect to find him
+here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Askin&rsquo; that solemn?&rdquo; retorted Berry. &ldquo;What him? your
+husband? O&rsquo; course I did! and you got him&mdash;somewheres hid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days,&rdquo; said Lucy, and
+her tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not heer from him!&mdash;fifteen days!&rdquo; Berry echoed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell
+me! I&rsquo;ve borne it so long. They&rsquo;re cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do
+you know if I have offended him&mdash;my husband? While he wrote I did not
+complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from him! To
+think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they want to take him from me?
+Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I&rsquo;ve had no one to speak out my heart
+to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy&rsquo;s
+lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never this
+excellent creature&rsquo;s system to be miserable in company. The sight of a
+sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her resolutely
+the other way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fiddle-faddle,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to see him repent!
+He won&rsquo;t find anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he
+know it. Now, look you here, my dear&mdash;you blessed weepin&rsquo;
+pet&mdash;the man that could see ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and
+he backed by the law, and not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for
+life, he ain&rsquo;t got much man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my
+babe! I was sayin&rsquo;, look here, to comfort ye&mdash;oh, why, to be sure
+he&rsquo;ve got some surprise for ye. And so&rsquo;ve I, my lamb! Hark, now!
+His father&rsquo;ve come to town, like a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite
+ye both, and bring your bodies together, as your hearts is, for
+everlastin&rsquo;. Now ain&rsquo;t that news?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Lucy, &ldquo;that takes my last hope away. I thought he
+had gone to his father.&rdquo; She burst into fresh tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Belike he&rsquo;s travellin&rsquo; after him,&rdquo; she suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sich a man as that. He&rsquo;s a
+regular meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey. Well, so hark you here. I
+says to myself, that knows him&mdash;for I did think my babe was in his natural
+nest&mdash;I says, the bar&rsquo;net&rsquo;ll never write for you both to come
+up and beg forgiveness, so down I&rsquo;ll go and fetch you up. For there was
+your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye one hour
+in a young marriage. It&rsquo;s dangerous, it&rsquo;s mad, it&rsquo;s wrong,
+and it&rsquo;s only to be righted by your obeyin&rsquo; of me, as I commands
+it: for I has my fits, though I am a soft &rsquo;un. Obey me, and ye&rsquo;ll
+be happy tomorrow&mdash;or the next to it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted martyrdom,
+and glad to give herself up to somebody else&rsquo;s guidance utterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Cause, &rsquo;cause&mdash;who can tell the why of men, my dear?
+But that he love ye faithful, I&rsquo;ll swear. Haven&rsquo;t he groaned in my
+arms that he couldn&rsquo;t come to ye?&mdash;weak wretch! Hasn&rsquo;t he
+swore how he loved ye to me, poor young man! But this is your fault, my sweet.
+Yes, it be. You should &rsquo;a followed my &rsquo;dvice at the
+fust&mdash;&rsquo;stead o&rsquo; going into your &rsquo;eroics about this and
+t&rsquo;other.&rdquo; Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
+matrimony, pointed especially at young couples. &ldquo;I should &rsquo;a been a
+fool if I hadn&rsquo;t suffered myself,&rdquo; she confessed, &ldquo;so
+I&rsquo;ll thank my Berry if I makes you wise in season.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into the soft
+woman&rsquo;s kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed from mouth to mouth.
+And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very secret to tell,
+very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring herself to speak it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! these&rsquo;s three men in my life I kissed,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Berry, too much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young
+wife&rsquo;s struggling bosom, &ldquo;three men, and one a nobleman!
+He&rsquo;ve got more whisker than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought. Ten
+to one he&rsquo;ll think, now, I was glad o&rsquo; my
+chance&mdash;they&rsquo;re that vain, whether they&rsquo;s lords or commons.
+How was I to know? I nat&rsquo;ral thinks none but her husband&rsquo;d sit in
+that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?&rdquo; Mrs. Berry hardened
+her eyes, &ldquo;and your husband away? What do this mean? Tell to me, child,
+what it mean his bein&rsquo; here alone without ere a candle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here,&rdquo; said Lucy.
+&ldquo;He is very kind. He comes almost every evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord Montfalcon&mdash;that his name!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+&ldquo;I been that flurried by the man, I didn&rsquo;t mind it at first. He
+come every evenin&rsquo;, and your husband out o&rsquo; sight! My goodness me!
+it&rsquo;s gettin&rsquo; worse and worse. And what do he come for, now,
+ma&rsquo;am? Now tell me candid what ye do together here in the dark of an
+evenin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like
+it,&rdquo; said Lucy, pouting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do he come for, I ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely, and wishes to
+amuse me. And he tells me of things I know nothing about and&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And wants to be a-teachin&rsquo; some of his things, mayhap,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Berry interrupted with a ruffled breast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman,&rdquo; said
+Lucy, chiding her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;re a silly, unsuspectin&rsquo; little bird,&rdquo; Mrs.
+Berry retorted, as she returned her taps on the cheek. &ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t
+told me what ye do together, and what&rsquo;s his excuse for
+comin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
+History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the great men. And
+he says I&rsquo;m not silly, Mrs. Berry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s one bit o&rsquo; lime on your wings, my bird. History,
+indeed! History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty
+History! Why, I know that man&rsquo;s name, my dear. He&rsquo;s a notorious
+living rake, that Lord Montfalcon. No woman&rsquo;s safe with him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, but he hasn&rsquo;t deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not pretended he
+was good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;More&rsquo;s his art,&rdquo; quoth the experienced dame. &ldquo;So you
+read History together in the dark; my dear!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
+Look! there&rsquo;s the book open ready for him when the candles come in. And
+now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me. I do
+love you. Talk of other things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So we will,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy&rsquo;s caresses.
+&ldquo;So let us. A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and
+she sich a beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
+spot it shall! He won&rsquo;t meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I
+drop him. I&rsquo;m dyin&rsquo; for a cup o&rsquo; tea, my dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite dropping
+him, was continuing to say: &ldquo;Let him go and boast I kiss him; he
+ain&rsquo;t nothin&rsquo; to be &rsquo;shamed of in a chaste woman&rsquo;s
+kiss&mdash;unawares&mdash;which men don&rsquo;t get too often in their lives, I
+can assure &rsquo;em;&rdquo;&mdash;her eye surveyed Lucy&rsquo;s figure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms, and
+drew her into feminine depths. &ldquo;Oh, you blessed!&rdquo; she cried in most
+meaning tone, &ldquo;you good, lovin&rsquo;, proper little wife, you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it, Mrs. Berry!&rdquo; lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent
+blue eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As if I couldn&rsquo;t see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or
+I&rsquo;d &rsquo;a marked ye the fast shock. Thinkin&rsquo; to deceive
+me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s eyes spoke generations. Lucy&rsquo;s wavered; she coloured
+all over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a sweet one,&rdquo; murmured the soft woman, patting her
+back, and rocking her. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a rose, you are! and a bud on your
+stalk. Haven&rsquo;t told a word to your husband, my dear?&rdquo; she asked
+quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right. We&rsquo;ll give him a surprise; let it come all at
+once on him, and thinks he&mdash;losin&rsquo; breath &lsquo;I&rsquo;m a
+father!&rsquo; Nor a hint even you haven&rsquo;t give him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! you are a sweet one,&rdquo; said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more
+closely and lovingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
+persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
+fingers&rsquo; ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: &ldquo;Now
+this right everything&mdash;a baby in the balance! Now I say this angel-infant
+come from on high. It&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s messenger, my love! and it&rsquo;s
+not wrong to say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn&rsquo;t &rsquo;a had
+one&mdash;not for all the tryin&rsquo; in the world, you wouldn&rsquo;t, and
+some tries hard enough, poor creatures! Now let us rejice and make merry!
+I&rsquo;m for cryin&rsquo; and laughin&rsquo;, one and the same. This is the
+blessed seal of matrimony, which Berry never stamp on me. It&rsquo;s be hoped
+it&rsquo;s a boy. Make that man a grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and
+you got him safe. Oh! this is what I call happiness, and I&rsquo;ll have my tea
+a little stronger in consequence. I declare I could get tipsy to know this
+joyful news.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate and she
+drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste was hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Says Lucy demurely: &ldquo;Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
+books.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I?&rdquo; replies Berry. &ldquo;Belike I do. Since what you
+done&rsquo;s so good, my darlin&rsquo;, I&rsquo;m agreeable to anything. A fig
+for all the lords! They can&rsquo;t come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and
+Travels, my dear, and Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle
+in your own dear way, and that&rsquo;s all I cares for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, but you don&rsquo;t understand,&rdquo; persists Lucy. &ldquo;I only
+read sensible books, and talk of serious things, because I&rsquo;m sure...
+because I have heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don&rsquo;t you understand
+now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. &ldquo;Only to think of her bein&rsquo; that
+thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of one religion
+ain&rsquo;t as good as another, after that. Why, you want to make him a
+historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who&rsquo;ve been comin&rsquo;
+here playin&rsquo; at wolf, you been and made him&mdash;unbeknown to
+himself&mdash;sort o&rsquo; tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that
+little women ain&rsquo;t got art ekal to the cunningest of &rsquo;em. Oh! I
+understand. Why, to be sure, didn&rsquo;t I know a lady, a widow of a
+clergyman: he was a postermost child, and afore his birth that women read
+nothin&rsquo; but Blair&rsquo;s &lsquo;Grave&rsquo; over and over again, from
+the end to the beginnin&rsquo;;&mdash;that&rsquo;s a serious book!&mdash;very
+hard readin&rsquo;!&mdash;and at four years of age that child that come of it
+reelly was the piousest infant!&mdash;he was like a little curate. His eyes was
+up; he talked so solemn.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate&rsquo;s
+appearance and manner of speaking. &ldquo;So she got her wish, for one!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at this lady Lucy laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to sleep
+with her. &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin&rsquo;
+beside a woman,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;I know it were to me shortly
+after my Berry, and I felt it. It don&rsquo;t somehow seem nat&rsquo;ral after
+matrimony&mdash;a woman in your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for the
+cold sheets do give ye the creeps when you&rsquo;ve been used to that
+that&rsquo;s different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then Lucy
+opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced linen, all adapted
+for a very small body, all the work of her own hands: and Mrs. Berry praised
+them and her. &ldquo;You been guessing a boy&mdash;woman-like,&rdquo; she said.
+Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed by the fire, and knelt at the
+bedside, with their arms about each other, praying; both praying for the unborn
+child; and Mrs. Berry pressed Lucy&rsquo;s waist the moment she was about to
+breathe the petition to heaven to shield and bless that coming life; and
+thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a strong love for her. Then Lucy got into
+bed first, leaving Berry to put out the light, and before she did so, Berry
+leaned over her, and eyed her roguishly, saying, &ldquo;I never see ye like
+this, but I&rsquo;m half in love with ye myself, you blushin&rsquo; beauty!
+Sweet&rsquo;s your eyes, and your hair do take one so&mdash;lyin&rsquo; back.
+I&rsquo;d never forgive my father if he kep me away from ye four-and-twenty
+hours just. Husband o&rsquo; that!&rdquo; Berry pointed at the young
+wife&rsquo;s loveliness. &ldquo;Ye look so ripe with kisses, and there they are
+a-languishin&rsquo;!&mdash;... You never look so but in your bed, ye
+beauty!&mdash;just as it ought to be.&rdquo; Lucy had to pretend to rise to put
+out the light before Berry would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy. Then
+they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their departure
+to-morrow, and reviewed Richard&rsquo;s emotions when he came to hear he was
+going to be made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy&rsquo;s delicious shivers
+when Richard was again in his rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now
+usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things; enough to make one fancy the
+adage subverted, that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew such glowing
+pictures of bliss within the law and the limits of the conscience, till at
+last, worn out, Lucy murmured &ldquo;Peepy, dear Berry,&rdquo; and the soft
+woman gradually ceased her chirp.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart beside
+her, and listening to Lucy&rsquo;s breath as it came and went; squeezing the
+fair sleeper&rsquo;s hand now and then, to ease her love as her reflections
+warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire hills, and sprang white
+foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It passed, leaving a thin cloth of
+snow on the wintry land. The moon shone brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog
+bark. His bark was savage and persistent. She was roused by the noise. By and
+by she fancied she heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that
+the house-door opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in
+the midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and bolted the door of
+the room, assured herself of Lucy&rsquo;s unconsciousness, and went on tiptoe
+to the window. The trees all stood white to the north; the ground glittered;
+the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her bosom, and peeped as
+close over into the garden as the situation of the window permitted. Berry was
+a soft, not a timid, woman: and it happened this night that her thoughts were
+above the fears of the dark. She was sure of the voices; curiosity without a
+shade of alarm held her on the watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel
+round her neck and shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth as well
+as she could, and remained stationary. The low hum of the voices came to a
+break; something was said in a louder tone; the house-door quietly shut; a man
+walked out of the garden into the road. He paused opposite her window, and
+Berry let the blind go back to its place, and peeped from behind an edge of it.
+He was in the shadow of the house, so that it was impossible to discern much of
+his figure. After some minutes he walked rapidly away, and Berry returned to
+the bed an icicle, from which Lucy&rsquo;s limbs sensitively shrank.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in the
+night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top. Mrs. Berry went into
+the garden. The snow was partially melted; all save one spot, just under the
+portal, and there she saw the print of a man&rsquo;s foot. By some strange
+guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of Richard&rsquo;s boots. She
+did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of the boot in that solitary
+footmark. There could be no doubt that it fitted. She tried it from heel to toe
+a dozen times.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap40"></a>
+CHAPTER XL</h2>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher who
+says, &rsquo;Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not arrived
+thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His deep love for
+him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and more tenacious vanity.
+Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature who had robbed him of his son
+and hewed at his System, were in his heart of hearts. This he knew; and in his
+own mind he took credit for his softness. But the world must not suppose him
+soft; the world must think he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what
+would his long absence signify?&mdash;Something highly unphilosophical. So,
+though love was strong, and was moving him to a straightforward course, the
+last tug of vanity drew him still aslant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a necessity.
+As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one who entirely put
+aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental duty, based on the science
+of life, was paramount: a Scientific Humanist, in short.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish&rsquo;s
+manner when he did appear. &ldquo;At last!&rdquo; said the lady, in a sad way
+that sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course, nothing
+to reproach himself with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But where was Richard?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he had gone,&rdquo; said the baronet, &ldquo;he would have
+anticipated me by a few hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and shown
+his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at him wistfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not seem to
+catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent, more flattering
+to their grandeur than to their influence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin&rsquo;s pitch of
+self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the rumour
+of him that was about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If,&rdquo; said the baronet, &ldquo;this person, his wife, is what you
+paint her, I do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If she
+is one to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him. It is
+impossible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The lady saw one thing to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call her to you,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Have her with you at Raynham.
+Recognize her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
+wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If she is with
+you his way will be clear. Will you do that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish&rsquo;s proposition was
+far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by nature, have no idea of science.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be between
+me and my son.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything, when he
+had just brought himself to do so much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had expected and
+had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook his hand respectfully,
+and inquired after his health with the common social solicitude. He then said:
+&ldquo;During your absence, sir, I have taken the liberty, without consulting
+you, to do something in which you are more deeply concerned than myself. I have
+taken upon myself to find out my mother and place her under my care. I trust
+you will not think I have done wrong. I acted as I thought best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin replied: &ldquo;You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself in
+such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself in imagining
+that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you did.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not deceived myself, sir,&rdquo; said Richard, and the interview
+was over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
+satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for tones
+indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard gave him none
+of those. The young man did not even face him as he spoke: if their eyes met by
+chance, Richard&rsquo;s were defiantly cold. His whole bearing was changed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This rash marriage has altered him,&rdquo; said the very just man of
+science in life: and that meant: &ldquo;it has debased him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He pursued his reflections. &ldquo;I see in him the desperate maturity of a
+suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never lost,
+what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost, perhaps to me! lost to him!
+It may show itself in his children.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting embryos: but it
+was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin. Bitterly he felt the injury to
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at the hotel
+while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told him a tale that threw
+Christian light on one part of Richard&rsquo;s nature. But this might gratify
+the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man of science. A Feverel, his
+son, would not do less, he thought. He sat down deliberately to study his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and drank; joked and
+laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh bottle. He
+talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound forced. In all he
+did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth who sees a future before
+him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be carelessness, and wanton blood, for
+no one could say he had much on his mind. The man of science was not reckoning
+that Richard also might have learned to act and wear a mask. Dead
+subjects&mdash;this is to say, people not on their guard&mdash;he could
+penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare chance, as scientific men well know,
+that one has an opportunity of examining the structure of the living.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were engaged to dine
+with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys&rsquo;, and walked down to her in the afternoon,
+father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them. Previously the offended father
+had condescended to inform his son that it would shortly be time for him to
+return to his wife, indicating that arrangements would ultimately be ordered to
+receive her at Raynham. Richard had replied nothing; which might mean excess of
+gratitude, or hypocrisy in concealing his pleasure, or any one of the thousand
+shifts by which gratified human nature expresses itself when all is made to run
+smooth with it. Now Mrs. Berry had her surprise ready charged for the young
+husband. She had Lucy in her own house waiting for him. Every day she expected
+him to call and be overcome by the rapturous surprise, and every day, knowing
+his habit of frequenting the park, she marched Lucy thither, under the plea
+that Master Richard, whom she had already christened, should have an airing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington chestnuts, when
+these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the hope she bore in her bosom, she
+was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman galloping by at the moment. Mrs.
+Berry plucked at her gown once or twice, to prepare her eyes for the shock, but
+Lucy&rsquo;s head was still half averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry,
+&ldquo;Twon&rsquo;t hurt her if she go into his arms head foremost.&rdquo; They
+were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob preliminary. Richard held her silent
+with a terrible face; he grasped her arm, and put her behind him. Other people
+intervened. Lucy saw nothing to account for Berry&rsquo;s excessive flutter.
+Berry threw it on the air and some breakfast bacon, which, she said, she knew
+in the morning while she ate it, was bad for the bile, and which probably was
+the cause of her bursting into tears, much to Lucy&rsquo;s astonishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all&mdash;&rdquo; Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned
+sideways, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s all stomach, my dear. Don&rsquo;t ye mind,&rdquo;
+and becoming aware of her unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the
+shelter of the elms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have a singular manner with old ladies,&rdquo; said Sir Austin to
+his son, after Berry had been swept aside. &ldquo;Scarcely courteous. She
+behaved like a mad woman, certainly.&mdash;Are you ill, my son?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness. The
+baronet sought Adrian&rsquo;s eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed, and he
+had a glimpse of Richard&rsquo;s countenance while disposing of Berry. Had Lucy
+recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly. As she did not, he
+thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave matters as they were. He
+answered the baronet&rsquo;s look with a shrug.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you ill, Richard?&rdquo; Sir Austin again asked his son.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come on, sir! come on!&rdquo; cried Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His father&rsquo;s further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the
+Foreys&rsquo;, gave poor Berry a character which one who lectures on matrimony,
+and has kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear the very title of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard will go to his wife to-morrow,&rdquo; Sir Austin said to Adrian
+some time before they went in to dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by the side
+of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the baronet&rsquo;s
+acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a person, Adrian said:
+&ldquo;That was his wife, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had torn open
+the young man&rsquo;s skull, and some blast of battle laid his palpitating
+organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and his heart; and with
+the grief and terror of one whose mental habit was ever to pierce to extremes.
+Not altogether conscious that he had hitherto played with life, he felt that he
+was suddenly plunged into the stormful reality of it. He projected to speak
+plainly to his son on all points that night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard is very gay,&rdquo; Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All will be right with him to-morrow,&rdquo; he replied; for the game
+had been in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine, that
+having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a certain extent
+secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I notice he has rather a wild laugh&mdash;I don&rsquo;t exactly like his
+eyes,&rdquo; said Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will see a change in him to-morrow,&rdquo; the man of science
+remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In the middle
+of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law, worthy John Todhunter,
+reached the house, stating that Clare was alarmingly ill, bidding her come
+instantly. She cast about for some one to accompany her, and fixed on Richard.
+Before he would give his consent for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak
+with him apart, and in that interview he said to his son: &ldquo;My dear
+Richard! it was my intention that we should come to an understanding together
+this night. But the time is short&mdash;poor Helen cannot spare many minutes.
+Let me then say that you deceived me, and that I forgive you. We fix our seal
+on the past. You will bring your wife to me when you return.&rdquo; And very
+cheerfully the baronet looked down on the generous future he thus founded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, my son, when you bring her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you mocking me, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, what do you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I ask you to receive her at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be kept
+from your happiness many days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it will be some time, sir!&rdquo; said Richard, sighing deeply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
+play with your first duty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is my first duty, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since you are married, to be with your wife.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!&rdquo; said Richard to
+himself, not intending irony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you receive her at once?&rdquo; he asked resolutely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet was clouded by his son&rsquo;s reception of his graciousness. His
+grateful prospect had formerly been Richard&rsquo;s marriage&mdash;the
+culmination of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He
+now looked for a pretty scene in recompense:&mdash;Richard leading up his wife
+to him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one ostentatious
+minute in his embrace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said: &ldquo;Before you return, I demur to receiving her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well, sir,&rdquo; replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken
+all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash
+proceeding!&rdquo; the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he
+had uttered the words, Richard&rsquo;s eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It
+pained him, but he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain
+from glancing acutely and asking: &ldquo;Do you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Regret it, sir?&rdquo; The question aroused one of those struggles in
+the young man&rsquo;s breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and
+which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not. Richard&rsquo;s
+eyes had the light of the desert.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you?&rdquo; his father repeated. &ldquo;You tempt me&mdash;I almost
+fear you do.&rdquo; At the thought&mdash;for he expressed his mind&mdash;the
+pity that he had for Richard was not pure gold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is
+to have taken one of God&rsquo;s precious angels and chained her to misery! Ask
+me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand over her and
+see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes, I do! Would
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
+mind&rsquo;s eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and
+won&rsquo;t understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon,&rdquo; he said
+gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: &ldquo;I passed her because I
+could not do otherwise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your wife, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! my wife!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she had seen you, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God spared her that!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard&rsquo;s hat and
+greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture. Dimples
+of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her brother&rsquo;s
+perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare, deploring his fatuity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel with
+Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. &ldquo;Somebody has kissed him, sir,
+and the chaste boy can&rsquo;t get over it.&rdquo; This absurd suggestion did
+more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable reasonable key
+to Richard&rsquo;s conduct. It set him thinking that it might be a prudish
+strain in the young man&rsquo;s mind, due to the System in difficulties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I may have been wrong in one thing,&rdquo; he said, with an air of the
+utmost doubt of it. &ldquo;I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much
+liberty during his probation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes; that is on me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges, and by
+some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the telegraph
+to John Todhunter&rsquo;s uxorious distress at a toothache, or possibly the
+first symptoms of an heir to his house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That child&rsquo;s mind has disease in it... She is not sound,&rdquo;
+said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry. Her wish
+to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated, she was
+ushered upstairs into his room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to occupy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&rsquo; ma&rsquo;am, you have something to say,&rdquo; observed the
+baronet, for she seemed loth to commence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wishin&rsquo; I hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;&rdquo; Mrs. Berry took him up, and
+mindful of the good rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: &ldquo;I dare say,
+Sir Austin, you don&rsquo;t remember me, and I little thought when last we
+parted our meeting &rsquo;d be like this. Twenty year don&rsquo;t go over one
+without showin&rsquo; it, no more than twenty ox. It&rsquo;s a might o&rsquo;
+time,&mdash;twenty year! Leastways not quite twenty, it ain&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Round figures are best,&rdquo; Adrian remarked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
+married!&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had assisted his
+son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience to hear himself addressed
+on a family matter; but he was naturally courteous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us as
+have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that we parted
+with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so sweet! so strong!
+so fat!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian laughed aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: &ldquo;I wished
+afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not cut
+short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey,
+ain&rsquo;t one o&rsquo; them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished.
+And a pension to me now, it&rsquo;s something more than it were. For a pension
+and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was&mdash;that&rsquo;s a bait many a
+man&rsquo;ll bite, that won&rsquo;t so a forsaken wife!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will speak to the point, ma&rsquo;am, I will listen to
+you,&rdquo; the baronet interrupted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the beginnin&rsquo; that&rsquo;s the worst, and that&rsquo;s
+over, thank the Lord! So I&rsquo;ll speak, Sir Austin, and say my
+say:&mdash;Lord speed me! Believin&rsquo; our idees o&rsquo; matrimony to be
+sim&rsquo;lar, then, I&rsquo;ll say, once married&mdash;married for life! Yes!
+I don&rsquo;t even like widows. For I can&rsquo;t stop at the grave. Not at the
+tomb I can&rsquo;t stop. My husband&rsquo;s my husband, and if I&rsquo;m a body
+at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the husband o&rsquo;
+my body; and to think of two claimin&rsquo; of me then&mdash;it makes me hot
+all over. Such is my notion of that state &rsquo;tween man and woman. No
+givin&rsquo; in marriage, o&rsquo; course I know; and if so I&rsquo;m
+single.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet suppressed a smile. &ldquo;Really, my good woman, you wander very
+much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Beggin&rsquo; pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the
+same, and I&rsquo;m comin&rsquo; to it. Ac-knowledgin&rsquo; our error,
+it&rsquo;d done, and bein&rsquo; done, it&rsquo;s writ aloft. Oh! if you ony
+knew what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed; &rsquo;taint all of humble
+birth that&rsquo;s unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too: She reads
+History! She talk that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that
+she&rsquo;s a prey to the artful o&rsquo; men&mdash;unpertected. And it&rsquo;s
+a young marriage&mdash;but there&rsquo;s no fear for her, as far as she go. The
+fear&rsquo;s t&rsquo;other way. There&rsquo;s that in a man&mdash;at the
+commencement&mdash;which make of him Lord knows what if you any way interferes:
+whereas a woman bides quiet! It&rsquo;s consolation catch her, which is what we
+mean by seduein&rsquo;. Whereas a man&mdash;he&rsquo;s a savage!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, ma&rsquo;am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would
+only come to it quickly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then here&rsquo;s my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there
+ain&rsquo;t another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me.
+And as for her, I&rsquo;ll risk sayin&rsquo;&mdash;it&rsquo;s done, and no
+harm&mdash;you might search England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid
+that&rsquo;s his match like his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together
+as should be? O Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and
+exposed, I went, and fetched her out of seducers&rsquo; ways&mdash;which they
+may say what they like, but the inn&rsquo;cent is most open to when
+they&rsquo;re healthy and confidin&rsquo;&mdash;I fetch her, and&mdash;the
+liberty&mdash;boxed her safe in my own house. So much for that sweet! That you
+may do with women. But it&rsquo;s him&mdash;Mr. Richard&mdash;I am bold, I
+know, but there&mdash;I&rsquo;m in for it, and the Lord&rsquo;ll help me!
+It&rsquo;s him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a young
+marriage. It&rsquo;s him, and&mdash;I say nothin&rsquo; of her, and how sweet
+she bears it, and it&rsquo;s eating her at a time when Natur&rsquo; should have
+no other trouble but the one that&rsquo;s goin&rsquo; on&mdash;it&rsquo;s him,
+and I ask&mdash;so bold&mdash;shall there&mdash;and a Christian gentlemen his
+father&mdash;shall there be a tug &rsquo;tween him as a son and him as a
+husband&mdash;soon to be somethin&rsquo; else? I speak bold out&mdash;I&rsquo;d
+have sons obey their fathers, but a priest&rsquo;s words spoke over them, which
+they&rsquo;re now in my ears, I say I ain&rsquo;t a doubt on
+earth&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure there ain&rsquo;t one in heaven&mdash;which
+dooty&rsquo;s the holier of the two.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the sexes were
+undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was slightly
+disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old lady&rsquo;s
+doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred that he had
+latterly followed it out. He sat cross-legged and silent, a finger to his
+temple.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One gets so addle-gated thinkin&rsquo; many things,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Berry, simply. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s why we see wonder clever people goin&rsquo;
+wrong&mdash;to my mind. I think it&rsquo;s al&rsquo;ays the plan in a dielemmer
+to pray God and walk forward.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet&rsquo;s thoughts, and she
+had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth, by which
+Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a principle of his
+own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to comprehend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time to
+direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave her his hand, saying, &ldquo;My son has gone out of town to see his
+cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they will
+both come to me at Raynham.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
+perpendicularly. &ldquo;He pass her like a stranger in the park this
+evenin&rsquo;,&rdquo; she faltered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah?&rdquo; said the baronet. &ldquo;Yes, well! they will be at Raynham
+before the week is over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. &ldquo;Not of his own accord he pass that
+sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must beg you not to intrude further, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All&rsquo;s well that ends well,&rdquo; she said to herself.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s just bad inquirin&rsquo; too close among men. We must take
+&rsquo;em somethin&rsquo; like Providence&mdash;as they come. Thank heaven! I
+kep&rsquo; back the baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I have not met a better in my life,&rdquo; said the baronet,
+mingling praise and sarcasm.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her white
+hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head to feet. She
+needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for the first time. He
+sees the sculpture of clay&mdash;the spark gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have spoken
+nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead, and none knew
+her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When hours of weeping had silenced the mother&rsquo;s anguish, she, for some
+comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard, speaking low
+in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was his own lost ring
+Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her husband that Clare&rsquo;s
+last request had been that neither of the rings should be removed. She had
+written it; she would not speak it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me
+between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering, as she
+wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare&rsquo;s dead hand,
+Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to enter it,
+reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had buried while she lived, arose with
+her death. He saw it play like flame across her marble features. The memory of
+her voice was like a knife at his nerves. His coldness to her started up
+accusingly: her meekness was bitter blame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his bedroom, with a
+face so white that he asked himself if aught worse could happen to a mother
+than the loss of her child. Choking she said to him, &ldquo;Read this,&rdquo;
+and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling in his hand. She would not
+breathe to him what it was. She entreated him not to open it before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;tell me what you think. John must not
+hear of it. I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My Diary&rdquo; was written in the round hand of Clare&rsquo;s childhood
+on the first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard&rsquo;s fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put
+it under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He does not
+notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but Richard is not,
+and never will be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish prayer
+to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her growing mind in his history.
+As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made much of little
+trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted each
+other, and I told him he used to call them &lsquo;coals-sleeps&rsquo; when he
+was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to be told
+he was ever a baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek
+affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress and pink
+ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He read on:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure there
+is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a great General and
+going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself as a boy and go after him,
+and he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray he will never, never be
+wounded. I wonder what I should feel if Richard was ever to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me. Richard
+said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is angry with me because
+I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I know I am not looking
+after earthworms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then it came to a period when the words: &ldquo;Richard kissed me,&rdquo; stood
+by themselves, and marked a day in her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He read one of
+his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that ambition.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Thy truth to me is truer<br/>
+    Than horse, or dog, or blade;<br/>
+Thy vows to me are fewer<br/>
+    Than ever maiden made.<br/>
+<br/>
+Thou steppest from thy splendour<br/>
+    To make my life a song:<br/>
+My bosom shall be tender<br/>
+    As thine has risen strong.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the verses were transcribed. &ldquo;It is he who is the humble
+knight,&rdquo; Clare explained at the close, &ldquo;and his lady, is a Queen.
+Any Queen would throw her crown away for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men. Something
+tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed in blue. He said
+Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek. Richard never kisses me on the
+mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and kissed him while he was asleep. He
+sleeps with one arm under his head, and the other out on the bed. I moved away
+a bit of his hair that was over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have one piece.
+I do not let anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama. She says I want iron. I
+am sure I do not. I like to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard&rsquo;s
+is Richard Doria Feverel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music of that
+name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow now behind the
+hills of death.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to belong to her.
+The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare&rsquo;s. Clare&rsquo;s voice
+clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages. She spoke of
+his marriage, and her finding the ring.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning. I saw
+him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His wife must be so
+beautiful! Richard&rsquo;s wife! Perhaps he will love me better now he is
+married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful. If I can help him
+I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God hears poor sinners&rsquo;
+prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do. They say I am good, but I
+know. When I look on the ground I am not looking after earthworms, as he said.
+Oh, do forgive me, God!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey her
+mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have seen Richard. Richard despises me,&rdquo; was the next entry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine handwriting
+like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible conclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my
+fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should not have
+kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth was on
+mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further: &ldquo;I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than endure
+it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would do? I think if
+my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so kind, and tries to make
+me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I pray to God half the night. I seem
+to be losing sight of my God the more I pray.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be mounting
+and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words in earnest? Did
+she lie there dead&mdash;he shrouded the thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A quarter to one o&rsquo;clock. I shall not be alive this time
+to-morrow. I shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the
+fields together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children,
+but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he
+said&mdash;if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I
+made a vow to wear it for ever and ever... It is not mama&rsquo;s fault. She
+does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward, nor am
+I. He hates cowards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead
+he will hear what I say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard just now Richard call distinctly&mdash;Clare, come out to me.
+Surely he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very
+cold.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if her hand
+had lost mastery over the pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I am
+not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words.
+&lsquo;Clari,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Don Ricardo,&rsquo; and his laugh. He used to
+be full of fun. Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he
+had a friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a young
+man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been happier. I must have
+died. God never looks on me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is past two o&rsquo;clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be
+very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not
+over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of existence
+left half the number of pages white.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay, the same
+impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved&mdash;to him she
+had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with strange
+tidings&mdash;it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to have been
+speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that still heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her alone,
+till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent him to the
+window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine, hung with frosty
+mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent fold. Death in life it
+sounded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare&rsquo;s bed. She knelt by his
+side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but neither of
+them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in common. They prayed
+God to forgive her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother breathed no
+wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;the worst is over for me. I have no one
+to love but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this...
+Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare my
+brother what I suffer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He answered the broken spirit: &ldquo;I have killed one. She sees me as I am. I
+cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her hand, and
+were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt. Go you to her, and
+when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head that&mdash;No! say that I
+am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me. If I find it I shall come
+to claim her. If not, God help us all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he went
+forth.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap41"></a>
+CHAPTER XLI</h2>
+
+<p>
+A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of
+Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I&rsquo;m not a man of
+fashion, happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had been in
+the wilderness five years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton is to
+receive Liberty&rsquo;s pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a
+cycle&rsquo;s notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out; Demos
+and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see, your absence
+has worked wonders. Depart for another five years, and you will return to
+ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an equality made perfect by
+universal prostration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin indulged him in a laugh. &ldquo;I want to hear about ourselves. How is
+old Ricky?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know of his&mdash;what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed
+to jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?&mdash;a very charming little woman
+she makes, by the way&mdash;presentable! quite old Anacreon&rsquo;s rose in
+milk. Well! everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It
+continued to flourish in spite. It&rsquo;s in a consumption now,
+though&mdash;emaciated, lean, raw, spectral! I&rsquo;ve this morning escaped
+from Raynham to avoid the sight of it. I have brought our genial uncle Hippias
+to town&mdash;a delightful companion! I said to him: &lsquo;We&rsquo;ve had a
+fine Spring.&rsquo; &lsquo;Ugh!&rsquo; he answers, &lsquo;there&rsquo;s a time
+when you come to think the Spring old.&rsquo; You should have heard how he
+trained out the &lsquo;old.&rsquo; I felt something like decay in my sap just
+to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle Hippias has
+been unfairly hit below the belt. Let&rsquo;s guard ourselves there, and go and
+order dinner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s Ricky now, and what is he doing?&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A child? Richard has one?&rdquo; Austin&rsquo;s clear eyes shone with
+pleasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it&rsquo;s not common among your tropical savages. He has one:
+one as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It bore the
+marriage&mdash;the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby,
+&rsquo;twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy. I
+assure you it&rsquo;s quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every
+hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a consummate
+cure, or a happy release.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By degrees Austin learnt the baronet&rsquo;s proceedings, and smiled sadly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How has Ricky turned out?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;What sort of a
+character has he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it. Character? he
+has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it.
+Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the maiden
+days of Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your fashion,
+Austin,&mdash;you have something to answer for. Unfortunately he began with the
+feminine side of it. Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to
+people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the
+guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work. Oh, horror! he
+never expected that. Conceive the System in the flesh, and you have our
+Richard. The consequence is, that this male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise,
+though the gates are open for him, the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted
+one awaits him fruitful within. We heard of him last that he was trying the
+German waters&mdash;preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from
+the subjugation of the Teuton. Let&rsquo;s hope they&rsquo;ll wash him. He is
+in the company of Lady Judith Felle&mdash;your old friend, the ardent female
+Radical who married the decrepit to carry out her principles. They always marry
+English lords, or foreign princes: I admire their tactics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but she was always
+too sentimental,&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I like her for her
+sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are sure to live long and die fat.
+Feeling, that&rsquo;s the slayer, coz. Sentiment! &rsquo;tis the cajolery of
+existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable. Would
+that I had more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not much changed, Adrian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not a Radical, Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian&rsquo;s figurative speech, instructed
+Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of statuesque
+offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-in-law and grandson.
+That was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the System to swallow the baby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re in a tangle,&rdquo; said the wise youth. &ldquo;Time will
+extricate us, I presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy&rsquo;s place of residence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll go to her by and by,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall go and see her now,&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we&rsquo;ll go and order the dinner first, coz.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Give me her address.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard,&rdquo; Adrian
+objected. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you care what you eat?&rdquo; he roared hoarsely,
+looking humorously hurt. &ldquo;I daresay not. A slice out of him that&rsquo;s
+handy&mdash;sauce du ciel! Go, batten on the baby, cannibal. Dinner at
+seven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy&rsquo;s, and strolled off to do the
+better thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup. Posting him
+on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had vaulted lightly and
+thereby indicated that he was positively coming the next day. She forgot him in
+the bustle of her duties and the absorption of her faculties in thoughts of the
+incomparable stranger Lucy had presented to the world, till a knock at the
+street-door reminded her. &ldquo;There he is!&rdquo; she cried, as she ran to
+open to him. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s my stranger come!&rdquo; Never was a
+woman&rsquo;s faith in omens so justified. The stranger desired to see Mrs.
+Richard Feverel. He said his name was Mr. Austin Wentworth. Mrs. Berry clasped
+her hands, exclaiming, &ldquo;Come at last!&rdquo; and ran bolt out of the
+house to look up and down the street. Presently she returned with many excuses
+for her rudeness, saying: &ldquo;I expected to see her comin&rsquo; home, Mr.
+Wentworth. Every day twice a day she go out to give her blessed angel an
+airing. No leavin&rsquo; the child with nursemaids for her! She is a mother!
+and good milk, too, thank the Lord! though her heart&rsquo;s so low.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the history of the young couple
+and her participation in it, and admired the beard. &ldquo;Although I&rsquo;d
+swear you don&rsquo;t wear it for ornament, now!&rdquo; she said, having in the
+first impulse designed a stroke at man&rsquo;s vanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication, and with dejected head
+and joined hands threw out dark hints about Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case, Lucy came in
+preceding the baby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am Austin Wentworth,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand. They read each
+other&rsquo;s faces, these two, and smiled kinship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your name is Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She affirmed it softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And mine is Austin, as you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy&rsquo;s charms to subdue him, and presented
+Richard&rsquo;s representative, who, seeing a new face, suffered himself to be
+contemplated before he commenced crying aloud and knocking at the doors of
+Nature for something that was due to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t he a lusty darlin&rsquo;?&rdquo; says Mrs. Berry.
+&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t he like his own father? There can&rsquo;t be no doubt about
+zoo, zoo pitty pet. Look at his fists. Ain&rsquo;t he got passion? Ain&rsquo;t
+he a splendid roarer? Oh!&rdquo; and she went off rapturously into
+baby-language.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fine boy, certainly. Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for further proof,
+desiring Austin&rsquo;s confirmation as to their being dumplings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid roarer out of the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She might a done it here,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+no prettier sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see that! He&rsquo;s
+off in his heroics&mdash;he want to be doin&rsquo; all sorts o&rsquo; things: I
+say he&rsquo;ll never do anything grander than that baby. You should &rsquo;a
+seen her uncle over that baby&mdash;he came here, for I said, you shall see
+your own family, my dear, and so she thinks. He come, and he laughed over that
+baby in the joy of his heart, poor man! he cried, he did. You should see that
+Mr. Thompson, Mr. Wentworth&mdash;a friend o&rsquo; Mr. Richard&rsquo;s, and a
+very modest-minded young gentleman&mdash;he worships her in his innocence.
+It&rsquo;s a sight to see him with that baby. My belief is he&rsquo;s unhappy
+&rsquo;cause he can&rsquo;t anyways be nurse-maid to him. O Mr. Wentworth! what
+do you think of her, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin&rsquo;s reply was as satisfactory as a man&rsquo;s poor speech could
+make it. He heard that Lady Feverel was in the house, and Mrs. Berry prepared
+the way for him to pay his respects to her. Then Mrs. Berry ran to Lucy, and
+the house buzzed with new life. The simple creatures felt in Austin&rsquo;s
+presence something good among them. &ldquo;He don&rsquo;t speak much,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;but I see by his eye he mean a deal. He ain&rsquo;t one
+o&rsquo; yer long-word gentry, who&rsquo;s all gay deceivers, every one of
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast. &ldquo;I wonder what he
+thinks of me, Mrs. Berry? I could not speak to him. I loved him before I saw
+him. I knew what his face was like.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He looks proper even with a beard, and that&rsquo;s a trial for a
+virtuous man,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;One sees straight through the hair
+with him. Think! he&rsquo;ll think what any man&rsquo;d think&mdash;you
+a-suckin spite o&rsquo; all your sorrow, my sweet,&mdash;and my Berry
+talkin&rsquo; of his Roman matrons!&mdash;here&rsquo;s a English wife&rsquo;ll
+match &rsquo;em all! that&rsquo;s what he thinks. And now that leetle dark
+under yer eye&rsquo;ll clear, my darlin&rsquo;, now he&rsquo;ve come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more than the peace she had
+in being near Richard&rsquo;s best friend. When she sat down to tea it was with
+a sense that the little room that held her was her home perhaps for many a day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin&rsquo;s dinner. During
+the meal he entertained them with anecdotes of his travels. Poor Lucy had no
+temptation to try to conquer Austin. That heroic weakness of hers was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry had said: &ldquo;Three cups&mdash;I goes no further,&rdquo; and Lucy
+had rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin, who was in the thick of a
+Brazilian forest, asked her if she was a good traveller.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean, can you start at a minute&rsquo;s notice?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy hesitated, and then said; &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; decisively, to which Mrs.
+Berry added, that she was not a &ldquo;luggage-woman.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There used to be a train at seven o&rsquo;clock,&rdquo; Austin remarked,
+consulting his watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two women were silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy&rsquo;s lips parted to speak. She could not answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s dropping hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Joy and deliverance!&rdquo; she exclaimed with a foundering voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you come?&rdquo; Austin kindly asked again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Mrs.
+Berry cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones with a
+mighty whisper: &ldquo;She&rsquo;s thinking what&rsquo;s to be done with
+baby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must learn to travel,&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Berry, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll be his nuss, and bear
+him, a sweet! Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham Abbey!
+but it&rsquo;s nurse-woman now, you must say. Let us be goin&rsquo; on the
+spot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool the heaven-sent
+resolve. Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy alternately. She was wishing
+to ask a multitude of questions. His face reassured her, and saying: &ldquo;I
+will be dressed instantly,&rdquo; she also left the room. Talking, bustling,
+preparing, wrapping up my lord, and looking to their neatnesses, they were
+nevertheless ready within the time prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood
+humming over the baby. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll sleep it through,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s had enough for an alderman, and goes to sleep sound after his
+dinner, he do, a duck!&rdquo; Before they departed, Lucy ran up to Lady
+Feverel. She returned for the small one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One moment, Mr. Wentworth?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just two,&rdquo; said Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were full of
+tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She shall,&rdquo; Austin said simply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all upon the
+great act of courage she was performing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do hope baby will not wake,&rdquo; was her chief solicitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He!&rdquo; cries nurse-woman Berry, from the rear, &ldquo;his little
+tum-tum&rsquo;s as tight as he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty! and
+ye may take yer oath he never wakes till that&rsquo;s slack. He&rsquo;ve got
+character of his own, a blessed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by storm. The
+baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and rejoicing in the
+pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and to himself. Hearing
+Austin&rsquo;s name sonorously pronounced by the man of calves, he looked up
+from his book, and held out his hand. &ldquo;Glad to see you, Austin.&rdquo;
+His appearance betokened complete security. The next minute he found himself
+escaladed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room besides
+Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the lamp: Mrs. Berry close to the door. The
+door was half open, and passing through it might be seen the petrified figure
+of a fine man. The baronet glancing over the lamp rose at Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s
+signification of a woman&rsquo;s personality. Austin stepped back and led Lucy
+to him by the hand. &ldquo;I have brought Richard&rsquo;s wife, sir,&rdquo; he
+said with a pleased, perfectly uncalculating, countenance, that was disarming.
+Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed. She felt her two hands taken, and heard a
+kind voice. Could it be possible it belonged to the dreadful father of her
+husband? She lifted her eyes nervously: her hands were still detained. The
+baronet contemplated Richard&rsquo;s choice. Had he ever had a rivalry with
+those pure eyes? He saw the pain of her position shooting across her brows,
+and, uttering gentle inquiries as to her health, placed her in a seat. Mrs.
+Berry had already fallen into a chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What aspect do you like for your bedroom?&mdash;East?&rdquo; said the
+baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: &ldquo;Am I to stay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps you had better take to Richard&rsquo;s room at once,&rdquo; he
+pursued. &ldquo;You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and
+will feel more at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy&rsquo;s colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should
+say, &ldquo;The day is ours!&rdquo; Undoubtedly&mdash;strange as it was to
+think it&mdash;the fortress was carried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy is rather tired,&rdquo; said Austin, and to hear her Christian name
+thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet was about to touch the bell. &ldquo;But have you come alone?&rdquo;
+he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to require effort
+for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp, her agitation
+could not escape notice. The blissful bundle shook in her arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By the way, what is he to me?&rdquo; Austin inquired generally as he
+went and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. &ldquo;My relationship is not so
+defined as yours, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson with
+the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment the mother of
+anybody&rsquo;s child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I really think he&rsquo;s like Richard,&rdquo; Austin laughed. Lucy
+looked: I am sure he is!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As like as one to one,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa
+not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. &ldquo;And he&rsquo;s
+as healthy as his father was, Sir Austin&mdash;spite o&rsquo; the might
+&rsquo;a beens. Reg&rsquo;lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he
+come. We knows the hour o&rsquo; the day, and of the night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You nurse him yourself, of course?&rdquo; the baronet spoke to Lucy, and
+was satisfied on that point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the
+consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.
+&ldquo;&rsquo;T&rsquo;d take a deal to do that,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, and
+harped on Master Richard&rsquo;s health and the small wonder it was that he
+enjoyed it, considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish
+attentions of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He looks healthy,&rdquo; said the baronet, &ldquo;but I am not a judge
+of babies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new commandant, who
+was now borne away, under the directions of the housekeeper, to occupy the room
+Richard had slept in when an infant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: &ldquo;She is
+extremely well-looking.&rdquo; He replied: &ldquo;A person you take to at
+once.&rdquo; There it ended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy and Mrs.
+Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to talk about the reception they had met
+with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms, and the solid
+happiness that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry all the while would persist in
+consulting the looking-glass. Her first distinct answer was, &ldquo;My dear!
+tell me candid, how do I look?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would be so
+kind, so considerate?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sure I looked a frump,&rdquo; returned Mrs. Berry. &ldquo;Oh dear!
+two birds at a shot. What do you think, now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never saw so wonderful a likeness,&rdquo; says Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Likeness! look at me.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the
+palms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ain&rsquo;t it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to bed, Berry, dear,&rdquo; says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing
+way. &ldquo;I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart! You&rsquo;ve had so
+much excitement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha!&rdquo; Berry laughed hysterically; &ldquo;she thinks it&rsquo;s
+about this business of hers. Why, it&rsquo;s child&rsquo;s-play, my
+darlin&rsquo;. But I didn&rsquo;t look for tragedy to-night. Sleep in this
+house I can&rsquo;t, my love!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy was astonished. &ldquo;Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?&mdash;Oh! why, you
+silly old thing? I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do ye!&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re afraid of ghosts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Belike I am when they&rsquo;re six foot two in their shoes, and bellows
+when you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my Berry!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your husband?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Large as life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as the
+Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that he had
+recognized her and quaked. &ldquo;Time ain&rsquo;t aged him,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Berry, &ldquo;whereas me! he&rsquo;ve got his excuse now. I know I look a
+frump.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy kissed her: &ldquo;You look the nicest, dearest old thing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may say an old thing, my dear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And your husband is really here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Berry&rsquo;s below!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of incredulity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What will you do, Mrs. Berry?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go, my dear. Leave him to be happy in his own way. It&rsquo;s over
+atween us, I see that. When I entered the house I felt there was something
+comin&rsquo; over me, and lo and behold ye! no sooner was we in the
+hall-passage&mdash;if it hadn&rsquo;t been for that blessed infant I should
+&rsquo;a dropped. I must &rsquo;a known his step, for my heart began
+thumpin&rsquo;, and I knew I hadn&rsquo;t got my hair straight&mdash;that Mr.
+Wentworth was in such a hurry&mdash;nor my best gown. I knew he&rsquo;d scorn
+me. He hates frumps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scorn you!&rdquo; cried Lucy, angrily. &ldquo;He who has behaved so
+wickedly!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry attempted to rise. &ldquo;I may as well go at once,&rdquo; she
+whimpered. &ldquo;If I see him I shall only be disgracin&rsquo; of myself. I
+feel it all on my side already. Did ye mark him, my dear? I know I was
+vexin&rsquo; to him at times, I was. Those big men are so touchy about their
+dignity&mdash;nat&rsquo;ral. Hark at me! I&rsquo;m goin&rsquo; all soft in a
+minute. Let me leave the house, my dear. I daresay it was good half my fault.
+Young women don&rsquo;t understand men sufficient&mdash;not
+altogether&mdash;and I was a young woman then; and then what they goes and does
+they ain&rsquo;t quite answerable for: they, feel, I daresay, pushed from
+behind. Yes. I&rsquo;ll go. I&rsquo;m a frump. I&rsquo;ll go.
+&rsquo;Tain&rsquo;t in natur&rsquo; for me to sleep in the same house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s shoulders, and forcibly fixed her in
+her seat. &ldquo;Leave baby, naughty woman? I tell you he shall come to you,
+and fall on his knees to you and beg your forgiveness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Berry on his knees!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away words, great&rsquo;ll
+be my wonder!&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will see,&rdquo; said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do something for
+the good creature that had befriended her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry examined her gown. &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t it seem we&rsquo;re
+runnin&rsquo; after him?&rdquo; she murmured faintly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is your husband, Mrs. Berry. He may be wanting to come to you
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Where is all I was goin&rsquo; to say to that man when we
+met.&rdquo; Mrs. Berry ejaculated. Lucy had left the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed in black, who stopped
+her and asked if she was Richard&rsquo;s wife, and kissed her, passing from her
+immediately. Lucy despatched a message for Austin, and related the Berry
+history. Austin sent for the great man and said: &ldquo;Do you know your wife
+is here?&rdquo; Before Berry had time to draw himself up to enunciate his
+longest, he was requested to step upstairs, and as his young mistress at once
+led the way, Berry could not refuse to put his legs in motion and carry the
+stately edifice aloft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch that night. &ldquo;He
+began in the old way, my dear, and says I, a true heart and plain words, Martin
+Berry. So there he cuts himself and his Johnson short, and down he
+goes&mdash;down on his knees. I never could &rsquo;a believed it. I kep my
+dignity as a woman till I see that sight, but that done for me. I was a ripe
+apple in his arms &rsquo;fore I knew where I was. There&rsquo;s something about
+a fine man on his knees that&rsquo;s too much for us women. And it reely was
+the penitent on his two knees, not the lover on his one. If he mean it! But ah!
+what do you think he begs of me, my dear?&mdash;not to make it known in the
+house just yet! I can&rsquo;t, I can&rsquo;t say that look well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct, and Mrs. Berry did her
+best to look on it in that light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did the bar&rsquo;net kiss ye when you wished him goodnight?&rdquo; she
+asked. Lucy said he had not. &ldquo;Then bide awake as long as ye can,&rdquo;
+was Mrs. Berry&rsquo;s rejoinder. &ldquo;And now let us pray blessings on that
+simple-speaking gentleman who does so much &rsquo;cause he says so
+little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly where her own soft
+heart was concerned. As she secretly anticipated, the baronet came into her
+room when all was quiet. She saw him go and bend over Richard the Second, and
+remain earnestly watching him. He then went to the half-opened door of the room
+where Lucy slept, leaned his ear a moment, knocked gently, and entered. Mrs.
+Berry heard low words interchanging within. She could not catch a syllable, yet
+she would have sworn to the context. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ve called her his
+daughter, promised her happiness, and given a father&rsquo;s kiss to
+her.&rdquo; When Sir Austin passed out she was in a deep sleep.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap42"></a>
+CHAPTER XLII</h2>
+
+<p>
+Briareus reddening angrily over the sea&mdash;what is that vaporous Titan? And
+Hesper set in his rosy garland&mdash;why looks he so implacably sweet? It is
+that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work, and he has
+got a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West fair Lucy beckons
+him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How strong and fierce the temptation is!
+how subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his reason, his honour. For he loves
+her; she is still the first and only woman to him. Otherwise would this black
+spot be hell to him? otherwise would his limbs be chained while her arms are
+spread open to him. And if he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit,
+or a thousand? Is not love the password to that beckoning bliss? So may we say;
+but here is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for a dance of devils? His
+education has thus wrought him to think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel base and accept the
+bliss that beckons&mdash;he has not fallen so low as that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the Fancy led
+him away from you, high in his conceit? Poor wretch! that thought to be he of
+the hundred hands, and war against the absolute Gods. Jove whispered a light
+commission to the Laughing Dame; she met him; and how did he shake Olympus?
+with laughter?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears, than one
+called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever outcast. He has not the
+oblivion of madness. Clothed in the lights of his first passion, robed in the
+splendour of old skies, she meets him everywhere; morning, evening, night, she
+shines above him; waylays him suddenly in forest depths; drops palpably on his
+heart. At moments he forgets; he rushes to embrace her; calls her his beloved,
+and lo, her innocent kiss brings agony of shame to his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by the love he
+had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt unread all the letters he
+received. He knew too well how easily he could persuade himself: words from
+without might tempt him and quite extinguish the spark of honourable feeling
+that tortured him, and that he clung to in desperate self-vindication.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous and
+thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one that fair women greatly prize, and
+certain of them professionally follow. Lady Judith, as far as her sex would
+permit, was also of the Titans in their battle against the absolute Gods; for
+which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord incapable in all save his
+acres. Her achievements she kept to her own mind: she did not look happy over
+them. She met Richard accidentally in Paris; she saw his state; she let him
+learn that she alone on earth understood him. The consequence was that he was
+forthwith enrolled in her train. It soothed him to be near a woman. Did she
+venture her guess as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a
+facility women have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to
+participate in. She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, much as he might speak
+of his&mdash;vaguely, and with self-blame. And she understood him. How the dark
+unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman&rsquo;s eye! We are at compound
+interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!&mdash;almost as rich as we
+dreamed! But then the instant we are away from her we find ourselves bankrupt,
+beggared. How is that? We do not ask. We hurry to her and bask hungrily in her
+orbs. The eye must be feminine to be thus creative: I cannot say why. Lady
+Judith understood Richard, and he feeling infinitely vile, somehow held to her
+more feverishly, as one who dreaded the worst in missing her. The spirit must
+rest; he was weak with what he suffered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans, male and
+female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift, prone on floods of
+sentiment. The blue-flocked peasant swinging behind his oxen of a morning, the
+gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even the doctor of those
+regions, have done more for their fellows. Horrible reflection! Lady Judith is
+serene above it, but it frets at Richard when he is out of her shadow. Often
+wretchedly he watches the young men of his own age trooping to their work. Not
+cloud-work theirs! Work solid, unambitious, fruitful!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped blindfolded for
+anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters. He swallowed it
+comfortably. It was an intoxicating cordial. Himself on horseback overriding
+wrecks of Empires! Well might common sense cower with the meaner animals at the
+picture. Tacitly they agreed to recast the civilized globe. The quality of
+vapour is to melt and shape itself anew; but it is never the quality of vapour
+to reassume the same shapes. Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn
+to a monstrous donkey with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering
+apes. The phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those we see in
+the skies, and equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith blew. There was
+plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or other. You
+that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see the similitude: it
+will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish to you, that a young man of
+Richard&rsquo;s age, Richard&rsquo;s education and position, should be in this
+wild state. Had he not been nursed to believe he was born for great things? Did
+she not say she was sure of it? And to feel base, yet born for better, is
+enough to make one grasp at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg.
+How intense is his faith to quacks! with what a passion of longing is he not
+seized to break somebody&rsquo;s head! They spoke of Italy in low voices.
+&ldquo;The time will come,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;And I shall be ready,&rdquo;
+said he. What rank was he to take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel,
+general in chief, or simple private? Here, as became him, he was much more
+positive and specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he save
+himself caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course.
+Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth under
+her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the distance. They
+read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this
+speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her fair body, but their sighs
+went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and their hands joined. Who has not
+wept for Italy? I see the aspirations of a world arise for her, thick and
+frequent as the puffs of smoke from cigars of Pannonian sentries!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady Judith
+said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind! This Richard verified.
+Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The high road of Folly may have led him
+from one that terminates worse. He is foolish, God knows; but for my part I
+will not laugh at the hero because he has not got his occasion. Meet him when
+he is, as it were, anointed by his occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must term folly.
+Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and somebody who gave
+them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin plainly he could not leave
+her, and did not anticipate the day when he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t you go to your wife, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at heart.
+Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian palace of the
+West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith&rsquo;s old lord played on all the
+baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health. Whithersoever he listed she
+changed her abode. So admirable a wife was to be pardoned for espousing an old
+man. She was an enthusiast even in her connubial duties. She had the brows of
+an enthusiast. With occasion she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her
+also be shielded from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very
+different from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that
+order who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in
+their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man&rsquo;s admiration, if she
+was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin easily,
+while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin were not
+unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old lord.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where the shadow
+of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water brawling over slabs
+of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a baby, whose mighty size
+drew their attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a wopper!&rdquo; Richard laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, that is a fine fellow,&rdquo; said Austin, &ldquo;but I
+don&rsquo;t think he&rsquo;s much bigger than your boy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius,&rdquo; Richard was
+saying. Then he looked at Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What was that you said?&rdquo; Lady Judith asked of Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What have I said that deserves to be repeated?&rdquo; Austin
+counterqueried quite innocently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard has a son?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t know it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His modesty goes very far,&rdquo; said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow
+of a curtsey to Richard&rsquo;s paternity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s heart throbbed with violence. He looked again in Austin&rsquo;s
+face. Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said nothing more on
+the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; murmured Lady Judith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: &ldquo;Austin! you
+were in earnest?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You didn&rsquo;t know it, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your father, your aunt. I
+believe Adrian wrote too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tore up their letters,&rdquo; said Richard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a noble fellow, I can tell you. You&rsquo;ve nothing to be
+ashamed of. He&rsquo;ll soon be coming to ask about you. I made sure you
+knew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I never knew.&rdquo; Richard walked away, and then said: &ldquo;What
+is he like?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother&rsquo;s eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she&rsquo;s&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I think the child has kept her well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;re both at Raynham?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hence fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where are the dreams of the hero
+when he learns he has a child? Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will
+speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these hills can boast the same, yet
+marvels the hero at none of his visioned prodigies as he does when he comes to
+hear of this most common performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he
+were trying to make out the lineaments of his child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into the air, and
+walked on and on. &ldquo;A father!&rdquo; he kept repeating to himself:
+&ldquo;a child!&rdquo; And though he knew it not, he was striking the keynotes
+of Nature. But he did know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over his
+whole being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still. He left the
+high road and pierced into the forest. His walk was rapid: the leaves on the
+trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his
+feet. Something of a religious joy&mdash;a strange sacred pleasure&mdash;was in
+him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself: and now he was possessed by a
+proportionate anguish. A father! he dared never see his child. And he had no
+longer his phantasies to fall upon. He was utterly bare to his sin. In his
+troubled mind it seemed to him that Clare looked down on him&mdash;Clare who
+saw him as he was; and that to her eyes it would be infamy for him to go and
+print his kiss upon his child. Then came stern efforts to command his misery
+and make the nerves of his face iron.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past summers,
+beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his journey&rsquo;s end. There
+he discovered he had a companion in Lady Judith&rsquo;s little dog. He gave the
+friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were silent in the
+forest-silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged. He must
+advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells and on the
+heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook tinkled it was no
+cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of water. Yonder in a
+space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white fire to sight and
+feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys were clear, defined to the shadows
+of their verges, the distances sharply distinct, and with the colours of day
+but slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far
+out of rifle-mark. The breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone
+in a broad blue heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him;
+crouched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started
+afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk of the
+forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey topless
+ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard mechanically sat down on
+the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled
+at his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of glow-worms studded the dark dry
+ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were expended in
+action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow Westward
+from the South. Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were
+imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the van of a tempest. He did not
+observe them or the leaves beginning to chatter. When he again pursued his
+course with his face to the Rhine, a huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over
+him, and he had it in his mind to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it
+for all his vigorous outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the
+sky. Then heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were singing, the
+earth breathed, it was black before him, and behind. All at once the thunder
+spoke. The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up startled the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the country at the foot of
+the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished. Then there were
+pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven, and the thunder as the
+tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him; filling him with awful
+rapture. Alone there&mdash;sole human creature among the grandeurs and
+mysteries of storm&mdash;he felt the representative of his kind, and his spirit
+rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin! Lower down the
+lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light
+were darted from the sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a
+second, were supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused
+in the leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and
+heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the
+earth. Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard had a
+savage pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of the wet, and
+the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short,
+lifting a curious nostril. He fancied he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen
+the flower in Rhineland&mdash;never thought of it; and it would hardly be met
+with in a forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little companion
+wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance. He went an slowly, thinking
+indistinctly. After two or three steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to
+feel for the flower, having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its
+growth there. Groping about, his hand encountered something warm that started
+at his touch, and he, with the instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to
+look at it. The creature was very small, evidently quite young. Richard&rsquo;s
+eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern it for what it was,
+a tiny leveret, and ha supposed that the dog had probably frightened its dam
+just before he found it. He put the little thing on one hand in his breast, and
+stepped out rapidly as before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured. So cool and easy
+had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of shelter the birds
+could find, and how the butterflies and moths saved their coloured wings from
+washing. Folded close they might hang under a leaf, he thought. Lovingly he
+looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts on each side, as one of their
+children. He was next musing on a strange sensation he experienced. It ran up
+one arm with an indescribable thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It
+was purely physical, ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all
+through his blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little thing
+he carried in his breast was licking his hand there. The small rough tongue
+going over and over the palm of his hand produced the strange sensation he
+felt. Now that he knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
+cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping continued
+without intermission as on he walked. What did it say to him? Human tongue
+could not have said so much just then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the dawn.
+Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all about in his
+path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who
+feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing one of
+those little forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where the peasant halts
+to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight it stood, rain-drops pattering
+round it. He looked within, and saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by.
+But not many steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and he
+shuddered. What was it? He asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as lightning
+the Spirit of Life illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child,
+his darling&rsquo;s touch. With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from
+the depths; they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he had
+a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small birds
+hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills. He was on the
+edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious
+morning sky.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap43"></a>
+CHAPTER XLIII</h2>
+
+<p>
+They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming. Lucy had the news first in a
+letter from Ripton Thompson, who met him at Bonn. Ripton did not say that he
+had employed his vacation holiday on purpose to use his efforts to induce his
+dear friend to return to his wife; and finding Richard already on his way, of
+course Ripton said nothing to him, but affected to be travelling for his
+pleasure like any cockney. Richard also wrote to her. In case she should have
+gone to the sea he directed her to send word to his hotel that he might not
+lose an hour. His letter was sedate in tone, very sweet to her. Assisted by the
+faithful female Berry, she was conquering an Aphorist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Woman&rsquo;s reason is in the milk of her breasts,&rdquo; was one of
+his rough notes, due to an observation of Lucy&rsquo;s maternal cares. Let us
+remember, therefore, we men who have drunk of it largely there, that she has
+it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master Richard&rsquo;s education
+had commenced, and the great future historian he must consequently be. This
+trait in Lucy was of itself sufficient to win Sir Austin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here my plan with Richard was false,&rdquo; he reflected: &ldquo;in
+presuming that anything save blind fortuity would bring him such a mate as he
+should have.&rdquo; He came to add: &ldquo;And has got!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten science; for as Richard was
+coming, as all were to be happy, his wisdom embraced them all paternally as the
+author of their happiness. Between him and Lucy a tender intimacy grew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told you she could talk, sir,&rdquo; said Adrian.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thinks!&rdquo; said the baronet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle, he settled generously.
+Farmer Blaize should come up to Raynham when he would: Lucy must visit him at
+least three times a week. He had Farmer Blaize and Mrs. Berry to study, and
+really excellent Aphorisms sprang from the plain human bases this natural
+couple presented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will do us no harm,&rdquo; he thought, &ldquo;some of the honest
+blood of the soil in our veins.&rdquo; And he was content in musing on the
+parentage of the little cradled boy. A common sight for those who had the entry
+to the library was the baronet cherishing the hand of his daughter-in-law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham were beating quicker
+measures as the minutes progressed. That night he would be with them. Sir
+Austin gave Lucy a longer, warmer salute when she came down to breakfast in the
+morning. Mrs. Berry waxed thrice amorous. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s your second
+bridals, ye sweet livin&rsquo; widow!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Thanks be the
+Lord! it&rsquo;s the same man too! and a baby over the bed-post,&rdquo; she
+appended seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Strange,&rdquo; Berry declared it to be, &ldquo;strange I feel none
+o&rsquo; this to my Berry now. All my feelin&rsquo;s o&rsquo; love seem
+t&rsquo;ave gone into you two sweet chicks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, the faithless male Berry complained of being treated badly, and
+affected a superb jealousy of the baby; but the good dame told him that if he
+suffered at all he suffered his due. Berry&rsquo;s position was decidedly
+uncomfortable. It could not be concealed from the lower household that he had a
+wife in the establishment, and for the complications this gave rise to, his
+wife would not legitimately console him. Lucy did intercede, but Mrs. Berry,
+was obdurate. She averred she would not give up the child till he was weaned.
+&ldquo;Then, perhaps,&rdquo; she said prospectively. &ldquo;You see I
+ain&rsquo;t so soft as you thought for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a very unkind, vindictive old woman,&rdquo; said Lucy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Belike I am,&rdquo; Mrs. Berry was proud to agree. We like a new
+character, now and then. Berry had delayed too long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Were it not notorious that the straightlaced prudish dare not listen to, the
+natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry thought it advisable to impart to the
+young wife with regard to Berry&rsquo;s infidelity, and the charity women
+should have toward sinful men, might here be reproduced. Enough that she
+thought proper to broach the matter, and cite her own Christian sentiments, now
+that she was indifferent in some degree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oily calm is on the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and speculate that
+Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to throw himself on his
+darling&rsquo;s mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest and sea, tempest and
+peace&mdash;to her the hero comes humbly. Great is that day when we see our
+folly! Ripton and he were the friends of old. Richard encouraged him to talk of
+the two he could be eloquent on, and Ripton, whose secret vanity was in his
+powers of speech, never tired of enumerating Lucy&rsquo;s virtues, and the
+peculiar attributes of the baby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did not say a word against me, Rip?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Against you, Richard! The moment she knew she was to be a mother, she
+thought of nothing but her duty to the child. She&rsquo;s one who can&rsquo;t
+think of herself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve seen her at Raynham, Rip?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, once. They asked me down. And your father&rsquo;s so fond of
+her&mdash;I&rsquo;m sure he thinks no woman like her, and he&rsquo;s right. She
+is so lovely, and so good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his father: too British to
+expose his emotions. Ripton divined how deep and changed they were by his
+manner. He had cast aside the hero, and however Ripton had obeyed him and
+looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him tenfold now. He told his
+friend how much Lucy&rsquo;s mere womanly sweetness and excellence had done for
+him, and Richard contrasted his own profitless extravagance with the patient
+beauty of his dear home angel. He was not one to take her on the easy terms
+that offered. There was that to do which made his cheek burn as he thought of
+it, but he was going to do it, even though it lost her to him. Just to see her
+and kneel to her was joy sufficient to sustain him, and warm his blood in the
+prospect. They marked the white cliffs growing over the water. Nearer, the sun
+made them lustrous. Houses and people seemed to welcome the wild youth to
+common sense, simplicity, and home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were in town by mid-day. Richard had a momentary idea of not driving to
+his hotel for letters. After a short debate he determined to go there. The
+porter said he had two letters for Mr. Richard Feverel&mdash;one had been
+waiting some time. He went to the box and fetched them. The first Richard
+opened was from Lucy, and as he read it, Ripton observed the colour deepen on
+his face, while a quivering smile played about his mouth. He opened the other
+indifferently. It began without any form of address. Richard&rsquo;s forehead
+darkened at the signature. This letter was in a sloping feminine hand, and
+flourished with light strokes all over, like a field of the bearded barley.
+Thus it ran:
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+&ldquo;I know you are in a rage with me because I would not consent to ruin
+you, you foolish fellow. What do you call it? Going to that unpleasant place
+together. Thank you, my milliner is not ready yet, and I want to make a good
+appearance when I do go. I suppose I shall have to some day. Your health, Sir
+Richard. Now let me speak to you seriously. Go home to your wife at once. But I
+know the sort of fellow you are, and I must be plain with you. Did I ever say I
+loved you? You may hate me as much as you please, but I will save you from
+being a fool.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now listen to me. You know my relations with Mount. That beast Brayder
+offered to pay all my debts and set me afloat, if I would keep you in town. I
+declare on my honour I had no idea why, and I did not agree to it. But you were
+such a handsome fellow&mdash;I noticed you in the park before I heard a word of
+you. But then you fought shy&mdash;you were just as tempting as a girl. You
+stung me. Do you know what that is? I would make you care for me, and we know
+how it ended, without any intention of mine, I swear. I&rsquo;d have cut off my
+hand rather than do you any harm, upon my honour. Circumstances! Then I saw it
+was all up between us. Brayder came and began to chaff about you. I dealt the
+animal a stroke on the face with my riding-whip&mdash;I shut him up pretty
+quick. Do you think I would let a man speak about you?&mdash;I was going to
+swear. You see I remember Dick&rsquo;s lessons. O my God! I do feel
+unhappy.&mdash;Brayder offered me money. Go and think I took it, if you like.
+What do I care what anybody thinks! Something that black-guard said made me
+suspicious. I went down to the Isle of Wight where Mount was, and your wife was
+just gone with an old lady who came and took her away. I should so have liked
+to see her. You said, you remember, she would take me as a sister, and treat
+me&mdash;I laughed at it then. My God! how I could cry now, if water did any
+good to a devil, as you politely call poor me. I called at your house and saw
+your man-servant, who said Mount had just been there. In a minute it struck me.
+I was sure Mount was after a woman, but it never struck me that woman was your
+wife. Then I saw why they wanted me to keep you away. I went to Brayder. You
+know how I hate him. I made love to the man to get it out of him. Richard! my
+word of honour, they have planned to carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot
+seduce her. Talk of devils! He&rsquo;s one; but he is not so bad as Brayder. I
+cannot forgive a mean dog his villany.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a man to stop away
+from her another moment. I have no more to say. I suppose we shall not see each
+other again, so good-bye, Dick! I fancy I hear you cursing me. Why can&rsquo;t
+you feel like other men on the subject? But if you were like the rest of them I
+should not have cared for you a farthing. I have not worn lilac since I saw you
+last. I&rsquo;ll be buried in your colour, Dick. That will not offend
+you&mdash;will it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not going to believe I took the money? If I thought you thought
+that&mdash;it makes me feel like a devil only to fancy you think it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The first time you meet Brayder, cane him publicly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Adieu! Say it&rsquo;s because you don&rsquo;t like his face. I suppose
+devils must not say Adieu. Here&rsquo;s plain old good-bye, then, between you
+and me. Good-bye, dear Dick! You won&rsquo;t think that of me?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took or ever will touch
+a scrap of their money.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+B<small>ELLA</small>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard folded up the letter silently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jump into the cab,&rdquo; he said to Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything the matter, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The driver received directions. Richard sat without speaking. His friend knew
+that face. He asked whether there was bad news in the letter. For answer, he
+had the lie circumstancial. He ventured to remark that they were going the
+wrong way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the right way,&rdquo; cried Richard, and his jaws were hard
+and square, and his eyes looked heavy and full.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton said no more, but thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cabman pulled up at a Club. A gentleman, in whom Ripton recognized the Hon.
+Peter Brayder, was just then swinging a leg over his horse, with one foot in
+the stirrup. Hearing his name called, the Hon. Peter turned about, and
+stretched an affable hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is Mountfalcon in town?&rdquo; said Richard taking the horse&rsquo;s
+reins instead of the gentlemanly hand. His voice and aspect were quite
+friendly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mount?&rdquo; Brayder replied, curiously watching the action;
+&ldquo;yes. He&rsquo;s off this evening.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is in town?&rdquo; Richard released his horse. &ldquo;I want to see
+him. Where is he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man looked pleasant: that which might have aroused Brayder&rsquo;s
+suspicions was an old affair in parasitical register by this time. &ldquo;Want
+to see him? What about?&rdquo; he said carelessly, and gave the address.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; he sang out, &ldquo;we thought of putting your name
+down, Feverel.&rdquo; He indicated the lofty structure. &ldquo;What do you
+say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard nodded back at him, crying, &ldquo;Hurry.&rdquo; Brayder returned the
+nod, and those who promenaded the district soon beheld his body in elegant
+motion to the stepping of his well-earned horse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for, Richard?&rdquo; said
+Ripton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I just want to see him,&rdquo; Richard replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord&rsquo;s residence. He had to
+wait there a space of about ten minutes, when Richard returned with a clearer
+visage, though somewhat heated. He stood outside the cab, and Ripton was
+conscious of being examined by those strong grey eyes. As clear as speech he
+understood them to say to him, &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; but which of
+the many things on earth he would not do for he was at a loss to think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go down to Raynham, Ripton. Say I shall be there tonight certainly.
+Don&rsquo;t bother me with questions. Drive off at once. Or wait. Get another
+cab. I&rsquo;ll take this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street. As he was
+on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to get a word of
+elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are Feverel&rsquo;s friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman, standing at the open door of
+Lord Mountfalcon&rsquo;s house, and a gentleman standing on the doorstep, told
+him that he was addressed by that nobleman. He was requested to step into the
+house. When they were alone, Lord Mountfalcon, slightly ruffled, said:
+&ldquo;Feverel has insulted me grossly. I must meet him, of course. It&rsquo;s
+a piece of infernal folly!&mdash;I suppose he is not quite mad?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton&rsquo;s only definite answer was, a gasping iteration of &ldquo;My
+lord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My lord resumed: &ldquo;I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far as I
+know. In fact, I had a friendship for him. Is he liable to fits of this sort of
+thing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: &ldquo;Fits, my lord?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style.
+&ldquo;You know nothing of this business, perhaps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton said he did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you any influence with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not much, my lord. Only now and then&mdash;a little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not in the Army?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question was quite unnecessary. Ripton confessed to the law, and my lord
+did not look surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not detain you,&rdquo; he said, distantly bowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton gave him a commoner&rsquo;s obeisance; but getting to the door, the
+sense of the matter enlightened him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a duel, my lord?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No help for it, if his friends don&rsquo;t shut him up in Bedlam between
+this and to-morrow morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton&rsquo;s imagination. He
+stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter of calamity
+suddenly opened where happiness had promised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A duel! but he won&rsquo;t, my lord,&mdash;he mustn&rsquo;t fight, my
+lord.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must come on the ground,&rdquo; said my lord, positively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord Mountfalcon said: &ldquo;I
+went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you. I saw you from the window. Your
+friend is mad. Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad. I have particular reasons
+to wish not to injure the young man, and if an apology is to be got out of him
+when we&rsquo;re on the ground, I&rsquo;ll take it, and we&rsquo;ll stop the
+damned scandal, if possible. You understand? I&rsquo;m the insulted party, and
+I shall only require of him to use formal words of excuse to come to an
+amicable settlement. Let him just say he regrets it. Now, sir,&rdquo; the
+nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness, &ldquo;should anything
+happen&mdash;I have the honour to be known to Mrs. Feverel&mdash;and I beg you
+will tell her. I very particularly desire you to let her know that I was not to
+blame.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out. With this on his mind Ripton
+hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at Raynham.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap44"></a>
+CHAPTER XLIV</h2>
+
+<p>
+The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
+calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight. Adrian,
+wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump face,&mdash;held
+slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,&mdash;sat writing at the library
+table. Round the baronet&rsquo;s chair, in a semi-circle, were Lucy, Lady
+Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that very ill bird at Raynham. They were
+silent as those who question the flying minutes. Ripton had said that Richard
+was sure to come; but the feminine eyes reading him ever and anon, had gathered
+matter for disquietude, which increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in
+his habitual air of speculative repose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak and betray
+his state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray, put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing,&rdquo; he said,
+half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s no
+nightmare, this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure. Adrian&rsquo;s
+pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in commiseration or
+infernal glee, none might say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are you writing?&rdquo; the baronet inquired testily of Adrian,
+after a pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the wise
+youth&rsquo;s coolness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do I disturb you, sir?&rdquo; rejoined Adrian. &ldquo;I am engaged on a
+portion of a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under one
+Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and lamented Holy Roman.
+This treats of the management of Youths and Maids, and of certain magisterial
+functions connected therewith. &lsquo;It is decreed that these officers be all
+and every men of science,&rsquo; etc.&rdquo; And Adrian cheerily drove his pen
+afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria took Lucy&rsquo;s hand, mutely addressing encouragement to her, and
+Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to reply with.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fear we must give him up to-night,&rdquo; observed Lady Blandish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he said he would come, he will come,&rdquo; Sir Austin interjected.
+Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly going on. He
+was conscious that nothing save perfect success would now hold this
+self-emancipating mind. She had seen him through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He declared to me he would be certain to come,&rdquo; said Ripton; but
+he could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware that
+Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black conspirator
+against their happiness. He determined to tell the baronet what he knew, if
+Richard did not come by twelve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is the time?&rdquo; he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Time for me to be in bed,&rdquo; growled Hippias, as if everybody
+present had been treating him badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She quietly rose.
+Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: &ldquo;You had better not come
+down again, my child.&rdquo; She kept her eyes on him. &ldquo;Oblige me by
+retiring for the night,&rdquo; he added. Lucy shook their hands, and went out,
+accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This agitation will be bad for the child,&rdquo; he said, speaking to
+himself aloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish remarked: &ldquo;I think she might just as well have returned.
+She will not sleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She will control herself for the child&rsquo;s sake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ask too much of her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of her, not,&rdquo; he emphasized.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was twelve o&rsquo;clock when Hippias shut his watch, and said with
+vehemence: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
+decreases!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Going back to the pre-Harvey period!&rdquo; murmured Adrian as he wrote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce them to
+the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was sufficiently
+harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve. Taking it for acquiescence in
+his deplorable condition, Hippias resumed despairingly: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a
+fact. I&rsquo;ve brought you to see that. No one can be more moderate than I
+am, and yet I get worse. My system is organically sound&mdash;I believe: I do
+every possible thing, and yet I get worse. Nature never forgives! I&rsquo;ll go
+to bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin took up his brother&rsquo;s thought: &ldquo;I suppose nothing short
+of a miracle helps us when we have offended her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing short of a quack satisfies us,&rdquo; said Adrian, applying wax
+to an envelope of official dimensions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by
+Lucy&rsquo;s last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went round
+to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and accompanied
+him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone, Lady Blandish said to the
+baronet: &ldquo;He is not coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-morrow, then, if not tonight,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;But I say he
+will come to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You do really wish to see him united to his wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you ask me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; said, the ungenerous woman, &ldquo;your System will
+require no further sacrifices from either of them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he did answer, it was to say: &ldquo;I think her altogether a superior
+person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Admit that your science does not accomplish everything.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No: it was presumptuous&mdash;beyond a certain point,&rdquo; said the
+baronet, meaning deep things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish eyed him. &ldquo;Ah me!&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;if we would
+always be true to our own wisdom!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very singular to-night, Emmeline.&rdquo; Sir Austin stopped his
+walk in front of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely forgiven. Here
+was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family and
+permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would have done more&mdash;or as
+much? This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have fought it.
+All the people of position that he was acquainted with would have fought it,
+and that without feeling it so peculiarly. But while the baronet thought this,
+he did not think of the exceptional education his son had received. He took the
+common ground of fathers, forgetting his System when it was absolutely on
+trial. False to his son it could not be said that he had been: false to his
+System he was. Others saw it plainly, but he had to learn his lesson by and by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table, saying,
+&ldquo;Well! well!&rdquo; She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and
+drew forth a little book she recognized. &ldquo;Ha! what is this?&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Benson returned it this morning,&rdquo; he informed her. &ldquo;The
+stupid fellow took it away with him&mdash;by mischance, I am bound to
+believe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned over the
+leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She read: &ldquo;A maker of Proverbs&mdash;what is he but a narrow mind with
+the mouthpiece of narrower?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not agree with that,&rdquo; she observed. He was in no humour for
+argument.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He merely said: &ldquo;Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings. A
+proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority rest
+there content: can the keeper of such a house be flattered by his
+company?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There must be
+greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and admirable
+aptitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Further she read, &ldquo;Which is the coward among us?&mdash;He who sneers at
+the failings of Humanity!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!&rdquo; cried the dark-eyed
+dame as she beamed intellectual raptures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: &ldquo;There is no more
+grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the mercy
+of his feelings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must have written it,&rdquo; she thought, &ldquo;when he had himself
+for an example&mdash;strange man that he is!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly insubordinate.
+She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind
+could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The
+Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in
+lesser hands. Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this
+lady&rsquo;s allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said again: &ldquo;He is not coming to-night,&rdquo; and the baronet, on
+whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past,
+quietly added: &ldquo;He is come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard&rsquo;s voice was heard in the hall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir. Berry,
+seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that her involuntary
+coldness had enhanced her value&mdash;&ldquo;Such is men!&rdquo; as the soft
+woman reflected&mdash;Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in pompous
+tones and wheedling gestures. &ldquo;The best word you&rsquo;ve spoke for many
+a day,&rdquo; says she, and leaves him unfee&rsquo;d, in an attitude, to hurry
+and pour bliss into Lucy&rsquo;s ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord be praised!&rdquo; she entered the adjoining room exclaiming,
+&ldquo;we&rsquo;re got to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses.
+I could cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her
+knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes
+started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing, but
+thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to still her
+frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper from bursting Mrs.
+Berry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had come. He was under his father&rsquo;s roof, in the old home that
+had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife and child. He
+might embrace them both: and now the fulness of his anguish and the madness of
+the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he tasted hard earthly
+misery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of heaven directed
+him homeward? And he had come: here he stood: congratulations were thick in his
+ears: the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was invited to drink of it.
+Which was the dream? his work for the morrow, or this? But for a leaden load
+that he felt like a bullet in his breast, he might have thought the morrow with
+death sitting on it was the dream. Yes; he was awake. Now first the cloud of
+phantasms cleared away: he beheld his real life, and the colours of true human
+joy: and on the morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them. That leaden
+bullet dispersed all unrealities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria,
+Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long. They shook his hand: they gave
+him greetings he had never before understood the worth of or the meaning. Now
+that he did they mocked him. There was Mrs. Berry in the background bobbing,
+there was Martin Berry bowing, there was Tom Bakewell grinning. Somehow he
+loved the sight of these better.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, my old Penelope!&rdquo; he said, breaking through the circle of his
+relatives to go to her. &ldquo;Tom! how are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless ye, my Mr. Richard,&rdquo; whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered,
+rosily, &ldquo;all&rsquo;s agreeable now. She&rsquo;s waiting up in bed for ye,
+like a new-born.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The person who betrayed most agitation was Mrs. Doria. She held close to him,
+and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one accustomed to masks.
+&ldquo;You are pale, Richard?&rdquo; He pleaded exhaustion. &ldquo;What
+detained you, dear?&rdquo; &ldquo;Business,&rdquo; he said. She drew him
+imperiously apart from the others. &ldquo;Richard! is it over?&rdquo; He asked
+what she meant. &ldquo;The dreadful duel, Richard.&rdquo; He looked darkly.
+&ldquo;Is it over? is it done, Richard?&rdquo; Getting no immediate answer, she
+continued&mdash;and such was her agitation that the words were shaken by pieces
+from her mouth: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t pretend not to understand me, Richard! Is it
+over? Are you going to die the death of my child&mdash;Clare&rsquo;s death? Is
+not one in a family enough? Think of your dear young wife&mdash;we love her
+so!&mdash;your child!&mdash;your father! Will you kill us all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton&rsquo;s communication to
+Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s arranged&mdash;the matter you allude to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed!&mdash;truly, dear?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell me&rdquo;&mdash;but he broke away from her, saying: &ldquo;You
+shall hear the particulars to-morrow,&rdquo; and she, not alive to double
+meaning just then, allowed him to leave her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he would take
+only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the library. He said,
+without any show of feeling, that he must eat before he saw the young hope of
+Raynham: so there he sat, breaking bread, and eating great mouthfuls, and
+washing them down with wine, talking of what they would. His father&rsquo;s
+studious mind felt itself years behind him, he was so completely altered. He
+had the precision of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all
+that the necessity for cloaking an infinite misery gives. But let things be as
+they might, he was, there. For one night in his life Sir Austin&rsquo;s
+perspective of the future was bounded by the night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you go to your wife now?&rdquo; he had asked and Richard had
+replied with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better that their
+meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs. The others
+perceived that father and son should now be left alone. Adrian went up to him,
+and said: &ldquo;I can no longer witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir
+Famish! You may cheat yourself into the belief that you&rsquo;ve made a meal,
+but depend upon it your progeny&mdash;and it threatens to be
+numerous&mdash;will cry aloud and rue the day. Nature never forgives! A lost
+dinner can never be replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And here&mdash;oblige me
+by taking this,&rdquo; he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what
+he had written that evening. &ldquo;Credentials!&rdquo; he exclaimed
+humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard also the words
+&ldquo;propagator&mdash;species,&rdquo; but had no idea of their import. The
+wise youth looked: You see we&rsquo;ve made matters all right for you here, and
+quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard shook his hand, and Ripton&rsquo;s. Then Lady Blandish said her
+good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual happiness.
+The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke together outside. Ripton
+was for getting a positive assurance that the duel would not be fought, but
+Adrian said: &ldquo;Time enough tomorrow. He&rsquo;s safe enough while
+he&rsquo;s here. I&rsquo;ll stop it to-morrow:&rdquo; ending with banter of
+Ripton and allusions to his adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian
+said, have led him into many affairs of the sort. Certainly Richard was there,
+and while he was there he must be safe. So thought Ripton, and went to his bed.
+Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and likewise thought him safe while he was
+there. For once in her life she thought it better not to trust to her instinct,
+for fear of useless disturbance where peace should be. So she said not a
+syllable of it to her brother. She only looked more deeply into Richard&rsquo;s
+eyes, as she kissed him, praising Lucy. &ldquo;I have found a second daughter
+in her, dear. Oh! may you both be happy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they were alone.
+&ldquo;Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her, Richard. I think
+Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young person, possessing mental
+faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have never before met.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some hours back he
+would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You compliment me on my choice, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible and he could speak no
+other way, his bitterness was so intense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you very fortunate,&rdquo; said his father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal feeling was
+frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against the chimney-piece,
+glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only when he spoke. Fortunate! very
+fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and remembered how clearly he had
+seen that his father must love Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his
+efforts to persuade her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage blackened
+his brain. But could he blame that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself?
+Not utterly. His father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was there:
+it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, and
+looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard,&rdquo; said his father, coming close to him, &ldquo;it is late
+to-night. I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I should have
+explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think&mdash;or at least
+hope&mdash;you would have justified me. I had cause to believe that you had not
+only violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It was not so, I now
+know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding has resulted from that
+mistake. But you were married&mdash;a boy: you knew nothing of the world,
+little of yourself. To save you in after-life&mdash;for there is a period when
+mature men and women who have married young are more impelled to temptation
+than in youth,&mdash;though not so exposed to it,&mdash;to save you, I say, I
+decreed that you should experience self-denial and learn something of your
+fellows of both sexes, before settling into a state that must have been
+otherwise precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate. My System
+with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have felt the
+effects of it. It is over now. You are a man. The dangers to which your nature
+was open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to be happy, and I give you both
+my blessing, and pray God to conduct and strengthen you both.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin&rsquo;s mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly. True or
+not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers over, and happiness,
+mockery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard coldly took his father&rsquo;s extended hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will go to her,&rdquo; said the baronet. &ldquo;I will leave you at
+her door.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the colour
+rushed, Richard said: &ldquo;A husband who has been unfaithful to his wife may
+go to her there, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no advice on such a
+matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday he would have listened to
+his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what was to be done humbly
+before God and her: now in the recklessness of his misery he had as little pity
+for any other soul as for his own. Sir Austin&rsquo;s brows were deep drawn
+down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did you say, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this&mdash;the worst he could
+hear&mdash;this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and
+cast aside&mdash;could it be?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard said: &ldquo;I told you all but the very words when we last parted.
+What else do you think would have kept me from her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: &ldquo;What brings you to her
+now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will be between us two,&rdquo; was the reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke from a
+wrathful heart: &ldquo;You will not dare to take her without&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; Richard interrupted him, &ldquo;I shall not. Have no
+fear.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you did not love your wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did I not?&rdquo; A smile passed faintly over Richard&rsquo;s face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you care so much for this&mdash;this other person?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had
+none.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose in the
+baronet&rsquo;s mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor child! poor child!&rdquo; he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
+Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son&mdash;her true forgiving
+heart&mdash;it seemed she should be spared this misery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between women and
+men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical and moral
+citations. His argument carried him so far, that to hear him one would have
+imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His words were idle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She must know it,&rdquo; said Richard, sternly. &ldquo;I will go to her
+now, sir, if you please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded his
+principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He could not induce his son to
+waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being interchanged, he
+understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on Lucy&rsquo;s mercy. He had
+no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange thing to have come to. On
+which should the accusation fall&mdash;on science, or on human nature?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times breathing
+contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted suspicion of his own
+wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he deserved that blow from his son
+which had plunged him into wretchedness. Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell,
+roused the heavy sleeper, and told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at
+the park gates East within an hour. Tom&rsquo;s nearest approach to a hero was
+to be a faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his
+conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and heroically dashed
+his head into cold water. &ldquo;She shall be ready, sir,&rdquo; he nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tom! if you don&rsquo;t see me back here at Raynham, your money will go
+on being paid to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard,&rdquo; said Tom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Richard, sir?&rdquo; Tom stared. &ldquo;God bless me, Mr.
+Richard&rdquo;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No questions. You&rsquo;ll do what I say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, sir; that I will. Did&rsquo;n Isle o&rsquo; Wight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The very name of the Island shocked Richard&rsquo;s blood; and he had to walk
+up and down before he could knock at Lucy&rsquo;s door. That infamous
+conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him the
+feelings of a man when he thought of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door, and stood
+before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that passed ere she was
+in his arms, he had time to observe the change in her. He had left her a girl:
+he beheld a woman&mdash;a blooming woman: for pale at first, no sooner did she
+see him than the colour was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half
+shown through the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty
+made his heart thump and his eyes swim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darling!&rdquo; each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth
+was fastened on his.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her, whose
+strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and clasped her
+closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the oblivion her lips put
+upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace. Heaven granted him that. He
+placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet with both arms around her. Her
+bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling
+wave. This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken
+with bashfulness in her husband&rsquo;s arms&mdash;womanly bashfulness on the
+torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of
+girlhood. Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly&mdash;far
+on the horizon of memory&mdash;the fatal truth returned to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories
+of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and glittering, but
+constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling wave.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And his she
+was! a woman&mdash;his wife! The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was all
+powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the prayer of
+his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this time it was as a
+robber grasps priceless treasure&mdash;with exultation and defiance. One
+instant of this. Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now surmounted the first wild
+passion of their meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered body, and
+said almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully quivering: &ldquo;Come and see
+him&mdash;baby;&rdquo; and then in great hope of the happiness she was going to
+give her husband, and share with him, and in tremour and doubt of what his
+feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows worked: she tried to throw off
+the strangeness of a year of separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Darling! come and see him. He is here.&rdquo; She spoke more clearly,
+though no louder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered himself to be
+led to the other side of the bed. His heart began rapidly throbbing at the
+sight of a little rosy-curtained cot covered with lace like milky summer cloud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that child&rsquo;s
+face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; he cried suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should have been
+disturbed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy, come back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it, darling?&rdquo; said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip
+he had unwittingly given her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death, perhaps die
+and be torn from his darling&mdash;his wife and his child; and that ere he went
+forth, ere he could dare to see his child and lean his head reproachfully on
+his young wife&rsquo;s breast&mdash;for the last time, it might be&mdash;he
+must stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy!&rdquo; She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
+whiteness of his&mdash;she bending forward to him, all her faculties strung to
+hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the horrible
+wound he was going to lay open to her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She moved her lips repeating his words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her head shook widened eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you
+understand?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Darling,&rdquo; she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him,
+&ldquo;what have I done to make you angry with me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O beloved!&rdquo; cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes. &ldquo;O
+beloved!&rdquo; was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited, reassured, but in terror.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lucy. I stayed away from you&mdash;I could not come to you, because... I
+dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come because I was a
+coward: because&mdash;hear me&mdash;this was the reason: I have broken my
+marriage oath.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in them. &ldquo;But
+you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Darling! Kiss me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you understood what I have told you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss me,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not join lips. &ldquo;I have come to you to-night to ask your
+forgiveness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her answer was: &ldquo;Kiss me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you forgive a man so base?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you love me, Richard?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed you, and
+am unworthy of you&mdash;not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your feet,
+to breathe the same air with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eyes shone brilliantly. &ldquo;You love me! you love me, darling!&rdquo;
+And as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said: &ldquo;My
+husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be parted
+again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with fresh fears
+at his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she spoke what her soul
+had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from it, and in her manner
+reminded him of his first vision of her on the summer morning in the field of
+the meadow-sweet. He held her to him, and thought then of a holier picture: of
+Mother and Child: of the sweet wonders of life she had made real to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made him think
+so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: &ldquo;You mustn&rsquo;t
+disturb him&mdash;mustn&rsquo;t touch him, dear!&rdquo; and with dainty fingers
+drew off the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the child was out
+along the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth was pouted full; the dark
+lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his plump cheeks. Richard stooped lower
+down to him, hungering for some movement as a sign that he lived. Lucy
+whispered. &ldquo;He sleeps like you, Richard&mdash;one arm under his
+head.&rdquo; Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping tenderness was in
+Richard. He breathed quick and soft, bending lower, till Lucy&rsquo;s curls, as
+she nestled and bent with him, rolled on the crimson quilt of the cot. A smile
+went up the plump cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was in rapid motion. The
+young mother whispered, blushing: &ldquo;He&rsquo;s dreaming of me,&rdquo; and
+the simple words did more than Richard&rsquo;s eyes to make him see what was.
+Then Lucy began to hum and buzz sweet baby-language, and some of the tiny
+fingers stirred, and he made as if to change his cosy position, but
+reconsidered, and deferred it, with a peaceful little sigh. Lucy whispered:
+&ldquo;He is such a big fellow. Oh! when you see him awake he is so like you,
+Richard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped there in his
+likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the more heavenly it
+seemed. His son! his child! should he ever see him awake? At the thought, he
+took the words that had been spoken, and started from the dream he had been in.
+&ldquo;Will he wake soon, Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept him awake for
+you, but he was so sleepy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he saw the eyes of his boy,
+and had him once on his heart, he never should have force to leave him. Then he
+looked down on him, again struggled to tear himself away. Two natures warred in
+his bosom, or it may have been the Magian Conflict still going on. He had come
+to see his child once and to make peace with his wife before it should be too
+late. Might he not stop with them? Might he not relinquish that devilish
+pledge? Was not divine happiness here offered to him?&mdash;If foolish Ripton
+had not delayed to tell him of his interview with Mountfalcon all might have
+been well. But pride said it was impossible. And then injury spoke. For why was
+he thus base and spotted to the darling of his love? A mad pleasure in the
+prospect of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for him,
+once more blackened his brain. If he would stay he could not. So he resolved,
+throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but oh, the pain!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child&rsquo;s cot. She
+marvelled at such excess of emotion. But when his chest heaved, and the
+extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized him, her heart sank, and
+she tried to get him in her arms. He turned away from her and went to the
+window. A half-moon was over the lake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;do you remember our rowing there one night,
+and we saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could have come early to-night
+that we might have had another row, and I have heard you sing there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Darling!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;will it make you happier if I go with
+you now? I will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, no! that I&rsquo;m not. I thought so once. I know I am not
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes! to have lived&mdash;the child on your heart&mdash;and never to have
+uttered a complaint!&mdash;you are brave. O my Lucy! my wife! you that have
+made me man! I called you a coward. I remember it. I was the coward&mdash;I the
+wretched vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you now. You are brave, and
+you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or three, I may be back&mdash;back for
+good, if you will accept me. Promise me to go to bed quietly. Kiss the child
+for me, and tell him his father has seen him. He will learn to speak soon. Will
+he soon speak, Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one arm of his
+with both her hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Going?&rdquo; she presently gasped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For two or three days. No more&mdash;I hope.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-night?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Going now? my husband!&rdquo; her faculties abandoned her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will be brave, my Lucy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it takes you from me?&rdquo;
+But questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried piteously to him
+to stay&mdash;not to leave them. Then she dragged him to the little sleeper,
+and urged him to pray by his side, and he did, but rose abruptly from his
+prayer when he had muttered a few broken words&mdash;she praying on with
+tight-strung nerves, in the faith that what she said to the interceding Mother
+above would be stronger than human hands on him. Nor could he go while she
+knelt there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering. She came to him,
+quiet. &ldquo;I knew you would remain.&rdquo; And taking his hand, innocently
+fondling it: &ldquo;Am I so changed from her he loved? You will not leave me,
+dear?&rdquo; But dread returned, and the words quavered as she spoke them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood. She drew his hand
+to her heart, and strained it there under one breast. &ldquo;Come: lie on my
+heart,&rdquo; she murmured with a smile of holy sweetness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of hell, kissed
+her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried to the door. It was over
+in an instant. She cried out his name, clinging to him wildly, and was adjured
+to be brave, for he would be dishonoured if he did not go. Then she was shaken
+off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child, which
+showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any answer to her
+applications for admittance, she made bold to enter. There she saw Lucy, the
+child in her lap, sitting on the floor senseless:&mdash;she had taken it from
+its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as her strongest appeal to
+him, and had fainted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh my! oh my!&rdquo; Mrs. Berry moaned, &ldquo;and I just now
+thinkin&rsquo; they was so happy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to revive Lucy,
+and heard what had brought her to that situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to his father,&rdquo; said Mrs. Berry.
+&ldquo;Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go, my love, and every horse in Raynham shall
+be out after &rsquo;m. This is what men brings us to!
+Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah! Or you take blessed baby, and I&rsquo;ll go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The baronet himself knocked at the door. &ldquo;What is this?&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;I heard a noise and a step descend.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife
+and babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy&mdash;Oh, my goodness! what sorrow&rsquo;s come
+on us!&rdquo; and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently,
+and Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips and
+tears dropping over him. And if the Scientific Humanist to the day of his death
+forgets the sight of those two poor true women jigging on their wretched hearts
+to calm the child, he must have very little of the human in him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap45"></a>
+CHAPTER XLV</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;His ordeal is over. I have just come from his room and seen him bear the
+worst that could be. Return at once&mdash;he has asked for you. I can hardly
+write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard from
+Ralph Morton. Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord Mountfalcon, and
+was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast. His father started immediately with
+his poor wife, and I followed in company with his aunt and his child. The wound
+was not dangerous. He was shot in the side somewhere, but the ball injured no
+vital part. We thought all would be well. Oh! how sick I am of theories, and
+Systems, and the pretensions of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and
+the man was still unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could
+hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till
+the day I die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely, where we still
+remain, and the people try as much as they can do to compensate for our
+discomforts by their kindness. The French poor people are very considerate
+where they see suffering. I will say that for them. The doctors had not allowed
+his poor Lucy to go near him. She sat outside his door, and none of us dared
+disturb her. That was a sight for Science. His father and myself, and Mrs.
+Berry, were the only ones permitted to wait on him, and whenever we came out,
+there she sat, not speaking a word&mdash;for she had been told it would
+endanger his life&mdash;but she looked such awful eagerness. She had the sort
+of eye I fancy mad persons have. I was sure her reason was going. We did
+everything we could think of to comfort her. A bed was made up for her and her
+meals were brought to her there. Of course there was no getting her to eat.
+What do you suppose his alarm was fixed on? He absolutely said to me&mdash;but
+I have not patience to repeat his words. He thought her to blame for not
+commanding herself for the sake of her maternal duties. He had absolutely an
+idea of insisting that she should make an effort to suckle the child. I shall
+love that Mrs. Berry to the end of my days. I really believe she has twice the
+sense of any of us&mdash;Science and all. She asked him plainly if he wished to
+poison the child, and then he gave way, but with a bad grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him. I remember that you said Richard had
+done wrong. Yes; well, that may be. But his father eclipsed his wrong in a
+greater wrong&mdash;a crime, or quite as bad; for if he deceived himself in the
+belief that he was acting righteously in separating husband and wife, and
+exposing his son as he did, I can only say that there are some who are worse
+than people who deliberately commit crimes. No doubt Science will benefit by
+it. They kill little animals for the sake of Science.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician from Dieppe, a
+very skilful man. It was he who told us where the real danger lay. We thought
+all would be well. A week had passed, and no fever supervened. We told Richard
+that his wife was coming to him, and he could bear to hear it. I went to her
+and began to circumlocute, thinking she listened&mdash;she had the same eager
+look. When I told her she might go in with me to see her dear husband, her
+features did not change. M. Despres, who held her pulse at the time, told me,
+in a whisper, it was cerebral fever&mdash;brain fever coming on. We have talked
+of her since. I noticed that though she did not seem to understand me, her
+bosom heaved, and she appeared to be trying to repress it, and choke something.
+I am sure now, from what I know of her character, that she&mdash;even in the
+approaches of delirium&mdash;was preventing herself from crying out. Her last
+hold of reason was a thought for Richard. It was against a creature like this
+that we plotted! I have the comfort of knowing that I did my share in helping
+to destroy her. Had she seen her husband a day or two before&mdash;but no!
+there was a new System to interdict that! Or had she not so violently
+controlled her nature as she did, I believe she might have been saved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb. Will you
+believe that when he saw his son&rsquo;s wife&mdash;poor victim! lying
+delirious, he could not even then see his error. You said he wished to take
+Providence out of God&rsquo;s hands. His mad self-deceit would not leave him. I
+am positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her for not
+having considered the child. Indeed he made a remark to me that it was
+unfortunate &lsquo;disastrous,&rsquo; I think he said&mdash;that the child
+should have to be fed by hand. I dare say it is. All I pray is that this young
+child may be saved from him. I cannot bear to see him look on it. He does not
+spare himself bodily fatigue&mdash;but what is that? that is the vulgarest form
+of love. I know what you will say. You will say I have lost all charity, and I
+have. But I should not feel so, Austin, if I could be quite sure that he is an
+altered man even now the blow has struck him. He is reserved and simple in his
+speech, and his grief is evident, but I have doubts. He heard her while she was
+senseless call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw
+then his mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his
+mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine
+he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a &lsquo;forte et belle
+jeune femme:&rsquo; and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded
+clay upon. A noble soul &lsquo;forte et belle!&rsquo; She lies upstairs. If he
+can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never enlighten
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She died five days after she had been removed. The shock had utterly
+deranged her. I was with her. She died very quietly, breathing her last breath
+without pain&mdash;asking for no one&mdash;a death I should like to die.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She screamed that she was
+&lsquo;drowning in fire,&rsquo; and that her husband would not come to her to
+save her. We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible to
+prevent Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and it produced an effect like
+fever on him. Whenever she called he answered. You could not hear them without
+weeping. Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with him, and his father moved from
+one to the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the trial for us came when she was gone. How to communicate it to
+Richard&mdash;or whether to do so at all! His father consulted with us. We were
+quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it while he was in that
+state. I can admit now&mdash;as things have turned out&mdash;we were wrong. His
+father left us&mdash;I believe he spent the time in prayer&mdash;and then
+leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in so many words, that his Lucy was
+no more. I thought it must kill him. He listened, and smiled. I never saw a
+smile so sweet and so sad. He said he had seen her die, as if he had passed
+through his suffering a long time ago. He shut his eyes. I could see by the
+motion of his eyeballs up that he was straining his sight to some inner
+heaven.&mdash;I cannot go on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think Richard is safe. Had we postponed the tidings, till he came to
+his clear senses, it must have killed him. His father was right for once, then.
+But if he has saved his son&rsquo;s body, he has given the death-blow to his
+heart. Richard will never be what he promised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the quarrel. I have
+had an interview with Lord M. this morning. I cannot say I think him exactly to
+blame: Richard forced him to fight. At least I do not select him the foremost
+for blame. He was deeply and sincerely affected by the calamity he has caused.
+Alas! he was only an instrument. Your poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks
+strange things of her daughter&rsquo;s death. She is only happy in drudging.
+Dr. Bairam says we must under any circumstances keep her employed. Whilst she
+is doing something, she can chat freely, but the moment her hands are not
+occupied she gives me an idea that she is going into a fit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We expect the dear child&rsquo;s uncle to-day. Mr. Thompson is here. I
+have taken him upstairs to look at her. That poor young man has a true heart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come at once. You will not be in time to see her. She will lie at
+Raynham. If you could you would see an angel. He sits by her side for hours. I
+can give you no description of her beauty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want you, for your
+presence will make me more charitable than I find it possible to be. Have you
+noticed the expression in the eyes of blind men? That is just how Richard
+looks, as he lies there silent in his bed&mdash;striving to image her on his
+brain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE END
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL ***</div>
+<div style='text-align:left'>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Updated editions will replace the previous one&#8212;the old editions will
+be renamed.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
+law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
+so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
+States without permission and without paying copyright
+royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
+of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG&#8482;
+concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
+and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
+the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
+of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
+copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
+easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
+of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
+Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
+do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
+by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
+license, especially commercial redistribution.
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br />
+<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br />
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+To protect the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; License available with this file or online at
+www.gutenberg.org/license.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
+destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in your
+possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
+by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
+or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.B. &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is a registered trademark. It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
+paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works if you follow the terms of this
+agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&#8220;the
+Foundation&#8221; or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
+of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works. Nearly all the individual
+works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
+States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
+United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
+claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
+displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
+all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
+that you will support the Project Gutenberg&#8482; mission of promoting
+free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; name associated with the work. You can easily
+comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
+same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License when
+you share it without charge with others.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
+in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
+check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
+agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
+distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
+other Project Gutenberg&#8482; work. The Foundation makes no
+representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
+country other than the United States.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
+immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License must appear
+prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work (any work
+on which the phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; appears, or with which the
+phrase &#8220;Project Gutenberg&#8221; is associated) is accessed, displayed,
+performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
+</div>
+
+<blockquote>
+  <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+    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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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.
+  </div>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is
+derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
+contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
+copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
+the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
+redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase &#8220;Project
+Gutenberg&#8221; associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
+either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
+obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
+additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
+will be linked to the Project Gutenberg&#8482; License for all works
+posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
+beginning of this work.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg&#8482;.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; License.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
+any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
+to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg&#8482; work in a format
+other than &#8220;Plain Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other format used in the official
+version posted on the official Project Gutenberg&#8482; website
+(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
+to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
+of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original &#8220;Plain
+Vanilla ASCII&#8221; or other form. Any alternate format must include the
+full Project Gutenberg&#8482; License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg&#8482; works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+provided that:
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'>
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+        the use of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works calculated using the method
+        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
+        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, but he has
+        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
+        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
+        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
+        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
+        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
+        Section 4, &#8220;Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
+        Literary Archive Foundation.&#8221;
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
+        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
+        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+        works.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
+        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
+        receipt of the work.
+    </div>
+
+    <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'>
+        &#8226; You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+        distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482; works.
+    </div>
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work or group of works on different terms than
+are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
+from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
+the Project Gutenberg&#8482; trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
+forth in Section 3 below.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
+contain &#8220;Defects,&#8221; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
+or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
+other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
+cannot be read by your equipment.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &#8220;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&#8221; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
+with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
+with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
+lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
+or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
+opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
+the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
+without further opportunities to fix the problem.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you &#8216;AS-IS&#8217;, WITH NO
+OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
+damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
+violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
+agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
+limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
+unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
+remaining provisions.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works in
+accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
+production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
+including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
+the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
+or any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, (b) alteration, modification, or
+additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg&#8482; work, and (c) any
+Defect you cause.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg&#8482;
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
+computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
+exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
+from people in all walks of life.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg&#8482;&#8217;s
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg&#8482; collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg&#8482; and future
+generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
+Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service. The Foundation&#8217;s EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
+U.S. federal laws and your state&#8217;s laws.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation&#8217;s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
+Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
+to date contact information can be found at the Foundation&#8217;s website
+and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
+public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
+DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
+visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
+donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'>
+Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg&#8482; electronic works
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
+Gutenberg&#8482; concept of a library of electronic works that could be
+freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
+distributed Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks with only a loose network of
+volunteer support.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Project Gutenberg&#8482; eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
+the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
+necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
+edition.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
+facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>.
+</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This website includes information about Project Gutenberg&#8482;,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b675541
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #4412 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4412)
diff --git a/old/4412.txt b/old/4412.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8777d28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/4412.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,19792 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete
+by George Meredith
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Last Updated: March 6, 2009
+Release Date: October 12, 2006 [EBook #4412]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By George Meredith
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  I.        THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+  II.       FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE STRENGTH
+  III.      THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+  IV.       ARSON
+  V.        ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
+  VI.       JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
+  VII.      DAPHNE'S BOWER
+  VIII.     THE BITTER CUP
+  IX.       A FINE DISTINCTION
+  X.        RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL
+  XI.       THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER
+  XII.      THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
+  XIII.     THE MAGNETIC AGE
+  XIV.      AN ATTRACTION
+  XV.       FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
+  XVI.      UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON
+  XVII.     GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD
+  XVIII.    THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA
+  XIX.      A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE
+  XX.       CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO
+  XXI.      RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON
+  XXII.     INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER
+  XXIII.    CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE
+  XXIV.     OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL
+  XXV.      IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP
+  XXVI.     RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO
+  XXVII.    CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE
+  XXVIII.   PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS
+  XIX.      THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE OF THE FIRST
+  XXX.      CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST
+  XXXI.     THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON
+  XXXII.    PROCESSION OF THE CAKE
+  XXXIII.   NURSING THE DEVIL
+  XXXIV.    CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE
+  XXXV.     CLARE'S MARRIAGE
+  XXXVI.    A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
+  XXXVII.   MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY
+  XXXVIII.  AN ENCHANTRESS
+  XXXIX.    THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE RESCUE!
+  XL.       CLARE'S DIARY
+  XLI.      AUSTIN RETURNS
+  XLII.     NATURE SPEAKS
+  XLIII.    AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+  XLIV.     THE LAST SCENE
+  XLV.      LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH
+
+
+
+
+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. Dialer 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 neat 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 in
+considerable elation. He had brought these great people to a pretty low
+pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably, as a British yeoman should;
+but not budged a foot in his demands: not to the baronet: not to the
+Captain: not to good young Mr. Wentworth. For Farmer Blaize was a solid
+Englishman; and, on hearing from the baronet a frank confession of the
+hold he had on the family, he determined to tighten his hold, and
+only relax it in exchange for tangible advantages--compensation to his
+pocket, his wounded person, and his still more wounded sentiments: the
+total indemnity being, in round figures, three hundred pounds, and a
+spoken apology from the prime offender, young Mister Richard. Even then
+there was a reservation. Provided, the farmer said, nobody had been
+tampering with any of his witnesses. In that 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the apparition
+that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the stage of events
+at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a
+moment. Morally superstitious as the baronet was, the character of his
+mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency in the affairs of
+men, and, when the matter was made clear to him, it shook off a weight
+of weakness and restored his mental balance; so that from this time he
+went about more like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly
+the great truth, that This World is well designed. Nay, he could laugh
+on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family
+members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit, Algernon's
+Leg.
+
+Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had seen ----.
+Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal property.
+After satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir Austin,
+moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her Ghost
+could write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy lady
+who had given Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply telling him his
+house would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what
+heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of soul!
+Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a man
+fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will act
+when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
+for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning
+by stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in
+the family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
+sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to
+this boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and father.
+A few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. "Let
+this be her penance, not inflicted by me!" Mrs. Doria bowed to the
+System for another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for
+herself.
+
+Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
+disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty fingers on
+a greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small
+hires. His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What
+he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
+juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot
+be performed without it. Returning from her wretched journey to
+her wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from
+easy-going Diaper,--a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse:
+for, seldom writing metrically now, he took to talking it. With a
+fluent sympathetic tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her
+interests by these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to
+elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told
+her that the poverty she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle
+nurture, and that he had reason to believe--could assure her--that an
+annuity was on the point of being granted her by her husband. And
+Diaper broke his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered this
+information. She learnt that he had applied to her husband for money.
+It is hard to have one's prop of self-respect cut away just when we
+are suffering a martyr's agony at the stake. There was a five minutes'
+tragic colloquy in the recesses behind the scenes,--totally tragic to
+Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in the warm sun of that annuity,
+and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then wrote the letter Sir
+Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere behind the scenes is
+not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost, we will return and face the
+curtain.
+
+That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had
+furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect
+was considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time
+quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to
+Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own age to rub his
+excessive vitality against, and wanted none. His hands were full enough
+with Tom Bakewell. Moreover, his father and he were heart in heart.
+The boy's mind was opening, and turned to his father affectionately
+reverent. At this period, when the young savage grows into higher
+influences, the faculty of worship is foremost in him. At this period
+Jesuits will stamp the future of their chargeling flocks; and all who
+bring up youth by a System, and watch it, know that it is the malleable
+moment. Boys possessing any mental or moral force to give them a
+tendency, then predestinate their careers; or, if under supervision,
+take the impress that is given them: not often to cast it off, and
+seldom to cast it off altogether.
+
+In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood and
+Adolescence--The Blossoming Season--on the threshold of Puberty, there
+is one Unselfish Hour--say, Spiritual Seed-time."
+
+He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the
+most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to
+germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.
+
+"I am only striving to make my son a Christian," he said, answering
+them who persisted in expostulating with the System. And to these
+instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous," he told his son, "and
+then serve your country with heart and soul." The youth was instructed
+to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read
+history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one
+day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his
+chin, against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating
+the hero of our Parliament, his eyes streaming with tears.
+
+People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he
+only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order
+to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life
+of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This
+was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to
+disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and
+did not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in
+proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into
+penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.
+
+The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
+
+"How is it, sir," he said one night, "I can't get Tom Bakewell to pray?"
+
+"Does he refuse?" Sir Austin asked.
+
+"He seems to be ashamed to," Richard replied. "He wants to know what is
+the good? and I don't know what to tell him."
+
+"I'm afraid it has gone too far with him," said Sir Austin, "and until
+he has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of Prayer.
+Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for their
+education. He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable rind.
+Culture is half-way to heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever be
+brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his
+prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim's Scrip):
+
+"'Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.'"
+
+"I will, sir," said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
+
+Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was
+beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known
+to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this
+side, now on that.
+
+The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments
+in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin's interdict not
+to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of
+a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of
+sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of
+his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the
+Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin), little better than a
+month: the religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when
+he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Burnley, and the
+domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and
+hard to bear;--he tried to convert Adrian! All the while Tom was being
+exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a drill-sergeant from the
+nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself,
+and marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke
+his heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic to take in the
+rudiments of letters: for the boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero
+in grain.
+
+Richard's pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
+thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to
+him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of
+them.
+
+"I an animal!" cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled
+by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin had
+him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.
+
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
+Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was
+growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed
+absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree,
+and Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.
+
+Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: "If I had been
+a girl, I would have had you for my husband." And he with the frankness
+of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would have had you?"
+causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her
+say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning
+of!
+
+"You don't read your father's Book," she said. Her own copy was bound
+in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier
+books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
+remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed
+at him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her
+brother would not be on his guard.
+
+"See here," said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to
+one of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must
+clay-enclose us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human
+creature in our path. "Can you understand it, child?"
+
+Richard informed her that when she read he could.
+
+"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
+through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and
+yon with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise
+man to guide me."
+
+"Is my father very wise?" Richard asked.
+
+"I think so," the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
+
+"Do you--" Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his
+heart.
+
+"Do I--what?" she calmly queried.
+
+"I was going to say, do you--I mean, I love him so much."
+
+Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
+
+They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
+always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
+sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
+disturb him.
+
+Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
+Austin's principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly joyous
+and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of his
+pupil's advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were
+planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard
+was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his
+studies. The System flourished. Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he
+took the lead of his companions on land and water, and had more than
+one bondsman in his service besides Ripton Thompson--the boy without
+a Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle
+too conscious of it. His generosity to his occasional companions was
+princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a
+prince; and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would
+overlook that more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded
+an utter servility when it had once been rendered susceptible. If
+Richard had his followers he had also his feuds. The Papworths were as
+subservient as Ripton, but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr. Morton,
+and a match for Richard in numerous promising qualities, comprising the
+noble science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind too openly, and
+moreover would not be snubbed. There was no middle course for Richard's
+comrades between high friendship or absolute slavery. He was deficient
+in those cosmopolite habits and feelings which enable boys and men
+to hold together without caring much for each other; and, like every
+insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which he was quite
+aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior nature. Young Ralph
+was a lively talker: therefore, argued Richard's vanity, he had no
+intellect. He was affable: therefore he was frivolous. The women liked
+him: therefore he was a butterfly. In fine, young Ralph was popular, and
+our superb prince, denied the privilege of despising, ended by detesting
+him.
+
+Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the
+absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival. Ralph was an Eton boy,
+and hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer. A swimmer and a
+cricketer is nowhere to be scorned in youth's republic. Finding that
+manoeuvre would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to entrench
+himself behind his greater wealth and his position; but he soon
+abandoned that also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him
+he was exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous.
+And so he was dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck
+of champions. For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt:
+Richard's middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom
+pick up more than three eggs underwater to Ralph's half-dozen. He was
+beaten, too, in jumping and running. Why will silly mortals strive to
+the painful pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having reached them,
+not have the magnanimity and circumspection to retire into private life
+immediately? Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent
+Papworths to Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton;
+matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once, trice, or
+thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton, would require
+for the undertaking. It was accepted, and a reply returned, equally
+formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein Ralph Barthrop
+Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria Feverel, and was his
+man. The match came off on a midsummer morning, under the direction
+of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a spectator from the cover of a
+plantation by the river-side, unknown to his son, and, to the scandal
+of her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the baronet. He had invited her
+attendance, and she, obeying her frank nature, and knowing what The
+Pilgrim's Scrip said about prudes, at once agreed to view the match,
+pleasing him mightily. For was not here a woman worthy the Golden Ages
+of the world? one who could look upon man as a creature divinely made,
+and look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted, by the Serpent! Such
+a woman was rare. Sir Austin did not discompose her by uttering
+his praises. She was conscious of his approval only in an increased
+gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and communications,
+as if he were speaking to a familiar, a very high compliment from him.
+While the lads were standing ready for the signal to plunge from the
+steep decline of greensward into the shining waters, Sir Austin called
+upon her to admire their beauty, and she did, and even advanced her head
+above his shoulder delicately. In so doing, and just as the start was
+given, a bonnet became visible to Richard. Young Ralph was heels in air
+before he moved, and then he dropped like lead. He was beaten by several
+lengths.
+
+The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard's
+friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start. But though the
+youth, with full confidence in his better style and equal strength,
+had backed himself heavily against his rival, and had lost his little
+river-yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort. It was the Bonnet
+had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet, typical of the mystery that
+caused his heart those violent palpitations, was his dear, detestable
+enemy.
+
+And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned towards
+a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet was
+etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress. A cheek to the pride of
+a boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest
+powers. Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic:
+he relinquished the material world to young Ralph, and retired into
+himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was
+his handmaid, and History his minister and Time his ancient harper,
+and sweet Romance his bride; where he walked in a realm vaster and more
+gorgeous than the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been.
+For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal this
+early one that is made bountifully common to so many, when the ripening
+blood has put a spark to the imagination, and the earth is seen through
+rosy mists of a thousand fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires;
+panting for bliss and taking it as it comes; making of any sight or
+sound, perforce of the enchantment they carry with them, a key to
+infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The passions then are gambolling
+cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow to. They have their teeth and
+their talons, but they neither tear nor bite. They are in counsel and
+fellowship with the quickened heart and brain. The whole sweet system
+moves to music.
+
+Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,
+which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due
+to his plan. The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging
+to solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were
+matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. "For it comes," said
+he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on
+the youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, "it comes of
+a thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:
+neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the
+flower of manhood. If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and
+perfection of his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father! But
+one thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew
+paradise, and could read God's handwriting on the earth! Now those
+abominations whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters,
+doctor!--and who can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is
+full of them--as they will have no divine time to look back upon in
+their own lives, how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or
+be other than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my boy," and the
+baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to hear, "my boy,
+if he fall, will fall from an actual region of purity. He dare not be
+a sceptic as to that. Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding
+light of a memory behind him. So much is secure."
+
+To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of
+profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received
+opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight,
+is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded
+themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them
+to make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill. Sir
+Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw the truth, and, persisting
+in it so long, he was accredited by those who did not understand him,
+and silenced them that did.
+
+"We shall see," was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
+unbelievers.
+
+So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comelier, bracer,
+better boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was undeniable. The
+vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved
+by the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good
+trial trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the
+Bakewell Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be hopefuller.
+The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that
+could destroy so bright a Spring! But, bright as it was, the baronet
+relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision. He said to his intimates:
+"Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this
+Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future. The living Tree now
+requires incessant watchfulness." And, acting up to his light, Sir
+Austin did watch. The youth submitted to an examination every night
+before he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of his studies,
+but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of the day. He could
+do so, for he was pure. Any wildness in him that his father noted, any
+remoteness or richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as
+incidental to the Blossoming Season. There is nothing like a theory for
+binding the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward, knew
+less of his son than the servant of his household. And he was deaf, as
+well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to tell him that the youth
+was consuming paper. Lady Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning
+propensities. Sir Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the System
+had foreseen it, he said. But when he came to hear that the youth
+was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for being much
+disturbed.
+
+"Surely," said Lady Blandish, "you knew he scribbled?"
+
+"A very different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet. "No
+Feverel has ever written poetry."
+
+"I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked. "He rhymes
+very prettily to me."
+
+A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry,
+quieted Sir Austin's fears.
+
+The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty;
+and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced
+several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to
+him. Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at
+his best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing:
+he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin
+manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, "Poor
+boy!"
+
+Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition. For a youth in
+his Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to
+destroy his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason
+cogent enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of
+abhorrent despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under it. A strange
+man had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his skull
+with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an
+infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was making him feel such
+an animal! Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw
+in its shoots and twigs. And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man
+having departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner,
+stated that it would give him pleasure to see those same precocious,
+utterly valueless, scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining
+mental blossoms spontaneously fell away. Richard's spirit stood bare.
+He protested not. Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay
+a minute in doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a
+drawer in his room, and from a clean-linen recess, never suspected
+by Sir Austin, the secretive youth drew out bundle after bundle: each
+neatly tied, named, and numbered: and pitched them into flames. And so
+Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence
+between Father and Son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the Age
+of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is dangerous, and
+to see it, a communication of the disease. People at Raynham were put on
+their guard by the baronet, and his reputation for wisdom was severely
+criticized in consequence of the injunctions he thought fit to issue
+through butler and housekeeper down to the lower household, for the
+preservation of his son from any visible symptom of the passion. A
+footman and two housemaids are believed to have been dismissed on the
+report of heavy Benson that they were in or inclining to the state; upon
+which an undercook and a dairymaid voluntarily threw up their places,
+averring that "they did not want no young men, but to have their sex
+spied after by an old wretch like that," indicating the ponderous
+butler, "was a little too much for a Christian woman," and then
+they were ungenerous enough to glance at Benson's well-known marital
+calamity, hinting that some men met their deserts. So intolerable
+did heavy Benson's espionage become, that Raynham would have grown
+depopulated of its womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out
+to the baronet what a fearful arm his butler was wielding. Sir Austin
+acknowledged it despondently. "It only shows," said he, with a fine
+spirit of justice, "how all but impossible it is to legislate where
+there are women!"
+
+"I do not object," he added; "I hope I am too just to object to
+the exercise of their natural inclinations. All I ask from them is
+discreetness."
+
+"Ay," said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
+
+"No gadding about in couples," continued the baronet, "no kissing in
+public. Such occurrences no boy should witness. Whenever people of
+both sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they are
+high-fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for as a
+matter of course. Let it be known that I only require discreetness."
+
+Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey. Under
+Adrian's able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that virtue.
+
+Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household. Sir Austin, who
+had not previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne's hopeless
+curate, now desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least discourage, his
+visits, for the appearance of the man was that of an embodied sigh and
+groan.
+
+"Really, Austin!" said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother more
+awake than she had supposed, "I have never allowed him to hope."
+
+"Let him see it, then," replied the baronet; "let him see it."
+
+"The man amuses me," said Mrs. Doria. "You know, we have few amusements
+here, we inferior creatures. I confess I should like a barrel-organ
+better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and besides, it plays
+more than one tune. However, since you think my society bad for him, let
+him stop away."
+
+With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the moment
+her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view.
+Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins, Richard
+and Clare; had already beheld them espoused and fruitful. For this she
+yielded the pleasures of town; for this she immured herself at Raynham;
+for this she bore with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences,
+things abhorrent to her, and heaven knows what forms of torture and
+self-denial, which are smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary
+martyrs--a mother with a daughter to marry. Mrs. Doria, an amiable
+widow, had surely married but for her daughter Clare. The lady's hair no
+woman could possess without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme
+of her lady's-maid,--a natural aureole to her head. She was gay, witty,
+still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she sacrificed
+it to accomplish her daughter's! sacrificed, as with heroic scissors,
+hair, wit, gaiety--let us not attempt to enumerate how much! more than
+may be said. And she was only one of thousands; thousands who have
+no portion of the hero's reward; for he may reckon on applause, and
+condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they, poor slaves! must look for
+nothing but the opposition of their own sex and the sneers of ours. O,
+Sir Austin! had you not been so blinded, what an Aphorism might have
+sprung from this point of observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told,
+between sister and brother, that during the Magnetic Age her daughter's
+presence at Raynham was undesirable. Instead of nursing offence, her
+sole thought was the mountain of prejudice she had to contend against.
+She bowed, and said, Clare wanted sea-air--she had never quite recovered
+the shock of that dreadful night. How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know,
+might the Peculiar Period be expected to last?
+
+"That," said Sir Austin, "depends. A year, perhaps. He is entering on
+it. I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen. Clare is now--how old?"
+
+"Seventeen."
+
+"She is marriageable."
+
+"Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don't name such a thing. My child
+shall not be robbed of her youth."
+
+"Our women marry early, Helen."
+
+"My child shall not!"
+
+The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose his sister.
+
+"As you are of that opinion, Helen," said he, "perhaps we may still make
+arrangements to retain you with us. Would you think it advisable to
+send Clare--she should know discipline--to some establishment for a few
+months?"
+
+"To an asylum, Austin?" cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her indignation as
+well as she could.
+
+"To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are such to be found."
+
+"Austin!" Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in her
+eyes. "Unjust! absurd!" she murmured. The baronet thought it a natural
+proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
+
+"I cannot leave my child." Mrs. Doria trembled. "Where she goes, I go.
+I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no value to
+the world, but she is my child. I will see, poor dear, that you have no
+cause to complain of her."
+
+"I thought," Sir Austin remarked, "that you acquiesced in my views with
+regard to my son."
+
+"Yes--generally," said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had not
+before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol
+in his house--an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than
+wood or brass or gold. But she had bowed to the Idol too long--she had
+too entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency. She had,
+and she dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics, in
+teaching her daughter to bow to the Idol also. Love of that kind Richard
+took for tribute. He was indifferent to Clare's soft eyes. The parting
+kiss he gave her was ready and cold as his father could desire. Sir
+Austin now grew eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but
+Richard thought his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship
+awkward, and all manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and
+worthless. To what end? sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud,
+as soon as he was relieved of his father's society, what was the good
+of anything? Whatever he did--whichever path he selected, led back to
+Raynham. And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed
+himself, only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his
+previsions. Tom Bakewell, now the youth's groom, had to give the baronet
+a report of his young master's proceedings, in common with Adrian, and
+while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out. "He do ride like fire
+every day to Pig's Snout," naming the highest hill in the neighbourhood,
+"and stand there and stare, never movin', like a mad 'un. And then hoam
+agin all slack as if he'd been beaten in a race by somebody."
+
+"There is no woman in that!" mused the baronet. "He would have ridden
+back as hard as he went," reflected this profound scientific humanist,
+"had there been a woman in it. He would shun vast expanses, and
+seek shade, concealment, solitude. The desire for distances betokens
+emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an image
+we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty."
+
+Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of
+cynicism.
+
+"Exactly," said the baronet. "As I foresaw. At this period an insatiate
+appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate. Nothing but the
+quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies,
+will satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied! Hence his
+bitterness. Life can furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and
+purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and roam
+through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs earth has
+to offer to high natures, as she offers to low ones debauchery. 'Tis a
+sign, this sourness, that he is subject to none of the empiricisms that
+are afloat. Now to keep him clear of them!"
+
+The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As yet, however, it
+could not be said that Sir Austin's System had failed. On the contrary,
+it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed
+the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they asked, was such
+another young man to be found?
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, "if men could give their hands
+to women unsoiled--how different would many a marriage be! She will be a
+happy girl who calls Richard husband."
+
+"Happy, indeed!" was the baronet's caustic ejaculation. "But where shall
+I meet one equal to him, and his match?"
+
+"I was innocent when I was a girl," said the lady.
+
+Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
+
+"Do you think no girls innocent?"
+
+Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
+
+"No, that you know they are not," said the lady, stamping. "But they are
+more innocent than boys, I am sure."
+
+"Because of their education, madam. You see now what a youth can
+be. Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather--to speak more
+humbly--when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall
+have virtuous young men."
+
+"It's too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them," said
+the lady, pouting and laughing.
+
+"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the baronet,
+and they trifled a little. They were approaching Daphne's Bower, which
+they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending
+midsummer day.
+
+The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
+serious converse.
+
+"I shall believe again in Arthur's knights," she said. "When I was a
+girl I dreamed of one."
+
+"And he was in quest of the San Greal?"
+
+"If you like."
+
+"And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San
+Blandish?"
+
+"Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady,
+ruffling.
+
+"I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend of
+homage.
+
+The lady gathered her mouth. "Either we are very mighty or you are very
+weak."
+
+"Both, madam."
+
+"But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and truth,
+and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in them, we
+are constant, and would die for them--die for them. Ah! you know men but
+not women."
+
+"The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?"
+said Sir Austin.
+
+"Old, or young!"
+
+"But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?"
+
+"They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes--ah!" said the lady. "Intellect may subdue women--make slaves of
+them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they only
+love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature."
+
+Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
+
+"And did you encounter the knight of your dream?"
+
+"Not then." She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily done.
+
+"And how did you bear the disappointment?"
+
+"My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was lengthened to a gown
+I stood at the altar. I am not the only girl that has been made a woman
+in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Austin, "women have much to bear."
+
+Here the couple changed characters. The lady became gay as the baronet
+grew earnest.
+
+"You know it is our lot," she said. "And we are allowed many amusements.
+If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like our virtue, is
+its own reward. Then, as a widow, I have wonderful privileges."
+
+"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"
+
+"Certainly," she responded. "I have no trouble now in patching and
+piecing that rag the world calls--a character. I can sit at your feet
+every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are
+female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."
+
+Sir Austin drew nearer to her. "You would have made an admirable mother,
+madam."
+
+This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
+
+"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."
+
+"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.
+
+"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."
+
+"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"
+
+"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"
+
+The lady tapped her toe with her parasol. "But I am a mother," she said.
+"Richard is my son. Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.
+
+Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and held
+his head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she
+chose to refuse, or defer. They made the coloured West a common point
+for their eyes, and then Sir Austin said:
+
+"As you will not say 'ours,' let me. And, as you have therefore an
+equal claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately
+conceived."
+
+The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal,
+but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a
+declaration. So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed
+smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project. It
+concerned Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was to
+marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young lady, some years his
+junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be
+every way fitted by education, instincts, and blood--on each of which
+qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged--to espouse so perfect a
+youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of
+the Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he proposed to set forth
+immediately, and devote a couple of months, to the first essay in his
+Coelebite search.
+
+"I fear," said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully unfolded,
+"you have laid down for yourself a difficult task. You must not be too
+exacting."
+
+"I know it." The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.
+
+"Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself to no class.
+If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood.
+I believe many of the middle classes are frequently more careful--more
+pure-blooded--than our aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing
+family who educate their children--I should prefer a girl without
+brothers and sisters--as a Christian damsel should be educated--say,
+on the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to
+Richard Feverel."
+
+Lady Blandish bit her lip. "And what do you do with Richard while you
+are absent on this expedition?"
+
+"Oh!" said the baronet, "he accompanies his father."
+
+"Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
+bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and pudding.
+How can he care for her? He thinks more at his age of old women like me.
+He will be certain to kick against her, and destroy your plan, believe
+me, Sir Austin."
+
+"Ay? ay? do you think that?" said the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
+
+"Ay! true," he muttered. "Adrian said the same. He must not see her.
+How could I think of it! The child is naked woman. He would despise her.
+Naturally!"
+
+"Naturally!" echoed the lady.
+
+"Then, madam," and the baronet rose, "there is one thing for me to
+determine upon. I must, for the first time in his life, leave him."
+
+"Will you, indeed?" said the lady.
+
+"It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly
+mated,--not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so
+delicately trained might be; more easily than another! Betrothed, he
+will be safe from a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a
+term. My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his season."
+
+"And under whose charge will you leave him?" Lady Blandish inquired.
+
+She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the
+upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.
+
+"Madam!" he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, "under
+whose but yours?"
+
+As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock. She did
+not withdraw her hand. The baronet's salute was flatteringly reverent.
+He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony. And
+he, the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish
+forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it. She received the
+exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must
+deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.
+
+The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
+from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring
+beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime. They turned
+their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the
+scene. The next moment he had galloped away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter,
+and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and
+the great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.
+Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering,
+sighing, knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer.
+He had the key now. His own father had given it to him. His heart was a
+lightning steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed
+in superhuman beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned
+whispering upon close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a
+splendour upon savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in
+golden courts lit to a glorious day by ladies' eyes, one pair of which,
+dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him through the
+boskage and dwelt upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above
+a hand glittering white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May
+night.
+
+Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act
+of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small
+white hand. Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth: to fling
+the Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off! He was intoxicated
+by anticipation. For that he was born. There was, then, some end in
+existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman's hand, and die! He
+would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to relieve his
+swarming sensations. Scarce was he seated when the pen was dashed aside,
+the paper sent flying with the exclamation, "Have I not sworn I would
+never write again?" Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve. The nonsense
+that was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency
+for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his
+oath, and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of composition
+before pride could speak a word. Possibly the pride even of Richard
+Feverel had been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a
+time, and a single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were
+demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows,
+pressed impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to
+form, quite as much as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his
+incapacity, threw down the powerless pen, and sent him panting to his
+outstretched length and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled
+land.
+
+Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went
+forth into the air. A lamp was still burning in his father's room, and
+Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on
+the watch. Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold
+against the hues of dawn.
+
+Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes
+of fever. Richard took to it instinctively. The clear fresh water,
+burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep
+shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel. Overhead solitary
+morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower;
+still, delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he
+was heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of
+river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant
+of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was
+rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here
+and there. It was not a dream, now he knew. There was a secret abroad.
+The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds. Oh,
+why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should
+draw down ladies' eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur! To
+such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had
+pulled through his first feverish energy.
+
+He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude
+which follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a hail and his own name
+called. It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption
+of miserable masculine prose. Heartily wishing him abed with the rest
+of mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped ashore. Ralph immediately seized
+his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a talk with him, and
+dragged the Magnetic Youth from his water-dreams, up and down the wet
+mown grass. That he had to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and
+Richard, though he barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival's
+gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience; whereat
+Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat foreign to his mind, but
+of great human interest and importance, put the question to him:
+
+"I say, what woman's name do you like best?"
+
+"I don't know any," quoth Richard, indifferently. "Why are you out so
+early?"
+
+In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be
+considered a pretty name.
+
+Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half the
+women cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name of Mary
+was equivalent for women at home.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Ralph. "We have lots of Marys. It's so common. Oh! I
+don't like Mary best. What do you think?"
+
+Richard thought it just like another.
+
+"Do you know," Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging into
+the subject, "I'd do anything on earth for some names--one or two. It's
+not Mary, nor Lucy. Clarinda's pretty, but it's like a novel. Claribel,
+I like. Names beginning with 'Cl' I prefer. The 'Cl's' are always gentle
+and lovely girls you would die for! Don't you think so?"
+
+Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to inspire that
+emotion. Indeed these urgent appeals to his fancy in feminine names at
+five o'clock in the morning slightly surprised him, though he was but
+half awake to the outer world. By degrees he perceived that Ralph
+was changed. Instead of the lusty boisterous boy, his rival in manly
+sciences, who spoke straightforwardly and acted up to his speech, here
+was an abashed and blush-persecuted youth, who sued piteously for a
+friendly ear wherein to pour the one idea possessing him. Gradually,
+too, Richard apprehended that Ralph likewise was on the frontiers of
+the Realm of Mystery, perhaps further toward it than he himself was;
+and then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was revealed to him the wonderful
+beauty and depth of meaning in feminine names. The theme appeared novel
+and delicious, fitted to the season and the hour. But the hardship was,
+that Richard could choose none from the number; all were the same to
+him; he loved them all.
+
+"Don't you really prefer the 'Cl's'?" said Ralph, persuasively.
+
+"Not better than the names ending in 'a' and 'y,' Richard replied,
+wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently ahead of him.
+
+"Come under these trees," said Ralph. And under the trees Ralph
+unbosomed. His name was down for the army: Eton was quitted for ever. In
+a few months he would have to join his regiment, and before he left he
+must say goodbye to his friends.... Would Richard tell him Mrs. Forey's
+address? he had heard she was somewhere by the sea. Richard did not
+remember the address, but said he would willingly take charge of any
+letter and forward it.
+
+Ralph dived his hand into his pocket. "Here it is. But don't let anybody
+see it."
+
+"My aunt's name is not Clare," said Richard, perusing what was composed
+of the exterior formula. "You've addressed it to Clare herself."
+
+That was plain to see.
+
+"Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish," Richard
+continued in a low tone, transferring the names, and playing on the
+musical strings they were to him. Then he said: "Names of ladies! How
+they sweeten their names!"
+
+He fixed his eyes on Ralph. If he discovered anything further he said
+nothing, but bade the good fellow good-bye, jumped into his boat, and
+pulled down the tide. The moment Ralph was hidden by an abutment of the
+banks, Richard perused the address. For the first time it struck him
+that his cousin Clare was a very charming creature: he remembered the
+look of her eyes, and especially the last reproachful glance she gave
+him at parting. What business had Ralph to write to her? Did she not
+belong to Richard Feverel? He read the words again and again: Clare
+Doria Forey. Why, Clare was the name he liked best--nay, he loved it.
+Doria, too--she shared his own name with him. Away went his heart, not
+at a canter now, at a gallop, as one who sights the quarry. He felt too
+weak to pull. Clare Doria Forey--oh, perfect melody! Sliding with the
+tide, he heard it fluting in the bosom of the hills.
+
+When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the Fates
+are behindhand in furnishing a temple for the flame.
+
+Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder
+below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds.
+Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble,
+and there also hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad
+straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun,
+and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes. Across her
+shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost
+golden where the ray touched them. She was simply dressed, befitting
+decency and the season. On a closer inspection you might see that
+her lips were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on
+dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water. Apparently she
+found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her
+mouth. Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite
+proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully
+have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries.
+Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry
+is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You eat: mouth, eye,
+and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam. And so it
+was with the damsel who knelt there. The little skylark went up above
+her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from
+a dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to
+her with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green
+osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat
+slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked
+the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her
+territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
+Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz,
+the weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild
+flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a
+terrible attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his
+proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and
+stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds. Her
+posture was so graceful, that though he was making straight for the
+weir, he dared not dip a scull. Just then one enticing dewberry caught
+her eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched
+low, and could not gather what it sought. A stroke from his right
+brought him beside her. The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole
+shape trembled over the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the
+water. Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust against
+the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself, he enabled her to
+recover her balance, and gain safe earth, whither he followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes. The world
+lay wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to
+the vivid reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither away
+thousands of leagues in an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sang overhead!
+What splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty about his
+enchanted brows! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by whose light the
+glories of being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand
+is at your feet.
+
+Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
+transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
+
+The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was the First Woman
+to him.
+
+And she--mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
+
+So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood
+together; he pale, and she blushing.
+
+She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival
+damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung
+like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly
+fast and far with her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her
+eyes, bore witness to the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were
+in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
+that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have
+thrown her the handkerchief for his son. The wide summer-hat, nodding
+over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing heavy
+curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls, waves
+of hair call them, rippling at the ends, went like a sunny red-veined
+torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious vision to the
+youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a feature.
+There were curious features of colour in her face for him to have read.
+Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of
+the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and
+level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth,
+and by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful creature used her
+faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer. Under the dark
+thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to
+the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning--more than brain was ever
+meant to fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
+Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of
+colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall
+match the depth of its lightest look?
+
+Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire his figure
+looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his
+forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away
+slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward
+curve of his brows there--felt more than seen, so slight it was--and
+gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air
+was a flattering charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying
+fast and far with her! He leaned a little forward, drinking her in
+with all his eyes, and young Love has a thousand. Then truly the System
+triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been
+content to draw the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would
+fly, he might have pointed to his son again, and said to the world,
+"Match him!" Such keen bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an
+innocent youth alone has powers of soul in him to experience.
+
+"O Women!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts,
+"Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not
+to learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
+putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!"
+
+If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero,
+and was not present, or their fates might have been different.
+
+So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they
+came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
+
+She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words;
+and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
+she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
+was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish
+to be chronicled.
+
+The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of
+anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely
+face, clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My book! my book!" and ran to
+the bank.
+
+Prince Ferdinand was at her side. "What have you lost?" he said.
+
+"My book!" she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
+shoulders to the stream. Then turning to him, "Oh, no, no! let me
+entreat you not to," she said; "I do not so very much mind losing it."
+And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle
+hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
+
+"Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she continued,
+withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening. "Pray, do not!"
+
+The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner was the spell
+of contact broken than he jumped in. The water was still troubled and
+discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his
+head with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of
+paper floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if
+fire had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element
+to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land
+disconsolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and pretty
+expostulations.
+
+"Let me try again," he said.
+
+"No, indeed!" she replied, and used the awful threat: "I will run away
+if you do," which effectually restrained him.
+
+Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she
+cried, "There, there! you have what I want. It is that. I do not care
+for the book. No, please! You are not to look at it. Give it me."
+
+Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard
+had glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two
+Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below--O wonderment immense! his
+own handwriting!
+
+He handed it to her. She took it, and put it in her bosom.
+
+Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls,
+Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
+reserved for such a starry fate--passing beatitude!
+
+As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember
+the hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable
+production. The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all,
+to tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was
+complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet--
+
+     "Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
+     As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair."
+
+And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were two blue eyes and
+golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working
+of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she
+that was to fulfil it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak.
+Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden
+on her conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed. At last she drew
+up her chin to look at her companion under the nodding brim of her hat
+(and the action gave her a charmingly freakish air), crying, "But where
+are you going to? You are wet through. Let me thank you again; and,
+pray, leave me, and go home and change instantly."
+
+"Wet?" replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest;
+"not more than one foot, I hope. I will leave you while you dry your
+stockings in the sun."
+
+At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
+
+"Not I, but you. You would try to get that silly book for me, and you
+are dripping wet. Are you not very uncomfortable?"
+
+In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
+
+"And you really do not feel that you are wet?"
+
+He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
+
+She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes
+lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
+
+"I cannot help it," she said, her mouth opening, and sounding harmonious
+bells of laughter in his ears. "Pardon me, won't you?"
+
+His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
+
+"Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!"
+she musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
+
+"It's true," he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a
+duet with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the
+work of a month of intimacy. Better than sentiment, laughter opens the
+breast to love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of
+a corner here and there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion
+propitious, O British young! and laugh and treat love as an honest God,
+and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two laughed, and the
+souls of each cried out to other, "It is I it is I."
+
+They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried
+his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird's
+copse, and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the
+many-coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from it.
+
+Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
+swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid
+backwater.
+
+"Will you let it go?" said the damsel, eying it curiously.
+
+"It can't be stopped," he replied, and could have added: "What do I care
+for it now!"
+
+His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned. His new life was
+with her, alive, divine.
+
+She flapped low the brim of her hat. "You must really not come any
+farther," she softly said.
+
+"And will you go, and not tell me who you are?" he asked, growing bold
+as the fears of losing her came across him. "And will you not tell me
+before you go"--his face burned--"how you came by that--that paper?"
+
+She chose to select the easier question for answer: "You ought to know
+me; we have been introduced." Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.
+
+"Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I never could have
+forgotten you."
+
+"You have, I think," she said.
+
+"Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!"
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Do you remember Belthorpe?"
+
+"Belthorpe! Belthorpe!" quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain
+to recollect there was such a place. "Do you mean old Blaize's farm?"
+
+"Then I am old Blaize's niece." She tripped him a soft curtsey.
+
+The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was it that this divine
+sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
+
+"Then what--what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes added, "O
+wonderful creature! How came you to enrich the earth?"
+
+"Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?" she peered at him from
+a side-bend of the flapping brim.
+
+"The Desboroughs of Dorset?" A light broke in on him. "And have you
+grown to this? That little girl I saw there!"
+
+He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision. She
+could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes. Her volubility
+fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high,
+and they were mutually constrained.
+
+"You see," she murmured, "we are old acquaintances."
+
+Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, "You are
+very beautiful!"
+
+The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
+Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that
+is touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
+
+Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness;
+but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips. She turned
+away from them, her bosom a little rebellious. Praise so passionately
+spoken, and by one who has been a damsel's first dream, dreamed of
+nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her
+thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
+would. She quickened her steps.
+
+"I have offended you!" said a mortally wounded voice across her
+shoulder.
+
+That he should think so were too dreadful.
+
+"Oh no, no! you would never offend me." She gave him her whole sweet
+face.
+
+"Then why--why do you leave me?"
+
+"Because," she hesitated, "I must go."
+
+"No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not go."
+
+"Indeed I must," she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her
+hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
+resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said,
+"Good-bye," as if it were a natural thing to say.
+
+The hand was pure white--white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a
+Maynight. It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last
+night bent his head reverentially above, and kissed--resigning
+himself thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such
+daring--by such bliss well rewarded.
+
+He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
+
+"Good-bye," she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same
+time slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu. It was a
+signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Pray, let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
+
+"You will not go?" Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
+thumping heart.
+
+"I must," she faltered piteously.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Oh yes! yes!"
+
+"Tell me. Do you wish to go?"
+
+The question was a subtle one. A moment or two she did not answer, and
+then forswore herself, and said, Yes.
+
+"Do you--you wish to go?" He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.
+
+A fainter Yes responded.
+
+"You wish--wish to leave me?" His breath went with the words.
+
+"Indeed I must."
+
+Her hand became a closer prisoner.
+
+All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame. From
+him to her it coursed, and back from her to him. Forward and back love's
+electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it
+surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its
+mate. They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair
+heavens of the morning.
+
+When he could get his voice it said, "Will you go?"
+
+But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her
+gentle wrist.
+
+"Then, farewell!" he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair hand,
+kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.
+
+Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him. Strange,
+that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid
+tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, "You are not angry with
+me?"
+
+"With you, O Beloved!" cried his soul. "And you forgive me, fair
+charity!"
+
+"I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again," she said,
+and again proffered her hand.
+
+The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him. The gracious
+glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched her hand, not moving
+his eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell,
+passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of
+the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.
+
+And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren air.
+But it was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous splendours had
+sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his
+bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes
+them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings ghosts of the
+vanished sun.
+
+There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring
+it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft flushed cheeks!
+sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his
+ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let
+you go? And he seriously asked himself that question.
+
+To-morrow this place will have a memory--the river and the meadow, and
+the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
+skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned
+chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the
+grass is grass: his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.
+Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does
+he taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place
+to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his for ever.
+
+Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and
+discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph
+and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical
+discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
+those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair! fair! all of them fair!"
+sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our
+perdition! I think we have in this country what will match the Italian
+or the Greek." His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes
+before the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine's hair is a dark
+luxuriance, dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men
+for dark-haired Wonders. They have no mutual confidences, but they are
+singularly kind to each other, these three children of instinct.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
+future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of
+families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not
+degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an
+open leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis,
+distantly dropped his eye. There were names historic and names
+mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have called in his
+muster-roll; names that had been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum
+of civilized lifer by a millwheel or a merchant-stool. Against them
+the baronet had written M. or Po. or Pr.--signifying, Money, Position,
+Principles, favouring the latter with special brackets. The wisdom of a
+worldly man, which he could now and then adopt, determined him, before
+he commenced his round of visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and
+his physician thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the rats who know
+best the merits of a house, and on what sort of foundation it may be
+standing.
+
+Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his
+misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it
+were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no
+wife and his son no mother. He wandered on foot through the streets the
+first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows
+and bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as
+destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost forgotten how to find
+his way about, and came across his old mansion in his efforts to regain
+his hotel. The windows were alight--signs of merry life within. He
+stared at it from the shadow of the opposite side. It seemed to him he
+was a ghost gazing upon his living past. And then the phantom which had
+stood there mocking while he felt as other men--the phantom, now flesh
+and blood reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its
+unforgiving crevices with bitter ironic venom. He remembered by the time
+reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house at
+his disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something of the sort. In
+the morning, too, he remembered that he had divorced the world to wed a
+System, and must be faithful to that exacting Spouse, who, now alone of
+things on earth, could fortify and recompense him.
+
+Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to
+such a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour. He was a thin
+stately man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops,
+and carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment
+skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase
+his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain. After congratulating
+Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two or three suits, and being
+assured that the baronet's business in town had no concern therewith,
+Mr. Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all his father
+could desire him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a
+pattern to the youth of the Age.
+
+"A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!" said the old lawyer, shaking his
+head. "We must keep our eyes on them--keep awake! The mischief is done
+in a minute."
+
+"We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root
+was sound, or the mischief will do itself in site of, or under the very
+spectacles of, supervision," said the baronet.
+
+His legal adviser murmured "Exactly," as if that were his own idea,
+adding, "It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an
+introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young
+friend, whom he does not forget. Ripton follows the Law. He is articled
+to me, and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence. I
+bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at night. I think I
+may say that I am quite content with him."
+
+"Do you think," said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, "that you can trace
+every act of his to its motive?"
+
+The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be
+repeated.
+
+"Do you"--Sir Austin held the same searching expression--"do you
+establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition: do you base
+your watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with his character, so
+perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements--even the
+eccentric ones--are anticipated by you, and provided for?"
+
+The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat
+another repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man,
+Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was
+afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to
+say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at school.
+
+"I find," Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his inspecting
+pose and mien, "there are fathers who are content to be simply obeyed.
+Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would have him
+guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes--feeling me in him
+stronger than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my
+responsibility ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting machine. He
+cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the
+powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry
+him to perdition. Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic
+diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over
+him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties
+he may have to perform"...
+
+Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was utterly lost. He
+respected Sir Austin's estates too much to believe for a moment he was
+listening to downright folly. Yet how otherwise explain the fact of
+his excellent client being incomprehensible to him? For a middle-aged
+gentleman, and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing,
+will rarely have a notion of accusing his understanding; and Mr.
+Thompson had not the slightest notion of accusing his. But the baronet's
+condescension in coming thus to him, and speaking on the subject nearest
+his heart, might well affect him, and he quickly settled the case in
+favour of both parties, pronouncing mentally that his honoured client
+had a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that no wonder he
+experienced difficulty in giving it fitly significant words.
+
+Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism,
+for his lawyer's edification. At a recurrence of the word "healthy" Mr.
+Thompson caught him up:
+
+"I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely! Allow
+me to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if you condescend to examine
+him, you will say that regular habits, and a diet of nothing but
+law-reading--for other forms of literature I strictly interdict--have
+made him all that you instance."
+
+Mr. Thompson's hand was on the bell. Sir Austin arrested him.
+
+"Permit me to see the lad at his occupation," said he.
+
+Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential clerk,
+Mr. Beazley, a veteran of law, now little better than a document,
+looking already signed and sealed, and shortly to be delivered, who
+enjoined nothing from his pupil and companion save absolute silence, and
+sounded his praises to his father at the close of days when it had
+been rigidly observed--not caring, or considering, the finished dry old
+document that he was, under what kind of spell a turbulent commonplace
+youth could be charmed into stillness for six hours of the day. Ripton
+was supposed to be devoted to the study of Blackstone. A tome of the
+classic legal commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the
+partially lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student's head--law
+being thus brought into direct contact with his brain-pan. The
+office-door opened, and he heard not; his name was called, and he
+remained equally moveless. His method of taking in Blackstone seemed
+absorbing as it was novel.
+
+"Comparing notes, I daresay," whispered Mr. Thompson to Sir Austin. "I
+call that study!"
+
+The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.
+
+"Is it like this every day, Beazley?" Mr. Thompson asked with parental
+pride.
+
+"Ahem!" the old clerk replied, "he is like this every day, sir. I could
+not ask more of a mouse."
+
+Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity roused one of
+Ripton's senses, which blew a pall to the others. Down went the lid of
+the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in Ripton's
+face. He slouched from his perch with the air of one who means rather
+to defend his position than welcome a superior, the right hand in his
+waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching at his vacant stool.
+
+Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth's shoulder, and said, leaning
+his head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, "I am glad to
+find my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study is
+myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not
+be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread
+again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the visits of your
+client."
+
+So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson, that,
+seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and sneaking
+defiance, he thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and desired him
+to inform the baronet what particular part of Blackstone he was absorbed
+in mastering at that moment.
+
+Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious
+articulation, "The Law of Gravelkind."
+
+"What Law?" said Sir Austin, perplexed.
+
+"Gravelkind," again rumbled Ripton's voice.
+
+Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation. The old lawyer was
+shaking his law-box.
+
+"Singular!" he exclaimed. "He will make that mistake! What law, sir?"
+
+Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father's
+face, and corrected himself. "Gavelkind, sir."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief. "Gravelkind, indeed!
+Gavelkind! An old Kentish"--He was going to expound, but Sir Austin
+assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, "I should
+like to look at your son's notes, or remarks on the judiciousness of
+that family arrangement, if he had any."
+
+"You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered," said Mr.
+Thompson to the sucking lawyer; "a very good plan, which I have always
+enjoined on you. Were you not?"
+
+Ripton stammered that he was afraid he hid not any notes to show, worth
+seeing.
+
+"What were you doing then, sir?"
+
+"Making notes," muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.
+
+"Exhibit!"
+
+Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and at
+the confidential clerk. He took out his key. It would not fit the hole.
+
+"Exhibit!" was peremptorily called again.
+
+In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton
+discovered that the desk was already unlocked. Mr. Thompson marched to
+it, and held the lid aloft. A book was lying open within, which Ripton
+immediately hustled among a mass of papers and tossed into a dark
+corner, not before the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by
+Sir Austin's eye.
+
+The baronet smiled, and said, "You study Heraldry, too? Are you fond of
+the science?"
+
+Ripton replied that he was very fond of it--extremely attached, and
+threw a further pile of papers into the dark corner.
+
+The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them
+was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were
+found, that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of
+his son's exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of
+Gavelkind.
+
+Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those
+scraps he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner. Ripton, though he
+consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.
+
+"What have we here?" said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded paper
+addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them
+forth, one by one. Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read
+aloud:
+
+        "To the Editor of the 'Jurist.'
+
+"Sir,--In your recent observations on the great case of Crim"--
+
+Mr. Thompson hem'd! and stopped short, like a man who comes unexpectedly
+upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley's feet shuffled. Sir Austin
+changed the position of an arm.
+
+"It's on the other side, I think," gasped Ripton.
+
+Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.
+
+"To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond Court,
+Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U Five pounds,
+when I can pay.
+
+             "Signed: RIPTON THOMPSON."
+
+Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly appended:
+
+"(Mem. Document not binding.)"
+
+There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment and
+reproach passed round the office. Sir Austin assumed an attitude.
+Mr. Thompson shed a glance of severity on his confidential clerk, who
+parried by throwing up his hands.
+
+Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his father's
+nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked "Legal
+Considerations." Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding
+his son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their
+offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up to
+a certain point, for the good of both. He therefore opened the paper,
+expecting something worse than what he had hitherto seen, despite its
+formal heading, and he was not disappointed.
+
+The "Legal Considerations" related to the Case regarding, which Ripton
+had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to the Editor
+of the "Jurist," and was indeed a great case, and an ancient; revived
+apparently for the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities
+of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr. Ripton Thompson, whose
+assistance the Attorney-General, in his opening statement, congratulated
+himself on securing; a rather unusual thing, due probably to the
+eminence and renown of that youthful gentleman at the Bar of his
+country. So much was seen from the copy of a report purporting to
+be extracted from a newspaper, and prefixed to the Junior Counsel's
+remarks, or Legal Considerations, on the conduct of the Case, the
+admissibility and non-admissibility of certain evidence, and the
+ultimate decision of the judges.
+
+Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of
+one prepared to do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a
+town-crier, varied by a bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song tone,
+deliberately read:
+
+          "VULCAN v. MARS.
+
+"The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on
+behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital
+Opportunity, for the Defendant."
+
+"Oh!" snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate
+Ripton over his spectacles, "your notes are on that issue, sir! Thus you
+employ your time, sir!"
+
+With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired
+immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was
+pushed by the devil of his rancour to continue reading:
+
+"This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of
+particulars"...
+
+"Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial," said Mr.
+Thompson. "Ah!--what do you mean here, sir,--but enough! I think we may
+be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case. This is how you
+employ your law-studies, sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr. Beazley!
+you will henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man under my own
+eye. Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to a
+scene so disagreeable. It was a father's duty not to spare him."
+
+Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutes might have done after passing
+judgment on the scion of his house.
+
+"These papers," he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious lucubrations in
+a waving judicial hand, "I shall retain. The day will come when he will
+regard them with shame. And it shall be his penance, his punishment,
+to do so! Stop!" he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk,
+"have you more of them, sir; of a similar description? Rout them out!
+Let us know you at your worst. What have you there--in that corner?"
+
+Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on
+important cases.
+
+Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and
+turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much
+remarking it, for his suspicions had not risen to print.
+
+"A Manual of Heraldry?" the baronet politely, and it may be ironically,
+inquired, before it could well escape.
+
+"I like it very much," said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful
+torment.
+
+"Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct." The baronet
+proffered a hand for the book.
+
+"A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves," cried Ripton, still clutching it
+nervously.
+
+Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book
+from Ripton's hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads
+together over the title-page. It set forth in attractive characters
+beside a coloured frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed
+there, the entrancing adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.
+
+Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to
+consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his
+sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them. As it was, he contented
+himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the detected youth, who
+sat on his perch insensible to what might happen next, collapsed.
+
+Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a "Pah!" He, however,
+took her up again, and strode away with her. Sir Austin gave Ripton a
+forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying, "Good-bye, boy! At some
+future date Richard will be happy to see you at Raynham."
+
+Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.
+
+"Is it possible," quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had ushered his
+client into his private room, "that you will consent, Sir Austin, to see
+him and receive him again?"
+
+"Certainly," the baronet replied. "Why not? This by no means astonishes
+me. When there is no longer danger to my son he will be welcome as he
+was before. He is a schoolboy. I knew it. I expected it. The results of
+your principle, Thompson!"
+
+"One of the very worst books of that abominable class!" exclaimed the
+old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which brazen Miss
+Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt of captivating
+Time and all his veterans on a fair field. "Pah!" he shut her to with
+the energy he would have given to the office of publicly slapping
+her face; "from this day I diet him on bread and water--rescind his
+pocket-money!--How he could have got hold of such a book! How he--!
+And what ideas! Concealing them from me as he has done so cunningly!
+He trifles with vice! His mind is in a putrid state! I might have
+believed--I did believe--I might have gone on believing--my son Ripton
+to be a moral young man!" The old lawyer interjected on the delusion of
+fathers, and sat down in a lamentable abstraction.
+
+"The lad has come out!" said Sir Austin. "His adoption of the legal form
+is amusing. He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated are as
+hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner's amusements will resemble
+those of a confirmed debauchee. The satiated, and the insatiate,
+appetite alike appeal to extremes. You are astonished at this revelation
+of your son's condition. I expected it; though assuredly, believe me,
+not this sudden and indisputable proof of it. But I knew that the seed
+was in him, and therefore I have not latterly invited him to Raynham.
+School, and the corruption there, will bear its fruits sooner or later.
+I could advise you, Thompson, what to do with him: it would be my plan."
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he should esteem it
+an honour to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel's advice: secretly
+resolute, like a true Briton, to follow his own.
+
+"Let him, then," continued the baronet, "see vice in its nakedness.
+While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him! Vice, taken little
+by little, usurps gradually the whole creature. My counsel to you,
+Thompson, would be, to drag him through the sinks of town."
+
+Mr. Thompson began to blink again.
+
+"Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin! Do not fear me, air. I have no
+tenderness for vice."
+
+"That is not what is wanted, Thompson. You mistake me. He should be
+dealt with gently. Heavens! do you hope to make him hate vice by making
+him a martyr for its sake? You must descend from the pedestal of age to
+become his Mentor: cause him to see how certainly and pitilessly vice
+itself punishes: accompany him into its haunts"--
+
+"Over town?" broke forth Mr. Thompson.
+
+"Over town," said the baronet.
+
+"And depend upon it," he added, "that, until fathers act thoroughly up
+to their duty, we shall see the sights we see in great cities, and hear
+the tales we hear in little villages, with death and calamity in our
+homes, and a legacy of sorrow and shame to the generations to come. I
+do aver," he exclaimed, becoming excited, "that, if it were not for
+the duty to my son, and the hope I cherish in him, I, seeing the
+accumulation of misery we are handing down to an innocent posterity--to
+whom, through our sin, the fresh breath of life will be foul--I--yes!
+I would hide my name! For whither are we tending? What home is pure
+absolutely? What cannot our doctors and lawyers tell us?"
+
+Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.
+
+"And what is to come of this?" Sir Austin continued. "When the sins of
+the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is not perdition the final
+sum of things? And is not life, the boon of heaven, growing to be the
+devil's game utterly? But for my son, I would hide my name. I would not
+bequeath it to be cursed by them that walk above my grave!"
+
+This was indeed a terrible view of existence. Mr. Thompson felt uneasy.
+There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his speech, that
+silenced remonstrating reason and the cry of long years of comfortable
+respectability. Mr. Thompson went to church regularly; paid his rates
+and dues without overmuch, or at least more than common, grumbling. On
+the surface he was a good citizen, fond of his children, faithful to
+his wife, devoutly marching to a fair seat in heaven on a path paved by
+something better than a thousand a year. But here was a man sighting him
+from below the surface, and though it was an unfair, unaccustomed, not
+to say un-English, method of regarding one's fellow-man, Mr. Thompson
+was troubled by it. What though his client exaggerated? Facts were at
+the bottom of what he said. And he was acute--he had unmasked Ripton!
+Since Ripton's exposure he winced at a personal application in the text
+his client preached from. Possibly this was the secret source of part of
+his anger against that peccant youth.
+
+Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered visage and a
+pitiable contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly up from his chair.
+Apparently he was about to speak, but he straightway turned and went
+meditatively to a side-recess in the room, whereof he opened a door,
+drew forth a tray and a decanter labelled Port, filled a glass for his
+client, deferentially invited him to partake of it; filled another glass
+for himself, and drank.
+
+That was his reply.
+
+Sir Austin never took wine before dinner. Thompson had looked as if he
+meant to speak: he waited for Thompson's words.
+
+Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in his glass, the
+eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his client.
+
+Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this precious draught,
+and turned its flavour over and over with an aspect of potent Judicial
+wisdom (one might have thought that he was weighing mankind m the
+balance), the old lawyer heaved, and said, sharpening his lips over
+the admirable vintage, "The world is in a very sad state, I fear, Sir
+Austin!"
+
+His client gazed at him queerly.
+
+"But that," Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing by his gaze
+the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him, "that is,
+I think you would say, Sir Austin--if I could but prevail upon you--a
+tolerably good character wine!"
+
+"There's virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!" Sir Austin murmured,
+without disturbing his legal adviser's dimples.
+
+The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that such a wine
+was not to be had everywhere.
+
+They were then outwardly silent for a apace. Inwardly one of them was
+full of riot and jubilant uproar: as if the solemn fields of law were
+suddenly to be invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals: and to
+preserve a decently wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on terms with
+his companion, he had to grimace like a melancholy clown in a pantomime.
+
+Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair. The baronet was still expectant. Mr.
+Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied his glass. He combated the change
+that had come over him. He tried not to see Ruby. He tried to feel
+miserable, and it was not in him. He spoke, drawing what appropriate
+inspirations he could from his client's countenance, to show that they
+had views in common: "Degenerating sadly, I fear!"
+
+The baronet nodded.
+
+"According to what my wine-merchants say," continued Mr. Thompson,
+"there can be no doubt about it."
+
+Sir Austin stared.
+
+"It's the grape, or the ground, or something," Mr. Thompson went on.
+"All I can say is, our youngsters will have a bad look-out! In my
+opinion Government should be compelled to send out a Commission to
+inquire into the cause. To Englishmen it would be a public calamity. It
+surprises me--I hear men sit and talk despondently of this extraordinary
+disease of the vine, and not one of them seems to think it incumbent on
+him to act, and do his best to stop it." He fronted his client like a
+man who accuses an enormous public delinquency. "Nobody makes a stir!
+The apathy of Englishmen will become proverbial. Pray, try it, Sir
+Austin! Pray, allow me. Such a wine cannot disagree at any hour. Do! I
+am allowanced two glasses three hours before dinner. Stomachic. I find
+it agree with me surprisingly: quite a new man. I suppose it will last
+our time. It must! What should we do? There's no Law possible without
+it. Not a lawyer of us could live. Ours is an occupation which dries the
+blood."
+
+The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine had renovated, and
+gratitude to the wine inspired his tongue. He thought that his client,
+of the whimsical mind, though undoubtedly correct moral views, had need
+of a glass.
+
+"Now that very wine--Sir Austin--I think I do not err in saying, that
+very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher Feverel, used to taste
+whenever he came to consult my father, when I was a boy. And I remember
+one day being called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me out a glass.
+I wish I could call in Ripton now, and do the same. No! Leniency in such
+a case as that!--The wine would not hurt him--I doubt if there be much
+left for him to welcome his guests with. Ha! ha! Now if I could persuade
+you, Sir Austin, as you do not take wine before dinner, some day to
+favour me with your company at my little country cottage I have a wine
+there--the fellow to that--I think you would, I do think you would"--Mr.
+Thompson meant to say, he thought his client would arrive at something
+of a similar jocund contemplation of his fellows in their degeneracy
+that inspirited lawyers after potation, but condensed the sensual
+promise into "highly approve."
+
+Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour mouth comically
+compressed.
+
+It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and Thompson after,
+were two different men. To indoctrinate him now was too late: it was
+perhaps the time to make the positive use of him he wanted.
+
+He pencilled on a handy slip of paper: "Two prongs of a fork; the
+World stuck between them--Port and the Palate: 'Tis one which fails
+first--Down goes World;" and again the hieroglyph--"Port-spectacles." He
+said, "I shall gladly accompany you this evening, Thompson," words that
+transfigured the delighted lawyer, and ensigned the skeleton of a great
+Aphorism to his pocket, there to gather flesh and form, with numberless
+others in a like condition.
+
+"I came to visit my lawyer," he said to himself. "I think I have been
+dealing with The World in epitome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of Raynham,
+the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking out a bride
+for his only son and uncorrupted heir. Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the
+excellent authority. Doctor Bairam had safely delivered Mrs. Deborah
+Gossip of this interesting bantling, which was forthwith dandled in
+dozens of feminine laps. Doctor Bairam could boast the first interview
+with the famous recluse. He had it from his own lips that the object
+of the baronet was to look out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted
+heir; "and," added the doctor, "she'll be lucky who gets him." Which
+was interpreted to mean, that he would be a catch; the doctor probably
+intending to allude to certain extraordinary difficulties in the way of
+a choice.
+
+A demand was made on the publisher of The Pilgrim's Scrip for all his
+outstanding copies. Conventionalities were defied. A summer-shower of
+cards fell on the baronet's table.
+
+He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal. The
+cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband,
+if there was a husband, evidently dragged in for propriety's sake. He
+perused the cards and smiled. He knew their purpose. What terrible light
+Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them! Heavens! in what a state
+was the blood of this Empire.
+
+Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates,
+Lord Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of
+Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine
+crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that
+they did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found one with an
+imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters. "So much," he
+wrote in the Note-book, "for the Wild Oats theory!"
+
+Darley was proud of his daughters' white and pink skins. "Beautiful
+complexions," he called them. The eldest was in the market, immensely
+admired. Sir Austin was introduced to her. She talked fluently and
+sweetly. A youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even
+a man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair.
+There was something poetic about her. And she was quite well, she said,
+the baronet frequently questioning her on that point. She intimated that
+she was robust; but towards the close of their conversation her hand
+would now and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully an
+instant, saying, "Isn't it odd? Dora, Adela, and myself, we all feel
+the same queer sensation--about the heart, I think it is--after talking
+much."
+
+Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, "Wild oats!
+wild oats!"
+
+He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.
+
+Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.
+
+"It's all nonsense, Feverel," he said, "about bringing up a lad out of
+the common way. He's all the better for a little racketing when he's
+green--feels his bone and muscle learns to know the world. He'll never
+be a man if he hasn't played at the old game one time in his life, and
+the earlier the better. I've always found the best fellows were wildish
+once. I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn; besides, he's
+got an excuse for it then. You can't expect to have a man, if he doesn't
+take a man's food. You'll have a milksop. And, depend upon it, when he
+does break out he'll go to the devil, and nobody pities him. Look what
+those fellows the grocers, do when they get hold of a young--what d'ye
+call 'em?--apprentice. They know the scoundrel was born with a sweet
+tooth. Well! they give him the run of the shop, and in a very short time
+he soberly deals out the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract
+a morsel even for the pleasure of stealing. I know you have contrary
+theories. You hold that the young grocer should have a soul above sugar.
+It won't do! Take my word for it, Feverel, it's a dangerous experiment,
+that of bringing up flesh and blood in harness. No colt will bear it,
+or he's a tame beast. And look you: take it on medical grounds. Early
+excesses the frame will recover from: late ones break the constitution.
+There's the case in a nutshell. How's your son?"
+
+"Sound and well!" replied Sir Austin. "And yours?"
+
+"Oh, Lipscombe's always the same!" Lord Heddon sighed peevishly. "He's
+quiet--that's one good thing; but there's no getting the country to take
+him, so I must give up hopes of that."
+
+Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin surveyed him, and
+was not astonished at the refusal of the country to take him.
+
+"Wild oats!" he thought, as he contemplated the headless, degenerate,
+weedy issue and result.
+
+Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the marriage of their
+offspring as a matter of course. "And if I were not a coward," Sir
+Austin confessed to himself, "I should stand forth and forbid the
+banns! This universal ignorance of the inevitable consequence of sin is
+frightful! The wild oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have struck the
+world, and rendered it morally insensible." However, they silenced him.
+He was obliged to spare their feelings on a subject to him so deeply
+sacred. The healthful image of his noble boy rose before him, a
+triumphant living rejoinder to any hostile argument.
+
+He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought the third
+generation of wild oats would be a pretty thin crop!
+
+Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor Bairam physician could
+recollect a progenitorial blot, either on the male or female side,
+were not numerous. "Only," said the doctors "you really must not be too
+exacting in these days, my dear Sir Austin. It is impossible to contest
+your principle, and you are doing mankind incalculable service in
+calling its attention to this the gravest of its duties: but as the
+stream of civilization progresses we must be a little taken in the lump,
+as it were. The world is, I can assure you--and I do not look only
+above the surface, you can believe--the world is awakening to the vital
+importance of the question."
+
+"Doctor," replied Sir Austin, "if you had a pure-blood Arab barb would
+you cross him with a screw?"
+
+"Decidedly not," said the doctor.
+
+"Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to match my son
+according to his merits," Sir Austin returned. "I trust the world is
+awakening, as you observe. I have been to my publisher, since my arrival
+in town, with a manuscript 'Proposal for a New System of Education of
+our British Youth,' which may come in opportunely. I think I am entitled
+to speak on that subject."
+
+"Certainly," said the doctor. "You will admit, Sir Austin, that,
+compared with continental nations--our neighbours, for instance--we
+shine to advantage, in morals, as in everything else. I hope you admit
+that?"
+
+"I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower standard,"
+said the baronet. "If I compare the enlightenment of your views--for
+you admit my principle--with the obstinate incredulity of a country
+doctor's, who sees nothing of the world, you are hardly flattered, I
+presume?"
+
+Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison, assuredly,
+he interjected.
+
+"Besides," added the baronet, "the French make no pretences, and thereby
+escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy. Whereas we!--but I am not
+their advocate, credit me. It is better, perhaps, to pay our homage to
+virtue. At least it delays the spread of entire corruptness."
+
+Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured to
+assist his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by putting
+several mamas, whom he visited, on the alert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let us breathe the air of
+the Enchanted Island.
+
+Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the
+pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and
+the waters.
+
+The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to
+him golden shouts. He comes, and his heralds run before him, and
+touch the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the
+pine-stems redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded
+banks, where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline, and bramble-shoots
+wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the woodland are alight;
+and beyond them, over the open, 'tis a race with the long-thrown
+shadows; a race across the heaths and up the hills, till, at the
+farthest bourne of mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay
+rosy fingers and rest.
+
+Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray treads softly
+there. A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade
+fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little
+brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a
+chance tuneless note. From silence into silence things move.
+
+Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious
+full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their
+glories through voluminous leafage. But these are bowers where deep
+bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in
+which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend,
+great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and pass from
+us! You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to you, and all heavenly
+pageants, are the ministers and the slaves of the throbbing content
+within.
+
+For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded from vexed
+shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling
+nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless
+ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
+
+Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in
+a calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
+exultation, complain to the universe. You are not heard here.
+
+He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great boldness,
+has called him by his, Richard. Those two names are the key-notes of the
+wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
+
+"Lucy! my beloved!"
+
+"O Richard!"
+
+Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy pipes
+to meditative eve on a penny-whistle.
+
+Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops;
+and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!
+
+Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of feeling,
+and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping volume is too
+wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness spoken.
+
+Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had unblunted
+edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food. To
+gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows
+into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet;
+or, it may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them. And they are
+pleased. He is still the cunning musician. They languish, and taste
+ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an earthly concert. For them the
+spheres move not to two notes. They have lost, or forfeited and never
+known, the first super-sensual spring of the ripe senses into passion;
+when they carry the soul with them, and have the privileges of spirits
+to walk disembodied, boundlessly to feel. Or one has it, and the other
+is a dead body. Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a
+couple to whom Love's simple bread and water is a finer feast.
+
+Pipe, happy sheep-bop, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold your wings and
+lift your voices!
+
+They have out-flown philosophy. Their instinct has shot beyond the ken
+of science. They were made for their Eden.
+
+"And this divine gift was in store for me!"
+
+So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their
+recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined the years gone by
+and suffused the living Future!
+
+"You for me: I for you!"
+
+"We are born for each other!"
+
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their
+cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them
+together. And, O victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and
+difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
+
+"Here we two sit who are written above as one!"
+
+Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
+
+The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the West the sea
+of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and
+retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud
+from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys
+heaven.
+
+"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"
+
+"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."
+
+"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"
+
+"I did!"
+
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal
+journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day. Full half
+the sky is flushed. Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the two.
+
+"My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me? Whisper!"
+
+He hears the delicious music.
+
+"And you are mine?"
+
+A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they
+sit, and for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly
+fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her
+eyes her soul is naked to him.
+
+"Lucy! my bride! my life!"
+
+The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine. The
+soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts. Their lips
+are locked.
+
+Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express
+their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of
+it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of
+Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one,
+from her you may hear it.
+
+So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of the
+woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent
+squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish
+correspondingly awry, he also marches into silence, hailed by supper.
+The woods are still. There is heard but the night-jar spinning on the
+pine-branch, circled by moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of dragons.
+Wherever there is romance, these monsters come by inimical attraction.
+Because the heavens are certainly propitious to true lovers, the beasts
+of the abysses are banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable
+sad victories; and every love-tale is an Epic Par of the upper and lower
+powers. I wish good fairies were a little more active. They seem to be
+cajoled into security by the happiness of their favourites; whereas the
+wicked are always alert, and circumspect. They let the little ones shut
+their eyes to fancy they are not seen, and then commence.
+
+These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the dinner-table
+at the hour of contemplative digestion and prime claret; the hour when
+the wise youth Adrian delighted to talk at his ease--to recline in
+dreamy consciousness that a work of good was going on inside him;
+these abstractions from his studies, excesses of gaiety, and glumness,
+heavings of the chest, and other odd signs, but mainly the disgusting
+behaviour of his pupil at the dinner-table, taught Adrian to understand,
+though the young gentleman was clever in excuses, that he had somehow
+learnt there was another half to the divided Apple of Creation, and had
+embarked upon the great voyage of discovery of the difference between
+the two halves. With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether he might
+be in the observatory or the practical stage of the voyage. For himself,
+as a man and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its being either;
+and he had only to consider which was temporarily most threatening to
+the ridiculous System he had to support. Richard's absence annoyed him.
+The youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when
+he left table, Adrian had to sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth
+Century, from both of whom he had extracted all the amusement that could
+be got, and he saw his digestion menaced by the society of two ruined
+stomachs, who bored him just when he loved himself most. Poor Hippias
+was now so reduced that he had profoundly to calculate whether a
+particular dish, or an extra-glass of wine, would have a bitter effect
+on him and be felt through the remainder of his years. He was in the
+habit of uttering his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic
+doubts of experience, and the succulent insinuations of appetite,
+contended hotly. It was horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian
+for tempting him to a decision in favour of the moment.
+
+"Happy to take wine with you," Adrian would say, and Hippias would
+regard the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.
+
+"Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!" the Eighteenth
+Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends her own
+practice.
+
+"It's this literary work!" interjects Hippias, handling his glass of
+remorse. "I don't know what else it can be. You have no idea how anxious
+I feel. I have frightful dreams. I'm perpetually anxious."
+
+"No wonder," says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to which
+an absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought poor Hippias.
+"No wonder. Ten years of Fairy Mythology! Could anyone hope to sleep in
+peace after that? As to your digestion, no one has a digestion who is in
+the doctor's hands. They prescribe from dogmas, and don't count on the
+system. They have cut you down from two bottles to two glasses. It's
+absurd. You can't sleep, because your system is crying out for what it's
+accustomed to."
+
+Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggerdly confidence, but assures Adrian
+that he really should not like to venture on a bottle now: it would be
+rank madness to venture on a bottle now, he thinks. Last night only,
+after partaking, under protest, of that rich French dish, or was it the
+duck?--Adrian advised him to throw the blame on that vulgar bird.--Say
+the duck, then. Last night, he was no sooner stretched in bed, than he
+seemed to be of an enormous size all his limbs--his nose, his mouth,
+his toes--were elephantine! An elephant was a pigmy to him. And his
+hugeousness seemed to increase the instant he shut his eyes. He turned
+on this side; he turned on that. He lay on his back; he tried putting
+his face to the pillow; and he continued to swell. He wondered the
+room could hold him--he thought he must burst it--and absolutely lit a
+candle, and went to the looking-glass to see whether he was bearable.
+
+By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably. He had,
+however, a genial auditor in the Eighteenth Century, who declared it to
+be a new disease, not known in her day, and deserving investigation.
+She was happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of
+the complex order, and a potion soon righted her. In fact, her system
+appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment and medicine, on which
+the battle was fought, and, when over, she was none the worse, as she
+joyfully told Hippias. Never looked ploughman on prince, or village
+belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century
+Hippias expended in his gaze on the Eighteenth. He was too serious to
+note much the laughter of the young men.
+
+This 'Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus,' as Adrian designated the malady
+of Hippias, was repeated regularly ever evening. It was natural for any
+youth to escape as quick as he could from such a table of stomachs.
+
+Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter from the
+baronet, describing the house and maternal System of a Mrs. Caroline
+Grandison, and the rough grain of hopefulness in her youngest daughter,
+spurred him to think of his duties, and see what was going on. He gave
+Richard half-an-hour's start, and then put on his hat to follow his own
+keen scent, leaving Hippias and the Eighteenth Century to piquet.
+
+In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not unknown to him,
+one Molly Davenport by name, a buxom lass, who, on seeing him, invoked
+her Good Gracious, the generic maid's familiar, and was instructed by
+reminiscences vivid, if ancient, to giggle.
+
+"Are you looking for your young gentleman?" Molly presently asked.
+
+Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see if the coast
+was clear, and replied to her, "I am, miss. I want you to tell me about
+him."
+
+"Dear!" said the buxom lass, "was you coming for me to-night to know?"
+
+Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.
+
+"'Cause I can't stop out long to-night," Molly explained, taking the
+rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.
+
+"You may go in when you please, miss. Is that any one coming? Come here
+in the shade."
+
+"Now, get along!" said Miss Molly.
+
+Adrian spoke with resolution. "Listen to me, Molly Davenport!" He put
+a coin in her hand, which had a medical effect in calming her to
+attention. "I want to know whether you have seen him at all?"
+
+"Who? Your young gentleman? I sh'd think I did. I seen him to-night
+only. Ain't he grooved handsome. He's al'ays about Beltharp now. It
+ain't to fire no more ricks. He's afire 'unself. Ain't you seen 'em
+together? He's after the missis"--
+
+Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine herself
+to particulars. This buxom lass then told him that her young missis and
+Adrian's young gentleman were a pretty couple, and met one another every
+night. The girl swore for their innocence.
+
+"As for Miss Lucy, she haven't a bit of art in her, nor have he."
+
+"They're all nature, I suppose," said Adrian. "How is it I don't see her
+at church?"
+
+"She's Catholic, or some think," said Molly. "Her father was, and a
+leftenant. She've a Cross in her bedroom. She don't go to church. I see
+you there last Sunday a-lookin' so solemn," and Molly stroked her hand
+down her chin to give it length.
+
+Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts. It was dark, and in the dark he
+was indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested by the lass, but
+he wanted to hear facts, and he again bribed her to impart nothing
+but facts. Upon which she told him further, that her young lady was an
+innocent artless creature who had been to school upwards of three years
+with the nuns, and had a little money of her own, and was beautiful
+enough to be a lord's lady, and had been in love with Master Richard
+ever since she was a little girl. Molly had got from a friend of hers
+up at the Abbey, Mary Garner, the housemaid who cleaned Master Richard's
+room, a bit of paper once with the young gentleman's handwriting,
+and had given it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy had given her a gold
+sovereign for it--just for his handwriting! Miss Lucy did not seem happy
+at the farm, because of that young Tom, who was always leering at her,
+and to be sure she was quite a lady, and could play, and sing, and dress
+with the best.
+
+"She looks like angels in her nightgown!" Molly wound up.
+
+The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the first time as
+if there were a distinction of position between them, petitioned: "Mr.
+Harley! you won't go for doin' any harm to 'em 'cause of what I said,
+will you now? Do say you won't now, Mr. Harley! She is good, though
+she's a Catholic. She was kind to me when I was ill, and I wouldn't have
+her crossed--I'd rather be showed up myself, I would!"
+
+The wise youth gave no positive promise to Molly, and she had to read
+his consent in a relaxation of his austerity. The noise of a lumbering
+foot plodding down the lane caused her to be abruptly dismissed.
+Molly took to flight, the lumbering foot accelerated its pace, and the
+pastoral appeal to her flying skirts was heard--"Moll! you theyre! It be
+I--Bantam!" But the sprightly Silvia would not stop to his wooing, and
+Adrian turned away laughing at these Arcadians.
+
+Adrian was a lazy dragon. All he did for the present was to hint and
+tease. "It's the Inevitable!" he said, and asked himself why he should
+seek to arrest it. He had no faith in the System. Heavy Benson had.
+Benson of the slow thick-lidded antediluvian eye and loose-crumpled
+skin; Benson, the Saurian, the woman-hater; Benson was wide awake. A
+sort of rivalry existed between the wise youth and heavy Benson. The
+fidelity of the latter dependant had moved the baronet to commit to him
+a portion of the management of the Raynham estate, and this Adrian did
+not like. No one who aspires to the honourable office of leading
+another by the nose can tolerate a party in his ambition. Benson's surly
+instinct told him he was in the wise youth's way, and he resolved to
+give his master a striking proof of his superior faithfulness. For some
+weeks the Saurian eye had been on the two secret creatures. Heavy Benson
+saw letters come and go in the day, and now the young gentleman was off
+and out every night, and seemed to be on wings. Benson knew whither he
+went, and the object he went for. It was a woman--that was enough. The
+Saurian eye had actually seen the sinful thing lure the hope of Raynham
+into the shades. He composed several epistles of warning to the baronet
+of the work that was going on; but before sending one he wished to
+record a little of their guilty conversation; and for this purpose the
+faithful fellow trotted over the dews to eavesdrop, and thereby aroused
+the good fairy, in the person of Tom Bakewell, the sole confidant of
+Richard's state.
+
+Tom said to his young master, "Do you know what, sir? You be watched!"
+
+Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom hung his arms, and
+aped the respectable protrusion of the butler's head.
+
+"It's he, is it?" cried Richard. "He shall rue it, Tom. If I find him
+near me when we're together he shall never forget it."
+
+"Don't hit too hard, sir," Tom suggested. "You hit mortal hard when
+you're in earnest, you know."
+
+Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and told Tom to
+be within hail to-morrow night--he knew where. By the hour of the
+appointment it was out of the lover's mind.
+
+Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian's pointed
+invitation. According to custom, Richard started up and off, with
+few excuses. The lady exhibited no surprise. She and Adrian likewise
+strolled forth to enjoy the air of the Summer night. They had no
+intention of spying. Still they may have thought, by meeting Richard and
+his inamorata, there was a chance of laying a foundation of ridicule
+to sap the passion. They may have thought so--they were on no spoken
+understanding.
+
+"I have seen the little girl," said Lady Blandish. "She is pretty--she
+would be telling if she were well set up. She speaks well. How absurd it
+is of that class to educate their women above their station! The child
+is really too good for a farmer. I noticed her before I knew of this;
+she has enviable hair. I suppose she doesn't paint her eyelids. Just the
+sort of person to take a young man. I thought there was something wrong.
+I received, the day before yesterday, an impassioned poem evidently not
+intended for me. My hair was gold. My meeting him was foretold. My eyes
+were homes of light fringed with night. I sent it back, correcting the
+colours."
+
+"Which was death to the rhymes," said Adrian. "I saw her this morning.
+The boy hasn't bad taste. As you say, she is too good for a farmer. Such
+a spark would explode any System. She slightly affected mine. The Huron
+is stark mad about her."
+
+"But we must positively write and tell his father," said Lady Blandish.
+
+The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a trifle. The lady
+said she would have an interview with Richard, and then write, as it was
+her duty to do. Adrian shrugged, and was for going into the scientific
+explanation of Richard's conduct, in which the lady had to discourage
+him.
+
+"Poor boy!" she sighed. "I am really sorry for him. I hope he will not
+feel it too strongly. They feel strongly, father and son."
+
+"And select wisely," Adrian added.
+
+"That's another thing," said Lady Blandish.
+
+Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county people, about
+whom, it seemed, there was little or no scandal afloat: of the lady's
+loss of the season in town, which she professed not to regret, though
+she complained of her general weariness: of whether Mr. Morton of Poer
+Hall would propose to Mrs. Doria, and of the probable despair of the
+hapless curate of Lobourne; and other gossip, partly in French.
+
+They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through the park to
+Lobourne. The moon had risen. The atmosphere was warm and pleasant.
+
+"Quite a lover's night," said Lady Blandish.
+
+"And I, who have none to love pity me!" The wise youth attempted a sigh.
+
+"And never will have," said Lady Blandish, curtly. "You buy your loves."
+
+Adrian protested. However, he did not plead verbally against the
+impeachment, though the lady's decisive insight astonished him. He began
+to respect her, relishing her exquisite contempt, and he reflected that
+widows could be terrible creatures.
+
+He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing her
+romantic. This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air of "I
+know you men," with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise
+youth more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses would have
+done. He looked at the lady. Her face was raised to the moon. She knew
+nothing--she had simply spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge,
+and had forgotten her words. Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or
+whatever feeling it was, for the baronet, was sincere, and really the
+longing for a virtuous man. Perhaps she had tried the opposite set
+pretty much. Adrian shrugged. Whenever the wise youth encountered
+a mental difficulty he instinctively lifted his shoulders to equal
+altitudes, to show that he had no doubt there was a balance in the
+case--plenty to be said on both sides, which was the same to him as a
+definite solution.
+
+At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park, wrapped in
+themselves, piped to by tireless Love, Richard and Lucy sat, toying with
+eternal moments. How they seem as if they would never end! What mere
+sparks they are when they have died out! And how in the distance of time
+they revive, and extend, and glow, and make us think them full the half,
+and the best of the fire, of our lives!
+
+With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so
+shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that
+was not pure gold of emotion.
+
+Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham.
+Whoever had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the
+history of, and he for a kiss will do her bidding.
+
+Thus goes the tender duet:
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.--Darling! Beloved!"
+
+"My own! Richard!"
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin. You shall know him. He would take to
+you best of them all, and you to him. He is in the tropics now, looking
+out a place--it's a secret--for poor English working-men to emigrate to
+and found a colony in that part of the world:--my white angel!"
+
+"Dear love!"
+
+"He is such a noble fellow! Nobody here understands him but me. Isn't
+it strange? Since I met you I love him better! That's because I love all
+that's good and noble better now--Beautiful! I love--I love you!"
+
+"My Richard!"
+
+"What do you think I've determined, Lucy? If my father--but no! my
+father does love me.--No! he will not; and we will be happy together
+here. And I will win my way with you. And whatever I win will be
+yours; for it will be owing to you. I feel as if I had no strength but
+yours--none! and you make me--O Lucy!"
+
+His voice ebbs. Presently Lucy murmurs--
+
+"Your father, Richard."
+
+"Yes, my father?"
+
+"Dearest Richard! I feel so afraid of him."
+
+"He loves me, and will love you, Lucy."
+
+"But I am so poor and humble, Richard."
+
+"No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy."
+
+"You think so, because you"--
+
+"What?"
+
+"Love me," comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to dumb
+variations, performed equally in concert.
+
+It is resumed.
+
+"You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave as any of
+them.--My own bride! Oh, how I adore you! When you are gone, I could
+fall upon the grass you tread upon, and kiss it. My breast feels empty
+of my heart--Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a
+knight, and have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do nothing
+now. My lady-love! My lady-love!--A tear?--Lucy?"
+
+"Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady."
+
+"Who dares say that? Not a lady--the angel I love!"
+
+"Think, Richard, who I am."
+
+"My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has given you to me."
+
+Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank her
+God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant in her
+pure beauty that the limbs of the young man tremble.
+
+"Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!"
+
+Tenderly her lips part--"I do not weep for sorrow."
+
+The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul.
+
+They lean together--shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their
+thrilled cheeks and brows.
+
+He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it. She has seen little of
+mankind, but her soul tells her this one is different from others, and
+at the thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart
+will break--tears of boundless thanksgiving. And he, gazing on those
+soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace of her loose falling
+tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire streaming through his
+members.
+
+It is long ere they speak in open tones.
+
+"O happy day when we met!"
+
+What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.
+
+"O glorious heaven looking down on us!"
+
+Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending
+benediction.
+
+"O eternity of bliss!"
+
+Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.
+
+"Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some
+day to live. Come, and I will row you on the lake. You remember what
+you said in your letter that you dreamt?--that we were floating over
+the shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the
+cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling, it was the
+best omen in the world, their felling the old trees. And you write such
+lovely letters. So pure and sweet they are. I love the nuns for having
+taught you."
+
+"Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!" she lifts up her face pleadingly,
+as to plead against herself, "even if your father forgives my birth, he
+will not my religion. And, dearest, though I would die for you I cannot
+change it. It would seem that I was denying God; and--oh! it would make
+me ashamed of my love."
+
+"Fear nothing!" He winds her about with his arm. "Come! He will love us
+both, and love you the more for being faithful to your father's creed.
+You don't know him, Lucy. He seems harsh and stern--he is full of
+kindness and love. He isn't at all a bigot. And besides, when he hears
+what the nuns have done for you, won't he thank them, as I do? And--oh!
+I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared to see him soon, for
+I cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like a jewel in a sty. Mind!
+I'm not saying a word against your uncle. I declare I love everybody and
+everything that sees you and touches you. Stay! it is a wonder how you
+could have grown there. But you were not born there, and your father
+had good blood. Desborough!--here was a Colonel Desborough--never mind!
+Come!"
+
+She dreads to. She begs not to. She is drawn away.
+
+The woods are silent, and then--
+
+"What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?" says a very different
+voice.
+
+Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert. Lady
+Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through
+a vista of the lower greenwood which opened out upon the moon-lighted
+valley, her hands clasped round one knee, her features almost stern in
+their set hard expression.
+
+They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be
+heard in such positions, a luminous word or two.
+
+The lady did not answer. A movement among the ferns attracted Adrian,
+and he stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to behold heavy
+Benson below; shaking fern-seed and spidery substances off his crumpled
+skin.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?" called Benson, starting, as he puffed, and
+exercised his handkerchief.
+
+"Is it you, Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon these
+Mysteries?" Adrian called back, and coming close to him, added, "You
+look as if you had just been well thrashed."
+
+"Isn't it dreadful, sir?" snuffled Benson. "And his father in ignorance,
+Mr. Hadrian!"
+
+"He shall know, Benson! He shall know how, you have endangered your
+valuable skin in his service. If Mr. Richard had found you there just
+now I wouldn't answer for the consequences."
+
+"Ha!" Benson spitefully retorted. "This won't go on; Mr. Hadrian.
+It shan't, sir. It will be put a stop to tomorrow, sir. I call it
+corruption of a young gentleman like him, and harlotry, sir, I call it.
+I'd have every jade flogged that made a young innocent gentleman go on
+like that, sir."
+
+"Then, why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson? Ah, I see! you
+waited--what? This is not the first time you have been attendant on
+Apollo and Miss Dryope? You have written to headquarters?"
+
+"I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed her of Benson's
+zeal. The lady's eyes flashed. "I hope Richard will treat him as he
+deserves," she said.
+
+"Shall we home?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Do me a favour;" the lady replied. "Get my carriage sent round to meet
+me at the park-gates."
+
+"Won't you?"--
+
+"I want to be alone."
+
+Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her hands clasped
+round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley.
+
+"An odd creature!" muttered the wise youth. "She's as odd as any of
+them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose she's graduating for it. Hang
+that confounded old ass of a Benson! He has had the impudence to steal a
+march on me!"
+
+The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The moon was
+climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy, sang to him softly. She
+sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she
+had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. "Did
+I live?" he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic
+old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear them, seem to build up
+cathedral walls about you. The young man dropped the sculls. The strange
+solemn notes gave a religions tone to his love, and wafted him into the
+knightly ages and the reverential heart of chivalry.
+
+Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the moon
+stepping over and through white shoal's of soft high clouds above and
+below: floating to her void--no other breath abroad! His soul went out
+of his body as he listened.
+
+They must part. He rows her gently shoreward.
+
+"I never was so happy as to-night," she murmurs.
+
+"Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the lake. Look where
+you are to live."
+
+"Which is your room, Richard?"
+
+He points it out to her.
+
+"O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you! I should ask
+nothing more. How happy she must be!"
+
+"My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all shall wait on you,
+and I foremost, Lucy."
+
+"Dearest! may I hope for a letter?"
+
+"By eleven to-morrow. And I?"
+
+"Oh! you will have mine, Richard."
+
+"Tom shall wait far it. A long one, mind! Did you like my last song?"
+
+She pats her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it
+rests. O love! O heaven!
+
+They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against the
+shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her ashore.
+
+"See!" she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides--"See!" and
+prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little, "the cypress does point
+towards us. O Richard! it does!"
+
+And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her
+arch grave ways--
+
+"Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She mustn't dream, my
+darling! or dream only of me."
+
+"Dearest! but I do."
+
+"To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you at night. O happy
+to-morrow!"
+
+"You will be sure to be there, Richard?"
+
+"If I am not dead, Lucy."
+
+"O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not survive you."
+
+"Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die. Death or life,
+with you! Who is it yonder? I see some one--is it Tom? It's Adrian!"
+
+"Is it Mr. Harley?" The fair girl shivered.
+
+"How dares he come here!" cried Richard.
+
+The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly circled the lake.
+They were stealing away when he called. His call was repeated. Lucy
+entreated Richard to go to him; but the young man preferred to summon
+his attendant, Tom, from within hail, and send him to know what was
+wanted.
+
+"Will he have seen me? Will he have known me?" whispered Lucy,
+tremulously.
+
+"And if he does, love?" said Richard.
+
+"Oh! if he does, dearest--I don't know, but I feel such a presentiment.
+You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard. Is he good?"
+
+"Good?" Richard clutched her hand for the innocent maiden phrase. "He's
+very fond of eating; that's all I know of Adrian."
+
+Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.
+
+"Well, Tom?"
+
+"Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir," said Tom.
+
+"Do go to him, dearest! Do go!" Lucy begs him.
+
+"Oh, how I hate Adrian!" The young man grinds his teeth.
+
+"Do go!" Lucy urges him. "Tom--good Tom--will see me home. To-morrow,
+dear love! To-morrow!"
+
+"You wish to part from me?"
+
+"Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now. It may be news of
+importance, dearest. Think, Richard!"
+
+"Tom! go back!"
+
+At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off a dozen paces,
+and sees nothing. Then the precious charge is confided to him. A heart
+is cut in twain.
+
+Richard made his way to Adrian. "What is it you want with me, Adrian?"
+
+"Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?" was Adrian's answer. "I
+want nothing with you, except to know whether you have seen Benson."
+
+"Where should I see Benson? What do I know of Benson's doings?"
+
+"Of course not--such a secret old fist as he is! I want some one to
+tell him to order Lady Blandish's carriage to be sent round to the
+park-gates. I thought he might be round your way over there--I came upon
+him accidentally just now in Abbey-wood. What's the matter, boy?"
+
+"You saw him there?"
+
+"Hunting Diana, I suppose. He thinks she's not so chaste as they say,"
+continued Adrian. "Are you going to knock down that tree?"
+
+Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the tough wood. He
+left it and went to an ash.
+
+"You'll spoil that weeper," Adrian cried. "Down she comes! But
+good-night, Ricky. If you see Benson mind you tell him."
+
+Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight on the white road
+while Adrian spoke. The wise youth chuckled and strolled round the lake,
+glancing over his shoulder every now and then.
+
+It was not long before he heard a bellow for help--the roar of a dragon
+in his throes. Adrian placidly sat down on the grass, and fixed his
+eyes on the water. There, as the roar was being repeated amid horrid
+resounding echoes, the wise youth mused in this wise--
+
+"'The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,' says The
+Pilgrim's Scrip, or words to that effect. The heavens evidently love
+Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot. Master Ricky is
+a peppery young man. He gets it from the apt Gruffudh. I rather believe
+in race. What a noise that old ruffian makes! He'll require poulticing
+with The Pilgrim's Scrip. We shall have a message to-morrow, and a
+hubbub, and perhaps all go to town, which won't be bad for one who's
+been a prey to all the desires born of dulness. Benson howls: there's
+life in the old dog yet! He bays the moon. Look at her. She doesn't
+care. It's the same to her whether we coo like turtle-doves or roar like
+twenty lions. How complacent she looks! And yet she has dust as much
+sympathy for Benson as for Cupid. She would smile on if both were
+being birched. Was that a raven or Benson? He howls no more. It sounds
+guttural: frog-like--something between the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse
+raven's croak. The fellow'll be killing him. It's time to go to the
+rescue. A deliverer gets more honour by coming in at the last gasp than
+if he forestalled catastrophe.--Ho, there, what's the matter?"
+
+So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the scene of
+battle, where stood St. George puffing over the prostrate Dragon.
+
+"Holloa, Ricky! is it you?" said Adrian. "What's this? Whom have we
+here?--Benson, as I live!"
+
+"Make this beast get up," Richard returned, breathing hard, and shaking
+his great ash-branch.
+
+"He seems incapable, my dear boy. What have you been up to?--Benson!
+Benson!--I say, Ricky, this looks bad."
+
+"He's shamming!" Richard clamoured like a savage. "Spy upon me, will he?
+I tell you, he's shamming. He hasn't had half enough. Nothing's too bad
+for a spy. Let him getup!"
+
+"Insatiate youth! do throw away that enormous weapon."
+
+"He has written to my father," Richard shouted. "The miserable spy! Let
+him get up!"
+
+"Ooogh? I won't!" huskily groaned Benson. "Mr. Hadrian, you're a
+witness--he's my back!"--Cavernous noises took up the tale of his
+maltreatment.
+
+"I daresay you love your back better than any part of your body now,"
+Adrian muttered. "Come, Benson! be a man. Mr. Richard has thrown away
+the stick. Come, and get off home, and let's see the extent of the
+damage."
+
+"Ooogh! he's a devil! Mr. Hadrian, sir, he's a devil!" groaned Benson,
+turning half over in the road to ease his aches.
+
+Adrian caught hold of Benson's collar and lifted him to a sitting
+posture. He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful pupil's hand could
+do in wrath. The wretched butler's coat was slit and welted; his hat
+knocked in; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and trembled
+if his pitiless executioner stirred a foot. Richard stood over him,
+grasping his great stick; no dawn of mercy for Benson in any corner of
+his features.
+
+Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and immediately gasped,
+"I won't get up! I won't! He's ready to murder me again!--Mr. Hadrian!
+if you stand by and see it, you're liable to the law, sir--I won't get
+up while he's near." No persuasion could induce Benson to try his legs
+while his executioner stood by.
+
+Adrian took Richard aside: "You've almost killed the poor devil, Ricky.
+You must be satisfied with that. Look at his face."
+
+"The coward bobbed while I struck" said Richard. "I marked his back. He
+ducked. I told him he was getting it worse."
+
+At so civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his mouth wide.
+
+"Did you really? I admire that. You told him he was getting it worse?"
+
+Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of laughter out.
+
+"Come," he said, "Excalibur has done his word. Pitch him into the lake.
+And see--here comes the Blandish. You can't be at it again before
+a woman. Go and meet her, and tell her the noise was an ox being
+slaughtered. Or say Argus."
+
+With a whirr that made all Benson's bruises moan and quiver, the great
+ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung off to intercept Lady Blandish.
+
+Adrian got Benson on his feet. The heavy butler was disposed to summon
+all the commiseration he could feel for his bruised flesh. Every
+half-step he attempted was like a dislocation. His groans and grunts
+were frightful.
+
+"How much did that hat cost, Benson?" said Adrian, as he put it on his
+head.
+
+"A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!" Benson caressed its
+injuries.
+
+"The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have heard of!" said
+Adrian.
+
+Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter.
+
+"He's a devil, Mr. Hadrian! He's a devil, sir, I do believe, sir. Ooogh!
+he's a devil!--I can't move, Mr. Hadrian. I must be fetched. And Dr.
+Clifford must be sent for, sir. I shall never be fit for work again. I
+haven't a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon Venus. I hope
+the maids will nurse you properly. Let me see: you are friends with the
+housekeeper, aren't you? All depends upon that."
+
+"I'm only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian," the miserable butler
+snarled.
+
+"Then you've got no friend but your bed. Get to it as quick as possible,
+Benson."
+
+"I can't move." Benson made a resolute halt. "I must be fetched," he
+whinnied. "It's a shame to ask me to move, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You will admit that you are heavy, Benson," said Adrian, "so I can't
+carry you. However, I see Mr. Richard is very kindly returning to help
+me."
+
+At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and shambled on.
+
+Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.
+
+"I have been horribly frightened," she said. "Tell me, what was the
+meaning of those cries I heard?"
+
+"Only some one doing justice on a spy," said Richard, and the lady
+smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand through his hair.
+
+"Was that all? I should have done it myself if I had been a man. Kiss
+me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+By twelve o'clock at noon next day the inhabitants of Raynham Abbey knew
+that Berry, the baronet's man, had arrived post-haste from town, with
+orders to conduct Mr. Richard thither, and that Mr. Richard had refused
+to go, had sworn he would not, defied his father, and despatched Berry
+to the Shades. Berry was all that Benson was not. Whereas Benson hated
+woman, Berry admired her warmly. Second to his own stately person,
+woman occupied his reflections, and commanded his homage. Berry was of
+majestic port, and used dictionary words. Among the maids of Raynham
+his conscious calves produced all the discord and the frenzy those
+adornments seem destined to create in tender bosoms. He had, moreover,
+the reputation of having suffered for the sex; which assisted his object
+in inducing the sex to suffer for him. What with his calves, and
+his dictionary words, and the attractive halo of the mysterious
+vindictiveness of Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the lower
+household was a mighty man below, and he moved as one.
+
+On hearing the tumult that followed Berry's arrival, Adrian sent for
+him, and was informed of the nature of his mission, and its result.
+
+"You should come to me first," said Adrian. "I should have imagined you
+were shrewd enough for that, Berry?"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Adrian," Berry doubled his elbow to explain. "Pardon me,
+sir. Acting recipient of special injunctions I was not a free agent."
+
+"Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be a little confusion if he
+holds back. Perhaps you had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy.
+A slight hint will do. And here--Berry! when you return to town, you
+had better not mention anything--to quote Johnson--of Benson's
+spiflication."
+
+"Certainly not, sir."
+
+The wise youth's hint had the desired effect on Richard.
+
+He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and, mounting his
+horse, galloped to the Bellingham station.
+
+Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his hotel, when
+the Hope of Raynham burst into his room.
+
+The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary, for he was
+singularly just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he had
+been thinking all day after the receipt of Benson's letter that he
+was deficient in cordiality, and did not, by reason of his excessive
+anxiety, make himself sufficiently his son's companion: was not enough,
+as he strove to be, mother and father to him; preceptor and friend;
+previsor and associate. He had not to ask his conscience where he had
+lately been to blame towards the System. He had slunk away from Raynham
+in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this young woman of
+the parish (as Benson had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was the
+consequence.
+
+Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample
+on them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any
+time--doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it
+were. It gave him a strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth
+seemed to answer to it; he was excited. Was his love, then, beginning
+to correspond with his father's as in those intimate days before the
+Blossoming Season?
+
+But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, "My
+dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared--You are better, sir? Thank
+God!" Sir Austin stood away from him.
+
+"Safe?" he said. "What has alarmed you?"
+
+Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand
+and kissed it.
+
+Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.
+
+"Those doctors are such fools!" Richard broke out. "I was sure they were
+wrong. They don't know headache from apoplexy. It's worth the ride, sir,
+to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.--But you are well! It was not
+an attack of real apoplexy?"
+
+His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard
+pursued:
+
+"If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if coroners'
+inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of
+mare-slaughter. Cassandra'll be knocked up. I was too early for the
+train at Bellingham, and I wouldn't wait. She did the distance in four
+hours and three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?"
+
+"It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope," said the baronet, not so
+well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought
+the youth to him in such haste.
+
+"I'm ready," replied Richard. "I shall be in time to return by the last
+train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest."
+
+His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with
+an eagerness that might pass for appetite.
+
+"All well at Raynham?" said the baronet.
+
+"Quite, sir."
+
+"Nothing new?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"The same as when I left?"
+
+"No change whatever!"
+
+"I shall be glad to get back to the old place," said the baronet. "My
+stay in town has certainly been profitable. I have made some pleasant
+acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late
+autumn--people you may be pleased to know. They are very anxious to see
+Raynham."
+
+"I love the old place," cried Richard. "I never wish to leave it."
+
+"Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town."
+
+"Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don't want to remain here. I've seen
+enough of it."
+
+"How did you find your way to me?"
+
+Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick, and
+the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, "There's no place like
+home!"
+
+The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him
+with a double-dealing sentence--
+
+"To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the world,
+is youth's foolishness, my son. Reverence time! A better maxim that than
+your Horatian."
+
+"He knows all!" thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues from
+his father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.
+
+Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much
+briskness, "I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you come with
+me to the station?"
+
+The baronet did not answer.
+
+Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father's eyes
+fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty
+glass.
+
+"I think we will have a little more claret," said the baronet.
+
+Claret was brought, and they were left alone.
+
+The baronet then drew within arm's-reach of his son, and began:
+
+"I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
+years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry
+to be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I should
+not have complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank me.
+Perhaps, as it is, I never may. Everything, save selfishness, has its
+recompense. I shall be content if you prosper."
+
+He fetched a breath and continued: "You had in your infancy a great
+loss." Father and son coloured simultaneously. "To make that good to you
+I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself entirely to
+your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the
+son I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God's creatures. But for
+that very reason you are open to be tempted the most, and to sink the
+deepest. It was the first of the angels who made the road to hell."
+
+He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.
+
+"In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck very
+easily. It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried as
+most men are not. I see it in us all. And you, my son, are compounded of
+two races. Your passions are violent. You have had a taste of revenge.
+You have seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws rivers of
+blood. But there is now in you another power. You are mounting to the
+table-land of life, where mimic battles are changed to real ones. And
+you come upon it laden equally with force to create and to destroy." He
+deliberated to announce the intelligence, with deep meaning: "There are
+women in the world, my son!"
+
+The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.
+
+"It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial. It is
+when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some
+find it, a gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of any human
+object is the soul's ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not."
+
+The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw the moon-lighted
+wood, and the vision of his beloved. He could barely hold himself down
+and listen.
+
+"I believe," the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of
+belief, "good women exist."
+
+Oh, if he knew Lucy!
+
+"But," and he gazed on Richard intently, "it is given to very few to
+meet them on the threshold--I may say, to none. We find them after hard
+buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness
+has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are not the
+end, but the means, of life. In youth we think them the former, and
+thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select a mate--or
+worse--with that sole view. I believe women punish us for so perverting
+their uses. They punish Society."
+
+The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into
+consequences.
+
+'Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,' says
+The Pilgrim's Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak with
+moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the
+case.
+
+Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.
+
+Cold Blood said, "It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the
+ripe fruit of our animal being."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is a divinity! All that is worth living for in the
+world."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often
+leads to perdition."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "Lead whither it will, I follow it."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a name men and women are much in the habit of
+employing to sanctify their appetites."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is worship; religion; life!"
+
+And so the two parallel lines ran on.
+
+The baronet became more personal:
+
+"You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you cannot know;
+but you must know that it is something very deep, and--I do not wish to
+speak of it--but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude, since
+the only true expression of it is his son's moral good. If you care for
+my love, or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep you
+what I have made you, and guard you from the snares besetting you. It
+was in my hands once. It is ceasing to be so. Remember, my son, what my
+love is. It is different, I fear, with most fathers: but I am bound up
+in your welfare: what you do affects me vitally. You will take no step
+that is not intimate with my happiness, or my misery. And I have had
+great disappointments, my son."
+
+So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in his frenzied
+state he could not without emotion hear him thus speak.
+
+Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he was
+winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the dryness
+of his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young
+men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green,
+absolutely wanting to be--that most awful thing, which the wisest and
+strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification
+and penance--married! He sketched the Foolish Young Fellow--the object
+of general ridicule and covert contempt. He sketched the Woman--the
+strange thing made in our image, and with all our faculties--passing to
+the rule of one who in taking her proved that he could not rule himself,
+and had no knowledge of her save as a choice morsel which he would burn
+the whole world, and himself in the bargain, to possess. He harped upon
+the Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin
+tingle and was half suffocated with shame and rage.
+
+After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite
+undone his work. He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might
+accord to her her due position, and paint her fair: he might be shrewd,
+jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.
+
+Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: "Have you anything
+to tell me, Richard?" and hoping for a confession, and a thorough
+re-establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him cold: "I
+have not."
+
+The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.
+
+Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window. In
+the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining
+faintly, feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods were lifting
+up to her: his star of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set about
+flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland
+keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.
+
+A succession of hard sighs brought his father's hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard!
+Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
+untruth!"
+
+"Nothing at all, sir," the young man replied, meeting him with the full
+orbs of his eyes.
+
+The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.
+
+At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he
+said: "Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return to Raynham
+at all to-night?"
+
+His father was again falsely jocular:
+
+"What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes' start?"
+
+"Cassandra will take me," said the young man earnestly. "I needn't ride
+her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried? I should be
+down with him in little better than three hours."
+
+"Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked."
+
+"Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse, and
+would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?"
+
+The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked. At least, if he
+missed his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same
+air, marking what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed
+night-talk of the trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances
+that were like hope half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as
+Hesper, since he knew her. There were two swallows under the eaves
+shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows: two swallows, mates in one nest,
+blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-cheeped to the sole-lying beauty
+in her bed. Around these birds the lover's heart revolved, he knew not
+why. He associated them with all his close-veiled dreams of happiness.
+Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave the nest on
+their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness of dawn. It seemed
+to him now that if he could be at Raynham to see them in to-morrow's
+dawn he would be compensated for his incalculable loss of to-night: he
+would forgive and love his father, London, the life, the world. Just
+to see those purple backs and white breasts flash out into the quiet
+morning air! He wanted no more.
+
+The baronet's trifling had placed this enormous boon within the young
+man's visionary grasp.
+
+He still went on trying the boy's temper.
+
+"You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham. It is unfair
+to disturb the maids."
+
+Richard overrode every objection.
+
+"Well, then, my son," said the baronet, preserving his half-jocular air,
+"I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in town."
+
+"Then you have not been ill at all, sir!" cried Richard, as in his
+despair he seized the whole plot.
+
+"I have been as well as you could have desired me to be," said his
+father.
+
+"Why did they lie to me?" the young man wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+"I think, Richard, you can best answer that," rejoined Sir Austin,
+kindly severe.
+
+Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented Richard
+from expostulating further. Sir Austin saw him grinding his passion
+into powder for future explosion, and thought it best to leave him for
+awhile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the teachings
+of the System in a new atmosphere. He had to sit and listen to men of
+science who came to renew their intimacy with his father, and whom
+of all men his father wished him to respect and study; practically
+scientific men being, in the baronet's estimation, the only minds
+thoroughly mated and enviable. He had to endure an introduction to the
+Grandisons, and meet the eyes of his kind, haunted as he was by the
+Foolish Young Fellow. The idea that he might by any chance be identified
+with him held the poor youth in silent subjection. And it was horrible.
+For it was a continued outrage on the fair image he had in his heart.
+The notion of the world laughing at him because he loved sweet Lucy
+stung him to momentary frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in
+his spirit. Also the System desired to show him whither young women of
+the parish lead us, and he was dragged about at nighttime to see the
+sons and daughters of darkness, after the fashion prescribed to Mr.
+Thompson; how they danced and ogled down the high road to perdition. But
+from this sight possibly the teacher learnt more than his pupil, since
+we find him seriously asking his meditative hours, in the Note-book:
+"Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one gender?" a question certainly
+not suggested to him at Raynham; and again--"Whether men might not be
+attaching too rigid an importance?"...to a subject with a dotted
+tail apparently, for he gives it no other in the Note-book. But, as I
+apprehend, he had come to plead in behalf of women here, and had deduced
+something from positive observation. To Richard the scenes he witnessed
+were strange wild pictures, likely if anything to have increased his
+misanthropy, but for his love.
+
+Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the
+first two weeks of exile. They ceased; and now Richard fell into such
+despondency that his father in alarm had to take measures to hasten
+their return to Raynham. At the close of the third week Berry laid a
+pair of letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the breakfast-table,
+and, after reading one attentively, the baronet asked his son if he was
+inclined to quit the metropolis.
+
+"For Raynham, air?" cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, "As you will!"
+aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young Fellow.
+
+Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their instant
+return to Raynham.
+
+The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son's wishes
+was a composition of the wise youth Adrian's, and ran thus:
+
+"Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities. Happy
+when a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household! I quite agree
+with you that our faithful fool is the best servant of great schemes.
+Benson is now a piece of history. I tell him that this is indemnity
+enough, and that the sweet Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being
+half-flayed before she will condescend to notice them; but Benson, I
+regret to say, rejects the comfort so fine a reflection should offer,
+and had rather keep his skin and live opaque. Heroism seems partly a
+matter of training. Faithful folly is Benson's nature: the rest has been
+thrust upon.
+
+"The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I had an interview
+with the fair Papist myself, and also with the man Blaize. They were
+both sensible, though one swore and the other sighed. She is pretty. I
+hope she does not paint. I can affirm that her legs are strong, for she
+walks to Bellingham twice a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having
+confessed and been made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back the
+brisker, of which my Protestant muscular systems is yet aware. It was on
+the road to Bellingham I engaged her. She is well in the matter of hair.
+Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a fair match. Has it never
+struck you that Woman is nearer the vegetable than Man?--Mr. Blaize
+intends her for his son a junction that every lover of fairy mythology
+must desire to see consummated. Young Tom is heir to all the agremens of
+the Beast. The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very Proculus
+among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the maids. Beauty does
+not speak bad grammar--and altogether she is better out of the way."
+
+The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady's letter, and said:
+
+"I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability, and
+heartily sad it has made me. She is indeed very much above her
+station--pity that it is so! She is almost beautiful--quite beautiful
+at times, and not in any way what you have been led to fancy. The poor
+child had no story to tell. I have again seen her, and talked with her
+for an hour as kindly as I could. I could gather nothing more than we
+know. It is just a woman's history as it invariably commences. Richard
+is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce him, and sacrifice herself
+for his sake. Are we so bad? She asked me what she was to do. She would
+do whatever was imposed upon her--all but pretend to love another,
+and that she never would, and, I believe, never will. You know I am
+sentimental, and I confess we dropped a few tears together. Her uncle
+has sent her for the Winter to the institution where it appears she
+was educated, and where they are very fond of her and want to keep her,
+which it would be a good thing if they were to do. The man is a good
+sort of man. She was entrusted to him by her father, and he never
+interferes with her religion, and is very scrupulous about all that
+pertains to it, though, as he says, he is a Christian himself. In the
+Spring (but the poor child does not know this) she is to come back, and
+be married to his lout of a son. I am determined to prevent that. May
+I not reckon on your promise to aid me? When you see her, I am sure
+you will. It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing. You
+know, they are cousins. She asked me, where in the world there was one
+like Richard? What could I answer? They were your own words, and spoken
+with a depth of conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to think
+of him when he comes, and discovers what I have been doing. I hope I
+have been really doing right! A good deed, you say, never dies; but we
+cannot always know--I must rely on you. Yes, it is; I should think, easy
+to suffer martyrdom when one is sure of one's cause! but then one must
+be sure of it. I have done nothing lately but to repeat to myself that
+saying of yours, No. 54, C. 7, P.S.; and it has consoled me, I cannot
+say why, except that all wisdom consoles, whether it applies directly or
+not:
+
+"'For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to Him; that
+they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength.'
+
+"I like to know of what you are thinking when you composed this or
+that saying--what suggested it. May not one be admitted to inspect
+the machinery of wisdom? I feel curious to know how thoughts--real
+thoughts--are born. Not that I hope to win the secret. Here is the
+beginning of one (but we poor women can never put together even two of
+the three ideas which you say go to form a thought): 'When a wise man
+makes a false step, will he not go farther than a fool?' It has just
+flitted through me.
+
+"I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence the
+readings. I dislike the sneering essence of his writings. I keep
+referring to his face, until the dislike seems to become personal.
+How different is it with Wordsworth! And yet I cannot escape from
+the thought that he is always solemnly thinking of himself (but I do
+reverence him). But this is curious; Byron was a greater egoist, and yet
+I do not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a beast of the
+desert, savage and beautiful; and the former is what one would imagine
+a superior donkey reclaimed from the heathen to be--a very superior
+donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great natural
+complacency, and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his
+mission. The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a
+superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I
+love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater power over me. How
+is that?"
+
+("Because," Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil, "women are
+cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their
+hearts to Excellence and Nature's Inspiration.")
+
+The letter pursued:
+
+"I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter offends
+me. I suppose we women do not really care for humour. You are right in
+saying we have none ourselves, and 'cackle' instead of laugh. It is true
+(of me, at least) that 'Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat man.'
+I want to know what he illustrates. And Don Quixote--what end can be
+served in making a noble mind ridiculous?--I hear you say--practical. So
+it is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like wit--practical again!
+Or in your words (when I really think they generally come to my
+aid--perhaps it is that it is often all your thought); we 'prefer the
+rapier thrust, to the broad embrace, of Intelligence.'"
+
+He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as
+he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There are
+ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to
+us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on
+the filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much
+less to others. Why did he twice throw a look into the glass in the act
+of passing it? He stood for a moment with head erect facing it. His
+eyes for the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey
+gathered brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had traced over the
+circles half up his high straight forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose
+over his forehead and fell away in the fashion of Richard's plume. His
+general appearance showed the tints of years; but none of their weight,
+and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far
+satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential
+self through the mask we wear.
+
+Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he
+presented to the lady's discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had
+not a suspicion. But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women
+can, when it pleases them, and when their feelings are not quite boiling
+under the noonday sun, seize all the sides of a character, and put their
+fingers on its weak point. He was cognizant of the total absence of the
+humorous in himself (the want that most shut him out from his fellows),
+and perhaps the clear-thoughted, intensely self-examining gentleman
+filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the poet, she gazes on as one
+of the superior--grey beasts!
+
+He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that
+great-mindedness, and could snatch at times very luminous glances at the
+broad reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow compass
+holds up for us to see ourselves in when we will. Unhappily, the faculty
+of laughter, which is due to this gift, was denied him; and having seen,
+he, like the companion of friend Balsam, could go no farther. For a
+good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the blight of
+self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had given a healthier
+view of our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
+
+Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain and
+brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to feel
+infallible, as a man with a System should feel; and because he could not
+do so, after much mental conflict, he descended to entertain a personal
+antagonism to the young woman who had stepped in between his experiment
+and success. He did not think kindly of her. Lady Blandish's encomiums
+of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in
+a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common ground of
+fathers, and demanded, "Why he was not justified in doing all that lay
+in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon the first
+creature with a pretty face he encountered?" Deliberating thus, he
+lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment--the living,
+burning youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took a
+rigorous tone. It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that
+the uncle of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme
+of marrying her to his son, should not only not be thwarted in his
+object but encouraged and even assisted. At least, not thwarted. Sir
+Austin had no glass before him while these ideas hardened in his mind,
+and he had rather forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.
+
+Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too
+preoccupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling the
+hollows of the country. Over the pine-hills beyond the station a last
+rosy streak lingered across a green sky. Richard eyed it while they flew
+along. It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his love,
+and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids. The sad beauty of
+that one spot in the heavens seemed to call out to his soul to swear
+to his Lucy's truth to him: was like the sorrowful visage of his
+fleur-de-luce as he called her, appealing to him for faith. That
+tremulous tender way she had of half-closing and catching light on the
+nether-lids, when sometimes she looked up in her lover's face--as look
+so mystic-sweet that it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he
+saw it yonder, and his blood thrilled.
+
+Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our
+grosser being melts; and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking, stand
+etherealized, trembling with new joy? They come but rarely; rarely even
+in love, when we fondly think them revelations. Mere sensations they
+are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the spiritual scale
+than so many translucent glorious polypi that quiver on the shores, the
+hues of heaven running through them. Yet in the harvest of our days
+it is something for the animal to have had such mere fleshly polypian
+experiences to look back upon, and they give him an horizon--pale seas
+of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they do not bound him)
+may find the Isles of Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith in the
+upper glories is something. "Let us remember," says The Pilgrim's Scrip,
+"that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of
+the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the spheres.
+In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that through
+Nature only can we ascend. Cherished, trained, and purified, she is then
+partly worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon
+saw the Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog."
+
+It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young
+man, he knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings vanished.
+The soft wand touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly,
+Richard might have fallen upon his heart. He could not.
+
+He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue
+his System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the
+creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and
+vindictive as jealousy of woman.
+
+Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about
+the Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the
+train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the
+chest. Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master,
+he went into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had
+received private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his
+young master's mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of
+firs unenclosed on the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his
+retainer's zest for conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the
+part most favoured with shelter and concealment, found him furtively
+whiffing tobacco.
+
+"What news, Tom? Is there an illness?"
+
+Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
+agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract
+thought or sudden difficulty.
+
+"No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard," he whinnied with a false grin,
+as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action.
+
+"Speak out!" he was commanded. "I haven't had a letter for a week!"
+
+Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only
+getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very hard at
+Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making
+him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once rather than
+fix him in that owl-like way.
+
+"Go on!" said Richard, huskily. "Yes? She's gone! Well?"
+
+Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
+recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name
+of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a
+wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till
+morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained. Hereat the
+tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks. Tom said he had
+tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a
+terrible sum--that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please
+his young master on his return. "Likewise something in Lat'n," added
+Tom. "Nom'tive Mouser!--'nough to make ye mad, sir!" he exclaimed with
+pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.
+
+Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
+sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
+along with young Tom Blaize. "She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,"
+said Tom, "and cryin' don't spoil them." For which his hand was
+wrenched.
+
+Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady
+had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much
+as to sap, Good-bye, Tom! "And though she couldn't see me," said Tom,
+"I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like
+me." He was at high-pressure sentiment--what with his education for a
+hero and his master's love-stricken state.
+
+"You saw no more of her, Tom?"
+
+"No, sir. That was the last!"
+
+"That was the last you saw of her, Tom?"
+
+"Well, sir, I saw nothin' more."
+
+"And so she went out of sight!"
+
+"Clean gone, that she were, sir."
+
+"Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have
+they taken her to?"
+
+These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven rather
+than to Tom.
+
+"Why didn't she write?" they were resumed. "Why did she leave? She's
+mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her away? Why did she leave
+without writing?--Tom!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to the
+word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the change of
+tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again, "Where
+have they taken her to?" and this was even more perplexing to Tom than
+his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down the corners
+of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
+
+"She had been crying--you saw that, Tom?"
+
+"No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin' all night and all day, I
+sh'd say."
+
+"And she was crying when you saw her?"
+
+"She look'd as if she'd just done for a moment, sir."
+
+"But her face was white?"
+
+"White as a sheet."
+
+Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view
+from these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the same
+bars, fly as he might. Her tears were the stars in his black night. He
+clung to them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were at
+least pledges of love.
+
+The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the
+steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn. He mounted
+Cassandra, saying: "Tell them something, Tom. I shan't be home to
+dinner," and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe,
+whereat he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he
+advanced. His jewel was stolen,--he must gaze upon the empty box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded, grass-bordered
+lane leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe. The pale eye of twilight
+was shut. The wind had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was
+now flying broad and unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy--the
+charioted South-west at full charge behind his panting coursers. As he
+neared the farm his heart fluttered and leapt up. He was sure she must
+be there. She must have returned. Why should she have left for good
+without writing? He caught suspicion by the throat, making it voiceless,
+if it lived: he silenced reason. Her not writing was now a proof that
+she had returned. He listened to nothing but his imperious passion,
+and murmured sweet words for her, as if she were by: tender cherishing
+epithet's of love in the nest. She was there--she moved somewhere about
+like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet household
+duties. His blood began to sing: O happy those within, to see her, and
+be about her! By some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort
+of glory round the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself. And oh! to
+have companionship with a seraph one must know a seraph's bliss, and was
+not young Tom to be envied? The smell of late clematis brought on the
+wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain, and threw a light over the
+old red-brick house, for he remembered where it grew, and the winter
+rose-tree, and the jessamine, and the passion-flower: the garden in
+front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the long wall to the
+left striped by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a further garden
+through the wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond--the happy
+circle of her dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on
+the darkness. And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this
+light and inspired the momentary calm he experienced: it was despair
+exaggerating delusion, wilfully building up on a groundless basis. "For
+the tenacity of true passion is terrible," says The Pilgrim's Scrip:
+"it will stand against the hosts of heaven, God's great array of Facts,
+rather than surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will
+succumb--sent to the lowest pit!" He knew she was not there; she was
+gone. But the power of a will strained to madness fought at it, kept it
+down, conjured forth her ghost, and would have it as he dictated. Poor
+youth! the great array of facts was in due order of march.
+
+He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud; almost a cry
+for her escaped him. He had not noticed the opening of a door and the
+noise of a foot along the gravel walk. He was leaning over Cassandra's
+uneasy neck watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed him
+out of the darkness.
+
+"Be that you, young gentleman?--Mr. Fev'rel?"
+
+Richard's trance was broken. "Mr. Blaize!" he said; recognizing the
+farmer's voice.
+
+"Good even'n t' you, sir," returned the farmer. "I knew the mare though
+I didn't know you. Rather bluff to-night it be. Will ye step in, Mr.
+Fev'rel? it's beginning' to spit,--going to be a wildish night, I
+reckon."
+
+Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare,
+and ushered the young man in. Once there, Richard's conjurations ceased.
+There was a deadness about the rooms and passages that told of her
+absence. The walls he touched--these were the vacant shells of her.
+He had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what strange
+sweetness, and what pangs!
+
+Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in
+open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a summer
+month which had elapsed during his mother's minority. Young Tom was
+respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite
+work. He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of wonder.
+
+"What, Tom!" the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door;
+"there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye? What good'll them fashens do
+to you, I'd like t'know? Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr. Fev'rel's
+mare. He's al'ays at that ther' Folly now. I say there never were a
+better name for a book than that ther' Folly! Talk about attitudes!"
+
+The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor
+to do likewise.
+
+"It's a comfort they're most on 'em females," he pursued, sounding a
+thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat. "It
+don't matter much what they does, except pinchin' in--waspin' it at the
+waist. Give me nature, I say--woman as she's made! eh, young gentleman?"
+
+"You seem very lonely here," said Richard, glancing round, and at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Lonely?" quoth the farmer. "Well, for the matter o' that, we be!--jest
+now, so't happens; I've got my pipe, and Tom've got his Folly. He's on
+one side the table, and I'm on t'other. He gapes, and I gazes. We are a
+bit lonesome. But there--it's for the best!"
+
+Richard resumed, "I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr. Blaize."
+
+"Y'acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour for
+it!" said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.
+
+The thing implied by the farmer's words caused Richard to take a quick
+breath. They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer thrumming
+on the arm of his chair.
+
+Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures
+of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation,
+trying their best not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an
+encouraging smile through plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably
+executed half-figure of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a telescope
+under his left arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their kith and
+kin. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his bearing that of a man who
+knows how to carry his head and shoulders. The artist, while giving
+him an epaulette to indicate his rank, had also recorded the juvenility
+which a lieutenant in the naval service can retain after arriving at
+that position, by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips.
+To this portrait Richard's eyes were directed. Farmer Blaize observed
+it, and said--
+
+"Her father, sir!"
+
+Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.
+
+"Yes," said the farmer, "pretty well. Next best to havin' her, though
+it's a long way off that!"
+
+"An old family, Mr. Blaize--is it not?" Richard asked in as careless a
+tone as he could assume.
+
+"Gentlefolks--what's left of 'em," replied the farmer with an equally
+affected indifference.
+
+"And that's her father?" said Richard, growing bolder to speak of her.
+
+"That's her father, young gentleman!"
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard turned to face him, and burst out, "where is she?"
+
+"Gone, sir! packed off!--Can't have her here now." The farmer thrummed a
+step brisker, and eyed the young man's wild face resolutely.
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard leaned forward to get closer to him. He was
+stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: "Where has she
+gone? Why did she leave?"
+
+"You needn't to ask, sir--ye know," said the farmer, with a side shot of
+his head.
+
+"But she did not--it was not her wish to go?"
+
+"No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes't too well!"
+
+"Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?"
+
+The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her unhappy.
+"Nobody can't accuse me. Tell ye what, sir. I wunt have the busybodies
+set to work about her, and there's all the matter. So let you and I come
+to an understandin'."
+
+A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright. He forgot
+it the next minute, and said humbly: "Am I the cause of her going?"
+
+"Well!" returned the farmer, "to speak straight--ye be!"
+
+"What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again" the young
+hypocrite asked.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, "you're coming to business. Glad to hear ye talk
+in that sensible way, Mr. Feverel. You may guess I wants her bad enough.
+The house ain't itself now she's away, and I ain't myself. Well, sir!
+This ye can do. If you gives me your promise not to meddle with her at
+all--I can't mak' out how you come to be acquainted; not to try to
+get her to be meetin' you--and if you'd 'a seen her when she left,
+you would--when did ye meet?--last grass, wasn't it?--your word as a
+gentleman not to be writing letters, and spyin' after her--I'll have her
+back at once. Back she shall come!"
+
+"Give her up!" cried Richard.
+
+"Ay, that's it!" said the farmer. "Give her up."
+
+The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.
+
+"You sent her away to protect her from me, then?" he said savagely.
+
+"That's not quite it, but that'll do," rejoined the farmer.
+
+"Do you think I shall harm her, sir?"
+
+"People seem to think she'll harm you, young gentleman," the farmer said
+with some irony.
+
+"Harm me--she? What people?"
+
+"People pretty intimate with you, sir."
+
+"What people? Who spoke of us?" Richard began to scent a plot, and would
+not be balked.
+
+"Well, sir, look here," said the farmer. "It ain't no secret, and if
+it be, I don't see why I'm to keep it. It appears your education's
+peculiar!" The farmer drawled out the word as if he were describing the
+figure of a snake. "You ain't to be as other young gentlemen. All the
+better! You're a fine bold young gentleman, and your father's a right to
+be proud of ye. Well, sir--I'm sure I thank him for't he comes to hear
+of you and Luce, and of course he don't want nothin' o' that--more do
+I. I meets him there! What's more I won't have nothin' of it. She be my
+gal. She were left to my protection. And she's a lady, sir. Let me tell
+ye, ye won't find many on 'em so well looked to as she be--my Luce!
+Well, Mr. Fev'rel, it's you, or it's her--one of ye must be out o' the
+way. So we're told. And Luce--I do believe she's just as anxious about
+yer education as yer father she says she'll go, and wouldn't write,
+and'd break it off for the sake o' your education. And she've kep' her
+word, haven't she?--She's a true'n. What she says she'll do!--True blue
+she be, my Luce! So now, sir, you do the same, and I'll thank ye."
+
+Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it
+gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the mind of
+the lover as he listened to this speech.
+
+His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep. "Mr.
+Blaize," he said, "this is very kind of the people you allude to, but
+I am of an age now to think and act for myself--I love her, sir!" His
+whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face quivered.
+
+"Well!" said the farmer, appeasingly, "we all do at your age--somebody
+or other. It's natural!"
+
+"I love her!" the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by his
+passion to have a sense of shame in the confession. "Farmer!" his voice
+fell to supplication, "will you bring her back?"
+
+Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked--what for? and where was the
+promise required?--But was not the lover's argument conclusive? He
+said he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not in
+consequence immediately send for her, that they might be together. All
+very well, quoth the farmer, but what's to come of it?--What was to come
+of it? Why, love, and more love! And a bit too much! the farmer added
+grimly.
+
+"Then you refuse me, farmer," said Richard. "I must look to you for
+keeping her away from me, not to--to--these people. You will not have
+her back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?"
+
+Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an
+objection of his own. And it was, that her character was at stake, and
+God knew whether she herself might not be in danger. He spoke with a
+kindly candour, not without dignity. He complimented Richard personally,
+but young people were young people; baronets' sons were not in the habit
+of marrying farmers' nieces.
+
+At first the son of a System did not comprehend him. When he did, he
+said: "Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for heaven, to
+marry her when I am of age, will you have her back?"
+
+He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head
+doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly.
+Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these
+signs, and observed: "It's not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?"
+
+The farmer signified it was not that.
+
+"It's because my father is against me," Richard went on, and undertook
+to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely
+and for ever resist his son's inclinations. Argument being a cool field
+where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the
+tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He drew pictures of Lucy, of
+her truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death, from death to
+life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent. Perhaps he did move
+the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so
+visible a sacrifice of his pride.
+
+Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he must
+have.
+
+The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth
+botheration. "May smoke heer now," he said. "Not when--somebody's
+present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don't mind smell?"
+
+Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and
+lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
+
+"Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin' to this?"
+ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco. "You
+didn't think much of her that day, young gentleman! I introduced ye.
+Well! things comes about. Can't you wait till she returns in due course,
+now?"
+
+This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another
+torrent.
+
+"It's queer," said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his
+wrinkled-up temples.
+
+Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as
+no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and
+staring at Richard an instant:
+
+"Look, young gentleman! My word's gone. I've spoke it. I've given 'em
+the 'surance she shan't be back till the Spring, and then I'll have
+her, and then--well! I do hope, for more reasons than one, ye'll both be
+wiser--I've got my own notions about her. But I an't the man to force
+a gal to marry 'gainst her inclines. Depend upon it I'm not your
+enemy, Mr. Fev'rel. You're jest the one to mak' a young gal proud. So
+wait,--and see. That's my 'dvice. Jest tak' and wait. I've no more to
+say."
+
+Richard's impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his notions
+concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they were
+serious.
+
+The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with "Wait
+till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!" dinning despair in his ears,
+stood up to depart. Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly
+way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions
+to his Folly, did not appear. A maid rushed by Richard in the passage,
+and slipped something into his grasp, which fixed on it without further
+consciousness than that of touch. The mare was led forth by the Bantam.
+A light rain was falling down strong warm gusts, and the trees were
+noisy in the night. Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to
+give him his hand, and say all was well. He liked the young man for his
+earnestness and honest outspeaking. Richard could not say all was well,
+but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer's in a sharp squeeze,
+when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
+
+A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing
+grey image on the waters of the Abbey-lake. Before sunrise Tom Bakewell
+was abroad, and met the missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra
+leisurely along the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at.
+Cassandra's flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped: all that was
+in her had been taken out by that wild night. On what heaths and heavy
+fallows had she not spent her noble strength, recklessly fretting
+through the darkness!
+
+"Take the mare," said Richard, dismounting and patting her between the
+eyes. "She's done up, poor old gal! Look to her, Tom, and then come to
+me in my room."
+
+Tom asked no questions.
+
+Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard's birth, and though
+Tom was close, the condition of the mare, and the young gentleman's
+strange freak in riding her out all night becoming known, prepared
+everybody at Raynham for the usual bad-luck birthday, the prophets
+of which were full of sad gratification. Sir Austin had an unpleasant
+office to require of his son; no other than that of humbly begging
+Benson's pardon, and washing out the undue blood he had spilt in taking
+his Pound of Flesh. Heavy Benson was told to anticipate the demand
+for pardon, and practised in his mind the most melancholy Christian
+deportment he could assume on the occasion. But while his son was in
+this state, Sir Austin considered that he would hardly be brought to
+see the virtues of the act, and did not make the requisition of him, and
+heavy Benson remained drawn up solemnly expectant at doorways, and at
+the foot of the staircase, a Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a
+step in advance of the young man, while Richard heedlessly passed him,
+as he passed everybody else, his head bent to the ground, and his legs
+bearing him like random instruments of whose service he was unconscious.
+It was a shock to Benson's implicit belief in his patron; and he was
+not consoled by the philosophic explanation, "That Good in a strong
+many-compounded nature is of slower growth than any other mortal thing,
+and must not be forced." Damnatory doctrines best pleased Benson. He was
+ready to pardon, as a Christian should, but he did want his enemy before
+him on his knees. And now, though the Saurian Eye saw more than all the
+other eyes in the house, and saw that there was matter in hand between
+Tom and his master to breed exceeding discomposure to the System,
+Benson, as he had not received his indemnity, and did not wish to
+encounter fresh perils for nothing, held his peace.
+
+Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast of his son,
+without conceiving the depths of distrust his son cherished or quite
+measuring the intensity of the passion that consumed him. He was
+very kind and tender with him. Like a cunning physician who has,
+nevertheless, overlooked the change in the disease superinduced by one
+false dose, he meditated his prescriptions carefully and confidently,
+sure that he knew the case, and was a match for it. He decreed that
+Richard's erratic behaviour should pass unnoticed. Two days before the
+birthday, he asked him whether he would object to having company? To
+which Richard said: "Have whom you will, sir." The preparation for
+festivity commenced accordingly.
+
+On the birthday eve he dined with the rest. Lady Blandish was there, and
+sat penitently at his right. Hippias prognosticated certain indigestion
+for himself on the morrow. The Eighteenth Century wondered whether she
+should live to see another birthday. Adrian drank the two-years' distant
+term of his tutorship, and Algernon went over the list of the Lobourne
+men who would cope with Bursley on the morrow. Sir Austin gave ear and a
+word to all, keeping his mental eye for his son. To please Lady Blandish
+also, Adrian ventured to make trifling jokes about London's Mrs.
+Grandison; jokes delicately not decent, but so delicately so, that it
+was not decent to perceive it.
+
+After dinner Richard left them. Nothing more than commonly peculiar was
+observed about him, beyond the excessive glitter of his eyes, but
+the baronet said, "Yes, yes! that will pass." He and Adrian, and Lady
+Blandish, took tea in the library, and sat till a late hour discussing
+casuistries relating mostly to the Apple-disease. Converse very amusing
+to the wise youth, who could suggest to the two chaste minds situations
+of the shadiest character, with the air of a seeker after truth, and
+lead them, unsuspecting, where they dared not look about them. The
+Aphorist had elated the heart of his constant fair worshipper with a
+newly rounded if not newly conceived sentence, when they became aware
+that they were four. Heavy Benson stood among them. He said he had
+knocked, but received no answer. There was, however, a vestige of
+surprise and dissatisfaction on his face beholding Adrian of the
+company, which had not quite worn away, and gave place, when it did
+vanish, to an aspect of flabby severity.
+
+"Well, Benson? well?" said the baronet.
+
+The unmoving man replied: "If you please, Sir Austin--Mr. Richard!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"He's out!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"With Bakewell!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And a carpet-bag!"
+
+The carpet-bag might be supposed to contain that funny thing called a
+young hero's romance in the making.
+
+Out Richard was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell carried. He
+was on the road to Bellingham, under heavy rain, hasting like an escaped
+captive, wild with joy, while Tom shook his skin, and grunted at his
+discomforts. The mail train was to be caught at Bellingham. He knew
+where to find her now, through the intervention of Miss Davenport, and
+thither he was flying, an arrow loosed from the bow: thither, in spite
+of fathers and friends and plotters, to claim her, and take her, and
+stand with her against the world.
+
+They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham, and
+Tom's visions were of hot drinks. He hinted the necessity for inward
+consolation to his master, who could answer nothing but "Tom! Tom! I
+shall see her tomorrow!" It was bad--travelling in the wet, Tom hinted
+again, to provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and
+furiously shaken into the bargain. Passing the principal inn of the
+place, Tom spoke plainly for brandy.
+
+"No!" cried Richard, "there's not a moment to be lost!" and as he
+said it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering indistinctly of
+faintness, and that there was no time to lose. Tom lifted him in his
+arms, and got admission to the inn. Brandy, the country's specific, was
+advised by host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving him
+sufficiently to cry out, "Tom! the bell's ringing: we shall be late,"
+after which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they had stretched
+him. Excitement of blood and brain had done its work upon him. The
+youth suffered them to undress him and put him to bed, and there he lay,
+forgetful even of love; a drowned weed borne onward by the tide of the
+hours. There his father found him.
+
+Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful? He had looked forward to such a
+crisis as that point in the disease his son was the victim of, when the
+body would fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing
+very well that the seeds of the evil were not of the spirit. Moreover,
+to see him and have him was a repose after the alarm Benson had sounded.
+"Mark!" he said to Lady Blandish, "when he recovers he will not care for
+her."
+
+The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of
+Richard's seizure.
+
+"What an iron man you can be," she exclaimed, smothering her intuitions.
+She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least, if he
+would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he once was.
+
+"Can you look on him," she pleaded, "can you look on him and persevere?"
+
+It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply. The youth
+lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his
+cheeks, and altered eyes.
+
+Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with
+head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient
+arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The
+old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and
+answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he
+said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood
+with the young man, "drugs are not much in cases of this sort. Change!
+That's what's wanted, and as soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to
+see the world, and know what he is made of. It's no use my talking, I
+know," added the doctor.
+
+"On the contrary," said Sir Austin, "I am quite of your persuasion. And
+the world he shall see--now."
+
+"We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor," Adrian remarked.
+
+"But, doctor," said Lady Blandish, "have you known a case of this sort
+before."
+
+"Never, my lady," said the doctor, "they're not common in these parts.
+Country people are tolerably healthy-minded."
+
+"But people--and country people--have died for love, doctor?"
+
+The doctor had not met any of them.
+
+"Men, or women?" inquired the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish believed mostly women.
+
+"Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded women," said the
+baronet. "No! you are both looking at the wrong end. Between a
+highly-cultured being, and an emotionless animal, there is all the
+difference in the world. But of the two, the doctor is nearer the truth.
+The healthy nature is pretty safe. If he allowed for organization he
+would be right altogether. To feel, but not to feel to excess, that is
+the problem."
+
+     "If I can't have the one I chose,
+     To some fresh maid I will propose,"
+
+Adrian hummed a country ballad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+When the young Experiment again knew the hours that rolled him onward,
+he was in his own room at Raynham. Nothing had changed: only a strong
+fist had knocked him down and stunned him, and he opened his eyes to a
+grey world: he had forgotten what he lived for. He was weak and
+thin, and with a pale memory of things. His functions were the same,
+everything surrounding him was the same: he looked upon the old blue
+hills, the far-lying fallows, the river, and the woods: he knew them,
+they seemed to have lost recollection of him. Nor could he find in
+familiar human faces the secret of intimacy of heretofore. They were the
+same faces: they nodded and smiled to him. What was lost he could not
+tell. Something had been knocked out of him! He was sensible of his
+father's sweetness of manner, and he was grieved that he could not reply
+to it, for every sense of shame and reproach had strangely gone. He felt
+very useless. In place of the fiery love for one, he now bore about a
+cold charity to all.
+
+Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose, and while
+it died another heart was pushing forth the Primrose of Autumn.
+
+The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her admirer, now
+positively proved, were exciting matters to Lady Blandish. She was
+rebuked for certain little rebellious fancies concerning him that had
+come across her enslaved mind from time to time. For was he not almost
+a prophet? It distressed the sentimental lady that a love like Richard's
+could pass off in mere smoke, and words such as she had heard him speak
+in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness. Nay, it humiliated her personally,
+and the baronet's shrewd prognostication humiliated her. For how should
+he know, and dare to say, that love was a thing of the dust that could
+be trodden out under the heel of science? But he had said so; and he had
+proved himself right. She heard with wonderment that Richard of his own
+accord had spoken to his father of the folly he had been guilty of, and
+had begged his pardon. The baronet told her this, adding that the
+youth had done it in a cold unwavering way, without a movement of his
+features: had evidently done it to throw off the burden of the duty, he
+had conceived. He had thought himself bound to acknowledge that he had
+been the Foolish Young Fellow, wishing, possibly, to abjure the fact
+by an set of penance. He had also given satisfaction to Benson, and was
+become a renovated peaceful spirit, whose main object appeared to be to
+get up his physical strength by exercise and no expenditure of speech.
+
+In her company he was composed and courteous; even when they were alone
+together, he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy. Sober he seemed, as
+one who has recovered from a drunkenness and has determined to drink
+no more. The idea struck her that he might be playing a part, but Tom
+Bakewell, in a private conversation they had, informed her that he had
+received an order from his young master, one day while boxing with him,
+not to mention the young lady's name to him as long as he lived; and Tom
+could only suppose that she had offended him. Theoretically wise Lady
+Blandish had always thought the baronet; she was unprepared to find him
+thus practically sagacious. She fell many degrees; she wanted something
+to cling to; so she clung to the man who struck her low. Love, then,
+was earthly; its depth could be probed by science! A man lived who could
+measure it from end to end; foretell its term; handle the young cherub
+as were he a shot owl! We who have flown into cousinship with the
+empyrean, and disported among immortal hosts, our base birth as a child
+of Time is made bare to us!--our wings are cut! Oh, then, if science is
+this victorious enemy of love, let us love science! was the logic of
+the lady's heart; and secretly cherishing the assurance that she should
+confute him yet, and prove him utterly wrong, she gave him the fruits of
+present success, as it is a habit of women to do; involuntarily partly.
+The fires took hold of her. She felt soft emotions such as a girl feels,
+and they flattered her. It was like youth coming back. Pure women have a
+second youth. The Autumn primrose flourished.
+
+We are advised by The Pilgrim's Scrip that--
+
+"The ways of women, which are Involution, and their practices, which
+are Opposition, are generally best hit upon by guess work, and a bold
+word;"--it being impossible to track them and hunt them down in the
+ordinary style.
+
+So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed, let us each of
+us venture a guess and say a bold word as to how it came that the lady,
+who trusted love to be eternal, grovelled to him that shattered her
+tender faith, and loved him.
+
+Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and gossips had
+maligned the lady. Just when the gossips grew tired of their slander,
+and inclined to look upon her charitably, she set about to deserve every
+word they had said of her; which may instruct us, if you please, that
+gossips have only to persist in lying to be crowned with verity, or that
+one has only to endure evil mouths for a period to gain impunity. She
+was always at the Abbey now. She was much closeted with the baronet. It
+seemed to be understood that she had taken Mrs. Doria's place. Benson in
+his misogynic soul perceived that she was taking Lady Feverel's: but
+any report circulated by Benson was sure to meet discredit, and drew the
+gossips upon himself; which made his meditations tragic. No sooner was
+one woman defeated than another took the field! The object of the System
+was no sooner safe than its great author was in danger!
+
+"I can't think what has come to Benson" he said to Adrian.
+
+"He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of lead,"
+returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford's manner. "Change is
+what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a month, sir, and let
+Richard go with him. The two victims of woman may do each other good."
+
+"Unfortunately I can't do without him," said the baronet.
+
+"Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on our
+chests all night!" Adrian ejaculated.
+
+"I think while he preserves this aspect we won't have him at the
+dinner-table," said the baronet.
+
+Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and added:
+"You know, sir, what he says?"
+
+Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that Benson's
+excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety for the safety
+of his master.
+
+"You must pardon a faithful fool, sir," he continued, for the baronet
+became red, and exclaimed:
+
+"His stupidity is past belief! I have absolutely to bolt my study-door
+against him."
+
+Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study, not
+unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary prophet,
+Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of the future,
+had a care to spy upon the present: warned haply by The Pilgrim's Scrip,
+of which he was a diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically:
+"Could we see Time's full face, we were wise of him." Now to see Time's
+full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the
+veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek and
+grimacing confusion on the other behind the curtain. Decency and a sense
+of honour restrain most of us from being thus wise and miserable for
+ever. Benson's excuse was that he believed in his master, who was
+menaced. And moreover, notwithstanding his previous tribulation, to spy
+upon Cupid was sweet to him. So he peeped, and he saw a sight. He saw
+Time's full face; or, in other words, he saw the wiles of woman and the
+weakness of man: which is our history, as Benson would have written it,
+and a great many poets and philosophers have written it.
+
+Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had seen:
+a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring one: very
+innocent! Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks
+she has, a reason or two about the roots. She is not all instinct. "For
+this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him to be the flower
+of men, I give myself to him!" She makes that lofty inward exclamation
+while the hand is detaching her from the roots. Even so strong a
+self-justification she requires. She has not that blind glory in
+excess which her younger sister can gild the longest leap with. And if,
+moth-like, she desires the star, she is nervously cautious of candles.
+Hence her circles about the dangerous human flame are wide and shy.
+She must be drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh reason. She loves to
+sentimentalize. Lady Blandish had been sentimentalizing for ten years.
+She would have preferred to pursue the game. The dark-eyed dame was
+pleased with her smooth life and the soft excitement that did not ruffle
+it. Not willingly did she let herself be won.
+
+"Sentimentalists," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "are they who seek to enjoy
+without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done."
+
+"It is," the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, "a happy pastime
+and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but
+a damning one to them who have anything to forfeit."
+
+However, one who could set down the dying for love, as a sentimentalism,
+can hardly be accepted as a clear authority. Assuredly he was not one to
+avoid the incurring of the immense debtorship in any way: but he was
+a bondsman still to the woman who had forsaken him, and a spoken word
+would have made it seem his duty to face that public scandal which was
+the last evil to him. What had so horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard
+had already beheld in Daphne's Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white
+hand! Doubtless the keyhole somehow added to Benson's horror. The
+two similar performances, so very innocent, had wondrous opposite
+consequences. The first kindled Richard to adore Woman; the second
+destroyed Benson's faith in Man. But Lady Blandish knew the difference
+between the two. She understood why the baronet did not speak; excused,
+and respected him for it. She was content, since she must love, to love
+humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his sorrows to comfort her. A
+hundred fresh reasons for loving him arose and multiplied every day.
+He read to her the secret book in his own handwriting, composed for
+Richard's Marriage Guide: containing Advice and Directions to a Young
+Husband, full of the most tender wisdom and delicacy; so she thought;
+nay, not wanting in poetry, though neither rhymed nor measured. He
+expounded to her the distinctive character of the divers ages of love,
+giving the palm to the flower she put forth, over that of Spring, or the
+Summer rose. And while they sat and talked; "My wound has healed," he
+said. "How?" she asked. "At the fountain of your eyes," he replied, and
+drew the joy of new life from her blushes, without incurring further
+debtor ship for a thing done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero,
+and a consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at his
+chariot-wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he has made
+an actual start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us, albeit
+the head of our fates. By this you perceive the true hero, whether he be
+a prince or a pot-boy, that he does not plot; Fortune does all for him.
+He may be compared to one to whom, in an electric circle, it is given to
+carry the battery.
+
+We caper and grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his
+the power. 'Tis all Fortune's, whose puppet he is. She deals her
+dispensations through him. Yea, though our capers be never so comical,
+he laughs not. Intent upon his own business, the true hero asks little
+services of us here and there; thinks it quite natural that they should
+be acceded to, and sees nothing ridiculous in the lamentable contortions
+we must go through to fulfil them. Probably he is the elect of Fortune,
+because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own business:
+"Which is," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "with men to be valued equal to
+that force which in water makes a stream." This prelude was necessary to
+the present chapter of Richard's history.
+
+It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was busy
+with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang, and Hippias
+Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move within him. He
+communicated his delightful new sensations to the baronet, his brother,
+whose constant exclamation with regard to him, was: "Poor Hippias!
+All his machinery is bare!" and had no hope that he would ever be in a
+condition to defend it from view. Nevertheless Hippias had that hope,
+and so he told his brother, making great exposure of his machinery
+to effect the explanation. He spoke of all his physical experiences
+exultingly, and with wonder. The achievement of common efforts, not
+usually blazoned, he celebrated as triumphs, and, of course, had Adrian
+on his back very quickly. But he could bear him, or anything, now. It
+was such ineffable relief to find himself looking out upon the world
+of mortals instead of into the black phantasmal abysses of his own
+complicated frightful structure. "My mind doesn't so much seem to haunt
+itself, now," said Hippias, nodding shortly and peering out of intense
+puckers to convey a glimpse of what hellish sufferings his had been: "I
+feel as if I had come aboveground."
+
+A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never
+gets sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it is he whose groaning
+petitions for charity do at last rout that Christian virtue. Lady
+Blandish, a charitable soul, could not listen to Hippias, though she
+had a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir Austin had also small
+patience with his brother's gleam of health, which was just enough to
+make his disease visible. He remembered his early follies and excesses,
+and bent his ear to him as one man does to another who complains of
+having to pay a debt legally incurred.
+
+"I think," said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias were
+received, "that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach, it's
+best to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent."
+
+Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or
+real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He
+advised his uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful
+impressions in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made Hippias
+visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village, who bewailed
+the loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and did his best to waken him
+up, and give the outer world a stronger hold on him. He succeeded in
+nothing but in winning his uncle's gratitude. The season bloomed scarce
+longer than a week for Hippias, and then began to languish. The poor
+Dyspepsy's eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he went underground
+again. He announced that he felt "spongy things"--one of the more
+constant throes of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he chewed the
+cud of horrid hallucinations. He told Richard he must give up
+going about with him: people telling of their ailments made him so
+uncomfortable--the birds were so noisy, pairing--the rude bare soil
+sickened him.
+
+Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father's. He asked what
+the doctors said.
+
+"Oh! the doctors!" cried Hippias with vehement scepticism. "No man of
+sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder. Do you happen to have
+heard of any new remedy then, Richard? No? They advertise a great many
+cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder whether one
+can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures? I see no reason why
+there should be no cure for such a disease?--Eh? And it's just one of
+the things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one
+who is in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've
+often thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some
+of the extraordinary digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his
+gastric juices, there is really no manner of reason why we should not
+comfortably dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and
+one might eat French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what's
+to follow. And this makes me think that those fellows may, after all,
+have got some truth in them: some secret that, of course, they require
+to be paid for. We distrust each other in this world too much,
+Richard. I've felt inclined once or twice--but it's absurd!--If it
+only alleviated a few of my sufferings I should be satisfied. I've no
+hesitation in saying that I should be quite satisfied if it only did
+away with one or two, and left me free to eat and drink as other people
+do. Not that I mean to try them. It's only a fancy--Eh? What a thing
+health is, my dear boy! Ah! if I were like you! I was in love once!"
+
+"Were you!" said Richard, coolly regarding him.
+
+"I've forgotten what I felt!" Hippias sighed. "You've very much
+improved, my dear boy."
+
+"So people say," quoth Richard.
+
+Hippias looked at him anxiously: "If I go to town and get the doctor's
+opinion about trying a new course--Eh, Richard? will you come with me? I
+should like your company. We could see London together, you know. Enjoy
+ourselves," and Hippias rubbed his hands.
+
+Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his
+uncle's eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where they
+were--an answer that might mean anything. Hippias immediately became
+possessed by the beguiling project. He went to the baronet, and put the
+matter before him, instancing doctors as the object of his journey, not
+quacks, of course; and requesting leave to take Richard. Sir Austin was
+getting uneasy about his son's manner. It was not natural. His heart
+seemed to be frozen: he had no confidences: he appeared to have no
+ambition--to have lost the virtues of youth with the poison that
+had passed out of him. He was disposed to try what effect a little
+travelling might have on him, and had himself once or twice hinted
+to Richard that it would be good for him to move about, the young man
+quietly replying that he did not wish to quit Raynham at all, which was
+too strict a fulfilment of his father's original views in educating
+him there entirely. On the day that Hippias made his proposal, Adrian,
+seconded by Lady Blandish, also made one. The sweet Spring season
+stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not to pastoral measures: to the
+joys of the operatic world and bravura glories. He also suggested that
+it would be advisable to carry Richard to town for a term, and let
+him know his position, and some freedom. Sir Austin weighed the two
+proposals. He was pretty certain that Richard's passion was consumed,
+and that the youth was now only under the burden of its ashes. He had
+found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn: a great lock of golden
+hair. He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling about for it with
+faint hands, never asked for it. This precious lock (Miss Davenport had
+thrust it into his hand at Belthorpe as Lucy's last gift), what sighs
+and tears it had weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard's sight one
+day, and beheld him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down again
+calmly, as if he were handling any common curiosity. It pacified him on
+that score. The young man's love was dead. Dr. Clifford said rightly:
+he wanted distractions. The baronet determined that Richard should go.
+Hippias and Adrian then pressed their several suits as to which should
+have him. Hippias, when he could forget himself, did not lack sense. He
+observed that Adrian was not at present a proper companion for Richard,
+and would teach him to look on life from the false point.
+
+"You don't understand a young philosopher," said the baronet.
+
+"A young philosopher's an old fool!" returned Hippias, not thinking that
+his growl had begotten a phrase.
+
+His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
+"Excellent! worthy of your best days! You're wrong, though, in applying
+it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done has been to
+bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and sees. I think,
+however," the baronet added, "he may want faith in the better qualities
+of men." And this reflection inclined him not to let his son be alone
+with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his father's
+wishes tended, and decided so to please him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian
+extremely. He said to his chief:
+
+"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we derive
+any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty
+years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional
+tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered
+Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I would rather
+society were not intimate with them under their several headings."
+Adrian enumerated some of the most abhorrent. "You know him, sir. If he
+conceives a duty, he will do it in the face of every decency--all the
+more obstinate because the conception is rare. If he feels a little
+brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that makes us
+famous! We go down to posterity with heightened characteristics, to say
+nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned
+inside-out to the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery
+made bare to them."
+
+Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to Dr.
+Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in about two
+weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective Summer
+campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came.
+Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put into his
+hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his pocket-expenses.
+He did not want it, he said, but she told him he was a young man, and
+would soon make that fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady
+did not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her
+grandnephew to understand that, should he require more, he knew where
+to apply, and secrets would be kept. His father presented him with a
+hundred pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care
+for money. "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.
+
+Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up quarters
+at the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the house not being
+altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of
+the imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man's movements, and
+letting him imagine he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as
+it were, pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom
+again, in complete independence, as far as he could feel. So did the
+sage decree; and we may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his
+previsions, and how successful they must have been, had not Fortune,
+the great foe to human cleverness, turned against him, or he against
+himself.
+
+The departure took place on a fine March morning. The bird of Winter
+sang from the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of Summer.
+Adrian rode between Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham station, and
+vented his disgust on them after his own humorous fashion, because it
+did not rain and damp their ardour. In the rear came Lady Blandish and
+the baronet, conversing on the calm summit of success.
+
+"You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself," she said, pointing
+with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure of the young man.
+
+"Outwardly, perhaps," he answered, and led to a discussion on Purity and
+Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.
+
+"But you do not," said the baronet. "And there I admire the always true
+instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form,
+and seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a
+characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted--how soon! For there are
+questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when,
+hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest
+soul becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do
+battle. Strength indicates a boundless nature--like the Maker. Strength
+is a God to you--Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of
+playing with it," he added, with unaccustomed slyness.
+
+The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that the
+constraint on his mind had left him. It was for women to fight their
+fight now; she only took part in it for amusement. This is how the ranks
+of our enemies are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a champion in
+their midst than she betrays them.
+
+"I see," she said archly, "we are the lovelier vessels; you claim the
+more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women--slips! Nay, you have said
+so," she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.
+
+"But I never printed it."
+
+"Oh! what you speak answers for print with me."
+
+Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love her.
+
+"Tell me what are your plans?" she asked. "May a woman know?"
+
+He replied, "I have none or you would share them. I shall study him
+in the world. This indifference must wear off. I shall mark his
+inclinations now, and he shall be what he inclines to. Occupation will
+be his prime safety. His cousin Austin's plan of life appears most
+to his taste, and he can serve the people that way as well as in
+Parliament, should he have no stronger ambition. The clear duty of a man
+of any wealth is to serve the people as he best can. He shall go among
+Austin's set, if he wishes it, though personally I find no pleasure in
+rash imaginations, and undigested schemes built upon the mere instinct
+of principles."
+
+"Look at him now," said the lady. "He seems to care for nothing; not
+even for the beauty of the day."
+
+"Or Adrian's jokes," added the baronet.
+
+Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a
+confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his chin to
+one, and to the other, with audible asides. Richard he treated as a
+new instrument of destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering
+metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting condition; and he got so
+much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the
+mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal
+insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's dull life at
+Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional
+joker.
+
+"Oh! the Spring! the Spring!" he cried, as in scorn of his sallies they
+exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him. "You
+seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles, rooks,
+and daws. Why can't you let them alone?"
+
+          'Wind bloweth,
+          Cock croweth,
+             Doodle-doo;
+          Hippy verteth,
+          Ricky sterteth,
+             Sing Cuckoo!'
+
+There's an old native pastoral!--Why don't you write a Spring sonnet,
+Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the
+strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for. What kind of
+berry was that I saw some verses of yours about once?--amatory verses
+to some kind of berry--yewberry, blueberry, glueberry! Pretty verses,
+decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom, legs--legs? I don't think you gave
+her any legs. No legs and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste
+of the day. It shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for a
+chaste people.
+
+     'O might I lie where leans her lute!'
+
+and offend no moral community. That's not a bad image of yours, my dear
+boy:
+
+       'Her shape is like an antelope
+        Upon the Eastern hills.'
+
+But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be
+considered correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the ballet
+that you are in error about women at present, Richard. That admirable
+institution which our venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the
+instruction of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you. I assure
+you I used, from reading The Pilgrim's Scrip, to imagine all sorts of
+things about them, till I was taken there, and learnt that they are very
+like us after all, and then they ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the
+great danger to youth, my son! Mystery is woman's redoubtable weapon,
+O Richard of the Ordeal! I'm aware that you've had your lessons in
+anatomy, but nothing will persuade you that an anatomical figure means
+flesh and blood. You can't realize the fact. Do you intend to publish
+when you're in town? It'll be better not to put your name. Having one's
+name to a volume of poems is as bad as to an advertising pill."
+
+"I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish," quoth Richard.
+"Hark at that old blackbird, uncle."
+
+"Yes!" Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his
+contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, "fine old fellow!"
+
+"What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July
+nightingales. You know that bird I told you of--the blackbird that had
+its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell's bird from
+the tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day before yesterday,
+and the dame says her bird hasn't sung a note since."
+
+"Extraordinary!" Hippias muttered abstractedly. "I remember the verses."
+
+"But where's your moral?" interposed the wrathful Adrian. "Where's
+constancy rewarded?
+
+       'The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
+        With orange-tawny bill;
+        The rascal with his aim so true;
+        The Poet's little quill!'
+
+"Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the poet!
+Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who
+for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a
+defunct male. I suppose that's what Ricky dwells on."
+
+"As you please, my dear Adrian," says Richard, and points out larch-buds
+to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.
+
+The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil's
+heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not
+believe in. "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his turn, and
+pretending to interpret his fits of song:
+
+"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my
+Fiesco?--Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train has
+started--jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be winners yet!
+
+"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"
+
+"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a manner
+mildly affable.
+
+Adrian shrugged. "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he
+emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for
+which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into
+Bellingham.
+
+There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and
+gala waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had
+preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound for
+London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet:
+"The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;" but he paid no
+heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look
+took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the
+nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could
+supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was not stiffened by
+the eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady
+Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's
+adieux across the palings. He shook hands with each of them in the same
+kindly cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on his style
+of doing it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into
+one of the carriages.
+
+Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at
+war with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern
+life; and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant
+watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active forties,
+cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he but
+sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this, and smile
+wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System incarnate, wave a
+serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor morbidly unwilling to
+try his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At present, I am aware, an
+audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on
+incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will come
+to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work: who,
+as it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds
+of March when they do not blow. To them will nothing be trivial, seeing
+that they will have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around
+us, whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes.
+And they will perceive, moreover, that in real life all hangs together:
+the train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon the
+field of thousands. They will see the links of things as they pass, and
+wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter came out of
+that small one.
+
+Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet's gratification
+at his son's demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience
+not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some excited
+apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went
+sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young
+man throw himself back in the carriage violently laughing. Science
+was at a loss to account for that. Sir Austin checked his mind from
+inquiring, that he might keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it
+odd, and the jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight,
+remained with him as he rode home.
+
+Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say: "You see it was
+the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already."
+
+"It was," Adrian put in his word, "the exact thing he wanted. His
+spirits have returned miraculously."
+
+"Something amused him," said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing
+train.
+
+"Probably something his uncle said or did," Lady Blandish suggested, and
+led off at a gallop.
+
+Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard's
+laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed
+on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells
+in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express
+his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the
+Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which
+unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,
+
+          "Hippy verteth,
+          Sing cuckoo!"
+
+in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized
+him.
+
+          "Hippy verteth!"
+
+Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so
+immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
+
+"Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy," said Hippias,
+and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest "ha! ha!"
+
+"Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?" cried Richard.
+
+"I really don't know," Hippias chuckled.
+
+"Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!"
+
+They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias
+not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like
+any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and
+anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at
+him--he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at
+his own transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes,
+now and then, that it might not last, and that he must go underground
+again, lent him a look of pathos and humour which tickled his youthful
+companion irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.
+
+"I tell you what, uncle," said Richard, "I think travelling's a capital
+thing."
+
+"The best thing in the world, my dear boy," Hippias returned. "It makes
+me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before, instead
+of chaining myself to a task. We're quite different beings in a minute.
+I am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?"
+
+"Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend to
+make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride on a
+railway every day."
+
+Hippias remarked: "They say it rather injures the digestion."
+
+"Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow."
+
+"Perhaps I shall do something yet," sighed Hippias, alluding to the vast
+literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. "I hope I shall have a good
+night to-night."
+
+"Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?"
+
+"Ugh!" Hippias grunted, "I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment you
+get into bed!"
+
+"The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment I wake. Health's
+everything!"
+
+"Health's everything!" echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.
+
+"And if you'll put yourself in my hands," Richard continued, "you shall
+do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing 'Jolly!' like
+Adrian's blackbird. You shall, upon my honour, uncle!"
+
+He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery--no less
+than twelve a day--that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness
+almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his own.
+
+"Mind," quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, "mind your dishes are
+not too savoury!"
+
+"Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart to
+all, but give it to none!" exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters,
+"Yes! yes!" and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his not
+following that maxim earlier.
+
+"Love ruins us, my dear boy," he said, thinking to preach Richard a
+lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:
+
+       "The love of Monsieur Francatelli,
+        It was the ruin of--et coetera."
+
+Hippias blinked, exclaiming, "Really, my dear boy! I never saw you so
+excited."
+
+"It's the railway! It's the fun, uncle!"
+
+"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden Bride!
+Keep her if you can. That's a pretty fable of your father's. I gave him
+the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my ideas!"
+
+"Here's the idea in verse, uncle:
+
+       'O sunless walkers by the tide!
+        O have you seen the Golden Bride!
+        They say that she is fair beyond
+        All women; faithful, and more fond!
+
+"You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by
+the brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:
+
+        Faithful she is, but she forsakes:
+        And fond, yet endless woe she makes:
+        And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd;
+        To know her not till she is lost!'
+
+"Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the
+fabulist pursues:
+
+       'She hath a palace in the West:
+        Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:
+        And him the Morning Star awakes
+        Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
+
+        So lives he till he sees, alas!
+        The maids of baser metal pass.'
+
+"And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with
+one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy
+Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds
+her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina,
+till he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less
+obscure become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her radiance
+shines forth, my uncle."
+
+"Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you've got her,"
+says Hippias.
+
+"We will, uncle!--Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in the
+fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!
+
+     'She claims the whole, and not the part--
+     The coin of an unused heart!
+     To gain his Golden Bride again,
+     He hunts with melancholy men,'
+     --and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!"
+
+"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias
+interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a
+Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion.
+I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."
+
+"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard. "You shall ride in the park with
+me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden Bride. You
+know that little poem of Sandoe's?
+
+     'She rides in the park on a prancing bay,
+      She and her squires together;
+     Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,
+      And toss with the tossing feather.
+
+     'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
+      Is the beautiful face as it passes;
+     The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+      The coxcombs lift their glasses.
+
+     'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
+      The ice-wall that guards her securely;
+     You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
+      As the heart that can image her purely.'
+
+"Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they quarrelled.
+He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?
+
+     'True, Madam, you may think to part
+      Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
+     But Beauty's for the largest heart,
+      And all abysses Love can bridge!
+
+"Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words."
+
+"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never seen
+one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go parading your
+admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the
+subject when he thinks fit."
+
+"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he
+murmured to a pleased ear:
+
+        "Beauty's for the largest heart!"
+
+The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of
+passengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure. All
+faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and
+his Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before them,
+he looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape,
+projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing
+hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great
+service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his
+reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage
+door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something curious on his
+mind; and he gave Tom the word to speak out. Tom edged his master out of
+hearing, and began sputtering a laugh.
+
+"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said. "That young Tom! He've come to
+town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more than a
+stag. He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know
+how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis. Look at him,
+Mr. Richard! There he goes."
+
+Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.
+
+"Who has he come for?" Richard asked.
+
+"Don't you know, sir? You don't like me to mention the name," mumbled
+Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.
+
+"Is it for her, Tom?"
+
+"Miss Lucy, sir."
+
+Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get
+out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear
+him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right,
+or left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was
+manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in the
+conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to drive off. He made the
+excuse that he did not wish to start till there was a clear road.
+At last young Tom cast anchor by a policeman, and, doubtless at the
+official's suggestion, bashfully took seat in a cab, and was shot into
+the whirlpool of London. Richard then angrily asked his driver what he
+was waiting for.
+
+"Are you ill, my boy?" said Hippias. "Where's your colour?"
+
+He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow
+would drive fast.
+
+"I hate slow motion after being in the railway," he said.
+
+Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.
+
+"Nothing, uncle! nothing!" said Richard, looking fiercely candid.
+
+They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch
+from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such
+pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the
+heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart--the struggle of life and
+death in him--grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries
+out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the
+dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised
+by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight
+clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain
+it is, the old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm
+of his passion filing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one woman to
+Richard. He had forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence.
+Must the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy's shape.
+Thinking of her now so near him--his darling! all her graces, her
+sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her
+true--swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic,
+and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated it. As well
+might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the violent
+emotion that began to rage in his breast. "I shall not see her!" he said
+to himself exultingly, and at the same instant thought, how black
+was every corner of the earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how
+utterly cheerless the place he was going to! Then he determined to bear
+it; to live in darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary
+martyrdom. "For if I chose I could see her--this day within an hour!--I
+could see her, and touch her hand, and, oh, heaven!--But I do not
+choose." And a great wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only
+to swell again more stormily.
+
+Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was
+uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this
+Babylon alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that they
+had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out
+of the way--they had been miserably plotting against him once more.
+"They shall see what right they have to fear me. I'll shame them!" was
+the first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and
+see her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed
+not to be one of the conspirators. Nevertheless, after forming that
+resolve, he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the wheels
+that bore him away from it--perhaps because he knew, as some do when
+passion is lord, that his intelligence juggled with him; though none the
+less keenly did he feel his wrongs and suspicions. His Golden Bride was
+waning fast. But when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: "We shall soon
+be there!" the spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to
+speak to Tom, and would ride with him the rest of the journey. He knew
+well enough which line of railway his Lucy must come by. He had studied
+every town and station on the line. Before his uncle could express more
+than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom Bakewell, who
+came behind with the boxes and baggage in a companion cab, his head a
+yard beyond the window to make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle
+preceding.
+
+"What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is," said Hippias. "We're in
+the very street!"
+
+Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to arrange
+everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his bow.
+
+"Mr. Richard, sir?--evaporated?" was Berry's modulated inquiry.
+
+"Behind--among the boxes, fool!" Hippias growled, as he received Berry's
+muscular assistance to alight. "Lunch ready--eh!"
+
+"Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir--been in attendance
+one quarter of an hour. Heah!" Berry sang out to the second cab, which,
+with its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces
+distant. At his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on
+them, and went off in a contrary direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to
+consult his gold watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and the
+forthcoming dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk's office where
+he sat, and a man of a scowling countenance, who looked a villain, and
+whom he was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his hands, nodding that
+it would be prudent for him to read, and be silent. Ripton obeyed in
+alarm. Apparently the contents of the letter relieved his conscience;
+for he reached down his hat, and told Mr. Beazley to inform his father
+that he had business of pressing importance in the West, and should
+meet him at the station. Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the paternal
+Thompson without delay, and together making their observations from the
+window, they beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton darted and
+was followed by one in groom's dress. It was Saturday, the day when
+Ripton gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself upon
+his family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son's arm as he walked
+down to the station; but that third glass of Port which always stood for
+his second, and the groom's suggestion of aristocratic acquaintances,
+prevented Mr. Thompson from interfering: so Ripton was permitted to
+depart.
+
+In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It had the
+preciseness of an imperial mandate.
+
+"Dear Ripton,--You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately. Not a
+word to a soul. Then come along with Tom. R.D.F."
+
+"Lodgings for a lady!" Ripton meditated aloud: "What sort of lodgings?
+Where am I to get lodgings? Who's the lady?--I say!" he addressed the
+mysterious messenger. "So you're Tom Bakewell, are you, Tom?"
+
+Tom grinned his identity.
+
+"Do you remember the rick, Tom? Ha! ha! We got out of that neatly. We
+might all have been transported, though. I could have convicted you,
+Tom, safe! It's no use coming across a practised lawyer. Now tell me."
+Ripton having flourished his powers, commenced his examination: "Who's
+this lady?"
+
+"Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir," Tom resumed his scowl to
+reply.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton acquiesced. "Is she young, Tom?"
+
+Tom said she was not old.
+
+"Handsome, Tom?"
+
+"Some might think one thing, some another," Tom said.
+
+"And where does she come from now?" asked Ripton, with the friendly
+cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.
+
+"Comes from the country, sir."
+
+"A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?"
+
+Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look. Tom's face
+was a dead blank.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him. "Why, you're
+quite a scholar, Tom! Mr. Richard is well. All right at home?"
+
+"Come to town this mornin' with his uncle," said Tom. "All well, thank
+ye, sir."
+
+"Ha!" cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, "now I see. You all came to
+town to-day, and these are your boxes outside. So, so! But Mr. Richard
+writes for me to get lodgings for a lady. There must be some mistake--he
+wrote in a hurry. He wants lodgings for you all--eh?"
+
+"'M sure I d'n know what he wants," said Tom. "You'd better go by the
+letter, sir."
+
+Ripton re-consulted that document. "'Lodgings for a lady, and then come
+along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.' I say! that looks like--but he
+never cared for them. You don't mean to say, Tom, he's been running away
+with anybody?"
+
+Tom fell back upon his first reply: "Better wait till ye see Mr.
+Richard, sir," and Ripton exclaimed: "Hanged if you ain't the tightest
+witness I ever saw! I shouldn't like to have you in a box. Some of you
+country fellows beat any number of cockneys. You do!"
+
+Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as
+nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform
+his friend's injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the
+country ought to lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the
+cabman to drive. Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the
+hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.
+
+It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have
+beneficent omens to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in
+full career, so that they really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and to
+check him in his course, had they that signal courage. For instance,
+Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, a ripe and wholesome landlady of advertised
+lodgings, on the borders of Kensington, noted, as she sat rocking her
+contemplative person before the parlour fire this very March afternoon,
+a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which
+signifies that a wedding approaches the house. Why--who shall say? Omens
+are as impassable as heroes. It may be because in these affairs the fire
+is thought to be all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and spoke
+its solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was
+known as a certificated lecturer against the snares of matrimony.
+Still that was no reason why she should not like a wedding. Expectant,
+therefore, she watched the one glowing cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing
+tremours beheld a cab of many boxes draw up by her bit of garden, and
+a gentleman emerge from it in the set of consulting an advertisement
+paper. The gentleman required lodgings for a lady. Lodgings for a lady
+Mrs. Berry could produce, and a very roseate smile for a gentleman;
+so much so that Ripton forgot to ask about the terms, which made the
+landlady in Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as the happy man. But her
+experienced woman's eye checked her enthusiasm. He had not the air of a
+bridegroom: he did not seem to have a weight on his chest, or an itch
+to twiddle everything with his fingers. At any rate, he was not the
+bridegroom for whom omens fly abroad. Promising to have all ready
+for the lady within an hour, Mrs. Berry fortified him with her card,
+curtsied him back to his cab, and floated him off on her smiles.
+
+The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of intrigue through
+London streets, now proceeded sedately to finish its operations. Ripton
+was landed at a hotel in Westminster. Ere he was halfway up the stairs,
+a door opened, and his old comrade in adventure rushed down. Richard
+allowed no time for salutations. "Have you done it?" was all he asked.
+For answer Ripton handed him Mrs. Berry's card. Richard took it, and
+left him standing there. Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard
+the gracious rustle of feminine garments above. Richard came a little in
+advance, leading and half-supporting a figure in a black-silk mantle and
+small black straw bonnet; young--that was certain, though she held her
+veil so close he could hardly catch the outlines of her face; girlishly
+slender, and sweet and simple in appearance. The hush that came with
+her, and her soft manner of moving, stirred the silly youth to some of
+those ardours that awaken the Knight of Dames in our bosoms. He felt
+that he would have given considerable sums for her to lift her veil. He
+could see that she was trembling--perhaps weeping. It was the master of
+her fate she clung to. They passed him without speaking. As she went
+by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a glimpse of noble tresses and a
+lovely neck; great golden curls hung loosely behind, pouring from under
+her bonnet. She looked a captive borne to the sacrifice. What Ripton,
+after a sight of those curls, would have given for her just to lift her
+veil an instant and strike him blind with beauty, was, fortunately
+for his exchequer, never demanded of him. And he had absolutely been
+composing speeches as he came along in the cab! gallant speeches for
+the lady, and sly congratulatory ones for his friend, to be delivered as
+occasion should serve, that both might know him a man of the world, and
+be at their ease. He forgot the smirking immoralities he had revelled
+in. This was clearly serious. Ripton did not require to be told that
+his friend was in love, and meant that life and death business called
+marriage, parents and guardians consenting or not.
+
+Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly, "I want you now
+to go to my uncle at our hotel. Keep him quiet till I come. Say I had to
+see you--say anything. I shall be there by the dinner hour. Rip! I must
+talk to you alone after dinner."
+
+Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home. He was very
+curious to hear the plot of the New Comedy; and besides, there was
+Richard's face questioning him sternly and confidently for signs of
+unhesitating obedience. He finished his grimaces by asking the name and
+direction of the hotel. Richard pressed his hand. It is much to obtain
+even that recognition of our devotion from the hero.
+
+Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by his chuckles
+and grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work cut out for him. In a few
+minutes they had driven to their separate destinations; Ripton was left
+to the unusual exercise of his fancy. Such is the nature of youth and
+its thirst for romance, that only to act as a subordinate is pleasant.
+When one unfurls the standard of defiance to parents and guardians,
+he may be sure of raising a lawless troop of adolescent ruffians, born
+rebels, to any amount. The beardless crew know that they have not a
+chance of pay; but what of that when the rosy prospect of thwarting
+their elders is in view? Though it is to see another eat the Forbidden
+Fruit, they will run all his risks with him. Gaily Ripton took rank as
+lieutenant in the enterprise, and the moment his heart had sworn the
+oaths, he was rewarded by an exquisite sense of the charms of existence.
+London streets wore a sly laugh to him. He walked with a dandified heel.
+The generous youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and glanced intimately
+at the ladies, overflowingly happy. The crossing-sweepers blessed
+him. He hummed lively tunes, he turned over old jokes in his mouth
+unctuously, he hugged himself, he had a mind to dance down Piccadilly,
+and all because a friend of his was running away with a pretty girl, and
+he was in the secret.
+
+It was only when he stood on the doorstep of Richard's hotel, that
+his jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering that he had then to
+commence the duties of his office, and must fabricate a plausible story
+to account for what he knew nothing about--a part that the greatest of
+sages would find it difficult to perform. The young, however, whom sages
+well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties to the
+level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias's angry complaints
+against the friend he serenely inquired for, gave Ripton his cue.
+
+"We're in the very street--within a stone's-throw of the house, and he
+jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be
+mad--that boy's got madness in him!--and carries off all the boxes--my
+dinner-pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day, though he
+promised to go to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me," said
+Hippias, venting an enraged snarl to sum up his grievances.
+
+Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say he's been to the doctor?" Hippias cried out.
+
+"He has called on him twice, sir," said Ripton, expressively. "On
+leaving me he was going a third time. I shouldn't wonder that's what
+detains him--he's so determined."
+
+By fine degrees Ripton ventured to grow circumstantial, saying that
+Richard's case was urgent and required immediate medical advice; and
+that both he and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose an
+hour in obtaining it.
+
+"He's alarmed about himself," said Ripton, and tapped his chest.
+
+Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his nephew of any
+physical affliction.
+
+"He was afraid of making you anxious, I think, sir."
+
+Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering at the
+alphabet to recollect the first letter of the doctor's name. They had
+met in the hall below, and were laughing heartily as they entered the
+room. Ripton jumped up to get the initiative.
+
+"Have you seen the doctor?" he asked, significantly plucking at
+Richard's fingers.
+
+Richard was all abroad at the question.
+
+Algernon clapped him on the back. "What the deuce do you want with
+doctor, boy?"
+
+The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they were. "Oh, ay! the
+doctor!" he said, smiling frankly at his lieutenant. "Why, he tells me
+he'd back me to do Milo's trick in a week from the present day.--Uncle,"
+he came forward to Hippias, "I hope you'll excuse me for running off as
+I did. I was in a hurry. I left something at the railway. This stupid
+Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself. The fact was, I wanted to
+fetch the doctor to see you here--so that you might have no trouble, you
+know. You can't bear the sight of his instruments and skeletons--I've
+heard you say so. You said it set all your marrow in revolt--'fried
+your marrow,' I think were the words, and made you see twenty thousand
+different ways of sliding down to the chambers of the Grim King. Don't
+you remember?"
+
+Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not believe the
+story. Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him
+incredulous. As he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he could do
+safely to express his disbelief in him, was to utter petulant remarks
+on his powerlessness to appear at the dinner-table that day: upon
+which--Berry just then trumpeting dinner--Algernon seized one arm of the
+Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the laughing couple bore him into the
+room where dinner was laid, Ripton sniggering in the rear, the really
+happy man of the party.
+
+They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have it; and his gaiety,
+his by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic promise of
+overriding all our laws, his handsome face, the lord and possessor of
+beauty that he looked, as it were a star shining on his forehead, gained
+the old complete mastery over Ripton, who had been, mentally at least,
+half patronizing him till then, because he knew more of London and life,
+and was aware that his friend now depended upon him almost entirely.
+
+After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his lieutenant's
+eye across the table, and said:
+
+"We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go. Do
+you think the old lady has any chance?"
+
+"Not a bit!" said Ripton, authoritatively.
+
+"But it's worth fighting--eh, Rip?"
+
+"Oh, certainly!" was Ripton's mature opinion.
+
+Richard observed that Ripton's father seemed doubtful. Ripton cited
+his father's habitual caution. Richard made a playful remark on the
+necessity of sometimes acting in opposition to fathers. Ripton agreed to
+it--in certain cases.
+
+"Yes, yes! in certain cases," said Richard.
+
+"Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!" Algernon interjected; Hippias
+adding: "And lay, too!"
+
+The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious dialogue, well
+kept up on both sides, and in the end desired a statement of the old
+lady's garrulous case; Hippias offering to decide what her chances were
+in law, and Algernon to give a common-sense judgment.
+
+"Rip will tell you," said Richard, deferentially signalling the lawyer.
+"I'm a bad hand at these matters. Tell them how it stands, Rip."
+
+Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours to right his
+position on his chair, and, inwardly praying speed to the claret jug
+to come and strengthen his wits, began with a careless aspect:
+"Oh, nothing! She very curious old character! She--a--wears a wig.
+She--a--very curious old character indeed! She--a--quite the old style.
+There's no doing anything with her!" and Ripton took a long breath to
+relieve himself after his elaborate fiction.
+
+"So it appears," Hippias commented, and Algernon asked: "Well? and about
+her wig? Somebody stole it?" while Richard, whose features were grim
+with suppressed laughter, bade the narrator continue.
+
+Ripton lunged for the claret jug. He had got an old lady like an
+oppressive bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless as she was. In
+the pangs of ineffectual authorship his ideas shot at her wig, and then
+at her one characteristic of extreme obstinacy, and tore back again at
+her wig, but she would not be animated. The obstinate old thing would
+remain a bundle. Law studies seemed light in comparison with this
+tremendous task of changing an old lady from a doll to a human creature.
+He flung off some claret, perspired freely, and, with a mental tribute
+to the cleverness of those author fellows, recommenced: "Oh, nothing!
+She--Richard knows her better than I do--an old lady--somewhere down in
+Suffolk. I think we had better advise her not to proceed. The expenses
+of litigation are enormous! She--I think we had better advise her to
+stop short, and not make any scandal."
+
+"And not make any scandal!" Algernon took him up. "Come, come! there's
+something more than a wig, then?"
+
+Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no. The luckless
+fictionist looked straight at his pitiless leader, and blurted out
+dubiously, "She--there's a daughter."
+
+"Born with effort!" ejaculated Hippias. "Must give her pause after that!
+and I'll take the opportunity to stretch my length on the sofa. Heigho!
+that's true what Austin says: 'The general prayer should be for a full
+stomach, and the individual for one that works well; for on that basis
+only are we a match for temporal matters, and able to contemplate
+eternal.' Sententious, but true. I gave him the idea, though! Take care
+of your stomachs, boys! and if ever you hear of a monument proposed to
+a scientific cook or gastronomic doctor, send in your subscriptions. Or
+say to him while he lives, Go forth, and be a Knight! Ha! They have
+a good cook at this house. He suits me better than ours at Raynham. I
+almost wish I had brought my manuscript to town, I feel so much better.
+Aha! I didn't expect to digest at all without my regular incentive.
+I think I shall give it up.--What do you say to the theatre to-night,
+boys!"
+
+Richard shouted, "Bravo, uncle!"
+
+"Let Mr. Thompson finish first," said Algernon. "I want to hear the
+conclusion of the story. The old girl has a wig and a daughter. I'll
+swear somebody runs away with one of the two! Fill your glass, Mr.
+Thompson, and forward!"
+
+"So somebody does," Ripton received his impetus. "And they're found
+in town together," he made a fresh jerk. "She--a--that is, the old
+lady--found them in company."
+
+"She finds him with her wig on in company!" said Algernon. "Capital!
+Here's matter for the lawyers!"
+
+"And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances of
+aggravation?" Hippias observed, humorously twinkling with his stomachic
+contentment.
+
+"It's the daughter," Ripton sighed, and surrendering to pressure,
+hurried on recklessly, "A runaway match--beautiful girl!--the only
+son of a baronet--married by special licence. A--the point is," he now
+brightened and spoke from his own element, "the point is whether the
+marriage can be annulled, as she's of the Catholic persuasion and he's a
+Protestant, and they're both married under age. That's the point."
+
+Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and saw things more
+distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader's horrified face.
+
+The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when Richard sent
+his chair to the floor, crying, "What a muddle you're in, Rip! You're
+mixing half-a-dozen stories together. The old lady I told you about was
+old Dame Bakewell, and the dispute was concerning a neighbour of hers
+who encroached on her garden, and I said I'd pay the money to see her
+righted!"
+
+"Ah," said Ripton, humbly, "I was thinking of the other. Her garden!
+Cabbages don't interest me"--
+
+"Here, come along," Richard beckoned to him savagely. "I'll be back in
+five minutes, uncle," he nodded coolly to either.
+
+The young men left the room. In the hall-passage they met Berry, dressed
+to return to Raynham. Richard dropped a helper to the intelligence
+into his hand, and warned him not to gossip much of London. Berry bowed
+perfect discreetness.
+
+"What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and Catholics
+marrying, Rip?" said Richard, as soon as they were in the street.
+
+"Why," Ripton answered, "I was so hard pushed for it, 'pon my honour,
+I didn't know what to say. I ain't an author, you know; I can't make
+a story. I was trying to invent a point, and I couldn't think of any
+other, and I thought that was just the point likely to make a jolly good
+dispute. Capital dinners they give at those crack hotels. Why did you
+throw it all upon me? I didn't begin on the old lady."
+
+The hero mused, "It's odd! It's impossible you could have known! I'll
+tell you why, Rip! I wanted to try you. You fib well at long range, but
+you don't do at close quarters and single combat. You're good behind
+walls, but not worth a shot in the open. I just see what you're fit for.
+You're staunch--that I am certain of. You always were. Lead the way to
+one of the parks--down in that direction. You know?--where she is!"
+
+Ripton led the way. His dinner had prepared this young Englishman to
+defy the whole artillery of established morals. With the muffled roar of
+London around them, alone in a dark slope of green, the hero, leaning
+on his henchman, and speaking in a harsh clear undertone, delivered his
+explanations. Doubtless the true heroic insignia and point of view will
+be discerned, albeit in common private's uniform.
+
+"They've been plotting against me for a year, Rip! When you see her,
+you'll know what it was to have such a creature taken away from you.
+It nearly killed me. Never mind what she is. She's the most perfect and
+noble creature God ever made! It's not only her beauty--I don't care so
+much about that!--but when you've once seen her, she seems to draw music
+from all the nerves of your body; but she's such an angel. I worship
+her. And her mind's like her face. She's pure gold. There, you'll see
+her to-night.
+
+"Well," he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous prospect,
+"they got her away, and I recovered. It was Mister Adrian's work. What's
+my father's objection to her? Because of her birth? She's educated; her
+manners are beautiful--full of refinement--quick and soft! Can they
+show me one of their ladies like her?--she's the daughter of a naval
+lieutenant! Because she's a Catholic? What has religion to do with"--he
+pronounced "Love!" a little modestly--as it were a blush in his voice.
+
+"Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her. It shows how
+we know ourselves! And I cared for nothing. I felt as if I had no blood.
+I tried to imitate my dear Austin. I wish to God he were here. I
+love Austin. He would understand her. He's coming back this year, and
+then--but it'll be too late then.--Well, my father's always scheming to
+make me perfect--he has never spoken to me a word about her, but I can
+see her in his eyes--he wanted to give me a change, he said, and asked
+me to come to town with my uncle Hippy, and I consented. It was another
+plot to get me out of the way! As I live, I had no more idea of meeting
+her than of flying to heaven!"
+
+He lifted his face. "Look at those old elm branches! How they seem to
+mix among the stars!--glittering fruits of Winter!"
+
+Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty bound to say,
+Yes! though he observed no connection between them and the narrative.
+
+"Well," the hero went on, "I came to town. There I heard she was coming,
+too--coming home. It must have been fate, Ripton! Heaven forgive me! I
+was angry with her, and I thought I should like to see her once--only
+once--and reproach her for being false--for she never wrote to me. And,
+oh, the dear angel! what she must have suffered!--I gave my uncle the
+slip, and got to the railway she was coming by. There was a fellow going
+to meet her--a farmer's son--and, good God! they were going to try and
+make her marry him! I remembered it all then. A servant of the farm had
+told me. That fellow went to the wrong station, I suppose, for we saw
+nothing of him. There she was--not changed a bit!--looking lovelier than
+ever! And when she saw me, I knew in a minute that she must love me
+till death!--You don't know what it is yet, Rip!--Will you believe,
+it?--Though I was as sure she loved me and had been true as steel, as
+that I shall see her to-night, I spoke bitterly to her. And she bore it
+meekly--she looked like a saint. I told her there was but one hope of
+life for me--she must prove she was true, and as I give up all, so must
+she. I don't know what I said. The thought of losing her made me mad.
+She tried to plead with me to wait--it was for my sake, I know. I
+pretended, like a miserable hypocrite, that she did not love me at all.
+I think I said shameful things. Oh what noble creatures women are! She
+hardly had strength to move. I took her to that place where you found
+us, Rip! she went down on her knees to me, I never dreamed of anything
+in life so lovely as she looked then. Her eyes were thrown up, bright
+with a crowd of tears--her dark brows bent together, like Pain and
+Beauty meeting in one; and her glorious golden hair swept off her
+shoulders as she hung forward to my hands.--Could I lose such a
+prize.--If anything could have persuaded me, would not that?--I thought
+of Dante's Madonna--Guido's Magdalen.--Is there sin in it? I see none!
+And if there is, it's all mine! I swear she's spotless of a thought of
+sin. I see her very soul? Cease to love her? Who dares ask me? Cease to
+love her? Why, I live on her!--To see her little chin straining up from
+her throat, as she knelt to me!--there was one curl that fell across her
+throat"....
+
+Ripton listened for more. Richard had gone off in a muse at the picture.
+
+"Well?" said Ripton, "and how about that young farmer fellow?"
+
+The hero's head was again contemplating the starry branches. His
+lieutenant's question came to him after an interval.
+
+"Young Tom? Why, it's young Torn Blaize--son of our old enemy, Rip! I
+like the old man now. Oh! I saw nothing of the fellow."
+
+"Lord!" cried Ripton, "are we going to get into a mess with Blaizes
+again? I don't like that!"
+
+His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.
+
+"But when he goes to the train, and finds she's not there?" Ripton
+suggested.
+
+"I've provided for that. The fool went to the South-east instead of the
+South-west. All warmth, all sweetness, comes with the South-west!--I've
+provided for that, friend Rip. My trusty Tom awaits him there, as if by
+accident. He tells him he has not seen her, and advises him to remain
+in town, and go for her there to-morrow, and the day following. Tom has
+money for the work. Young Tom ought to see London, you know, Rip!--like
+you. We shall gain some good clear days. And when old Blaize hears of
+it--what then? I have her! she's mine!--Besides, he won't hear for a
+week. This Tom beats that Tom in cunning, I'll wager. Ha! ha!" the hero
+burst out at a recollection. "What do you think, Rip? My father has some
+sort of System with me, it appears, and when I came to town the time
+before, he took me to some people--the Grandisons--and what do you
+think? one of the daughters is a little girl--a nice little thing enough
+very funny--and he wants me to wait for her! He hasn't said so, but I
+know it. I know what he means. Nobody understands him but me. I know he
+loves me, and is one of the best of men--but just consider!--a little
+girl who just comes up to my elbow. Isn't it ridiculous? Did you ever
+hear such nonsense?"
+
+Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was foolish.
+
+"No, no! The die's cast!" said Richard. "They've been plotting for a
+year up to this day, and this is what comes of it! If my father loves
+me, he will love her. And if he loves me, he'll forgive my acting
+against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done. Come! step
+out! what a time we've been!" and away he went, compelling Ripton to the
+sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a column of grenadiers.
+
+Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man with
+wind so that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a tremendous
+pace, and experience no sensation of fatigue. The hero was communing
+with the elements, his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he pleased.
+Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the discrepancy between the
+pedestrian powers of the two, aimed their wit at Mr. Thompson junior's
+expense. The pace, and nothing but the pace, induced Ripton to proclaim
+that they had gone too far, when they discovered that they had over shot
+the mark by half a mile. In the street over which stood love's star, the
+hero thundered his presence at a door, and evoked a flying housemaid,
+who knew not Mrs. Berry. The hero attached significance to the fact that
+his instincts should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that
+house. The door being shut he stood in dead silence.
+
+"Haven't you got her card?" Ripton inquired, and heard that it was in
+the custody of the cabman. Neither of them could positively bring to
+mind the number of the house.
+
+"You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty Thieves,"
+Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.
+
+Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love! The hero heavily
+descended the steps.
+
+Ripton murmured that they were done for. His commander turned on him,
+and said: "Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after another.
+I'll take these." With a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether
+subdued by Richard's native superiority to adverse circumstances.
+
+Then were families aroused. Then did mortals dimly guess that something
+portentous was abroad. Then were labourers all day in the vineyard,
+harshly wakened from their evening's nap. Hope and Fear stalked the
+street, as again and again the loud companion summonses resounded.
+Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully. He had Mrs. Berry before him,
+profuse of mellow curtsies.
+
+Richard ran to her and caught her hands: "She's well?--upstairs?"
+
+"Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and
+fluttering-like," Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone. The lover had
+flown aloft.
+
+The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour, there
+to wait till he was wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one of
+the two lightly," is the dictum of The Pilgrim's's Scrip.
+
+It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action, and
+occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses that
+are ever fretting to gallop off with them. But when they have given the
+reins and the whip to another, what are they to do? They may go down
+on their knees, and beg and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or
+moderate his pace. Alas! each fresh thing they do redoubles his ardour:
+There is a power in their troubled beauty women learn the use of, and
+what wonder? They have seen it kindle Ilium to flames so often! But ere
+they grow matronly in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore,
+and do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of
+loveliness. They resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy;
+pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive love. And so
+the very sensible things which they can and do say, are vain.
+
+I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest. Are not those
+their own horses in yonder team? Certainly, if they were quite in
+earnest, they might soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter. A
+hundred different ways of disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will point
+you out one or two that shall be instantly efficacious. For Love, the
+charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love keeps his legs
+to the end. Granted dear women are not quite in earnest, still the mere
+words they utter should be put to their good account. They do mean them,
+though their hearts are set the wrong way. 'Tis a despairing, pathetic
+homage to the judgment of the majority, in whose faces they are flying.
+Punish Helen, very young, lightly. After a certain age you may select
+her for special chastisement. An innocent with Theseus, with Paris she
+is an advanced incendiary.
+
+The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to
+recall her stunned senses. Her bonnet was un-removed, her hands clasped
+on her knees; dry tears in her eyes. Like a dutiful slave, she rose to
+him. And first he claimed her mouth. There was a speech, made up of
+all the pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love could gather,
+awaiting him there; but his kiss scattered it to fragments. She dropped
+to her seat weeping, and hiding her shamed cheeks.
+
+By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew it
+to her lips.
+
+He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.
+
+"Keep your eyes so."
+
+She could not.
+
+"Do you fear me, Lucy?"
+
+A throbbing pressure answered him.
+
+"Do you love me, darling?"
+
+She trembled from head to foot.
+
+"Then why do you turn from me?"
+
+She wept: "O Richard, take me home! take me home!"
+
+"Look at me, Lucy!"
+
+Her head shrank timidly round.
+
+"Keep your eyes on me, darling! Now speak!"
+
+But she could not look and speak too. The lover knew his mastery when he
+had her eyes.
+
+"You wish me to take you home?"
+
+She faltered: "O Richard? it is not too late."
+
+"You regret what you have done for me?"
+
+"Dearest! it is ruin."
+
+"You weep because you have consented to be mine?"
+
+"Not for me! O Richard!"
+
+"For me you weep? Look at me! For me?"
+
+"How will it end! O Richard!"
+
+"You weep for me?"
+
+"Dearest! I would die for you!"
+
+"Would you see me indifferent to everything in the world? Would you have
+me lost? Do you think I will live another day in England without you? I
+have staked all I have on you, Lucy. You have nearly killed me once.
+A second time, and the earth will not be troubled by me. You ask me to
+wait, when they are plotting against us on all sides? Darling Lucy! look
+on me. Fix--your fond eyes on me. You ask me to wait when here you are
+given to me when you have proved my faith--when we know we love as none
+have loved. Give me your eyes! Let them tell me I have your heart!"
+
+Where was her wise little speech? How could she match such mighty
+eloquence? She sought to collect a few more of the scattered fragments.
+
+"Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and by, and then--oh!
+if you take me home now"--
+
+The lover stood up. "He who has been arranging that fine scheme to
+disgrace and martyrize you? True, as I live! that's the reason of their
+having you back. Your old servant heard him and your uncle discussing
+it. He!--Lucy! he's a good man, but he must not step in between you and
+me. I say God has given you to me."
+
+He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
+
+She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning, and she was
+weaker and softer.
+
+Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first law to her?
+Why should she not believe that she would wreck him by resisting? And if
+she suffered, oh sweet to think it was for his sake! Sweet to shut out
+wisdom; accept total blindness, and be led by him!
+
+The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further. She rustled her garments
+ominously, and vanished.
+
+"Oh, my own Richard!" the fair girl just breathed.
+
+He whispered, "Call me that name."
+
+She blushed deeply.
+
+"Call me that name," he repeated. "You said it once today."
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+"Not that."
+
+"O darling!"
+
+"Not that."
+
+"Husband!"
+
+She was won. The rosy gate from which the word had issued was closed
+with a seal.
+
+Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of beauty
+that night. He received a lesson in the art of pumping from the worthy
+landlady below, up to an hour when she yawned, and he blinked, and
+their common candle wore with dignity the brigand's hat of midnight, and
+cocked a drunken eye at them from under it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not always he
+on whom beauty works its most conquering influence. It is the dull
+commonplace man into whose slow brain she drops like a celestial light,
+and burns lastingly. The poet, for instance, is a connoisseur of beauty:
+to the artist she is a model. These gentlemen by much contemplation of
+her charms wax critical. The days when they had hearts being gone, they
+are haply divided between the blonde and the brunette; the aquiline nose
+and the Proserpine; this shaped eye and that. But go about among simple
+unprofessional fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here and there you shall
+find some barbarous intelligence which has had just strength enough to
+conceive, and has taken Beauty as its Goddess, and knows but one form
+to worship, in its poor stupid fashion, and would perish for her. Nay,
+more: the man would devote all his days to her, though he is dumb as a
+dog. And, indeed, he is Beauty's Dog. Almost every Beauty has her Dog.
+The hero possesses her; the poet proclaims her; the painter puts her
+upon canvas; and the faithful Old Dog follows her: and the end of it
+all is that the faithful Old Dog is her single attendant. Sir Hero
+is revelling in the wars, or in Armida's bowers; Mr. Poet has spied a
+wrinkle; the brush is for the rose in its season. She turns to her Old
+Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has subsisted on a bone and a pat
+till there he squats decrepit, he turns his grateful old eyes up to
+her, and has not a notion that she is hugging sad memories in him: Hero,
+Poet, Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is she buried, and the village
+hears languid howls, and there is a paragraph in the newspapers
+concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an Old Dog.
+
+Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair Persian,
+and the change in the obscure monotony of his life by his having
+quarters in a crack hotel, and living familiarly with West-End
+people--living on the fat of the land (which forms a stout portion of an
+honest youth's romance), Ripton Thompson breakfasted next morning with
+his chief at half-past eight. The meal had been fixed overnight for
+seven, but Ripton slept a great deal more than the nightingale, and (to
+chronicle his exact state) even half-past eight rather afflicted his new
+aristocratic senses and reminded him too keenly of law and bondage. He
+had preferred to breakfast at Algernon's hour, who had left word for
+eleven. Him, however, it was Richard's object to avoid, so they fell
+to, and Ripton no longer envied Hippias in bed. Breakfast done, they
+bequeathed the consoling information for Algernon that they were off to
+hear a popular preacher, and departed.
+
+"How happy everybody looks!" said Richard, in the quiet Sunday streets.
+
+"Yes--jolly!" said Ripton.
+
+"When I'm--when this is over, I'll see that they are, too--as many as I
+can make happy," said the hero; adding softly: "Her blind was down at a
+quarter to six. I think she slept well!"
+
+"You've been there this morning?" Ripton exclaimed; and an idea of what
+love was dawned upon his dull brain.
+
+"Will she see me, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes. She'll see you to-day. She was tired last night."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.
+
+"Here," he said, coming under some trees in the park, "here's where I
+talked to you last night. What a time it seems! How I hate the night!"
+
+On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him, Ripton
+hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious acquaintance
+with the sex. Headings of certain random adventures he gave.
+
+"Well!" said his chief, "why not marry her?"
+
+Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, "Oh!" and had a taste of the feeling
+of superiority, destined that day to be crushed utterly.
+
+He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry's charge for a term that caused him
+dismal fears that the Fair Persian still refused to show her face,
+but Richard called out to him, and up Ripton went, unaware of the
+transformation he was to undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together to
+receive him. From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously
+agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the room
+his cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained beyond their
+exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover, welcomed him
+kindly. He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely silly. They sat
+down, and tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little
+master of his tongue as he was of his eyes. After an interval, the Fair
+Persian having done duty by showing herself, was glad to quit the room.
+Her lord and possessor then turned inquiringly to Ripton.
+
+"You don't wonder now, Rip?" he said.
+
+"No, Richard!" Ripton waited to reply with sufficient solemnity, "indeed
+I don't!"
+
+He spoke differently; he looked differently. He had the Old Dog's eyes
+in his head. They watched the door she had passed through; they listened
+for her, as dogs' eyes do. When she came in, bonneted for a walk, his
+agitation was dog-like. When she hung on her lover timidly, and went
+forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or anything save the secret
+raptures the sight of her gave him, which are the Old Dog's own. For
+beneficent Nature requites him: His sensations cannot be heroic, but
+they have a fulness and a wagging delight as good in their way. And this
+capacity for humble unaspiring worship has its peculiar guerdon. When
+Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what will he think of himself?
+Let no one despise the Old Dog. Through him doth Beauty vindicate her
+sex.
+
+It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of beholding
+her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her
+offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged
+comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he
+had to smother low growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of
+Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round
+the windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their
+hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked up his ears. She, too, made the
+remark that everybody seemed to look happy, and he heard it with thrills
+of joy. "So everybody is, where you are!" he would have wished to say,
+if he dared, but was restrained by fears that his burning eloquence
+would commit him. Ripton knew the people he met twice. It would have
+been difficult to persuade him they were the creatures of accident.
+
+From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton's frowned protest, Richard
+boldly struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning to
+perform the circuit. Here Ripton had some justification for his jealous
+pangs. The young girl's golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily
+sad, face; her gentle graceful figure in the black straight dress she
+wore; a sort of half-conventual air she had--a mark of something not
+of class, that was partly beauty's, partly maiden innocence growing
+conscious, partly remorse at her weakness and dim fear of the future it
+was sowing--did attract the eye-glasses. Ripton had to learn that eyes
+are bearable, but eye-glasses an abomination. They fixed a spell upon
+his courage; for somehow the youth had always ranked them as emblems
+of our nobility, and hearing two exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to
+front and rear several times, drawl in gibberish generally imputed to
+lords, that his heroine was a charming little creature, just the size,
+but had no style,--he was abashed; he did not fly at them and tear
+them. He became dejected. Beauty's dog is affected by the eye-glass in a
+manner not unlike the common animal's terror of the human eye.
+
+Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that he heard. He
+repeated to Lucy Diaper Sandoe's verses--
+
+     "The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+     The coxcombs lift their glasses,"
+
+and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the park, and
+shine among the highest.
+
+They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering through the
+bare trees across the water, and the bright-edged rack. The lover, his
+imagination just then occupied in clothing earthly glories in celestial,
+felt where his senses were sharpest the hand of his darling falter, and
+instinctively looked ahead. His uncle Algernon was leisurely jolting
+towards them on his one sound leg. The dismembered Guardsman talked to a
+friend whose arm supported him, and speculated from time to time on
+the fair ladies driving by. The two white faces passed him unobserved.
+Unfortunately Ripton, coming behind, went plump upon the Captain's live
+toe--or so he pretended, crying, "Confound it, Mr. Thompson! you might
+have chosen the other."
+
+The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered that it was
+extraordinary.
+
+"Not at all," said Algernon. "Everybody makes up to that fellow.
+Instinct, I suppose!"
+
+He had not to ask for his nephew. Richard turned to face the matter.
+
+"Sorry I couldn't wait for you this morning, uncle," he said, with the
+coolness of relationship. "I thought you never walked so far."
+
+His voice was in perfect tone--the heroic mask admirable.
+
+Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and contrived to
+allude to the popular preacher. He was instantly introduced to Ripton's
+sister, Miss Thompson.
+
+The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his nephew's choice
+of a minister. After a few stray remarks, and an affable salute to Miss
+Thompson, he hobbled away, and then the three sealed volcanoes breathed,
+and Lucy's arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to the heroic
+pitch.
+
+This incident quickened their steps homeward to the sheltering wings
+of Mrs. Berry. All that passed between them on the subject comprised
+a stammered excuse from Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured
+rejoinder from Richard, that he had gained a sister by it: at which
+Ripton ventured to wish aloud Miss Desborough would only think so, and
+a faint smile twitched poor Lucy's lips to please him. She hardly had
+strength to reach her cage. She had none to eat of Mrs. Berry's nice
+little dinner. To be alone, that she might cry and ease her heart of
+its accusing weight of tears, was all she prayed for. Kind Mrs. Berry,
+slipping into her bedroom to take off her things, found the fair body in
+a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing her completely and putting
+her to bed.
+
+"Just an hour's sleep, or so," the mellifluous woman explained the case
+to the two anxious gentlemen. "A quiet sleep and a cup of warm tea goes
+for more than twenty doctors, it do--when there's the flutters," she
+pursued. "I know it by myself. And a good cry beforehand's better than
+the best of medicine."
+
+She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired to her softer
+charge and sweeter babe, reflecting, "Lord! Lord! the three of 'em don't
+make fifty! I'm as old as two and a half of 'em, to say the least." Mrs.
+Berry used her apron, and by virtue of their tender years took them all
+three into her heart.
+
+Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a morsel.
+
+"Did you see the change come over her?" Richard whispered.
+
+Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.
+
+The lover flung down his knife and fork: "What could I do? If I had said
+nothing, we should have been suspected. I was obliged to speak. And she
+hates a lie! See! it has struck her down. God forgive me!"
+
+Ripton affected a serene mind: "It was a fright, Richard," he said.
+"That's what Mrs. Berry means by flutters. Those old women talk in that
+way. You heard what she said. And these old women know. I'll tell you
+what it is. It's this, Richard!--it's because you've got a fool for your
+friend!"
+
+"She regrets it," muttered the lover. "Good God! I think she fears me."
+He dropped his face in his hands.
+
+Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort:
+"It's because you've got a fool for your friend!"
+
+Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused. The sun was buried
+alive in cloud. Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window. He
+watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement. His aristocratic
+visions had gone like his breakfast. Beauty had been struck down by his
+egregious folly, and there he stood--a wretch!
+
+Richard came to him: "Don't mumble on like that, Rip!" he said. "Nobody
+blames you."
+
+"Ah! you're very kind, Richard," interposed the wretch, moved at the
+face of misery he beheld.
+
+"Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night. Yes! If she's
+happier away from me!--do you think me a brute, Ripton? Rather than have
+her shed a tear, I'd!--I'll take her home to-night!"
+
+Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience,
+people perhaps might talk.
+
+The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he said:
+"If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue? If no one sees or
+hears of me, what can they say? O Rip! I'll give her up. I'm wrecked
+for ever! What of that? Yes--let them take her! The world in arms should
+never have torn her from me, but when she cries--Yes! all's over. I'll
+find him at once."
+
+He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve. Ripton
+looked on, wretcheder than ever.
+
+The idea struck him:--"Suppose, Richard, she doesn't want to go?"
+
+It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians
+and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their
+righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack and
+sent him home to his naughty Mother. Alas!(it is The Pilgrim's Scrip
+interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief! In bustles
+Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the two knights
+helmed, and sees, though 'tis dusk, that they wear doubtful brows, and
+guesses bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.
+
+"Dear! dear!" she exclaimed, "and neither of you eaten a scrap! And
+there's my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever see!"
+
+"Ha?" cried the lover, illuminated.
+
+"Soft as a baby!" Mrs. Berry averred. "I went to look at her this very
+moment, and there's not a bit of trouble in her breath. It come and it
+go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made. The Black Ox haven't
+trod on her foot yet! Most like it was the air of London. But only
+fancy, if you had called in a doctor! Why, I shouldn't have let her take
+any of his quackery. Now, there!"
+
+Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with
+a curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs.
+Berry's speech, he drew forth a little glove--dropped there by some
+freak of chance.
+
+"Keep me, keep me, now you have me!" sang the little glove, and amused
+the lover with a thousand conceits.
+
+"When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?" he asked.
+
+"Oh! we mustn't go for disturbing her," said the guileful good creature.
+"Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you young gentlemen was to
+take my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a appetite--everybody
+should eat! it's their sacred duty, no matter what their feelings
+be! and I say it who'm no chicken!--I'll frickashee this--which is a
+chicken--against your return. I'm a cook, I can assure ye!"
+
+The lover seized her two hands. "You're the best old soul in the world!"
+he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him. "We won't disturb
+her. Let her sleep. Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you? And we'll
+call to inquire after her this evening, and come and see her to-morrow.
+I'm sure you'll be kind to her. There! there!" Mrs. Berry was preparing
+to whimper. "I trust her to you, you see. Good-bye, you dear old soul."
+
+He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with
+his uncles, happy and hungry.
+
+Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry into
+their confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save their
+names, so that they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of that trump
+of a woman, and yet have nothing to fear from her. Lucy was to receive
+the name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and best-looking sister. The
+heartless fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of
+hers.
+
+"Letitia!" mused Richard. "I like the name. Both begin with L. There's
+something soft--womanlike--in the L.'s."
+
+Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper. The
+lover roamed through his golden groves. "Lucy Feverel! that sounds
+better! I wonder where Ralph is. I should like to help him. He's in love
+with my cousin Clare. He'll never do anything till he marries. No man
+can. I'm going to do a hundred things when it's over. We shall travel
+first. I want to see the Alps. One doesn't know what the earth is till
+one has seen the Alps. What a delight it will be to her! I fancy I see
+her eyes gazing up at them.
+
+  'And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
+    With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
+    Past weeping for mortality's distress--
+   Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.
+     And fills, but does not fall;
+     Softly I hear it call
+   At heaven's gate, till Sister Seraphs press
+   To look on you their old love from the skies:
+   Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!
+
+"Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a
+friend of my father's. I intend to find him and make them friends again.
+You don't care for poetry. It's no use your trying to swallow it, Rip!"
+
+"It sounds very nice," said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.
+
+"The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East," the hero
+continued. "She's ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave heart!
+Oh, the glorious golden East! I dream of the desert. I dream I'm chief
+of an Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our mares,
+and hurry to the rescue of my darling! And we push the spears, and we
+scatter them, and I come to the tent where she crouches, and catch her
+to my saddle, and away!--Rip! what a life!"
+
+Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.
+
+"And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin's life, with her
+to help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country heart
+and soul. A wise man told me that. I think I shall do something."
+
+Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover. Now
+life was a narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged, flew
+illimitably. An hour ago and food was hateful. Now he manfully refreshed
+his nature, and joined in Algernon's encomiums on Miss Letitia Thompson.
+
+Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the hero's
+band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the reality which
+was a dream. She awoke calling for some friend, "Margaret!" and heard
+one say, "My name is Bessy Berry, my love! not Margaret." Then she asked
+piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her dear friend, and
+Mrs. Berry whispered, "Sure you've got a dearer!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the strangeness
+of her state.
+
+Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the bedclothes
+quietly.
+
+Her name was breathed.
+
+"Yes, my love?" she said.
+
+"Is he here?"
+
+"He's gone, my dear."
+
+"Gone?--Oh, where?" The young girl started up in disorder.
+
+"Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!" Mrs. Berry
+chanted: "Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!"
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?" Lucy wept for the
+famine-struck hero, who was just then feeding mightily.
+
+Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of his
+heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of women;
+and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle.
+She wanted one to pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand from under
+the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's, and kissed it. The good creature
+required no further avowal of her secret, but forthwith leaned her
+consummate bosom to the pillow, and petitioned heaven to bless them
+both!--Then the little bride was alarmed, and wondered how Mrs. Berry
+could have guessed it.
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Berry, "your love is out of your eyes, and out of
+everything ye do." And the little bride wondered more. She thought she
+had been so very cautious not to betray it. The common woman in them
+made cheer together after their own April fashion. Following which Mrs.
+Berry probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match; but
+the little bride's lips were locked. She only said her lover was above
+her in station.
+
+"And you're a Catholic, my dear!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And him a Protestant."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Dear, dear!--And why shouldn't ye be?" she ejaculated, seeing sadness
+return to the bridal babe. "So as you was born, so shall ye be! But
+you'll have to make your arrangements about the children. The girls to
+worship with yet, the boys with him. It's the same God, my dear! You
+mustn't blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If my young gentleman
+could see you now!"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Berry!" Lucy murmured.
+
+"Why, he will, you know, my dear!"
+
+"Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And you that can't bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do wish there
+was fathers and mothers on both sides and dock-ments signed, and
+bridesmaids, and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in
+spite of them."
+
+She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she
+drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for. The one
+fact that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her;
+she would not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and history,
+however sadly she yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother
+Confessor.
+
+Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of
+matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.
+
+"And when you see your ticket," said Mrs. Berry, "you shan't know
+whether it's a prize or a blank. And, Lord knows! some go on thinking
+it's a prize when it turns on 'em and tears 'em. I'm one of the blanks,
+my dear! I drew a blank in Berry. He was a black Berry to me, my dear!
+Smile away! he truly was, and I a-prizin' him as proud as you can
+conceive! My dear!" Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron. "We
+hadn't been a three months man and wife, when that man--it wasn't the
+honeymoon, which some can't say--that man--Yes! he kicked me. His wedded
+wife he kicked! Ah!" she sighed to Lucy's large eyes, "I could have
+borne that. A blow don't touch the heart," the poor creature tapped her
+sensitive side. "I went on loving of him, for I'm a soft one. Tall as a
+Grenadier he is, and when out of service grows his moustache. I used to
+call him my body-guardsman like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools
+we women are. For, take my word for it, my dear, there's nothing here
+below so vain as a man! That I know. But I didn't deserve it.... I'm a
+superior cook.... I did not deserve that noways." Mrs. Berry thumped her
+knee, and accentuated up her climax: "I mended his linen. I saw to his
+adornments--he called his clothes, the bad man! I was a servant to him,
+my dear! and there--it was nine months--nine months from the day he
+swear to protect and cherish and that--nine calendar months, and my
+gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!--pish!" exclaimed
+Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly. "Here's my ring. A pretty
+ornament! What do it mean? I'm for tearin' it off my finger a dozen
+times in the day. It's a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the
+dead-alive to wear it, that's a widow and not a widow, and haven't got
+a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I've looked, my dear, and"--she
+spread out her arms--"Johnson haven't got a name for me!"
+
+At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into sobs. Lucy spoke
+gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of Autumn
+have no warning for April. The little bride, for all her tender pity,
+felt happier when she had heard her landlady's moving tale of the
+wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one
+hero who was hers. Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she
+fell, shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! I'm so young! Think of me--only just seventeen!"
+
+Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. "Young, my dear!
+Nonsense! There's no so much harm in being young, here and there. I knew
+an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married close over
+fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man began,
+she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore. They'd stare!
+Bless you! the grandmother could have married over and over again. It
+was her daughter's fault, not hers, you know."
+
+"She was three years younger," mused Lucy.
+
+"She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her father's bailiff's
+son. 'Ah, Berry!' she'd say, 'if I hadn't been foolish, I should be
+my lady now--not Granny!' Her father never forgave her--left all his
+estates out of the family."
+
+"Did her husband always love her?" Lucy preferred to know.
+
+"In his way, my dear, he did," said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
+matrimonial wisdom. "He couldn't help himself. If he left off, he began
+again. She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable. Cook! there
+wasn't such another cook out of a Alderman's kitchen; no, indeed! And
+she a born lady! That tells ye it's the duty of all women! She had her
+saying 'When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen fire!'
+and a good saying it is to treasure. Such is man! no use in havin' their
+hearts if ye don't have their stomachs."
+
+Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You know
+nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don't neglect
+your cookery. Kissing don't last: cookery do!"
+
+Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim'S Scrip, she broke
+off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well; very
+eager to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come.
+Mrs. Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little bride,
+positively commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be
+nursed and cherished. For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten minutes alone
+with the hero could only be had while the little bride was in that
+unattainable position.
+
+Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained. The night
+did not pass before she learnt, from the hero's own mouth, that Mr.
+Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his
+union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress
+to an immense property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and because
+his darling Letitia was a Catholic--Letitia, the sole daughter of a
+brave naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a savage uncle, who
+wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son. Mrs. Berry listened
+credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect that the
+wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of young
+ones. The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion
+over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three,
+and entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no
+conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his
+rank merely titular. He had never been married--he knew nothing about
+licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult--he
+had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given to the
+clergyman of the parish where one of the parties was resident. How
+should he? All his forethought was comprised in the ring, and whenever
+the discussion of arrangements for the great event grew particularly hot
+and important, he would say, with a shrewd nod: "We mustn't forget the
+ring, you know, Mrs. Berry!" and the new member was only prevented by
+natural complacence from shouting: "Oh, drat ye! and your ring too."
+Mrs. Berry had acted conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns, and
+by licence, and to have such an obvious requisite dinned in her ears was
+exasperating. They could not have contracted alliance with an auxiliary
+more invaluable, an authority so profound; and they acknowledged it
+to themselves. The hero marched like an automaton at her bidding;
+Lieutenant Thompson was rejoiced to perform services as errand-boy in
+the enterprise.
+
+"It's in hopes you'll be happier than me, I do it," said the devout and
+charitable Berry. "Marriages is made in heaven, they say; and if that's
+the case, I say they don't take much account of us below!"
+
+Her own woeful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for
+his story of cruel parents.
+
+Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt out
+the wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and suppliant.
+
+"Oh, he'll come!" said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic wrinkles: "he'll
+come of his own accord. Never anywhere will he meet such a cook as Bessy
+Berry! And he know her value in his heart of hearts. And I do believe,
+when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to him again, and not
+slapping his impidence in the face--I'm that soft! I always was--in
+matrimony, Mr. Richards!"
+
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and arsenals
+hammer night and day, and busy contractors measure time by inches, and
+the air hums around: for leagues as it were myriads of bees, so the
+house and neighbourhood of the matrimonial soft one resounded in
+the heroic style, and knew little of the changes of light decreed by
+Creation. Mrs. Berry was the general of the hour. Down to Doctors'
+Commons she expedited the hero, instructing him how boldly to face the
+Law, and fib: for that the Law never could mist a fib and a bold face.
+Down the hero went, and proclaimed his presence. And lo! the Law
+danced to him its sedatest lovely bear's-dance. Think ye the Lawless
+susceptible to him than flesh and blood? With a beautiful confidence it
+put the few familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then
+stamped the bond, and took the fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart
+that can permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only
+mark him when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he
+does so easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of
+a needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping
+more readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels alike,
+the lean purse an especially big camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage
+as it does, the Law can have no conscience.
+
+"I hadn't the slightest difficulty," said the exulting hero.
+
+"Of course not!" returns Mrs. Berry. "It's as easy, if ye're in earnest,
+as buying a plum bun."
+
+Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
+Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and
+there hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its
+forces: which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously
+engaged to do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.
+
+Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry,
+were toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,--the
+former soundly; and one day was as another to them. Regularly every
+morning a letter arrived from Richard to his father, containing
+observations on the phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on
+the speeches and acts of Parliament; and reasons for not having yet been
+able to call on the Grandisons. They were certainly rather monotonous
+and spiritless. The baronet did not complain. That cold dutiful tone
+assured him there was no internal trouble or distraction. "The letters
+of a healthful physique!" he said to Lady Blandish, with sure insight.
+Complacently he sat and smiled, little witting that his son's ordeal
+was imminent, and that his son's ordeal was to be his own. Hippias wrote
+that his nephew was killing him by making appointments which he never
+kept, and altogether neglecting him in the most shameless way, so that
+his ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse state than when he left
+Raynham. He wrote very bitterly, but it was hard to feel compassion for
+his offended stomach.
+
+On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
+despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening
+after evening, vastly disturbed. London was a large place--young Tom
+might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses. A
+wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels
+have proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost sent
+Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his
+pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into
+a scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of,
+unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had
+behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while
+he had the chance. It was a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable
+way of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the
+farmer held to it that he had done the deed. He argued as modern men do
+who think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from
+us. So, after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the
+outlook for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather
+elated than not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when
+Master Honeymoon did appear.
+
+Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's absence, Tom Bakewell
+came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the
+Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum.
+The Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in
+return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the
+heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace. Tom went back, and Raynham
+and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow. The System, wedded to
+Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged--anticipated by seven
+pregnant seasons. For Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing
+instrument, and had also registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew
+Time! he is unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world comes
+of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once
+done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive it.
+The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business
+of men to discover.
+
+The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs. Berry has a new satin
+gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves, presented to
+her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the altar to-morrow;
+and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much a chicken as any
+of the party, such has been the magic of these articles. Fathers she
+sees accepting the facts produced for them by their children; a world
+content to be carved out as it pleases the hero.
+
+At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor. The
+final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry
+lights the little bride to her bed. Lucy stops on the landing where
+there is an old clock eccentrically correct that night. 'Tis the
+palpitating pause before the gates of her transfiguration. Mrs. Berry
+sees her put her rosy finger on the One about to strike, and touch all
+the hours successively till she comes to the Twelve that shall sound
+"Wife" in her ears on the morrow, moving her lips the while, and looking
+round archly solemn when she has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs.
+Berry's heart that, not guessing Time to be the poor child's enemy, she
+endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in her arms, whimpering;
+"Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb! You shall be happy! You
+shall!"
+
+Old Time gazes grimly ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of
+that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his
+fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls
+with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they
+stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken. The
+shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness. There
+they have dreamed: here they must act. There lie youth and irresolution:
+here manhood and purpose. They are veritably in another land: a moral
+Acheron divides their life. Their memories scarce seem their own! The
+Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes that each man
+has, one time or other, a little Rubicon--a clear or a foul water to
+cross. It is asked him: "Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind
+thee?" And "I will," firmly pronounced, speeds him over. The above-named
+manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater number of
+caresses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are
+those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim
+back to the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may
+be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march
+even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the
+features of the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail before her, either
+in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither
+and sicken to what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon big or small,
+clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return. On--or to
+Acheron!--I subscribe to that saying of The Pilgrim's Scrip:
+
+"The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware
+the little knowledge of one's self!"
+
+Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already the
+mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in
+two, and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His father, his
+father's love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy. His poetic dreams
+had taken a living attainable shape. He had a distincter impression of
+the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at Raynham. And
+yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar
+loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic
+was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to
+feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless,
+nothing at all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer
+than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from
+the bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him
+as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning and
+securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and in
+that case, were not the means justified? Not that he took trouble to
+argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are in the
+habit of doing; to deduce a clear conscience. Conscience and Lucy went
+together.
+
+It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One of
+those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops forth
+all its babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early alive
+with the cries of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and organ
+boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined in
+tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing
+procession of omnibuses, freighted with business men, Cityward, where
+a column of reddish brown smoke,--blown aloft by the South-west, marked
+the scene of conflict to which these persistent warriors repaired.
+Richard had seen much of early London that morning. His plans were laid.
+He had taken care to ensure his personal liberty against accidents, by
+leaving his hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at sunrise. To-day or
+to-morrow his father was to arrive. Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell reported
+to him, was raging in town. Another day and she might be torn from him:
+but to-day this miracle of creation would be his, and then from those
+glittering banks yonder, let them summon him to surrender her who dared!
+The position of things looked so propitious that he naturally thought
+the powers waiting on love conspired in his behalf. And she, too--since
+she must cross this river, she had sworn to him to be brave, and do him
+honour, and wear the true gladness of her heart in her face. Without
+a suspicion of folly in his acts, or fear of results, Richard strolled
+into Kensington Gardens, breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great
+joy, now with a vision of his bride, now of the new life opening to him.
+Mountain masses of clouds, rounded in sunlight, swung up the blue. The
+flowering chestnut pavilions overhead rustled and hummed. A sound in his
+ears as of a banner unfolding in the joyful distance lulled him.
+
+He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven. His
+watch said a quarter to ten. He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed
+trees toward the well dedicated to a saint obscure. Some people were
+drinking at the well. A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had a
+little silver mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised dislike
+to the liquor of the salutary saint.
+
+"Drink, child!" said the maturer lady. "That is only your second mug. I
+insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning we're in town.
+Your constitution positively requires iron!"
+
+"But, mama," the other expostulated, "it's so nasty. I shall be sick."
+
+"Drink!" was the harsh injunction. "Nothing to the German waters, my
+dear. Here, let me taste." She took the mug and gave it a flying kiss.
+"I declare I think it almost nice--not at all objectionable. Pray, taste
+it," she said to a gentleman standing below them to act as cup-bearer.
+
+An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: "Certainly, if it's good
+fellowship; though I confess I don't think mutual sickness a very
+engaging ceremony."
+
+Can one never escape from one's relatives? Richard ejaculated inwardly.
+
+Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian. He had
+them under his eyes.
+
+Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man was
+near to see the possible consequence of it, was the first to perceive
+him. Her hand dropped.
+
+"Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!" said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Mama!" Clare gasped.
+
+Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was
+out of the question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: "My own boy! My dear
+Richard!" profuse of exclamations. Clare shyly greeted him. Adrian kept
+in the background.
+
+"Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard," said Mrs. Doria, smiling
+effusion; and rattled on, "We want another cavalier. This is delightful!
+My dear nephew! You have grown from a boy to a man. And there's down
+on his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in the morning?
+Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child.--Clare! finish that mug and
+thank your cousin for sparing you the third. I always bring her, when we
+are by a chalybeate, to take the waters before breakfast. We have to get
+up at unearthly hours. Think, my dear boy! Mothers are sacrifices! And
+so you've been alone a fortnight with your agreeable uncle! A charming
+time of it you must have had! Poor Hippias! what may be his last
+nostrum?"
+
+"Nephew!" Adrian stretched his head round to the couple. "Doses of
+nephew taken morning and night fourteen days! And he guarantees that it
+shall destroy an iron constitution in a month."
+
+Richard mechanically shook Adrian's hand as he spoke.
+
+"Quite well, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes: well enough," Richard answered.
+
+"Well?" resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare and
+Adrian followed. "I really never saw you looking so handsome. There's
+something about your face--look at me--you needn't blush. You've
+grown to an Apollo. That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes you
+admirably--and those gloves, and that easy neck-tie. Your style is
+irreproachable, quite a style of your own! And nothing eccentric. You
+have the instinct of dress. Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as much as
+anything else. Boy!--you see, I can't forget old habits. You were a boy
+when I left, and now!--Do you see any change in him, Clare?" she turned
+half round to her daughter.
+
+"Richard is looking very well, mama," said Clare, glancing at him under
+her eyelids.
+
+"I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.--Take my arm, Richard.
+Are you afraid of your aunt? I want to get used to you. Won't it be
+pleasant, our being all in town together in the season? How fresh the
+Opera will be to you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come to the
+Forey's box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys close by
+here. I think it's a little too far out, you know; but they like the
+neighbourhood. This is what I have always said: Give him more liberty!
+Austin has seen it at last. How do you think Clare looking?"
+
+The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his cousin hastily,
+and praised her looks.
+
+"Pale!" Mrs. Doria sighed.
+
+"Rather pale, aunt."
+
+"Grown very much--don't you think, Richard?"
+
+"Very tall girl indeed, aunt."
+
+"If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard! I'm sure I give
+her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues.
+I think she does not prosper away from her old companion. She was
+accustomed to look up to you, Richard"--
+
+"Did you get Ralph's letter, aunt?" Richard interrupted her.
+
+"Absurd!" Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. "The nonsense of a boy! Why did
+you undertake to forward such stuff?"
+
+"I'm certain he loves her," said Richard, in a serious way.
+
+The maternal eyes narrowed on him. "Life, my dear Richard, is a game
+of cross-purposes," she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather
+angered to hear him laugh. He excused himself by saying that she spoke
+so like his father.
+
+"You breakfast with us," she freshened off again. "The Foreys wish
+to see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have
+a reputation on account of that"--she crushed an intruding
+adjective--"System you were brought up on. You mustn't mind it. For
+my part, I think you look a credit to it. Don't be bashful with young
+women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know how to
+behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! I'm sure I
+shall be proud of you. Am I not?"
+
+Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.
+
+A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to
+spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along,
+he pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes he could
+dedicate to this charitable office.
+
+"Pardon me," said Mrs. Doria. "You want manners, my dear boy. I think
+it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my
+presence."
+
+Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour,
+up to which he was her servant.
+
+"Fiddlededee!" the vivacious lady sang. "Now I've got you, I mean to
+keep you. Oh! I've heard all about you. This ridiculous indifference
+that your father makes so much of! Why, of course, you wanted to see
+the world! A strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely
+house--no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics! Of
+course you were indifferent! Your intelligence and superior mind alone
+saved you from becoming a dissipated country boor.--Where are the
+others?"
+
+Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.
+
+"My damozel dropped something," Adrian explained.
+
+Her mother asked what it was.
+
+"Nothing, mama," said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.
+
+Overborne by his aunt's fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute
+calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he edged
+in a word for Ralph. When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.
+
+"I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank idiotcy."
+
+"It's nothing of the kind, aunt."
+
+"The fancy of a boy."
+
+"He's not a boy. He's half-a-year older than I am!"
+
+"You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all think yourselves
+men."
+
+"On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly."
+
+"Did he tell you so, child?"
+
+"Men don't speak openly of those things," said Richard.
+
+"Boys do," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind to Ralph.
+Don't drive him to--You maybe sorry for it. Let him--do let him write to
+her, and see her. I believe women are as cruel as men in these things."
+
+"I never encourage absurdity, Richard."
+
+"What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?"
+
+"Oh, they're both good families. It's not that absurdity, Richard.
+It will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn't a
+dairymaid." Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly. It did not touch
+her nephew.
+
+"Don't you want Clare ever to marry?" He put the last point of reason to
+her.
+
+Mrs. Doria laughed. "I hope so, child. We must find some comfortable old
+gentleman for her."
+
+"What infamy!" mutters Richard.
+
+"And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a
+hearty breakfast--We don't dance at weddings now, and very properly.
+It's a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.--Is that
+his regiment?" she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled
+gardens. "Tush, tush, child! Master Ralph will recover, as--hem! others
+have done. A little headache--you call it heartache--and up you rise
+again, looking better than ever. No doubt, to have a grain of sense
+forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be painful.. Girls
+suffer as much as boys, I assure you. More, for their heads are weaker,
+and their appetites less constant. Do I talk like your father now?
+Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?"
+
+Richard stopped short. Time spoke urgently.
+
+"I must go," he said.
+
+His face did not seem good for trifling. Mrs. Doria would trifle in
+spite.
+
+"Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an engagement. What
+possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o'clock in the
+morning?--unless it's to be married!" Mrs. Doria laughed at the
+ingenuity of her suggestion.
+
+"Is the church handy, Ricky?" said Adrian. "You can still give us
+half-an-hour if it is. The celibate hours strike at Twelve." And he also
+laughed in his fashion.
+
+"Won't you stay with us, Richard?" Clare asked. She blushed timidly, and
+her voice shook.
+
+Something indefinite--a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the burning
+bridegroom speak gently to her.
+
+"Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a most
+imperative appointment--that is, I promised--I must go. I shall see you
+again"--
+
+Mrs. Doria, took forcible possession of him. "Now, do come, and don't
+waste words. I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and then,
+if you really must go, you shall. Look! there's the house. At least you
+will accompany your aunt to the door."
+
+Richard conceded this. She little imagined what she required of him. Two
+of his golden minutes melted into nothingness. They were growing to be
+jewels of price, one by one more and more precious as they ran, and now
+so costly-rare--rich as his blood! not to kindest relations, dearest
+friends, could he give another. The die is cast! Ferryman! push off.
+
+"Good-bye!" he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and fled.
+
+They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the
+house. He looked like resolution on the march. Mrs. Doria, as usual with
+her out of her brother's hearing, began rating the System.
+
+"See what becomes of that nonsensical education! The boy really does not
+know how to behave like a common mortal. He has some paltry appointment,
+or is mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and everything must
+be sacrificed to it! That's what Austin calls concentration of the
+faculties. I think it's more likely to lead to downright insanity than
+to greatness of any kind. And so I shall tell Austin. It's time he
+should be spoken to seriously about him."
+
+"He's an engine, my dear aunt," said Adrian. "He isn't a boy, or a man,
+but an engine. And he appears to have been at high pressure since he
+came to town--out all day and half the night."
+
+"He's mad!" Mrs. Doria interjected.
+
+"Not at all. Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and carries as open an
+eye ahead of him as the ships before Troy. He's more than a match for
+any of us. He is for me, I confess."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Doria, "he does astonish me!"
+
+Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right season,
+which would not be long arriving.
+
+Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the Foreys of their
+hopeful relative's ungracious behaviour. Clare had left them. When Mrs.
+Doria went to her room her daughter was there, gazing down at something
+in her hand, which she guiltily closed.
+
+In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off her things,
+Clare said she was not hungry. Mrs. Doria lamented the obstinacy of a
+constitution that no quantity of iron could affect, and eclipsed the
+looking-glass, saying: "Take them off here, child, and learn to assist
+yourself."
+
+She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading hair,
+talking of Richard, and his handsome appearance, and extraordinary
+conduct. Clare kept opening and shutting her hand, in an attitude
+half-pensive, half-listless. She did not stir to undress. A joyless
+dimple hung in one pale cheek, and she drew long even breaths.
+
+Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to show, came to her
+daughter.
+
+"Now, really," she said, "you are too helpless, my dear. You cannot do a
+thing without a dozen women at your elbow. What will become of you? You
+will have to marry a millionaire.--What's the matter with you, child?"
+
+Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction of her
+eyes, and displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of a green glove.
+
+"A wedding-ring!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the curiosity most
+daintily.
+
+There on Clare's pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!
+
+Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found, beset Clare, who
+replied: "In the Gardens, mama. This morning. When I was walking behind
+Richard."
+
+"Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?"
+
+"Oh no, mama! he did not give it me."
+
+"Of course not! only he does such absurd things! I thought,
+perhaps--these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous! Mrs. Doria had an
+idea that it might have been concerted between the two young gentlemen,
+Richard and Ralph, that the former should present this token of hymeneal
+devotion from the latter to the young lady of his love; but a moment's
+reflection exonerated boys even from such preposterous behaviour.
+
+"Now, I wonder," she speculated on Clare's cold face, "I do wonder
+whether it's lucky to find a wedding-ring. What very quick eyes you
+have, my darling!" Mrs. Doria kissed her. She thought it must be lucky,
+and the circumstance made her feel tender to her child. Her child did
+not move to the kiss.
+
+"Let's see whether it fits," said Mrs. Doria, almost infantine with
+surprise and pleasure.
+
+Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off. The ring slid down her long
+thin finger, and settled comfortably.
+
+"It does!" Mrs. Doria whispered. To find a wedding ring is open to
+any woman; but to find a wedding-ring that fits may well cause a
+superstitious emotion. Moreover, that it should be found while walking
+in the neighbourhood of the identical youth whom a mother has destined
+for her daughter, gives significance to the gentle perturbation of ideas
+consequent on such a hint from Fortune.
+
+"It really fits!" she pursued. "Now I never pay any attention to the
+nonsense of omens and that kind of thing" (had the ring been a horseshoe
+Mrs. Doria would have pinked it up and dragged it obediently home), "but
+this, I must say, is odd--to find a ring that fits!--singular! It never
+happened to me. Sixpence is the most I ever discovered, and I have it
+now. Mind you keep it, Clare--this ring: And," she laughed, "offer it to
+Richard when he comes; say, you think he must have dropped it."
+
+The dimple in Clare's cheek quivered.
+
+Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard. Mrs. Doria,
+by exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one side there
+would be no obstacle to her project of general happiness, without, as
+she thought, compromising her daughter's feelings unnecessarily. It
+could do no harm to an obedient young girl to hear that there was
+no youth in the world like a certain youth. He the prince of his
+generation, she might softly consent, when requested, to be his
+princess; and if never requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged failure), she
+might easily transfer her softness to squires of lower degree. Clare
+had always been blindly obedient to her mother (Adrian called them Mrs.
+Doria Battledoria and the fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother
+accepted in this blind obedience the text of her entire character. It is
+difficult for those who think very earnestly for their children to know
+when their children are thinking on their own account. The exercise
+of their volition we construe as revolt. Our love does not like to be
+invalided and deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old
+thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank offspring
+out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the kinder of the
+two, though sentimental people do shrug their shoulders at these
+unsentimental acts of the creatures who never wander from nature. Now,
+excess of obedience is, to one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as
+insurrection. Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter's manner
+save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous nerves in
+her face, exhibited an imperious requirement of the mineral.
+
+"The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
+disappointing," we learn from The Pilgrim's Scrip, "is, that we will
+read them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading
+ourselves from theirs."
+
+Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she
+laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined
+in his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal
+auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and
+must, whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to
+him (for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine, as no woman would
+drop a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the world
+over. Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark
+man, or fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's
+fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang. Her aunt
+Forey warned her to have her dresses in readiness. Her grandpapa Forey
+pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected from grandpapas.
+
+This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe.
+The finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the palpitating
+accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous instrument. In
+the midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable want of
+iron by bursting into tears.
+
+Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then enacting?
+Perhaps, dimly, as we say: that is, without eyes.
+
+At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths. They
+are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so. If there is
+hesitation at the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly. She conceives
+as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over them hangs
+a cool young curate in his raiment of office. Behind are two apparently
+lucid people, distinguished from each other by sex and age: the foremost
+a bunch of simmering black satin; under her shadow a cock-robin in
+the dress of a gentleman, big joy swelling out his chest, and pert
+satisfaction cocking his head. These be they who stand here in place of
+parents to the young couple. All is well. The service proceeds.
+
+Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour of the complacent
+giant at least is his, and that he means to hold him bound through the
+eternities, men may hear. Clearly, and with brave modesty, speaks she:
+no less firmly, though her body trembles: her voice just vibrating while
+the tone travels on, like a smitten vase.
+
+Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands bind his huge
+limbs and lock the chains. He is used to it: he lets them do as they
+will.
+
+Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each other.
+The Man with his right hand takes the Woman by her right hand: the Woman
+with her right hand takes the Man by his right hand.--Devils dare not
+laugh at whom Angels crowd to contemplate.
+
+Their hands are joined; their blood flows as one stream. Adam and fair
+Eve front the generations. Are they not lovely? Purer fountains of life
+were never in two bosoms.
+
+And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the Man
+to put a ring on the Woman's fourth finger, counting thumb. And the Man
+thrusts his hand into one pocket, and into another, forward and back
+many times into all his pockets. He remembers that he felt for it, and
+felt it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the Gardens. And his hand comes
+forth empty. And the Man is ghastly to look at!
+
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh! The curate
+deliberates. The black satin bunch ceases to simmer. He in her shadow
+changes from a beaming cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow. Eyes
+multiply questions: lips have no reply. Time ominously shakes his chain,
+and in the pause a sound of mockery stings their ears.
+
+Think ye a hero is one to be defeated in his first battle? Look at the
+clock! there are but seven minutes to the stroke of the celibate hours:
+the veteran is surely lifting his two hands to deliver fire, and his
+shot will sunder them in twain so nearly united. All the jewellers of
+London speeding down with sacks full of the nuptial circlet cannot save
+them!
+
+The battle must be won on the field, and what does the hero now? It is
+an inspiration! For who else would dream of such a reserve in the
+rear? None see what he does; only that the black-satin bunch is
+remonstratingly agitated, stormily shaken, and subdued: and as though
+the menacing cloud had opened, and dropped the dear token from the skies
+at his demand, he produces the symbol of their consent, and the service
+proceeds: "With this ring I thee wed."
+
+They are prayed over and blest. For good, or for ill, this deed is
+done. The names are registered; fees fly right and left: they thank,
+and salute, the curate, whose official coolness melts into a smile of
+monastic gallantry: the beadle on the steps waves off a gaping world
+as they issue forth bridegroom and bridesman recklessly scatter gold on
+him: carriage doors are banged to: the coachmen drive off, and the scene
+closes, everybody happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would dissolve to one
+of Dian's Virgin Fountains from the clasp of the Sun-God. She has nobly
+preserved the mask imposed by comedies, till the curtain has fallen, and
+now she weeps, streams with tears. Have patience, O impetuous young man!
+It is your profession to be a hero. This poor heart is new to it, and
+her duties involve such wild acts, such brigandage, such terrors and
+tasks, she is quite unnerved. She did you honour till now. Bear with her
+now. She does not cry the cry of ordinary maidens in like cases. While
+the struggle went on her tender face was brave; but, alas! Omens are
+against her: she holds an ever-present dreadful one on that fatal fourth
+finger of hers, which has coiled itself round her dream of delight, and
+takes her in its clutch like a horrid serpent. And yet she must love it.
+She dares not part from it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its
+strange honey, and all the bliss it gives her casts all the deeper
+shadow on what is to come.
+
+Say: Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension, for a woman to be
+married in another woman's ring?
+
+You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand citadels--wherever
+there is strife, and Time is to be taken by the throat. Then shall few
+men match your sublime fury. But what if you see a vulture, visible only
+to yourselves, hovering over the house you are gaily led by the torch to
+inhabit? Will you not crouch and be cowards?
+
+As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to omens. He
+does his best to win his darling to confidence by caresses. Is she not
+his? Is he not hers? And why, when the battle is won, does she weep?
+Does she regret what she has done?
+
+Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast love seen
+swimming on clear depths of faith in them, through the shower.
+
+He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed waiting for
+the shower to pass.
+
+Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue to her distress,
+and a second character in the comedy changed her face.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what has happened!"
+
+"My darlin' child!" The bridal Berry gazed at the finger of doleful joy.
+"I'd forgot all about it! And that's what've made me feel so queer ever
+since, then! I've been seemin' as if I wasn't myself somehow, without
+my ring. Dear! dear! what a wilful young gentleman! We ain't a match for
+men in that state--Lord help us!"
+
+Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge of the bed.
+
+"What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry? Is it not terrible?"
+
+"I can't say I should 'a liked it myself, my dear," Mrs. Berry candidly
+responded.
+
+"Oh! why, why, why did it happen!" the young bride bent to a flood of
+fresh tears, murmuring that she felt already old--forsaken.
+
+"Haven't you got a comfort in your religion for all accidents?" Mrs.
+Berry inquired.
+
+"None for this. I know it's wrong to cry when I am so happy. I hope he
+will forgive me."
+
+Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest, beautifulest thing
+in life.
+
+"I'll cry no more," said Lucy. "Leave me, Mrs. Berry, and come back when
+I ring."
+
+She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees to the
+bed. Mrs. Berry left the room tiptoe.
+
+When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless, and smiled
+kindly to her.
+
+"It's over now," she said.
+
+Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.
+
+"He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have prepared, Mrs.
+Berry. I begged to be excused. I cannot eat."
+
+Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a superior nuptial
+breakfast, but with her mind on her ring she nodded assentingly.
+
+"We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"No, my dear. It's pretty well all done."
+
+"We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"And a very suitable spot ye've chose, my dear!"
+
+"He loves the sea. He wishes to be near it."
+
+"Don't ye cross to-night, if it's anyways rough, my dear. It isn't
+advisable." Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say, "Don't ye be soft and give
+way to him there, or you'll both be repenting it."
+
+Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had to speak. She
+saw Mrs. Berry's eyes pursuing her ring, and screwed up her courage at
+last.
+
+"Mrs. Berry."
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring."
+
+"Another, my dear?" Berry did not comprehend. "One's quite enough for
+the objeck," she remarked.
+
+"I mean," Lucy touched her fourth finger, "I cannot part with this." She
+looked straight at Mrs. Berry.
+
+That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring, till she had
+thoroughly exhausted the meaning of the words, and then exclaimed,
+horror-struck: "Deary me, now! you don't say that? You're to be married
+again in your own religion."
+
+The young wife repeated: "I can never part with it."
+
+"But, my dear!" the wretched Berry wrung her hands, divided between
+compassion and a sense of injury. "My dear!" she kept expostulating like
+a mute.
+
+"I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry. I am very grieved to pain
+you. It is mine now, and must be mine. I cannot give it back."
+
+There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible little heroine
+in the three Kingdoms.
+
+From her first perception of the meaning of the young bride's words,
+Mrs. Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew that her case was hopeless,
+unless she treated her as she herself had been treated, and seized the
+ring by force of arms; and that she had not heart for.
+
+"What!" she gasped faintly, "one's own lawful wedding-ring you wouldn't
+give back to a body?"
+
+"Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry. It was yours, but it is mine now. You
+shall have whatever you ask for but that. Pray, forgive me! It must be
+so."
+
+Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands together. It
+amazed her that this soft little creature could be thus firm. She tried
+argument.
+
+"Don't ye know, my dear, it's the fatalest thing you're inflictin'
+upon me, reelly! Don't ye know that bein' bereft of one's own lawful
+wedding-ring's the fatalest thing in life, and there's no prosperity
+after it! For what stands in place o' that, when that's gone, my dear?
+And what could ye give me to compensate a body for the loss o' that?
+Don't ye know--Oh, deary me!" The little bride's face was so set that
+poor Berry wailed off in despair.
+
+"I know it," said Lucy. "I know it all. I know what I do to you. Dear,
+dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me! If I parted with my ring I know it would be
+fatal."
+
+So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument as well as
+her ring.
+
+Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.
+
+"But, my child," she counter-argued, "you don't understand. It ain't as
+you think. It ain't a hurt to you now. Not a bit, it ain't. It makes no
+difference now! Any ring does while the wearer's a maid. And your Mr.
+Richard will find the very ring he intended for ye. And, of course,
+that's the one you'll wear as his wife. It's all the same now, my dear.
+It's no shame to a maid. Now do--now do--there's a darlin'!"
+
+Wheedling availed as little as argument.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, "you know what my--he spoke: 'With this ring I
+thee wed.' It was with this ring. Then how could it be with another?"
+
+Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that was logic.
+
+She hit upon an artful conjecture:
+
+"Won't it be unlucky your wearin' of the ring which served me so? Think
+o' that!"
+
+"It may! it may! it may!" cried Lucy.
+
+"And arn't you rushin' into it, my dear?"
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy said again, "it was this ring. It cannot--it never
+can be another. It was this. What it brings me I must bear. I shall wear
+it till I die!"
+
+"Then what am I to do?" the ill-used woman groaned. "What shall I tell
+my husband when he come back to me, and see I've got a new ring waitin'
+for him? Won't that be a welcome?"
+
+Quoth Lucy: "How can he know it is not the same; in a plain gold ring?"
+
+"You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my Berry!" returned his
+solitary spouse. "Not know, my dear? Why, any one would know that've got
+eyes in his head. There's as much difference in wedding-rings as there's
+in wedding people! Now, do pray be reasonable, my own sweet!"
+
+"Pray, do not ask me," pleads Lucy.
+
+"Pray, do think better of it," urges Berry.
+
+"Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!" pleads Lucy.
+
+"--And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when you're so happy!"
+
+"Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!" Lucy faltered.
+
+Mrs. Berry thought she had her.
+
+"Just when you're going to be the happiest wife on earth--all you want
+yours!" she pursued the tender strain. "A handsome young gentleman! Love
+and Fortune smilin' on ye!"--
+
+Lucy rose up.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," she said, "I think we must not lose time in getting ready,
+or he will be impatient."
+
+Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge of her chair.
+Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto folded
+under her wing. In an hour the heroine had risen to the measure of the
+hero. Without being exactly aware what creature she was dealing with,
+Berry acknowledged to herself it was not one of the common run, and
+sighed, and submitted.
+
+"It's like a divorce, that it is!" she sobbed.
+
+After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry bustled humbly
+about the packing. Then Lucy, whose heart was full to her, came and
+kissed her, and Berry bumped down and regularly cried. This over, she
+had recourse to fatalism.
+
+"I suppose it was to be, my dear! It's my punishment for meddlin' wi'
+such matters. No, I'm not sorry. Bless ye both. Who'd 'a thought you
+was so wilful?--you that any one might have taken for one of the
+silly-softs! You're a pair, my dear! indeed you are! You was made to
+meet! But we mustn't show him we've been crying.--Men don't like it when
+they're happy. Let's wash our faces and try to bear our lot."
+
+So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge. She
+deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another
+person's ring, how much sadder to have one's own old accustomed lawful
+ring violently torn off one's finger and eternally severed from one! But
+where you have heroes and heroines, these terrible complications ensue.
+
+They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal honour
+and success.
+
+In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last directions.
+Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared a sumptuous
+breakfast. Chickens offered their breasts: pies hinted savoury secrets:
+things mystic, in a mash, with Gallic appellatives, jellies, creams,
+fruits, strewed the table: as a tower in the midst, the cake colossal:
+the priestly vesture of its nuptial white relieved by hymeneal
+splendours.
+
+Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended
+upon this breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts
+that have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are
+careful to provide against: who will speak, and whose hateful voice must
+somehow be silenced while the feast is going on. This personage is
+The Philosopher. Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he would come. She
+provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious: that
+is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due
+and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers
+collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family
+lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her
+return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have
+stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work. The Philosopher
+would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names.
+Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry
+defied him. In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a
+whisper. And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think
+of protesting; fiery wines, and cool: claret sent purposely by the
+bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.
+
+For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb.
+Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the
+world as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with
+delight. He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly
+flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to
+do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would not allow him to shout
+Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil
+poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom,
+the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed
+emotion. At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously
+into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded
+instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short
+behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: "On my soul, I
+don't think you know a word I'm saying."
+
+"Every word, Ricky!" Ripton spirted through the opening. "I'm going down
+to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin! Here's your only chance of
+being a happy father--no, no!--Oh! don't you fear me, Ricky! I shall
+talk the old gentleman over."
+
+His chief said:
+
+"Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first
+thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train. Give him my letter. Listen
+to me--give him my letter, and don't speak a word till he speaks. His
+eyebrows will go up and down, he won't say much. I know him. If he
+asks you about her, don't be a fool, but say what you think of her
+sensibly"--
+
+No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to. He shouted: "She's
+an angel!"
+
+Richard checked him: "Speak sensibly, I say--quietly. You can say how
+gentle and good she is--my fleur-de-luce! And say, this was not her
+doing. If any one's to blame, it's I. I made her marry me. Then go to
+Lady Blandish, if you don't find her at the house. You may say whatever
+you please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want to hear from
+her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know what she thinks of her.
+You will then go to Farmer Blaize. I told you Lucy happens to be his
+niece--she has not lived long there. She lived with her aunt Desborough
+in France while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to
+the farmer--there's not a point of likeness between them. Poor darling!
+she never knew her mother. Go to Mr. Blaize, and tell him. You will
+treat him just as you would treat any other gentleman. If you are civil,
+he is sure to be. And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will
+still treat him with respect. You hear? And then write me a full account
+of all that has been said and done. You will have my address the day
+after to-morrow. By the way, Tom will be here this afternoon. Write out
+for him where to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case you have
+heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know at once, as Tom
+will join me that night. Don't mention to anybody about my losing the
+ring, Ripton. I wouldn't have Adrian get hold of that for a thousand
+pounds. How on earth I came to lose it! How well she bore it, Rip! How
+beautifully she behaved!"
+
+Ripton again shouted: "An angel!" Throwing up the heels of his second
+bottle, he said:
+
+"You may trust your friend, Richard. Aha! when you pulled at old Mrs.
+Berry I didn't know what was up. I do wish you'd let me drink her
+health?"
+
+"Here's to Penelope!" said Richard, just wetting his mouth. The carriage
+was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the same tune,
+and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the secretest
+veiled wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in the production
+of discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state made him begin to
+fume and send in messages for his bride by the maid.
+
+By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her
+journey, and smiling from stained eyes.
+
+Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out for
+her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
+
+The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom,
+on the plea of her softness. Lucy gave Ripton her hand, with a musical
+"Good-bye, Mr. Thompson," and her extreme graciousness made him just
+sensible enough to sit down before he murmured his fervent hopes for her
+happiness.
+
+"I shall take good care of him," said Mrs. Berry, focussing her eyes to
+the comprehension of the company.
+
+"Farewell, Penelope!" cried Richard. "I shall tell the police everywhere
+to look out for your lord."
+
+"Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!"
+
+Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching
+loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up
+the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an old
+shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry's enthusiastic female domestic.
+
+White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they
+were off. Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that
+she telegraphed, hand in air; awakening Ripton's lungs, for the coachman
+to stop, and ran back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone, but at
+his bride's intercession he consented to wait. Presently they beheld the
+old black-satin bunch stream through the street-door, down the bit of
+garden, and up the astonished street; halting, panting, capless at the
+carriage door, a book in her hand,--a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy,
+greasy book, which; at the same time calling out in breathless jerks,
+"There! never ye mind looks! I ain't got a new one. Read it, and don't
+ye forget it!" she discharged into Lucy's lap, and retreated to the
+railings, a signal for the coachman to drive away for good.
+
+How Richard laughed at the Berry's bridal gift! Lucy, too, lost the
+omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume. It was Dr.
+Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs
+and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry's abode,
+proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh
+regions. With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton's arm to regulate his
+steps, and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In the
+interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which
+altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty woman. She smoothed
+her excited apron, sighing. Let no one imagine that she regretted her
+complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute
+castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret;
+and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more--such is the
+born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of
+the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said he. O you very wise
+old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She
+enlightened him with the fatalist's reply. He sounded a bogey's alarm
+of contingent grave results. She retreated to the entrenched camp of the
+fact she had helped to make.
+
+"It's done!" she exclaimed. How could she regret what she felt comfort
+to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such
+stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on
+the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton's incision there, showing
+a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
+
+The eloquent indication was understood. "Dear! dear!" cried Mrs. Berry,
+"what a heap o' cake, and no one to send it to!"
+
+Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret.
+Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling
+geysir of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and waggled, and
+nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without
+effort, preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph,
+Gravitation, who was on the look-out for his whole length shortly.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken, and
+almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry's words
+had just reached his wits.
+
+"Why do you laugh, young man?" she inquired, familiar and motherly on
+account of his condition.
+
+Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and
+his nose on a chicken. "That's goo'!" he said, recovering, and rocking
+under Mrs. Berry's eyes. "No friend!"
+
+"I did not say, no friend," she remarked. "I said, no one; meanin', I
+know not where for to send it to."
+
+Ripton's response to this was: "You put a Griffin on that cake.
+Wheatsheaves each side."
+
+"His crest?" Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
+
+"Oldest baronetcy 'n England!" waved Ripton.
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
+
+"You think he's Richards. We're oblige' be very close. And she's the
+most lovely!--If I hear man say thing 'gainst her."
+
+"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said Mrs. Berry. "I wanted
+for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then go about
+my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me."
+
+Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
+
+"You do?" he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
+articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and
+Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an
+expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained
+his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his
+reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.
+
+Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the
+bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman
+was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and
+found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting
+every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell
+creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation
+that she had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to
+testify, and her evident, but inexplicable, access of misery induced
+the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs.
+Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and
+she had already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the
+maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon
+which Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he
+should be shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She
+repeated the injunction.
+
+The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see
+herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to look
+a very little better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was settled,
+smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.
+
+The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had
+put him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its
+white-vestured cake, made him whistle.
+
+Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
+
+"A fine morning, ma'am," said Adrian.
+
+"It have been!" Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the
+window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
+
+"A very fine Spring," pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her
+countenance.
+
+Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to "weather" on a deep sigh. Her
+wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful
+and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some
+strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing
+hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his element than when
+he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his
+affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry.
+
+"I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings?" he remarked, with a look
+at the table.
+
+Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were
+not Mr. Thompson's lodgings.
+
+"No?" said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.
+"Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?"
+
+A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on
+her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply.
+
+"Mr. Feverel's man," continued Adrian, "told me I should be certain to
+find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson. I'm
+too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I fancy you have been
+having a party of them here, ma'am?--a bachelors' breakfast!"
+
+In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so
+shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She felt she must
+speak. Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she
+began:
+
+"Sir, may I beg for to know your name?"
+
+Mr. Harley accorded her request.
+
+Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
+
+"And you are Mr. Harley, that was--oh! and you've come for Mr.?"--
+
+Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
+
+"Oh! and it's no mistake, and he's of Raynham Abbey?" Mrs. Berry
+inquired.
+
+Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.
+
+"His father's Sir Austin?" wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her
+handkerchief.
+
+Adrian verified Richard's descent.
+
+"Oh, then, what have I been and done!" she cried, and stared blankly at
+her visitor. "I been and married my baby! I been and married the bread
+out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you was
+a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it's my softness
+that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking. Look at that
+cake, Mr. Harley!"
+
+Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. "Wedding-cake, ma'am!" he
+said.
+
+"Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!"
+
+"Did you make it yourself, ma'am?"
+
+The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that
+train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him
+guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.
+
+"I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley," she replied. "It's a bought
+cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms
+a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house! I
+little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don't you remember his
+old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no
+fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin' after the night you got into
+Mr. Benson's cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary--I remember it as
+clear as yesterday!--and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use
+the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed. I'm that very woman."
+
+Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful
+life.
+
+"Well, ma'am! well?" he said. He would bring her to the furnace.
+
+"Won't you see it all, kind sir?" Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic
+dumb show.
+
+Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing
+at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked
+uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable
+full-bodied posture was the same. "Well, ma'am?" he spurred her on.
+
+Mrs. Berry burst forth: "It were done this mornin', Mr. Harley, in the
+church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence."
+
+Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. "Oh!" he said,
+like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved: "Somebody
+was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?"
+
+Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him,
+saying: "Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?"
+
+Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
+
+"This young gentleman was at church this morning?" he asked.
+
+"Oh! quite reasonable and proper then," Mrs. Berry begged him to
+understand.
+
+"Of course, ma'am." Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate
+limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. "You were all
+reasonable and proper, ma'am. The principal male performer, then, is my
+cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by licence at
+your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left
+intoxicated."
+
+Mrs. Berry flew out. "He never drink a drop, sir. A more moderate young
+gentleman you never see. Oh! don't ye think that now, Mr. Harley. He was
+as upright and master of his mind as you be."
+
+"Ay!" the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, "I mean
+the other form of intoxication."
+
+Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.
+
+Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him
+circumstantially what had been done.
+
+She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
+
+Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical
+woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his
+mask, and had ever since lived in exile from the Raynham world on a
+little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She was that
+woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse Providence for the
+betraying excess of softness it had endowed her with. How was she to
+recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a feigned name; not a word
+of the family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal, though
+she felt something more than ordinary to him--she knew she did. He came
+bringing a beautiful young lady, and on what grounds could she turn her
+back on them? Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, why should she
+interfere to make them unhappy--so few the chances of happiness in this
+world! Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring.
+
+"One wrench," said the sobbing culprit, "one, and my ring was off!"
+
+She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the
+vestry-book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other
+signatures.
+
+"I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done," said
+Adrian.
+
+"Indeed, sir," moaned Berry, "I were, and am."
+
+"And would do your best to rectify the mischief--eh, ma'am?"
+
+"Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would," she protested solemnly.
+
+"--As, of course, you should--knowing the family. Where may these
+lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?"
+
+Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: "To the Isle--I don't quite know, sir!"
+she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit she had
+fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be
+pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss! "To-morrow, if you
+please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!"
+
+"A pleasant spot," Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
+
+By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought
+his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this
+was enough to satisfy Adrian's mind that there had been concoction and
+chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance
+certainly had not brought him to the young one.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," he said, in answer to her petitions for his
+favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and
+the bridal pair, "I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the
+affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the
+consummation. He will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two
+must see him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will set our friend
+here on his legs. A bath and a clean shirt, and he might go. I don't
+see why your name should appear at all. Brush him up, and send him to
+Bellingham by the seven o'clock train. He will find his way to Raynham;
+he knows the neighbourhood best in the dark. Let him go and state the
+case. Remember, one of you must go."
+
+With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the
+couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtues
+over, Adrian said, "Good morning."
+
+Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. "You won't refuse a piece of his
+cake, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no, ma'am," Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. "I shall
+claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who will
+rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry. Put
+it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it to them,
+and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of
+relationship."
+
+Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the
+sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and
+she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she
+regretted her conduct. She vowed that they seemed made for each other;
+that both, were beautiful; both had spirit; both were innocent; and to
+part them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs. Berry wrought herself to
+cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
+
+Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion. He
+took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and left
+Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.
+
+"So dies the System!" was Adrian's comment in the street. "And now let
+prophets roar! He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which is more than
+I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime," he gave the cake a
+dramatic tap, "I'll go sow nightmares."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
+disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
+dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point
+of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive
+objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at
+them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies
+more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth
+had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period.
+Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater
+heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he
+saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and
+air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came precipitately
+down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the winds; while he
+remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground, fitting his morality
+to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his comfort to his
+conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows: on
+the contrary, his sole amusement was their society. Alone he was rather
+dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the
+animated varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think
+life a pleasant play; and the faculties he had forfeited to hold his
+elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in
+others. Thus:--wonder at Master Richard's madness: though he himself
+did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on his beloved
+relatives. As he carried along his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped
+out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing
+by some personal chagrin in the prospect. For his patron had projected a
+journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in
+Rome: a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of History and
+tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit
+might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been
+planned during Richard's absence to surprise him.
+
+Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the
+race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance,
+as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs,
+and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to
+the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts
+man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was
+aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded
+by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly
+be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground:
+he must recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize
+becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the expense
+of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the
+shelter of a but and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the bitterness
+of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and
+splendour due to his superior emotions, or not at all. Consequently the
+wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great
+nature in him, that at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he
+should look with such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite
+fabric of Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into
+unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would
+have turned away uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after.
+
+Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
+
+He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He had fought down
+his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to
+his dinner at the Foreys' with less than usual timidity.
+
+"Ah! glad you've come, Adrian," he said, and expanded his chest. "I was
+afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you. We'll walk down
+together through the park. It's absolutely dangerous to walk alone in
+these streets. My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the
+year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it. I give you
+my word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in
+Piccadilly, and I thought I was down! I saved myself by a miracle."
+
+"You have an appetite, I hope?" asked Adrian.
+
+"I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk," chirped Hippias. "Yes.
+I think I feel hungry now."
+
+"Charmed to hear it," said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on his
+knees. "How should you define Folly?" he checked the process to inquire.
+
+"Hm!" Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when such
+questions were addressed to him. "I think I should define it to be a
+slide."
+
+"Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on
+it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle.
+You must present that to the Pilgrim. And the monument of folly, what
+would that be?"
+
+Hippias meditated anew. "All the human race on one another's shoulders."
+He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
+
+"Very good," Adrian applauded, "or in default of that, some symbol of
+the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a chip."
+
+Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
+
+"This is the monument made portable--eh?"
+
+"Cake!" cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense
+disgust. "You're right of them that eat it. If I--if I don't mistake,"
+he peered at it, "the noxious composition bedizened in that way is what
+they call wedding-cake. It's arrant poison! Who is it you want to kill?
+What are you carrying such stuff about for?"
+
+Adrian rang the bell for a knife. "To present you with your due and
+proper portion. You will have friends and relatives, and can't be saved
+from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps,
+the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who
+consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to
+distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with the object
+probably" (he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to
+slice the cake) "of enabling those friends (these edifices require very
+delicate incision--each particular currant and subtle condiment hangs to
+its neighbour--a wedding-cake is evidently the most highly civilized
+of cakes, and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of
+civilization!)--I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt
+(we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair
+share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing
+some hours in purgatory. This, as far as I can apportion it without
+weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!"
+
+He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
+
+"Get away!" Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.
+"I'll have none of it, I tell you! It's death! It's fifty times worse
+than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What fool has been doing
+this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It's an insult."
+
+"You are not compelled to eat any before dinner," said Adrian, pointing
+the corner of the table after him, "but your share you must take, and
+appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the marriage
+cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I
+hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
+therefrom--said to be of a lighter class, taken that way. It's a capital
+cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it--you have indeed!
+So here it is."
+
+The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung
+himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: "There!... My appetite's gone for
+to-day!"
+
+"Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel of his cake?"
+said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking at his
+uncle.
+
+"Richard?"
+
+"Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you've been
+in town. He's married, you know. Married this morning at Kensington
+parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty
+to. Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight, a
+very delectable place for a month's residence. I have to announce to you
+that, thanks to your assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!"
+
+"Richard married!"
+
+There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the wits
+of poor Hippias were softened by the shock. His hand travelled half-way
+to his forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that seat of
+reason, and then fell.
+
+"Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in town
+under your charge...."
+
+"Married?" Hippias jumped up--he had it. "Why, he's under age! he's an
+infant."
+
+"So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib like a man and
+pay your fee--what does it matter? Any one who is breeched can obtain a
+licence in our noble country. And the interests of morality demand that
+it should not be difficult. Is it true--can you persuade anybody that
+you have known nothing about it?"
+
+"Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on somebody
+else," said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa. "You've done
+me up for the day, I can assure you."
+
+Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic
+finish to the work. He had the gratification of passing his uncle
+through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in conviction,
+and exclaimed, "This accounts for his conduct to me. That boy must have
+a cunning nothing short of infernal! I feel...I feel it just here, he
+drew a hand along his midriff.
+
+"I'm not equal to this world of fools," he added faintly, and shut his
+eyes. "No, I can't dine. Eat? ha!... no. Go without me!"
+
+Shortly after, Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed,
+"See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!" and as the pillow
+swelled over his ears, "I'm not sure that a day's fast won't do me
+good." The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had a
+right to use it.
+
+Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
+
+He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the
+Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged. The
+Captain did not pass with out querying the ungainly parcel.
+
+"I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?" said Adrian.
+
+"Enclosed is wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the
+maids and wives of Merry England sleep secure. I had half a mind to fix
+it on a pole, and engage a band to parade it. This is our dear Richard's
+wedding-cake. Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at
+the Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed
+the ring of his beautiful bride's lachrymose land-lady, she standing
+adjacent by the altar. His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers as
+a maid, you can claim on the spot if you think proper, and digest
+according to your powers."
+
+Algernon let off steam in a whistle. "Thompson, the solicitor's
+daughter!" he said. "I met them the other day, somewhere about here. He
+introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage.
+
+"No." Adrian set him right. "'Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman Catholic
+dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the
+Plantagenets! He's quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's
+daughter, and himself as Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal is in
+Hymen's chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?"
+
+"Oh, by all means!--not now." Algernon had an unwonted air of
+reflection.--"Father know it?"
+
+"Not yet. He will to-night by nine o'clock."
+
+"Then I must see him by seven. Don't say you met me." He nodded, and
+pricked his horse.
+
+"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once more
+in motion.
+
+The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had
+reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures!
+Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest
+check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate.
+Well might The Pilgrim's Scrip say of her that, "She is always at
+Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve
+throughout the ages; whereas the Pilgrim would have us believe that
+the Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has
+learnt a lesson from time. Probably the Pilgrim's meaning may be taken
+to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
+
+At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the
+nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria's maternal
+predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best
+form of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his
+Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty,
+and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and
+womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and
+other females of the family assembly were expected to develop the finer
+shades and tapering edges of an agitation to which no woman could be
+cold.
+
+All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in a
+conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to dinner.
+Much of the conversation adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria asked him if he
+had seen the youth, or heard of him.
+
+"Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!" said Adrian. "I have heard of him. I
+heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a breakfast that
+dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake and"--
+
+"Cake at breakfast!" they all interjected.
+
+"That seems to be his fancy just now."
+
+"What an extraordinary taste!"
+
+"You know, he is educated on a System."
+
+One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable
+pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent,
+as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young
+gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished by his
+own spark.
+
+Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, "Oh! fish-cake, I suppose! I wish he
+understood a little better the obligations of relationship."
+
+"Whether he understands them, I can't say," observed Adrian, "but I
+assure you he is very energetic in extending them."
+
+The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that
+his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by
+at the aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly
+mysterious and deep.
+
+"Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?" Mrs. Doria
+asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
+
+Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, "Do they keep a
+beadle at the door?"
+
+Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece
+of satirical ingenuousness. "I daresay they do," she said.
+
+"And a curate on hand?"
+
+"Oh, I should think a dozen!"
+
+Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house
+a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment's
+notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
+
+The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent
+old fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon
+as they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the
+flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord,
+and the gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled to
+the business of the table, sure that an hour for unbosoming and imbibing
+was their own. Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of
+standing.
+
+"I want to ask you," he said, "whether an infant in law can legally bind
+himself."
+
+"If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I suppose
+he can," yawned Brandon.
+
+"Is he responsible for his acts?"
+
+"I've no doubt we could hang him."
+
+"Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?"
+
+"Not quite so much; pretty near."
+
+"For instance, he can marry?"
+
+"That's not a criminal case, you know."
+
+"And the marriage is valid?"
+
+"You can dispute it."
+
+"Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds then?"
+
+"Both water and fire!"
+
+The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the
+vigorous circulation of the claret.
+
+"Dear me, sir!" said Adrian, "I beg pardon. The circumstances must
+excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid
+this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law."
+
+It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement
+was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than, "Deuce he has!" and,
+"A dairymaid!"
+
+"I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace," Adrian continued.
+"I wanted to be able to console my aunt"--
+
+"Well, but--well, but," the old gentleman, much the most excited,
+puffed--"eh, Brandon? He's a boy, this young ass! Do you mean to tell
+me a boy can go and marry when he pleases, and any troll he pleases,
+and the marriage is good? If I thought that I'd turn every woman off my
+premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid. I'd have
+no woman near him till--till"--
+
+"Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?" suggested Brandon.
+
+"Till he knew what women are made of, sir!" the old gentleman finished
+his sentence vehemently. "What, d'ye think, will Feverel say to it, Mr.
+Adrian?"
+
+"He has been trying the very System you have proposed sir--one that
+does not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile
+intelligence. I'm afraid it's the very worst way of solving the
+problem."
+
+"Of course it is," said Clarence. "None but a fool!"--
+
+"At your age," Adrian relieved his embarrassment, "it is natural, my
+dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or
+imprisoned manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to see
+what amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme, and we the
+other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind
+shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved
+themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral
+question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness,
+releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason
+of his foolishness, save himself from naughtiness?"
+
+A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at Mr.
+Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian,
+in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with
+him. Adrian preferred not to go in alone. "Very well," he said, and
+sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of law in Brandon
+Forey, and receiving nought but hollow echoes from that profound cavity.
+He would not affirm that the marriage was invalid: he would not affirm
+that it could not be annulled. He thought not: still he thought it would
+be worth trying. A consummated and a non-consummated union were two
+different things....
+
+"Dear me!" said Adrian, "does the Law recognize that? Why, that's almost
+human!"
+
+Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Forey very
+particularly wished to speak with him.
+
+"What can be the matter?" he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in
+woman strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt.
+
+So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society. All the
+younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood displayed,
+gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision, and intrude
+the comments and speculations continually arising from fresh shocks of
+wonder at the unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty
+air of men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the
+gallant males also ranged themselves round the common object of
+curiosity.
+
+"Here! Adrian!" Mrs. Doria cried. "Where is Adrian? Pray, come here.
+Tell me! Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do
+here? You know all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring it
+into the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer. Now do
+not make me impatient, Adrian."
+
+Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated rapidity
+and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled.
+
+"I was really bound to bring it," Adrian protested.
+
+"Answer me!"
+
+The wise youth bowed: "Categorically. This cake came from the house of a
+person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you partly, partly
+to me, partly to Clare, and to the rest of our family, on the principle
+of equal division for which purpose it is present...."
+
+"Yes! Speak!"
+
+"It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean."
+
+"This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian! where is Richard?"
+
+Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
+
+But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling
+hope sank. "The wretched boy has ruined himself!" she said, and sat down
+trembling.
+
+Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead of
+oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that System. She hesitated not to say that
+her brother had got what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice
+had overtaken him. Now he would see! but at what a price! at what a
+sacrifice!
+
+Mrs. Doria, commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
+
+Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry's words. "He was married
+this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve, by
+licence, at the Kensington parish church."
+
+"Then that was his appointment!" Mrs. Doria murmured.
+
+"That was the cake for breakfast!" breathed a second of her sex.
+
+"And it was his ring!" exclaimed a third.
+
+The men were silent, and made long faces.
+
+Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other's
+eyes.
+
+"Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?"
+
+"The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid," said
+Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
+
+Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried,
+"Brandon!" She was a woman of energy. Her thoughts resolved to action
+spontaneously.
+
+"Brandon," she drew the barrister a little aside, "can they not be
+followed, and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate them?
+A boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the
+toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not,
+Brandon?"
+
+The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her
+entreaties: "From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the
+office perilous."
+
+"I'm speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one of
+your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?"
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
+
+"You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon."
+
+Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to a
+man slept heavily after dinner.
+
+"Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you
+promise me to do so, Brandon?--Or a magistrate! A magistrate would send
+a policeman after them. My dear Brandon! I beg--I beg you to assist us
+in this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I
+believe he would forgive anything but this. You have no idea what his
+notions are of blood."
+
+Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
+
+"What is it, aunt?" asked the wise youth. "You want them followed and
+torn asunder by wild policemen?"
+
+"To-morrow!" Brandon queerly interposed.
+
+"Won't that be--just too late?" Adrian suggested.
+
+Mrs. Doria, sighed out her last spark of hope.
+
+"You see," said Adrian....
+
+"Yes! yes!" Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations. "Pray
+be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be! it's quite
+impossible! Can you stand there and tell me that boy is legally married?
+I never will believe it! The law cannot be so shamefully bad as to
+permit a boy--a mere child--to do such absurd things. Grandpapa!" she
+beckoned to the old gentleman. "Grandpapa! pray do make Brandon speak.
+These lawyers never will. He might stop it, if he would. If I were a
+man, do you think I would stand here?"
+
+"Well, my dear," the old gentleman toddled to compose her, "I'm quite
+of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or I. My belief is
+they none of them know anything till they join issue and go into Court.
+I want to see a few female lawyers."
+
+"To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?" said Adrian. "They would
+have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand."
+
+"And you can jest, Adrian!" his aunt reproached him. "But I will not be
+beaten. I know--I am firmly convinced that no law would ever allow a
+boy to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and nothing shall
+persuade me that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak
+in answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealing with a
+woman. Can my nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly? Is
+what he has done legitimate? Is he bound for life by what he has done
+while a boy?
+
+"Well--a," Brandon breathed through his teeth. "A--hm! the matter's so
+very delicate, you see, Helen."
+
+"You're to forget that," Adrian remarked.
+
+"A--hm! well!" pursued Brandon. "Perhaps if you could arrest and divide
+them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain facts"...
+
+"Yes?" the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
+
+"Well...hm! a...in that case...a... Or if a lunatic, you could prove him
+to have been of unsound mind."...
+
+"Oh! there's no doubt of his madness on my mind, Brandon."
+
+"Yes! well! in that case... Or if of different religious persuasions"...
+
+"She is a Catholic!" Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
+
+"Yes! well! in that case...objections might be taken to the form of
+the marriage... Might be proved fictitious... Or if he's under, say,
+eighteen years"...
+
+"He can't be much more," cried Mrs. Doria. "I think," she appeared to
+reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, "What is Richard's
+age?"
+
+The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the
+phantom straw she caught at.
+
+"Oh! about that, I should fancy," he muttered; and found it necessary
+at the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment. Mrs. Doria
+surpassed his expectations.
+
+"Yes I well, then..." Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was meant
+to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare's voice was heard
+from out the buzzing circle of her cousins: "Richard is nineteen years
+and six months old to-day, mama."
+
+"Nonsense, child."
+
+"He is, mama." Clare's voice was very steadfast.
+
+"Nonsense, I tell you. How can you know?"
+
+"Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama."
+
+Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Clare was too
+strong for her.
+
+"Singular child!" she mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully
+rejected straws while drowning.
+
+"But there's the religion still!" she comforted herself, and sat down to
+cogitate.
+
+The men smiled and looked vacuous.
+
+Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms;
+when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar's dust and is taken to
+fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: "I'm
+a laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!" Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary
+Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people
+to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the
+world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and very
+few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the glowing
+appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the
+emptiness he addressed. Clare was asked to entertain the company. The
+singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the
+appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger's repertory.
+
+Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the
+piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters;
+but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling
+an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity
+herself--a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler
+like that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly.
+Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme,
+rendered fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had almost
+reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She had enough
+of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.
+
+Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature prevented
+her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the
+harder she clutched them.
+
+She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow
+her.
+
+"Adrian," she said, turning upon him in the passage, "you mentioned a
+house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning. I desire you
+to take me to that woman immediately."
+
+The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped
+he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after
+enjoying the comedy of real life.
+
+"My dear aunt"...he was beginning to insinuate.
+
+"Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the
+Pilgrim's dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected
+on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation
+and a nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
+
+What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly
+know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or
+other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could
+use it in wrath. She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to
+abuse. She dared not abuse her brother to his face: him she would have
+to console. Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she
+was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic,
+ground by a discussion of the case. So she drove to Bessy Berry simply
+to inquire whither her nephew had flown.
+
+When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a woman
+of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy. Bessy
+Berry's creditor came to her in female form that night. She then beheld
+it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a
+disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes,
+and the peculiar male characteristic of being moved, and ultimately
+silenced, by tears. As female, her creditor was terrible indeed. Still,
+had it not been a late hour, Bessy Berry would have died rather than
+speak openly that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of
+Wight. They had a long start, they were out of the reach of pursuers,
+they were safe, and she told what she had to tell. She told more than
+was wise of her to tell. She made mention of her early service in
+the family, and of her little pension. Alas! her little pension! Her
+creditor had come expecting no payment--come; as creditors are wont in
+such moods, just to take it out of her--to employ the familiar term. At
+once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension.
+
+"That, of course, you know is at an end," she said in the calmest
+manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her. She
+only asked a little consideration for her feelings.
+
+True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene.
+Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it.
+Mrs. Doria was not generous. The Pilgrim may be wrong about the sex
+not growing; but its fashion of conducting warfare we must allow to be
+barbarous, and according to what is deemed the pristine, or wild cat,
+method. Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor Berry to her bed
+that night, and her character bled till morning on her pillow.
+
+The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had
+been at the cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and gentlemen
+present put it on the greedy mice, who were accused of having gorged and
+gone to bed.
+
+"I'm sure they're quite welcome," said Mrs. Doria. "It's a farce, this
+marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking. I would not
+touch an atom of it. Why, they were married in a married woman's ring!
+Can that be legal, as you call it? Oh, I'm convinced! Don't tell me.
+Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is true to his principles,
+he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from infamy. I want
+no legal advice. I go upon common sense, common decency. This marriage
+is false."
+
+Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that she
+could not give it up. She took Clare to her bed, and caressed and wept
+over her, as she would not have done had she known the singular child,
+saying, "Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him, Clare! we
+must save him!" Of the two the mother showed the greater want of iron on
+this occasion. Clare lay in her arms rigid and emotionless, with one
+of her hands tight-locked. All she said was: "I knew it in the morning,
+mama." She slept clasping Richard's nuptial ring.
+
+By this time all specially concerned in the System knew it. The
+honeymoon was shoring placidly above them. Is not happiness like another
+circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some poor
+hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have gone
+out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to
+be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later. Who knows
+the honeymoon that did not steal somebody's sweetness? Richard Turpin
+went forth, singing "Money or life" to the world: Richard Feverel
+has done the same, substituting "Happiness" for "Money," frequently
+synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have, and was just as much a
+highway robber as his fellow Dick, so that those who have failed to
+recognize him as a hero before, may now regard him in that light.
+Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks exceedingly patient and
+beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature and the order
+of things on earth have no warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a
+young man made happy by the Jews.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the lady
+who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous, those
+soft watchful woman's eyes. If you are below the measure they have made
+of you, you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot but show you
+that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down a bit. You feel
+yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they
+drop on you complacently level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever
+waxing enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw
+reflected in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to delude her!
+A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if
+you are surely that: she will haply learn to acknowledge that no mortal
+tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectably, and
+that practically (though she sighs to think it) her ideal of you was
+on the pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation jacket and
+breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor,
+and then smiles at herself. But shouldst thou, when the hour says
+plainly, Be thyself, and the woman is willing to take thee as thou art,
+shouldst thou still aspire to be that thing of shanks and wrests, wilt
+thou not seem contemptible as well as ridiculous? And when the fall
+comes, will it not be flat on thy face, instead of to the common height
+of men? You may fall miles below her measure of you, and be safe:
+nothing is damaged save an overgrown charity-boy; but if you fall below
+the common height of men, you must make up your mind to see her rustle
+her gown, spy at the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance. The
+moral of which is, that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for
+whose amusement the farce is performed, will find us out and punish us
+for it. And it is usually the end of a sentimental dalliance.
+
+Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he should
+feel, he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses, and, however much he
+lowered his reputation as a sage, Lady Blandish would have excused him:
+she would not have loved him less for seeing him closer. But the poor
+gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his muscles to act up to her
+conception of him. He, a man of science in life, who was bound to be
+surprised by nothing in nature, it was not for him to do more than
+lift his eyebrows and draw in his lips at the news delivered by Ripton
+Thompson, that ill bird at Raynham.
+
+All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his
+penitential headache to bed, was: "You see, Emmeline, it is useless to
+base any system on a human being."
+
+A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work building
+for nearly twenty years. Too philosophical to seem genuine. It revealed
+where the blow struck sharpest. Richard was no longer the Richard of his
+creation--his pride and his joy--but simply a human being with the rest.
+The bright star had sunk among the mass.
+
+And yet, what had the young man done? And in what had the System failed?
+
+The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled with the
+offended father.
+
+"My friend," she said, tenderly taking his hand before she retired, "I
+know how deeply you must be grieved. I know what your disappointment
+must be. I do not beg of you to forgive him now. You cannot doubt his
+love for this young person, and according to his light, has he not
+behaved honourably, and as you would have wished, rather than bring
+her to shame? You will think of that. It has been an accident--a
+misfortune--a terrible misfortune"...
+
+"The God of this world is in the machine--not out of it," Sir Austin
+interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good-night over.
+
+At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the
+phrase; now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to turn
+the meaning that was in it against himself, much as she pitied him.
+
+"You know, Emmeline," he added, "I believe very little in the fortune,
+or misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and reverses. They
+are useful impersonations to novelists; but my opinion is sufficiently
+high of flesh and blood to believe that we make our own history
+without intervention. Accidents?--Terrible misfortunes?--What are
+they?--Good-night."
+
+"Good-night," she said, looking sad and troubled. "When I said,
+'misfortune,' I meant, of course, that he is to blame; but--shall I
+leave you his letter to me?"
+
+"I think I have enough to meditate upon," he replied, coldly bowing.
+
+"God bless you," she whispered. "And--may I say it? do not shut your
+heart."
+
+He assured her that he hoped not to do so and the moment she was gone he
+set about shutting it as tight as he could.
+
+If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said,
+Never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of
+his own case. He had experimented on humanity in the person of the son
+he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to
+have failed, all humanity's failings fell on the shoulders of his son.
+Richard's parting laugh in the train--it was explicable now: it sounded
+in his ears like the mockery of this base nature of ours at every
+endeavour to exalt and chasten it. The young man had plotted this. From
+step to step Sir Austin traced the plot. The curious mask he had worn
+since his illness; the selection of his incapable uncle Hippias for a
+companion in preference to Adrian; it was an evident, well-perfected
+plot. That hideous laugh would not be silenced: Base, like the rest,
+treacherous, a creature of passions using his abilities solely to
+gratify them--never surely had humanity such chances as in him! A
+Manichaean tendency, from which the sententious eulogist of nature had
+been struggling for years (and which was partly at the bottom of the
+System), now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat
+alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his library, he saw the devil.
+
+How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates of
+them we love?
+
+There by the springs of Richard's future, his father sat: and the devil
+said to him: "Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely do nothing: your
+object now is to keep a brave face to the world, so that all may know
+you superior to this human nature that has deceived you. For it is the
+shameless deception, not the marriage, that has wounded you."
+
+"Ay!" answered the baronet, "the shameless deception, not the marriage:
+wicked and ruinous as it must be; a destroyer of my tenderest hopes!
+my dearest schemes! Not the marriage--the shameless deception!" and he
+crumpled up his son's letter to him, and tossed it into the fire.
+
+How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he
+talks our own thoughts to us?
+
+Further he whispered, "And your System:--if you would be brave to the
+world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you: relinquish an
+impossible project; see it as it is--dead: too good for men!"
+
+"Ay!" muttered the baronet: "all who would save them perish on the
+Cross!"
+
+And so he sat nursing the devil.
+
+By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and went
+to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth without a destiny
+slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and his
+helpless sunken chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him
+look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered how often he had compared
+his boy with this one: his own bright boy! And where was the difference
+between them?
+
+"Mere outward gilding!" said his familiar.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "I daresay this one never positively plotted
+to deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked, and is
+internally the sounder of the two."
+
+Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the light of the
+lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however abject.
+
+"Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!" whispered
+the monitor.
+
+"Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the whole?"
+ejaculated Sir Austin. "And is no angel of avail till that is drawn off?
+And is that our conflict--to see whether we can escape the contagion of
+its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that?"
+
+"The world is wise in its way," said the voice.
+
+"Though it look on itself through Port wine?" he suggested, remembering
+his lawyer Thompson.
+
+"Wise in not seeking to be too wise," said the voice.
+
+"And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!"
+
+"Human nature is weak."
+
+"And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an institution!"
+
+"It always has been so."
+
+"And always will be?"
+
+"So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts."
+
+"And leads--whither? And ends--where?"
+
+Richard's laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it were through
+the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.
+
+This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin
+asking again if there were no actual difference between the flower of
+his hopes and yonder drunken weed, and receiving for answer that
+there was a decided dissimilarity in the smell of the couple; becoming
+cognizant of which he retreated.
+
+Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him into his bosom
+at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and received his suggestions
+and bowed to his dictates. Because he suffered, and decreed that he
+would suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that
+he was great-minded in his calamity. He had stood against the world.
+The world had beaten him. What then? He must shut his heart and mask his
+face; that was all. To be far in advance of the mass, is as fruitless
+to mankind, he reflected, as straggling in the rear. For how do we know
+that they move behind us at all, or move in our track? What we win for
+them is lost; and where we are overthrown we lie!
+
+It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a
+nature not great, chose to colour his retrogression and countenance his
+shortcoming; and it was thus that he set about ruining the work he had
+done. He might well say, as he once did, that there are hours when the
+clearest soul becomes a cunning fox. For a grief that was private and
+peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon humanity; just as he had
+accused it in the period of what he termed his own ordeal. How had he
+borne that? By masking his face. And he prepared the ordeal for his
+son by doing the same. This was by no means his idea of a man's duty in
+tribulation, about which he could be strenuously eloquent.
+
+But it was his instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures
+alone are not at the mercy of their instincts. Moreover it would cost
+him pain to mask his face; pain worse than that he endured when there
+still remained an object for him to open his heart to in proportion;
+and he always reposed upon the Spartan comfort of bearing pain and being
+passive. "Do nothing," said the devil he nursed; which meant in his
+case, "Take me into you and don't cast me out." Excellent and sane is
+the outburst of wrath to men, when it stops short of slaughter. For who
+that locks it up to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed? Sir
+Austin had as weak a digestion for wrath, as poor Hippias for a green
+duckling. Instead of eating it, it ate him. The wild beast in him was
+not the less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not
+the less active because he resolved to do nothing.
+
+He sat at the springs of Richard's future, in the forlorn dead-hush of
+his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished fire,
+and that humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears the midnight
+Fates busily stirring their embryos. The lamp glowed mildly on the bust
+of Chatham.
+
+Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady Blandish glided in.
+With hasty step she came straight to him, and took both his hands.
+
+"My friend," she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling, "I feared I
+should find you here. I could not sleep. How is it with you?"
+
+"Well! Emmeline, well!" he replied, torturing his brows to fix the mask.
+
+He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He had an
+extraordinary longing for Adrian's society. He knew that the wise youth
+would divine how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to just enough
+weakness to demand a certain kind of management. Besides, Adrian, he had
+not a doubt, would accept him entirely as he seemed, and not pester him
+in any way by trying to unlock his heart; whereas a woman, he feared,
+would be waxing too womanly, and swelling from tears and supplications
+to a scene, of all things abhorred by him the most. So he rapped the
+floor with his foot, and gave the lady no very welcome face when he said
+it was well with him.
+
+She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly
+detaining the other.
+
+"Oh, my friend! may I believe you? May I speak to you?" She leaned close
+to him. "You know my heart. I have no better ambition than to be your
+friend. Surely I divide your grief, and may I not claim your confidence?
+Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows? I would not have
+come to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared relieves the burden,
+and it is now that you may feel a woman's aid, and something of what a
+woman could be to you...."
+
+"Be assured," he gravely said, "I thank you, Emmeline, for your
+intentions."
+
+"No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me. Think of
+him...think of your dear boy... Our Richard, as we have called him.--Oh!
+do not think it a foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a thought
+this night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak to you...
+Tell me first you have forgiven him."
+
+"A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline."
+
+"Your heart has forgiven him?"
+
+"My heart has taken what he gave."
+
+"And quite forgiven him?"
+
+"You will hear no complaints of mine."
+
+The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a wistful manner,
+saying with a sigh, "Yes! I know how noble you are, and different from
+others!"
+
+He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
+
+"You ought to be in bed, Emmeline."
+
+"I cannot sleep."
+
+"Go, and talk to me another time."
+
+"No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a
+clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have
+had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless
+him...it will end miserably. My friend, have you done so?"
+
+He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of
+his mask.
+
+"Have you done so, Austin?"
+
+"This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
+their sons, Emmeline!"
+
+"No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before the
+day comes?"
+
+He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:--"And I must do
+this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him from
+the seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has repeated
+his cousin's sin. You see the end of that."
+
+"Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor
+Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And he--be
+just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person
+has great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she--indeed I
+think, had she been in another position, you would not have looked upon
+her unfavourably."
+
+"She may be too good for my son!" The baronet spoke with sublime
+bitterness.
+
+"No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it."
+
+"Pass her."
+
+"Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We
+thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her,
+he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her
+for ever, and is the madness of an hour he did this...."
+
+"My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches."
+
+"Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as young
+men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?"
+
+Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.
+
+"You mean," he said, "that fathers must fold their arms, and either
+submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined."
+
+"I do not mean that," exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did
+mean, and how to express it. "I mean that he loved her. Is it not
+a madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is--save him from the
+consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride,
+his sensitiveness, his great wild nature--wild when he is set wrong:
+think how intense it is, set upon love; think, my friend, do not forget
+his love for you."
+
+Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
+
+"That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking more
+than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is not in
+the disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the natural
+offspring of acts. My child, you are talking sentiment, which is
+the distraction of our modern age in everything--a phantasmal vapour
+distorting the image of the life we live. You ask me to give him a
+golden age in spite of himself. All that could be done, by keeping him
+in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He is become a man, and as a
+man he must reap his own sowing."
+
+The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as if
+wisdom were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did love
+his son. Feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily,
+she reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had
+been quibbled with.
+
+"All I ask of you is to open your heart to him," she said.
+
+He kept silent.
+
+"Call him a man,--he is, and must ever be the child of your education,
+my friend."
+
+"You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins
+himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is something!"
+
+Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her
+eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show
+what he felt. Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain
+his elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over
+offended love. Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then: a
+blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance.
+
+"Am I pardoned for coming to you?" she said, after a pause.
+
+"Surely I can read my Emmeline's intentions," he gently replied.
+
+"Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been
+thinking. Oh, if I could!"
+
+"You speak very well, Emmeline."
+
+"At least, I am pardoned!"
+
+"Surely so."
+
+"And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?--may I beg
+it?--will you bless him?"
+
+He was again silent.
+
+"Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over."
+
+As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her
+bosom.
+
+The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him,
+he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
+
+"It's day already!" he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the
+shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
+
+Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and
+glanced up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane toward the West.
+She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so
+earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more
+than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as
+no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at
+present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed
+his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that moment
+she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol--a process
+dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the
+painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone
+roughness, murmured: "God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!
+My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day."
+He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
+
+"I could bear many, many!" she replied, meeting his eyes, "and you
+would see me look better and better, if... if only..." but she had no
+encouragement to end the sentence.
+
+Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome
+placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their
+Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the arm
+and talked of the morning.
+
+Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan
+behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye. Lady Blandish
+smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be concealed. By a
+strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have
+a human beholder.
+
+"Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon," Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a
+melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room.
+
+"And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks," said Lady
+Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
+
+The baronet then called in Benson.
+
+"Get me my breakfast as soon as you can," he said, regardless of the
+aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him. "I am
+going to town early. And, Benson," he added, "you will also go to town
+this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with
+you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made
+for you. You can go."
+
+The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
+baronet's gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort which
+shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably. An impatient signal sent
+him out dumb,--and Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great
+Shaddock dogma.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green waves before a
+full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and
+flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs. A crown of deep Summer blue
+topped the flying mountains of cloud.
+
+By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses, our
+young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of them.
+Had the Scientific Humanist observed them, he could not have contested
+the fact, that as a couple who had set up to be father and mother
+of Britons, they were doing their duty. Files of egg-cups with
+disintegrated shells bore witness to it, and they were still at work,
+hardly talking from rapidity of exercise. Both were dressed for an
+expedition. She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat. His sleeves
+were turned over at the wrists, and her gown showed its lining on her
+lap. At times a chance word might spring a laugh, but eating was the
+business of the hour, as I would have you to know it always will be
+where Cupid is in earnest. Tribute flowed in to them from the subject
+land. Neglected lies Love's penny-whistle on which they played so
+prettily and charmed the spheres to hear them. What do they care for the
+spheres, who have one another? Come, eggs! come, bread and butter! come,
+tea with sugar in it and milk! and welcome, the jolly hours. That is a
+fair interpretation of the music in them just now. Yonder instrument was
+good only for the overture. After all, what finer aspiration can lovers
+have, than to be free man and woman in the heart of plenty? And is it
+not a glorious level to have attained? Ah, wretched Scientific Humanist!
+not to be by and mark the admirable sight of these young creatures
+feeding. It would have been a spell to exorcise the Manichee, methinks.
+
+The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a flourish of
+his table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who met him on the confident
+budding of her mouth. The poetry of mortals is their daily prose. Is
+it not a glorious level to have attained? A short, quick-blooded kiss,
+radiant, fresh, and honest as Aurora, and then Richard says without lack
+of cheer, "No letter to-day, my Lucy!" whereat her sweet eyes dwell on
+him a little seriously, but he cries, "Never mind! he'll be coming down
+himself some morning. He has only to know her, and all's well! eh?" and
+so saying he puts a hand beneath her chin, and seems to frame her fair
+face in fancy, she smiling up to be looked at.
+
+"But one thing I do want to ask my darling," says Lucy, and dropped into
+his bosom with hands of petition. "Take me on board his yacht with him
+to-day--not leave me with those people! Will he? I'm a good sailor, he
+knows!"
+
+"The best afloat!" laughs Richard, hugging her, "but, you know, you
+darling bit of a sailor, they don't allow more than a certain number on
+board for the race, and if they hear you've been with me, there'll be
+cries of foul play! Besides, there's Lady Judith to talk to you about
+Austin, and Lord Mountfalcon's compliments for you to listen to, and Mr.
+Morton to take care of you."
+
+Lucy's eyes fixed sideways an instant.
+
+"I hope I don't frown and blush as I did?" she said, screwing her
+pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers,
+and murmured something delicious.
+
+"And we shall be separated for--how many hours? one, two, three hours!"
+she pouted to his flatteries.
+
+"And then I shall come on board to receive my bride's congratulations."
+
+"And then my husband will talk all the time to Lady Judith."
+
+"And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at Lord
+Mountfalcon."
+
+"Am I so foolish, Richard?" she forgot her trifling to ask in an earnest
+way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on her lips,
+for answer.
+
+After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy sinners had
+wandered forth one day to look on men and marvel at them, and had
+chanced to meet Mr. Morton of Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth's friend, and
+Ralph's uncle. Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the baronet, but
+had given him up for many years as impracticable and hopeless, for
+which reason he was the more inclined to regard Richard's misdemeanour
+charitably, and to lay the faults of the son on the father; and
+thinking society to be the one thing requisite to the young man, he had
+introduced him to the people he knew in the island; among others to
+the Lady Judith Felle, a fair young dame, who introduced him to Lord
+Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman; who introduced him to the yachtsmen
+beginning to congregate; so that in a few weeks he found himself in the
+centre of a brilliant company, and for the first time in his life tasted
+what it was to have free intercourse with his fellow-creatures of both
+sews. The son of a System was, therefore, launched; not only through the
+surf, but in deep waters.
+
+Now the baronet had so far compromised between the recurrence of his
+softer feelings and the suggestions of his new familiar, that he had
+determined to act toward Richard with justness. The world called it
+magnanimity, and even Lady Blandish had some thoughts of the same kind
+when she heard that he had decreed to Richard a handsome allowance, and
+had scouted Mrs. Doria's proposal for him to contest the legality of the
+marriage; but Sir Austin knew well he was simply just in not withholding
+money from a youth so situated. And here again the world deceived him by
+embellishing his conduct. For what is it to be just to whom we love! He
+knew it was not magnanimous, but the cry of the world somehow fortified
+him in the conceit that in dealing perfect justice to his son he was
+doing all that was possible, because so much more than common fathers
+would have done. He had shut his heart.
+
+Consequently Richard did not want money. What he wanted more, and did
+not get, was a word from his father, and though he said nothing to
+sadden his young bride, she felt how much it preyed upon him to be
+at variance with the man whom, now that he had offended him and gone
+against him, he would have fallen on his knees to; the man who was as no
+other man to him. She heard him of nights when she lay by his side, and
+the darkness, and the broken mutterings, of those nights clothed the
+figure of the strange stern man in her mind. Not that it affected the
+appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of Cupid enthroned
+and in condition; under the influence of sea-air, too. The files of
+egg-cups laugh at such an idea. Still the worm did gnaw them. Judge,
+then, of their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they were
+issuing from the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they
+caught sight of Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a portmanteau on
+his shoulders, and, some distance behind him, discerned Adrian.
+
+"It's all right!" shouted Richard, and ran off to meet him, and never
+left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing questions at him all the
+way, to where Lucy stood.
+
+"Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin."--"Isn't he an angel?" his eyes seemed
+to add; while Lucy's clearly answered, "That he is!"
+
+The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and acted with
+reserved unction the benefactor he saw in their greetings. "I think we
+are not strangers," he was good enough to remark, and very quickly let
+them know he had not breakfasted; on hearing which they hurried him into
+the house, and Lucy put herself in motion to have him served.
+
+"Dear old Rady," said Richard, tugging at his hand again, "how glad I am
+you've come! I don't mind telling you we've been horridly wretched."
+
+"Six, seven, eight, nine eggs," was Adrian's comment on a survey of the
+breakfast-table.
+
+"Why wouldn't he write? Why didn't he answer one of my letters? But here
+you are, so I don't mind now. He wants to see us, does he? We'll go up
+to-night. I've a match on at eleven; my little yacht--I've called her
+the 'Blandish'--against Fred Cuirie's 'Begum.' I shall beat, but whether
+I do or not, we'll go up to-night. What's the news? What are they all
+doing?"
+
+"My dear boy!" Adrian returned, sitting comfortably down, "let me put
+myself a little more on an equal footing with you before I undertake to
+reply. Half that number of eggs will be sufficient for an unmarried man,
+and then we'll talk. They're all very well, as well as I can recollect
+after the shaking my total vacuity has had this morning. I came over by
+the first boat, and the sea, the sea has made me love mother earth, and
+desire of her fruits."
+
+Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.
+
+"Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it? I want to know exactly
+what words he said."
+
+"Well says the sage, my son! 'Speech is the small change of Silence.' He
+said less than I do."
+
+"That's how he took it!" cried Richard, and plunged in meditation.
+
+Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy preceded
+the maid bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down unbonneted, and like a
+thorough-bred housewife, to pour out the tea for him.
+
+"Now we'll commence," said Adrian, tapping his egg with meditative
+cheerfulness; but his expression soon changed to one of pain, all the
+more alarming for his benevolent efforts to conceal it. Could it be
+possible the egg was bad? oh, horror! Lucy watched him, and waited in
+trepidation.
+
+"This egg has boiled three minutes and three-quarters," he observed,
+ceasing to contemplate it.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Lucy, "I boiled them myself exactly that time.
+Richard likes them so. And you like them hard, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"On the contrary, I like them soft. Two minutes and a half, or
+three-quarters at the outside. An egg should never rashly verge upon
+hardness--never. Three minutes is the excess of temerity."
+
+"If Richard had told me! If I had only known!" the lovely little hostess
+interjected ruefully, biting her lip.
+
+"We mustn't expect him to pay attention to such matters," said Adrian,
+trying to smile.
+
+"Hang it! there are more eggs in the house," cried Richard, and pulled
+savagely at the bell.
+
+Lucy jumped up, saying, "Oh, yes! I will go and boil some exactly the
+time you like. Pray let me go, Mr. Harley."
+
+Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his hand. "No," he
+said, "I will be ruled by Richard's tastes, and heaven grant me his
+digestion!"
+
+Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a sofa, and left the
+burden of the entertainment entirely to her. The eggs were a melancholy
+beginning, but her ardour to please Adrian would not be damped, and she
+deeply admired his resignation. If she failed in pleasing this glorious
+herald of peace, no matter by what small misadventure, she apprehended
+calamity; so there sat this fair dove with brows at work above her
+serious smiling blue eyes, covertly studying every aspect of the
+plump-faced epicure, that she might learn to propitiate him. "He shall
+not think me timid and stupid," thought this brave girl, and indeed
+Adrian was astonished to find that she could both chat and be useful, as
+well as look ornamental. When he had finished one egg, behold, two fresh
+ones came in, boiled according to his prescription. She had quietly
+given her orders to the maid, and he had them without fuss. Possibly
+his look of dismay at the offending eggs had not been altogether
+involuntary, and her woman's instinct, inexperienced as she was, may
+have told her that he had come prepared to be not very well satisfied
+with anything in Love's cottage. There was mental faculty in those
+pliable brows to see through, and combat, an unwitting wise youth.
+
+How much she had achieved already she partly divined when Adrian said:
+"I think now I'm in case to answer your questions, my dear boy--thanks
+to Mrs. Richard," and he bowed to her his first direct acknowledgment of
+her position. Lucy thrilled with pleasure.
+
+"Ah!" cried Richard, and settled easily on his back.
+
+"To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been persuaded
+to offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder thereof in an
+asylum for life. Benson--superlative Benson--has turned his shoulders
+upon Raynham. None know whither he has departed. It is believed that the
+sole surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is under a
+total eclipse of Woman."
+
+"Benson gone?" Richard exclaimed. "What a tremendous time it seems since
+I left Raynham!"
+
+"So it is, my dear boy. The honeymoon is Mahomet's minute; or say, the
+Persian King's water-pail that you read of in the story: You dip your
+head in it, and when you draw it out, you discover that you have lived
+a life. To resume your uncle Algernon still roams in pursuit of the
+lost one--I should say, hops. Your uncle Hippias has a new and most
+perplexing symptom; a determination of bride-cake to the nose. Ever
+since your generous present to him, though he declares he never consumed
+a morsel of it, he has been under the distressing illusion that his nose
+is enormous, and I assure you he exhibits quite a maidenly timidity
+in following it--through a doorway, for instance. He complains of its
+terrible weight. I have conceived that Benson invisible might be sitting
+on it. His hand, and the doctor's, are in hourly consultation with it,
+but I fear it will not grow smaller. The Pilgrim has begotten upon it a
+new Aphorism: that Size is a matter of opinion."
+
+"Poor uncle Hippy!" said Richard, "I wonder he doesn't believe in magic.
+There's nothing supernatural to rival the wonderful sensations he does
+believe in. Good God! fancy coming to that!"
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry," Lucy protested, "but I can't help laughing."
+
+Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.
+
+"The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard. Whom does he not forestall?
+'Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,' and he accuses the
+Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which may have
+been the case, owing to their infamous cookery. He says again, if you
+remember, that our own Age is travelling back to darkness and ignorance
+through dyspepsia. He lays the seat of wisdom in the centre of our
+system, Mrs. Richard: for which reason you will understand how sensible
+I am of the vast obligation I am under to you at the present moment, for
+your especial care of mine."
+
+Richard looked on at Lucy's little triumph, attributing Adrian's
+subjugation to her beauty and sweetness. She had latterly received a
+great many compliments on that score, which she did not care to hear,
+and Adrian's homage to a practical quality was far pleasanter to the
+young wife, who shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not help her much
+in the struggle she had now to maintain. Adrian continuing to lecture
+on the excelling virtues of wise cookery, a thought struck her: Where,
+where had she tossed Mrs. Berry's book?
+
+"So that's all about the home-people?" said Richard.
+
+"All!" replied Adrian. "Or stay: you know Clare's going to be married?
+Not? Your Aunt Helen"--
+
+"Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had the impertinence to
+write--but never mind! Is it to Ralph?"
+
+"Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary
+woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to
+call the female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know.
+The Pilgrim's Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding
+relatives. Well, your Aunt Helen"--
+
+"Mrs. Doria Battledoria!" laughed Richard.
+
+"--being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own--call it a System if
+you like--of some ten or fifteen years' standing, with regard to Miss
+Clare!"--
+
+"The fair Shuttlecockiana!"
+
+"--instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence, and
+turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing the world
+upside down, what does the practical animal do? She wanted to marry
+her to somebody she couldn't marry her to, so she resolved instantly to
+marry her to somebody she could marry her to: and as old gentlemen enter
+into these transactions with the practical animal the most readily,
+she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried old gentleman, a rich old
+gentleman, and now a captive old gentleman. The ceremony takes place
+in about a week from the present time. No doubt you will receive your
+invitation in a day or two."
+
+"And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old man!"
+groaned Richard. "I'll put a stop to that when I go to town."
+
+Richard got up and strode about the room. Then he bethought him it was
+time to go on board and make preparations.
+
+"I'm off," he said. "Adrian, you'll take her. She goes in the Empress,
+Mountfalcon's vessel. He starts us. A little schooner-yacht--such
+a beauty! I'll have one like her some day. Good-bye, darling!" he
+whispered to Lucy, and his hand and eyes lingered on her, and hers on
+him, seeking to make up for the priceless kiss they were debarred from.
+But she quickly looked away from him as he held her:--Adrian stood
+silent: his brows were up, and his mouth dubiously contracted. He spoke
+at last.
+
+"Go on the water?"
+
+"Yes. It's only to St. Helen's. Short and sharp."
+
+"Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has just received, my
+son?"
+
+"Oh, bother your system! Put on your hat, and come along. I'll put you
+on board in my boat."
+
+"Richard! I have already paid the penalty of them who are condemned to
+come to an island. I will go with you to the edge of the sea, and I will
+meet you there when you return, and take up the Tale of the Tritons:
+but, though I forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard's company, I refuse
+to quit the land."
+
+"Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!" Lucy broke from her husband, "and I will stay
+with you, if you please. I don't want to go among those people, and we
+can see it all from the shore.
+
+"Dearest! I don't want to go. You don't mind? Of course, I will go if
+you wish, but I would so much rather stay;" and she lengthened her plea
+in her attitude and look to melt the discontent she saw gathering.
+
+Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he could amuse
+himself very well till their return, and so forth; but she had schemes
+in her pretty head, and held to it to be allowed to stay in spite of
+Lord Mountfalcon's disappointment, cited by Richard, and at the great
+risk of vexing her darling, as she saw. Richard pished, and glanced
+contemptuously at Adrian. He gave way ungraciously.
+
+"There, do as you like. Get your things ready to leave this evening. No,
+I'm not angry."--Who could be? he seemed as he looked up from her
+modest fondling to ask Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a kiss on
+her forehead, which, however, did not immediately disperse the shade of
+annoyance he felt.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "Such a day as this, and a fellow refuses
+to come on the water! Well, come along to the edge of the sea." Adrian's
+angelic quality had quite worn off to him. He never thought of devoting
+himself to make the most of the material there was: but somebody else
+did, and that fair somebody succeeded wonderfully in a few short hours.
+She induced Adrian to reflect that the baronet had only to see her, and
+the family muddle would be smoothed at once. He came to it by degrees;
+still the gradations were rapid. Her manner he liked; she was certainly
+a nice picture: best of all, she was sensible. He forgot the farmer's
+niece in her, she was so very sensible. She appeared really to
+understand that it was a woman's duty to know how to cook.
+
+But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could be brought to
+consent to see her. He had not yet consented to see his son, and Adrian,
+spurred by Lady Blandish, had ventured something in coming down. He was
+not inclined to venture more. The small debate in his mind ended by
+his throwing the burden on time. Time would bring the matter about.
+Christians as well as Pagans are in the habit of phrasing this excuse
+for folding their arms; "forgetful," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "that the
+devil's imps enter into no such armistice."
+
+As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion, Lucy had
+many things to think of. There was her darling's match. The yachts were
+started by pistol-shot by Lord Mountfalcon on board the Empress, and her
+little heart beat after Richard's straining sails. Then there was the
+strangeness of walking with a relative of Richard's, one who had lived
+by his side so long. And the thought that perhaps this night she would
+have to appear before the dreaded father of her husband.
+
+"O Mr. Harley!" she said, "is it true--are we to go tonight? And me,"
+she faltered, "will he see me?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about," said Adrian. "I made
+some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted. Our
+second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind. I
+said 'see you,' and he supposed--now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you will
+understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be advisable--when the
+father and son have settled their accounts, the daughter-in-law can't be
+a debtor."...
+
+Lucy threw up her blue eyes. A half-cowardly delight at the chance of a
+respite from the awful interview made her quickly apprehensive.
+
+"O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?"
+
+"Well, that is my notion. But the fact is, he is such an excellent
+husband that I fancy it will require more than a man's power of
+persuasion to get him to go."
+
+"But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley." "Perhaps, if you would..."
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for his happiness," murmured Lucy.
+
+The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation. They walked
+on till the yachts had rounded the point.
+
+"Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?" she asked with some trouble in her voice
+now that her darling was out of sight.
+
+"I don't imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you
+to-night," Adrian replied gallantly. "Besides, I must speak for myself.
+To achieve the passage to an island is enough for one day. No necessity
+exists for any hurry, except in the brain of that impetuous boy. You
+must correct it, Mrs. Richard. Men are made to be managed, and women are
+born managers. Now, if you were to let him know that you don't want to
+go to-night, and let him guess, after a day or two, that you would very
+much rather... you might affect a peculiar repugnance. By taking it on
+yourself, you see, this wild young man will not require such frightful
+efforts of persuasion. Both his father and he are exceedingly delicate
+subjects, and his father unfortunately is not in a position to be
+managed directly. It's a strange office to propose to you, but it
+appears to devolve upon you to manage the father through the son.
+Prodigal having made his peace, you, who have done all the work from a
+distance, naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile, knowing
+it due to you. I see no other way. If Richard suspects that his father
+objects for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities will
+be continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to worse, and I
+see no end to it."
+
+Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are you capable of
+this piece of heroism? And it did seem hard to her that she should have
+to tell Richard she shrank from any trial. But the proposition chimed in
+with her fears and her wishes: she thought the wise youth very wise: the
+poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and the subtler flattery
+of making herself in some measure a sacrifice to the home she had
+disturbed. She agreed to simulate as Adrian had suggested.
+
+Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came
+on shore proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven
+minutes and three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated
+by his bride with her fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and
+anxiously questioned about wine.
+
+"Dearest! Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks we
+ought not to go immediately--that is, before he has had some letters,
+and I feel... I would so much rather..."
+
+"Ah! that's it, you coward!" said Richard. "Well, then, to-morrow. We
+had a splendid race. Did you see us?"
+
+"Oh, yes! I saw you and was sure my darling would win." And again she
+threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine. "Mr. Harley
+must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I'm so silly,
+I don't know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can get good
+wine. I have seen to the dinner."
+
+"So that's why you didn't come to meet me?"
+
+"Pardon me, darling."
+
+"Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn't, and Lady Judith thinks you ought
+to have been there."
+
+"Ah, but my heart was with you!"
+
+Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her eyelids softened,
+and she ran away.
+
+It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault with it, and
+was in perfect good-humour at the conclusion of the service. He did not
+abuse the wine they were able to procure for him, which was also much.
+The coffee, too, had the honour of passing without comment. These were
+sound first steps toward the conquest of an epicure, and as yet Cupid
+did not grumble.
+
+After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith's
+grounds. The wind had dropped. The clouds had rolled from the zenith,
+and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and
+land: Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion
+falling. There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows,
+stretching all his hands up to unattainable blue summits. North-west the
+range had a rich white glow, as if shining to the moon, and westward,
+streams of amber, melting into upper rose, shot out from the dipping
+disk.
+
+"What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven," said Richard under
+his breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters, and
+answered, in the swing of the caesura, "He might as well have said
+cauliflower."
+
+Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met them in
+the walk. She was tall and dark; dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet and
+persuasive in her accent and manner. "A second edition of the Blandish,"
+thinks Adrian. She welcomed him as one who had claims on her affability.
+She kissed Lucy protectingly, and remarking on the wonders of the
+evening, appropriated her husband. Adrian and Lucy found themselves
+walking behind them.
+
+The sun was under. All the spaces of the sky were alight, and Richard's
+fancy flamed.
+
+"So you're not intoxicated with your immense triumph this morning?" said
+Lady Judith.
+
+"Don't laugh at me. When it's over I feel ashamed of the trouble I've
+taken. Look at that glory!--I'm sure you despise me for it."
+
+"Was I not there to applaud you? I only think such energies should be
+turned into some definitely useful channel. But you must not go into the
+Army."
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"You are fit for so much that is better."
+
+"I never can be anything like Austin."
+
+"But I think you can do more."
+
+"Well, I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith. Something I will do. A
+man must deserve to live, as you say.
+
+"Sauces," Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the rear, "Sauces
+are the top tree of this science. A woman who has mastered sauces sits
+on the apex of civilization."
+
+Briareus reddened duskily seaward. The West was all a burning rose.
+
+"How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?" Richard resumed.
+"I feel ashamed of asking my men to work for me.--Or I feel so now."
+
+"Not when you're racing the Begum, I think. There's no necessity for you
+to turn democrat like Austin. Do you write now?"
+
+"No. What is writing like mine? It doesn't deceive me. I know it's only
+the excuse I'm making to myself for remaining idle. I haven't written a
+line since--lately."
+
+"Because you are so happy."
+
+"No, not because of that. Of course I'm very happy..." He did not
+finish.
+
+Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder skies. No
+Scientific Humanist was by to study the natural development, and
+guide him. This lady would hardly be deemed a very proper guide to the
+undirected energies of the youth, yet they had established relations of
+that nature. She was five years older than he, and a woman, which may
+explain her serene presumption.
+
+The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder smouldered over the
+sea.
+
+"We'll work together in town, at all events," said Richard,
+
+"Why can't we go about together at night and find out people who want
+help?"
+
+Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by saying, "I think
+we mustn't be too romantic. You will become a knight-errant, I suppose.
+You have the characteristics of one."
+
+"Especially at breakfast," Adrian's unnecessarily emphatic gastronomical
+lessons to the young wife here came in.
+
+"You must be our champion," continued Lady Judith: "the rescuer and
+succourer of distressed dames and damsels. We want one badly."
+
+"You do," said Richard, earnestly: "from what I hear: from what I
+know!" His thoughts flew off with him as knight-errant hailed shrilly
+at exceeding critical moment by distressed dames and damsels. Images
+of airy towers hung around. His fancy performed miraculous feats. The
+towers crumbled. The stars grew larger, seemed to throb with lustre.
+His fancy crumbled with the towers of the air, his heart gave a leap, he
+turned to Lucy.
+
+"My darling! what have you been doing?" And as if to compensate her for
+his little knight-errant infidelity, he pressed very tenderly to her.
+
+"We have been engaged in a charming conversation on domestic cookery,"
+interposed Adrian.
+
+"Cookery! such an evening as this?" His face was a handsome likeness of
+Hippias at the presentation of bridecake.
+
+"Dearest! you know it's very useful," Lucy mirthfully pleaded.
+
+"Indeed I quite agree with you, child," said Lady Judith, "and I think
+you have the laugh of us. I certainly will learn to cook some day."
+
+"Woman's mission, in so many words," ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"And pray, what is man's?"
+
+"To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon."
+
+"Let us give it up to them," said Lady Judith to Richard. "You and I
+never will make so delightful and beautifully balanced a world of it."
+
+Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give everything up
+to the fair face, his bridal Hesper.
+
+Neat day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and, as she did so, her heart
+sank to see how painfully it affected him that she should hesitate to go
+with him to his father. He was patient, gentle; he sat down by her side
+to appeal to her reason, and used all the arguments he could think of to
+persuade her.
+
+"If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees he has nothing
+to be ashamed of in you--rather everything to be proud of; if you are
+only near him, you will not have to speak a word, and I'm certain--as
+certain as that I live--that in a week we shall be settled happily at
+Raynham. I know my father so well, Lucy. Nobody knows him but I."
+
+Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.
+
+"Adrian? Not a bit. Adrian only knows a part of people, Lucy; and not
+the best part."
+
+Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of her conquest.
+
+"Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?"
+
+"No, no, Richard; oh, dear no!" she cried, and looked at him more
+tenderly because she was not quite truthful.
+
+"He doesn't know my father at all," said Richard. But Lucy had another
+opinion of the wise youth, and secretly maintained it. She could not be
+won to imagine the baronet a man of human mould, generous, forgiving,
+full of passionate love at heart, as Richard tried to picture him, and
+thought him, now that he beheld him again through Adrian's embassy. To
+her he was that awful figure, shrouded by the midnight. "Why are you
+so harsh?" she had heard Richard cry more than once. She was sure that
+Adrian must be right.
+
+"Well, I tell you I won't go without you," said Richard, and Lucy begged
+for a little more time.
+
+Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause. Adrian positively refused
+to go on the water unless that element were smooth as a plate. The
+South-west still joked boisterously at any comparison of the sort; the
+days were magnificent; Richard had yachting engagements; and Lucy always
+petitioned to stay to keep Adrian company, concerning it her duty as
+hostess. Arguing with Adrian was an absurd idea. If Richard hinted
+at his retaining Lucy, the wise youth would remark: "It's a wholesome
+interlude to your extremely Cupidinous behaviour, my dear boy."
+
+Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to talk about.
+
+"All manner of things," said Lucy; "not only cookery. He is so amusing,
+though he does make fun of The Pilgrim's Scrip, and I think he ought
+not. And then, do you know, darling--you won't think me vain?--I think
+he is beginning to like me a little."
+
+Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.
+
+"Doesn't everybody like you, admire you? Doesn't Lord Mountfalcon, and
+Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?"
+
+"But he is one of your family, Richard."
+
+"And they all will, if she isn't a coward."
+
+"Ah, no!" she sighs, and is chidden.
+
+The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife's conquest beyond her
+husband, however loyally devised for their mutual happiness, may be
+costly to her. Richard in his hours of excitement was thrown very much
+with Lady Judith. He consulted her regarding what he termed Lucy's
+cowardice. Lady Judith said: "I think she's wrong, but you must learn to
+humour little women."
+
+"Then would you advise me to go up alone?" he asked, with a cloudy
+forehead.
+
+"What else can you do? Be reconciled yourself as quickly as you can. You
+can't drag her like a captive, you know?"
+
+It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride the peerless
+flower of Creation, to learn that he must humour a little woman in her.
+It was revolting to Richard.
+
+"What I fear," he said, "is, that my father will make it smooth with me,
+and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall have to
+leave her, and tit for tat--an abominable existence, like a ball on a
+billiard-table. I won't bear that ignominy. And this I know, I know! she
+might prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it. You,
+you, Lady Judith, you wouldn't be a coward?"
+
+"Where my old lord tells me to go, I go," the lady coldly replied.
+"There's not much merit in that. Pray, don't cite me. Women are born
+cowards, you know."
+
+"But I love the women who are not cowards."
+
+"The little thing--your wife has not refused to go?"
+
+"No--but tears! Who can stand tears?"
+
+Lucy had come to drop them. Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted, and
+urgent where he saw the thing to do so clearly, the young husband had
+spoken strong words: and she, who knew that she would have given her
+life by inches for him; who knew that she was playing a part for his
+happiness, and hiding for his sake the nature that was worthy his
+esteem; the poor little martyr had been weak a moment.
+
+She had Adrian's support. The wise youth was very comfortable. He liked
+the air of the Island, and he liked being petted. "A nice little woman!
+a very nice little woman!" Tom Bakewell heard him murmur to himself
+according to a habit he had; and his air of rather succulent patronage
+as he walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty, with his head thrown
+back and a smile that seemed always to be in secret communion with his
+marked abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what
+she played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling,
+when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing.
+Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous
+pattings of the same, were not infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then
+Anacreontic in his compliments. Lucy would say: "That's worse than Lord
+Mountfalcon."
+
+"Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ--allow that?" quoth
+Adrian.
+
+"He is very kind," said Lucy.
+
+"To all, save to our noble vernacular," added Adrian. "He seems to scent
+a rival to his dignity there."
+
+It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.
+
+"We are at our ease here in excellent society," he wrote to Lady
+Blandish. "I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune, or
+a superlative instinct. Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable mate.
+She can look at a lord, and cook for an epicure. Besides Dr. Kitchener,
+she reads and comments on The Pilgrim's Scrip. The `Love' chapter, of
+course, takes her fancy. That picture of Woman, `Drawn by Reverence
+and coloured by Love,' she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up
+pretty eyes. Also the lover's petition: 'Give me purity to be worthy the
+good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.' 'Tis quite
+taking to hear her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the petition! I
+make her read me her choice passages. She has not a bad voice.
+
+"The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin's Miss Menteith, married to the
+incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him. Lord
+Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her--what? She has been trying to find
+out, but they have both got over their perplexity, and act respectively
+the bad man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which our
+young couple found them, and haply diverted its perils. They had quite
+taken them in hand. Lady Judith undertakes to cure the fair Papist of
+a pretty, modest trick of frowning and blushing when addressed, and his
+lordship directs the exuberant energies of the original man. 'Tis thus
+we fulfil our destinies, and are content. Sometimes they change pupils;
+my lord educates the little dame, and my lady the hope of Raynham. Joy
+and blessings unto all! as the German poet sings. Lady Judith accepted
+the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent service to her
+fellow-creatures. Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.
+
+"I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study. I
+think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a yeoman's
+niece. The language of the two social extremes is similar. I find it to
+consist in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and adjectives. My lord
+and Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my lord's has lost its
+backbone, and is limp, though fluent. Their pursuits are identical; but
+that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim terms it, vantage, and the
+other has not. Their ideas seem to have a special relationship in the
+peculiarity of stopping where they have begun. Young Tom Blaize with
+vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon. Even in the character of their
+parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound to confess that the
+Hon. Peter Brayder, who is my lord's parasite, is by no means noxious.
+
+"This sounds dreadfully democrat. Pray, don't be alarmed. The discovery
+of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal British Oak has
+made me thrice conservative. I see now that the national love of a lord
+is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat
+on one's image, as it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable
+wisdom of our system:--could there be a finer balance of power than in
+a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a
+gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to intellect--that noble rebel, as
+the Pilgrim has it--to stand, and bow, and know itself superior! This
+exquisite compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period
+anticipated by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an
+intellectual aristocracy, is indeed horrible to contemplate. For what
+despotism is so black as one the mind cannot challenge? 'Twill be an
+iron Age. Wherefore, madam, I cry, and shall continue to cry, 'Vive Lord
+Mountfalcon! long may he sip his Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed carry
+him on their shoulders!'
+
+"Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and
+Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a scrape.
+Our Richard has just been elected member of a Club for the promotion
+of nausea. Is he happy? you ask. As much so as one who has had the
+misfortune to obtain what he wanted can be. Speed is his passion. He
+races from point to point. In emulation of Leander and Don Juan,
+he swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the other day, or some
+world-shaking feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he went to meet:
+or, as they who pun say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty little domestic
+episode occurred this morning. He finds her abstracted in the fire of
+his caresses: she turns shy and seeks solitude: green jealousy takes
+hold of him: he lies in wait, and discovers her with his new rival--a
+veteran edition of the culinary Doctor! Blind to the Doctor's great
+national services, deaf to her wild music, he grasps the intruder,
+dismembers him, and performs upon him the treatment he has recommended
+for dressed cucumber. Tears and shrieks accompany the descent of the
+gastronome. Down she rushes to secure the cherished fragments: he
+follows: they find him, true to his character, alighted and straggling
+over a bed of blooming flowers. Yet ere a fairer flower can gather him,
+a heel black as Pluto stamps him into earth, flowers and all:--happy
+burial! Pathetic tribute to his merit is watering his grave, when by
+saunters my Lord Mountfalcon. 'What's the mattah?' says his lordship,
+soothing his moustache. They break apart, and 'tis left to me to explain
+from the window. My lord looks shocked, Richard is angry with her for
+having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty dries her eyes, and after a
+pause of general foolishness, the business of life is resumed. I may add
+that the Doctor has just been dug up, and we are busy, in the enemy's
+absence, renewing old Aeson with enchanted threads. By the way, a Papist
+priest has blest them."
+
+A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He was very
+comfortable; so of course he thought Time was doing his duty. Not a word
+did he say of Richard's return, and for some reason or other neither
+Richard nor Lucy spoke of it now.
+
+Lady Blandish wrote back: "His father thinks he has refused to come to
+him. By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must be so.
+Make him come. Bring him by force. Insist on his coming. Is he mad? He
+must come at once."
+
+To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a day
+or two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady's advice,
+"The point is that the half man declines to come without the whole man.
+The terrible question of sex is our obstruction."
+
+Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive assurance that the
+baronet would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but she
+thought she saw in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at least
+when the opening to come and make his peace seemed to be before him,
+should let days and weeks go by. She saw through the mask sufficiently
+not to have any hope of his consenting to receive the couple at present;
+she was sure that his equanimity was fictitious; but she pierced no
+farther, or she might have started and asked herself, Is this the heart
+of a woman?
+
+The lady at last wrote to Richard. She said: "Come instantly, and come
+alone." Then Richard, against his judgment, gave way. "My father is
+not the man I thought him!" he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy felt his eyes
+saying to her: "And you, too, are not the woman I thought you."
+Nothing could the poor little heart reply but strain to his bosom and
+sleeplessly pray in his arms all the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin Clare was married,
+under the blessings of her energetic mother, and with the approbation of
+her kinsfolk, to the husband that had been expeditiously chosen for her.
+The gentleman, though something more than twice the age of his bride,
+had no idea of approaching senility for many long connubial years to
+come. Backed by his tailor and his hairdresser, he presented no such bad
+figure at the altar, and none would have thought that he was an ancient
+admirer of his bride's mama, as certainly none knew he had lately
+proposed for Mrs. Doria before there was any question of her daughter.
+These things were secrets; and the elastic and happy appearance of Mr.
+John Todhunter did not betray them at the altar. Perhaps he would rather
+have married the mother. He was a man of property, well born, tolerably
+well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for the first time,
+the reputation of being a fool--which a wealthy man may have in his
+youth; but as he lived on, and did not squander his money--amassed it,
+on the contrary, and did not seek to go into Parliament, and did other
+negative wise things, the world's opinion, as usual, veered completely
+round, and John Todhunter was esteemed a shrewd, sensible man--only not
+brilliant; that he was brilliant could not be said of him. In fact,
+the man could hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no
+impromptu deliveries were required of him in the marriage-service.
+
+Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She had discovered
+something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any
+confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes
+are not resolutely shut. She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had
+fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain
+she entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she said,
+illegal alliance his son had contracted. Sir Austin would not even stop
+the little pension to poor Berry. "At least you will do that, Austin,"
+she begged pathetically. "You will show your sense of that horrid
+woman's conduct?" He refused to offer up any victim to console her. Then
+Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,--and when an outraged energetic lady
+is finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded treasures,
+she does not use half words as a medium. His System, and his conduct
+generally were denounced to him, without analysis. She let him
+understand that the world laughed at him; and he heard this from her
+at a time when his mask was still soft and liable to be acted on by his
+nerves. "You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell you!" she said, and, like
+all angry and self-interested people, prophecy came easy to her. In her
+heart she accused him of her own fault, in imputing to him the wreck of
+her project. The baronet allowed her to revel in the proclamation of a
+dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep apart from him, which
+his sister assured him she would do.
+
+But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman. Mark the
+race at any hour. "What revolution and hubbub does not that little
+instrument, the needle, avert from us!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip. Alas,
+that in calamity women cannot stitch! Now that she saw Clare wanted
+other than iron, it struck her she must have a husband, and be made
+secure as a woman and a wife. This seemed the thing to do: and, as she
+had forced the iron down Clare's throat, so she forced the husband, and
+Clare gulped at the latter as she had at the former. On the very day
+that Mrs. Doria had this new track shaped out before her, John Todhunter
+called at the Foreys'. "Old John!" sang out Mrs. Doria, "show him up to
+me. I want to see him particularly." He sat with her alone. He was a
+man multitudes of women would have married--whom will they not?--and who
+would have married any presentable woman: but women do want asking, and
+John never had the word. The rape of such men is left to the practical
+animal. So John sat alone with his old flame. He had become resigned to
+her perpetual lamentation and living Suttee for his defunct rival. But,
+ha! what meant those soft glances now--addressed to him? His tailor and
+his hairdresser gave youth to John, but they had not the art to bestow
+upon him distinction, and an undistinguished man what woman looks at?
+John was an indistinguishable man. For that reason he was dry wood to a
+soft glance.
+
+And now she said: "It is time you should marry; and you are the man
+to be the guide and helper of a young woman, John. You are well
+preserved--younger than most of the young men of our day. You are
+eminently domestic, a good son, and will be a good husband and good
+father. Some one you must marry.--What do you think of Clare for a wife
+for you?"
+
+At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much like his marrying
+a baby. However, he listened to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria.
+
+She went down to John's mother, and consulted with her on the propriety
+of the scheme of wedding her daughter to John in accordance with his
+proposition. Mrs. Todhunter's jealousy of any disturbing force in the
+influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria knew to be one of the causes
+of John's remaining constant to the impression she had afore-time
+produced on him. She spoke so kindly of John, and laid so much stress
+on the ingrained obedience and passive disposition of her daughter, that
+Mrs. Todhunter was led to admit she did think it almost time John should
+be seeking a mate, and that he--all things considered--would hardly find
+a fitter one. And this, John Todhunter--old John no more--heard to his
+amazement when, a day or two subsequently, he instanced the probable
+disapproval of his mother.
+
+The match was arranged. Mrs. Doria did the wooing. It consisted in
+telling Clare that she had come to years when marriage was desirable,
+and that she had fallen into habits of moping which might have the
+worse effect on her future life, as it had on her present health and
+appearance, and which a husband would cure. Richard was told by Mrs.
+Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented to accept Mr. John
+Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than obedience--with
+alacrity. At all events, when Richard spoke to Clare, the strange
+passive creature did not admit constraint on her inclinations. Mrs.
+Doria allowed Richard to speak to her. She laughed at his futile
+endeavours to undo her work, and the boyish sentiments he uttered on the
+subject. "Let us see, child," she said, "let us see which turns out the
+best; a marriage of passion, or a marriage of common sense."
+
+Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union. Richard made
+repeated journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph was quartered, and if Ralph
+could have been persuaded to carry off a young lady who did not love
+him, from the bridegroom her mother averred she did love, Mrs. Doria
+might have been defeated. But Ralph in his cavalry quarters was cooler
+than Ralph in the Bursley meadows. "Women are oddities, Dick," he
+remarked, running a finger right and left along his upper lip. "Best
+leave them to their own freaks. She's a dear girl, though she doesn't
+talk: I like her for that. If she cared for me I'd go the race. She
+never did. It's no use asking a girl twice. She knows whether she cares
+a fig for a fellow."
+
+The hero quitted him with some contempt, As Ralph Morton was a young
+man, and he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he sought
+another private interview with Clare, and getting her alone, said:
+"Clare, I've come to you for the last time. Will you marry Ralph
+Morton?"
+
+To which Clare replied, "I cannot marry two husbands, Richard."
+
+"Will you refuse to marry this old man?"
+
+"I must do as mama wishes."
+
+"Then you're going to marry an old man--a man you don't love, and can't
+love! Oh, good God! do you know what you're doing?" He flung about in
+a fury. "Do you know what it is? Clare!" he caught her two hands
+violently, "have you any idea of the horror you're going to commit?"
+
+She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed nor stammered:
+answering: "I see nothing wrong in doing what mama thinks right,
+Richard."
+
+"Your mother! I tell you it's an infamy, Clare! It's a miserable sin! I
+tell you, if I had done such a thing I would not live an hour after it.
+And coldly to prepare for it! to be busy about your dresses! They told
+me when I came in that you were with the milliner. To be smiling over
+the horrible outrage! decorating yourself!"...
+
+"Dear Richard," said Clare, "you will make me very unhappy."
+
+"That one of my blood should be so debased!" he cried, brushing angrily
+at his face. "Unhappy! I beg you to feel for yourself, Clare. But I
+suppose," and he said it scornfully, "girls don't feel this sort of
+shame."
+
+She grew a trifle paler.
+
+"Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard."
+
+"Have you no will of your own?" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he
+detested in her.
+
+"No, I believe you have none!" he added. "And what can I do? I can't
+step forward and stop this accursed marriage. If you would but say a
+word I would save you; but you tie my hands. And they expect me to stand
+by and see it done!"
+
+"Will you not be there, Richard?" said Clare, following the question
+with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that had so thrilled him on
+his marriage morn.
+
+"Oh, my darling Clare!" he cried in the kindest way he had ever used
+to her, "if you knew how I feel this!" and now as he wept she wept, and
+came insensibly into his arms.
+
+"My darling Clare!" he repeated.
+
+She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.
+
+"You will do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So lovely as you are,
+too!... Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to you, and
+tell you all.... Look up. Can you still consent?"
+
+"I must not disobey mama," Clare murmured, without looking up from the
+nest her cheek had made on his bosom.
+
+"Then kiss me for the last time," said Richard. "I'll never kiss you
+after it, Clare."
+
+He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly round
+him, and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips, shutting her
+eyes, her face suffused with a burning red.
+
+Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses.
+
+Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a stone
+wall. To her indeed the young married hero spoke almost indecorously,
+and that which his delicacy withheld him from speaking to Clare. He
+could provoke nothing more responsive from the practical animal than
+"Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!"
+
+"Really," Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, "that boy's education acts
+like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything sensibly. He is for
+ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come to at last
+heaven only knows! I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear
+it."
+
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not very
+well worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical controversy,
+as it were, with her brother. Doubtless she did trust he would be able
+to bear his sorrows to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can barely
+help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophecied much grief to the
+baronet.
+
+Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and
+had none of your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love
+in marriage, moved as one guiltless of offence, and deserving his
+happiness. Mrs. Doria shielded him from the hero. To see him smile at
+Clare's obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was touching.
+
+Meantime Clare's marriage served one purpose. It completely occupied
+Richard's mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of not
+finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town. A letter
+had awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, "Detain him till you hear
+further from me. Take him about with you into every form of society."
+No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone
+down to Wales on pressing business, and would be back in a week or
+so. For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young
+gentleman in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria. "Leave him to me," said
+Mrs. Doria, "I'll manage him." And she did.
+
+"Who can say," asks The Pilgrim's Scrip, "when he is not walking a
+puppet to some woman?"
+
+Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. "I believe," she observed, as
+Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,--"it is my firm
+opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her little
+finger--only give her time and opportunity." By dwelling on the arts of
+women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to divide the
+young husband from his wife till it pleased his father they should
+live their unhallowed union again. Without compunction, or a sense of
+incongruity, she abused her brother and assisted the fulfilment of his
+behests.
+
+So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or
+indifferent. Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his feelings,
+Richard found himself standing behind Clare in the church--the very
+edifice that had witnessed his own marriage, and heard, "I, Clare Doria,
+take thee John Pemberton," clearly pronounced. He stood with black brows
+dissecting the arts of the tailor and hairdresser on unconscious John.
+The back, and much of the middle, of Mr. Todhunter's head was bald; the
+back shone like an egg-shell, but across the middle the artist had drawn
+two long dabs of hair from the sides, and plastered them cunningly,
+so that all save wilful eyes would have acknowledged the head to be
+covered. The man's only pretension was to a respectable juvenility. He
+had a good chest, stout limbs, a face inclined to be jolly. Mrs. Doria
+had no cause to be put out of countenance at all by the exterior of her
+son-in-law: nor was she. Her splendid hair and gratified smile made a
+light in the church. Playing puppets must be an immense pleasure to the
+practical animal. The Forey bridesmaids, five in number, and one Miss
+Doria, their cousin, stood as girls do stand at these sacrifices,
+whether happy, sad, or indifferent; a smile on their lips and tears in
+attendance. Old Mrs. Todhunter, an exceedingly small ancient woman, was
+also there. "I can't have my boy John married without seeing it
+done," she said, and throughout the ceremony she was muttering audible
+encomiums on her John's manly behaviour.
+
+The ring was affixed to Clare's finger; there was no ring lost in this
+common-sense marriage. The instant the clergyman bade him employ it,
+John drew the ring out, and dropped it on the finger of the cold passive
+hand in a businesslike way, as one who had studied the matter. Mrs.
+Doria glanced aside at Richard. Richard observed Clare spread out her
+fingers that the operation might be the more easily effected.
+
+He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to his aunt:
+
+"Now I'll go."
+
+"You'll come to the breakfast, child? The Foreys"--
+
+He cut her short. "I've stood for the family, and I'll do no more. I
+won't pretend to eat and make merry over it."
+
+"Richard!"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+She had attained her object and she wisely gave way.
+
+"Well. Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand. Pray, pray be civil."
+
+She turned to Adrian, and said: "He is going. You must go with him, and
+find some means of keeping him, or he'll be running off to that woman.
+Now, no words--go!"
+
+Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to him humbly, but he
+kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"Do not cease to love me," she said in a quavering whisper in his ear.
+
+Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the hairdresser
+with his pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively was married, he thought
+he would rather have the daughter than the mother, which is a reverse of
+the order of human thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.
+
+"Richard, my boy!" he said heartily, "congratulate me."
+
+"I should be happy to, if I could," sedately replied the hero, to the
+consternation of those around. Nodding to the bridesmaids and bowing to
+the old lady, he passed out.
+
+Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
+unpleasantness, just hinted to John: "You know, poor fellow, he has got
+into a mess with his marriage."
+
+"Oh! ah! yes!" kindly said John, "poor fellow!"
+
+All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.
+
+Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of mind.
+Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted him.
+However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong disgust
+he felt was only expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly
+matter engendered by the conversation. They walked side by side into
+Kensington Gardens. The hero was mouthing away to himself, talking by
+fits.
+
+Presently he faced Adrian, crying: "And I might have stopped it! I see
+it now! I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking him
+if he dared marry a girl who did not love him. And I never thought of
+it. Good heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience."
+
+"Ah!" groaned Adrian. "An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that!
+I would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple. Do you
+purpose going to him now?"
+
+The hero soliloquized: "He's not a bad sort of man."...
+
+"Well, he's not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder
+your aunt selected him, no doubt? He's decidedly of the Roundhead type,
+with the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent."
+
+"There's the double infamy!" cried Richard, "that a man you can't call
+bad, should do this damned thing!"
+
+"Well, it's hard we can't find a villain."
+
+"He would have listened to me, I'm sure."
+
+"Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It's not yet too late.
+Who knows? If he really has a noble elevated superior mind--though not a
+Cavalier in person, he may be one at heart--he might, to please you, and
+since you put such stress upon it, abstain...perhaps with some loss of
+dignity, but never mind. And the request might be singular, or seem so,
+but everything has happened before in this world, you know, my dear
+boy. And what an infinite consolation it is for the eccentric, that
+reflection!"
+
+The hero was impervious to the wise youth. He stared at him as if he
+were but a speck in the universe he visioned.
+
+It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian's best subject for
+cynical pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies he started, and his
+worst in the way he took it; and the wise youth, against his will, had
+to feel as conscious of the young man's imaginative mental armour, as he
+was of his muscular physical.
+
+"The same sort of day!" mused Richard, looking up. "I suppose my
+father's right. We make our own fates, and nature has nothing to do with
+it."
+
+Adrian yawned.
+
+"Some difference in the trees, though," Richard continued abstractedly.
+
+"Growing bald at the top," said Adrian.
+
+"Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the conduct of that
+wretched slave Clare to Lucy's, who, she had the cruel insolence to say,
+entangled me into marriage?" the hero broke out loudly and rapidly. "You
+know--I told you, Adrian--how I had to threaten and insist, and how she
+pleaded, and implored me to wait."
+
+"Ah! hum!" mumbled Adrian.
+
+"You remember my telling you?" Richard was earnest to hear her
+exonerated.
+
+"Pleaded and implored, my dear boy? Oh, no doubt she did. Where's the
+lass that doesn't."
+
+"Call my wife by another name, if you please."
+
+"The generic title can't be cancelled because of your having married one
+of the body, my son."
+
+"She did all she could to persuade me to wait!" emphasized Richard.
+
+Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.
+
+"Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!"
+
+Richard bellowed: "What more could she have done?"
+
+"She could have shaved her head, for instance."
+
+This happy shaft did stick. With a furious exclamation Richard shot
+in front, Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his
+assumption verified), whether he did not think she might have shaved her
+head? and, presuming her to have done so, whether, in candour, he did
+not think he would have waited--at least till she looked less of a rank
+lunatic?
+
+After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about
+Richard's head. Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement
+deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear lovely
+home-face. He told Adrian it was his intention to go down that night.
+Adrian immediately became serious. He was at a loss what to invent
+to detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was coming
+to-morrow. He rendered homage to the genius of woman in these straits.
+"My aunt," he thought, "would have the lie ready; and not only that, but
+she would take care it did its work."
+
+At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them, proving
+to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon's parasite. He
+greeted them very cordially; and Richard, remembering some fun they had
+in the Island, asked him to dine with them; postponing his return till
+the next day. Lucy was his. It was even sweet to dally with the delight
+of seeing her.
+
+The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to. Though
+not so tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and he had
+a power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the
+exigencies of his profession. He had not a rap of money in the world;
+yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely. The world said that
+the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship, and that, in common with
+that of Parasite, he exercised the ancient companion profession. This
+the world said, and still smiled at the Hon. Peter; for he was an
+engaging fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon would not go.
+
+They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian, and made a
+square at the table, Ripton Thompson being the fourth. Richard sent
+down to his office to fetch him, and the two friends shook hands for
+the first time since the great deed had been executed. Deep was the
+Old Dog's delight to hear the praises of his Beauty sounded by such
+aristocratic lips as the Hon. Peter Brayder's. All through the dinner he
+was throwing out hints and small queries to get a fuller account of her;
+and when the claret had circulated, he spoke a word or two himself,
+and heard the Hon. Peter eulogize his taste, and wish him a bride as
+beautiful; at which Ripton blushed, and said, he had no hope of that,
+and the Hon. Peter assured him marriage did not break the mould.
+
+After the wine this gentleman took his cigar on the balcony, and found
+occasion to get some conversation with Adrian alone.
+
+"Our young friend here--made it all right with the governor?" he asked
+carelessly.
+
+"Oh yes!" said Adrian. But it struck him that Brayder might be of
+assistance in showing Richard a little of the `society in every form'
+required by his chief's prescript. "That is," he continued, "we are not
+yet permitted an interview with the august author of our being, and I
+have rather a difficult post. 'Tis mine both to keep him here, and also
+to find him the opportunity to measure himself with his fellow-man. In
+other words, his father wants him to see something of life before he
+enters upon housekeeping. Now I am proud to confess that I'm hardly
+equal to the task. The demi, or damnedmonde--if it's that lie wants him
+to observe--is one that I leave not got the walk to."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Brayder. "You do the keeping, I offer to parade the
+demi. I must say, though, it's a queer notion of the old gentleman."
+
+"It's the continuation of a philosophic plan," said Adrian.
+
+Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar with his eyes,
+and ejaculated, "Infernally philosophic!"
+
+"Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Mount? to tell the truth I don't know where he is. Chasing some light
+craft, I suppose. That's poor Mount's weakness. It's his ruin, poor
+fellow! He's so confoundedly in earnest at the game."
+
+"He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true," remarked
+Adrian.
+
+"He's a baby about women, and always will be," said Brayder. "He's been
+once or twice wanting to marry them. Now there's a woman--you've
+heard of Mrs. Mount? All the world knows her.--If that woman hadn't
+scandalized."--The young man joined them, and checked the communication.
+Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully indicated the presence of an
+innocent.
+
+"A married man, you know," said Adrian.
+
+"Yes, yes!--we won't shock him," Brayder observed. He appeared to study
+the young man while they talked.
+
+Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his aunt. Mrs. Doria
+took a seat by his side and spoke as follows:
+
+"My dear nephew. Now you know I have always loved you, and thought of
+your welfare as if you had been my own child. More than that, I fear.
+Well, now, you are thinking of returning to--to that place--are you not?
+Yes. It is as I thought. Very well now, let me speak to you. You are
+in a much more dangerous position than you imagine. I don't deny your
+father's affection for you. It would be absurd to deny it. But you are
+of an age now to appreciate his character. Whatever you may do he will
+always give you money. That you are sure of; that you know. Very well.
+But you are one to want more than money: you want his love. Richard, I
+am convinced you will never be happy, whatever base pleasures you may be
+led into, if he should withhold his love from you. Now, child, you
+know you have grievously offended him. I wish not to animadvert on your
+conduct.--You fancied yourself in love, and so on, and you were rash.
+The less said of it the better now. But you must now--it is your duty
+now to do something--to do everything that lies in your power to show
+him you repent. No interruptions! Listen to me. You must consider
+him. Austin is not like other men. Austin requires the most delicate
+management. You must--whether you feel it or no--present an appearance
+of contrition. I counsel it for the good of all. He is just like a
+woman, and where his feelings are offended he wants utter subservience.
+He has you in town, and he does not see you:--now you know that he and
+I are not in communication: we have likewise our differences:--Well, he
+has you in town, and he holds aloof:--he is trying you, my dear Richard.
+No: he is not at Raynham: I do not know where he is. He is trying you,
+child, and you must be patient. You must convince him that you do not
+care utterly for your own gratification. If this person--I wish to speak
+of her with respect, for your sake--well, if she loves you at all--if, I
+say, she loves you one atom, she will repeat my solicitations for you
+to stay and patiently wait here till he consents to see you. I tell you
+candidly, it's your only chance of ever getting him to receive her. That
+you should know. And now, Richard, I may add that there is something
+else you should know. You should know that it depends entirely upon your
+conduct now, whether you are to see your father's heart for ever divided
+from you, and a new family at Raynham. You do not understand? I will
+explain. Brothers and sisters are excellent things for young people, but
+a new brood of them can hardly be acceptable to a young man. In fact,
+they are, and must be, aliens. I only tell you what I have heard on good
+authority. Don't you understand now? Foolish boy! if you do not humour
+him, he will marry her. Oh! I am sure of it. I know it. And this you
+will drive him to. I do not warn you on the score of your prospects,
+but of your feelings. I should regard such a contingency, Richard, as a
+final division between you. Think of the scandal! but alas, that is the
+least of the evils."
+
+It was Mrs. Doria's object to produce an impression, and avoid an
+argument. She therefore left him as soon as she had, as she supposed,
+made her mark on the young man. Richard was very silent during the
+speech, and save for an exclamation or so, had listened attentively. He
+pondered on what his aunt said. He loved Lady Blandish, and yet he did
+not wish to see her Lady Feverel. Mrs. Doria laid painful stress on the
+scandal, and though he did not give his mind to this, he thought of it.
+He thought of his mother. Where was she? But most his thoughts recurred
+to his father, and something akin to jealousy slowly awakened his heart
+to him. He had given him up, and had not latterly felt extremely filial;
+but he could not bear the idea of a division in the love of which he
+had ever been the idol and sole object. And such a man, too! so good!
+so generous! If it was jealousy that roused the young man's heart to his
+father, the better part of love was also revived in it. He thought of
+old days: of his father's forbearance, his own wilfulness. He looked
+on himself, and what he had done, with the eyes of such a man. He
+determined to do all he could to regain his favour.
+
+Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her nephew intended
+waiting in town another week.
+
+"That will do," smiled Mrs. Doria. "He will be more patient at the end
+of a week."
+
+"Oh! does patience beget patience?" said Adrian. "I was not aware it was
+a propagating virtue. I surrender him to you. I shan't be able to hold
+him in after one week more. I assure you, my dear aunt, he's already"...
+
+"Thank you, no explanation," Mrs. Doria begged.
+
+When Richard saw her nest, he was informed that she had received a most
+satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter: quite a glowing account of
+John's behaviour: but on Richard's desiring to know the words Clare
+had written, Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and shot into worldly
+gossip.
+
+"Clare seldom glows," said Richard.
+
+"No, I mean for her," his aunt remarked. "Don't look like your father,
+child."
+
+"I should like to have seen the letter," said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A Lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides and
+walks. She passed him rather obviously and often. She was very handsome;
+a bold beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes not afraid
+of men. The hair was brushed from her temples, leaving one of those fine
+reckless outlines which the action of driving, and the pace, admirably
+set off. She took his fancy. He liked the air of petulant gallantry
+about her, and mused upon the picture, rare to him, of a glorious
+dashing woman. He thought, too, she looked at him. He was not at the
+time inclined to be vain, or he might have been sure she did. Once it
+struck him she nodded slightly.
+
+He asked Adrian one day in the park--who she was.
+
+"I don't know her," said Adrian. "Probably a superior priestess of
+Paphos."
+
+"Now that's my idea of Bellona," Richard exclaimed. "Not the fury they
+paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking creature like that."
+
+"Bellona?" returned the wise youth. "I don't think her hair was black.
+Red, wasn't it? I shouldn't compare her to Bellona; though, no doubt,
+she's as ready to spill blood. Look at her! She does seem to scent
+carnage. I see your idea. No; I should liken her to Diana emerged from
+the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play among the gods.
+Depend upon it--they tell us nothing of the matter--Olympus shrouds the
+story--but you may be certain that when she left the pretty shepherd she
+had greater vogue than Venus up aloft."
+
+Brayder joined them.
+
+"See Mrs. Mount go by?" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's Mrs. Mount!" cried Adrian.
+
+"Who's Mrs. Mount?" Richard inquired.
+
+"A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy."
+
+"Like to know her?" drawled the Hon. Peter.
+
+Richard replied indifferently, "No," and Mrs. Mount passed out of sight
+and out of the conversation.
+
+The young man wrote submissive letters to his father. "I have remained
+here waiting to see you now five weeks," he wrote. "I have written to
+you three letters, and you do not reply to them. Let me tell you again
+how sincerely I desire and pray that you will come, or permit me to come
+to you and throw myself at your feet, and beg my forgiveness, and hers.
+She as earnestly implores it. Indeed, I am very wretched, sir. Believe
+me, there is nothing I would not do to regain your esteem and the love I
+fear I have unhappily forfeited. I will remain another week in the hope
+of hearing from you, or seeing you. I beg of you, sir, not to drive me
+mad. Whatever you ask of me I will consent to."
+
+"Nothing he would not do!" the baronet commented as he read. "There is
+nothing he would not do! He will remain another week and give me that
+final chance! And it is I who drive him mad! Already he is beginning to
+cast his retribution on my shoulders."
+
+Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way. A
+Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it, and
+the author of The Pilgrim'S Scrip in trouble found London too hot for
+him. He quitted London to take refuge among the mountains; living there
+in solitary commune with a virgin Note-book.
+
+Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son. Had
+he construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a vague
+principle that the young man should be tried and tested.
+
+"Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live with his equals
+for a term. If he loves me he will read my wishes." Thus he explained
+his principle to Lady Blandish.
+
+The lady wrote: "You speak of a term. Till when? May I name one to him?
+It is the dreadful uncertainty that reduces him to despair. That, and
+nothing else. Pray be explicit."
+
+In return, he distantly indicated Richard's majority.
+
+How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away
+from his wife? Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she
+worshipped.
+
+When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed
+in deceiving and imposing upon others. Not only was Lady Blandish
+mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody's
+mind, and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother from
+infancy, and had never known herself to be once wrong about him, she
+confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin's principle. "For
+principle he has," said Mrs. Doria; "he never acts without one. But what
+it is, I cannot at present perceive. If he would write, and command
+the boy to await his return, all would be clear. He allows us to go and
+fetch him, and then leaves us all in a quandary. It must be some woman's
+influence. That is the only way to account for it."
+
+"Singular!" interjected Adrian, "what pride women have in their sex!
+Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow I
+hand my charge over to your keeping. I can't hold him in an hour
+longer. I've had to leash him with lies till my invention's exhausted.
+I petition to have them put down to the chief's account, but when the
+stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I had heard from
+him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready for him on Tuesday
+proximate. 'So!' says my son, 'I'll wait till then,' and from the
+gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I doubt any human power's
+getting him to wait longer."
+
+"We must, we must detain him," said Mrs. Doria. "If we do not, I am
+convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever repent. He
+will marry that woman, Adrian. Mark my words. Now with any other young
+man!... But Richard's education! that ridiculous System!... Has he no
+distraction? nothing to amuse him?"
+
+"Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow."
+
+The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
+
+"I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman."
+
+"My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?"
+
+"Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?--If he had but a
+profession!"
+
+"What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
+profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure you I have served a
+month's apprenticeship with him. We sally forth on the tenth hour of the
+night. A female passes. I hear him groan. 'Is she one of them, Adrian?'
+I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the portion
+of every creature wearing petticoats to be. Another groan; an evident
+internal, 'It cannot be--and yet!'...that we hear on the stage. Rollings
+of eyes: impious questionings of the Creator of the universe; savage
+mutterings against brutal males; and then we meet a second young person,
+and repeat the performance--of which I am rather tired. It would be all
+very well, but he turns upon me, and lectures me because I don't hire a
+house, and furnish it for all the women one meets to live in in purity.
+Now that's too much to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has latterly
+relieved me, I'm happy to say."
+
+Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
+
+"Has Austin written to you since you were in town?"
+
+"Not an Aphorism!" returned Adrian.
+
+"I must see Richard to-morrow morning," Mrs. Doria ended the colloquy by
+saying.
+
+The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made no
+allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days afterward he
+appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands: but what it was
+Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of Mrs. Doria's genius for
+management rose to a very high pitch.
+
+On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of the
+Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable manner,
+"I've come to propose to you to join us in a little dinner-party at
+Richmond. Nobody's in town, you know. London's as dead as a stock-fish.
+Nothing but the scrapings to offer you. But the weather's fine: I
+flatter myself you'll find the company agreeable, What says my friend
+Feverel?"
+
+Richard begged to be excused.
+
+"No, no: positively you must come," said the Hon. Peter. "I've had
+some trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness of your
+incarceration. Richmond's within the rules of your prison. You can be
+back by night. Moonlight on the water--lovely woman. We've engaged a
+city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars--I'm not sure it isn't sixteen.
+Come--the word!"
+
+Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment with Ripton.
+
+"You're in for another rick, you two," said Adrian. "Arrange that we
+go. You haven't seen the cockney's Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and taste of
+peace, my son."
+
+After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
+aside the care that was on him, saying, "Very well. Just as you like.
+We'll take old Rip with us."
+
+Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly declared
+he should be delighted to have Feverel's friend, and offered to take
+them all down in his drag.
+
+"If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide--eh, Feverel,
+my boy?"
+
+Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which
+Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the youth.
+
+Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape, bathed
+in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red horizon haze.
+The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered. It touched no
+link in the chain of his recollection. It was quiet, and belonged to the
+spirit of the season.
+
+Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
+Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather
+an undervoice, as a thing to get over. They made their bow to the first
+knot of ladies they encountered. Propriety was observed strictly, even
+to severity. The general talk was of the weather. Here and there a lady
+would seize a button-hole or any little bit of the habiliments, of the
+man she was addressing; and if it came to her to chide him, she did it
+with more than a forefinger. This, however, was only here and there, and
+a privilege of intimacy.
+
+Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may be
+known by her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering leaned
+against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in
+whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton, with
+a sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were fine men, offering
+inanimate homage. The trim of their whiskerage, the cut of their coats,
+the high-bred indolence in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton's sense of
+self-esteem. But they kindly looked over him. Occasionally one committed
+a momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a
+voice of scathing scorn, "Who's this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero
+to justify his humble pretensions to existence and an identity in the
+shadow of him. Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to
+say or do; and the cold bath before dinner in strange company is one of
+the instances. He had recognized his superb Bellona in the lady by the
+garden window. For Brayder the men had nods and yokes, the ladies
+a pretty playfulness. He was very busy, passing between the groups,
+chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and sometimes
+returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down and crossed his legs,
+looking amused and benignant.
+
+"Whose dinner is it?" Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a cavalier.
+
+"Mount's, I suppose," was the answer.
+
+"Where is he? Why don't he come?"
+
+"An affaire, I fancy."
+
+"There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!"
+
+"She don't seem to cry over it."
+
+Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of her
+Court, who appeared to be Fool.
+
+Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites.
+Brayder posted his three friends. Ripton found himself under the lee of
+a dame with a bosom. On the other aide of him was the mignonne. Adrian
+was at the lower end of the table. Ladies were in profusion, and he
+had his share. Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat. A happy man had
+established himself next to Mrs. Mount. Him Brayder hailed to take the
+head of the table. The happy man objected, Brayder continued urgent, the
+lady tenderly insisted, the happy man grimaced, dropped into the post of
+honour, strove to look placable. Richard usurped his chair, and was not
+badly welcomed by his neighbour.
+
+Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company,
+till the flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a
+hum began to spread. Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and
+displayeth the verity, hath also the quality of colouring it. The ladies
+laughed high; Richard only thought them gay and natural. They flung
+back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton thought only of
+the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks continued a
+regular file-firing.
+
+"Where have you been lately? I haven't seen you in the park," said Mrs.
+Mount to Richard.
+
+"No," he replied, "I've not been there." The question seemed odd: she
+spoke so simply that it did not impress him. He emptied his glass, and
+had it filled again.
+
+The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to horses,
+yachting, opera, and sport generally: who was ruined; by what horse,
+or by what woman. He told one or two of Richard's feats. Fair smiles
+rewarded the hero.
+
+"Do you bet?" said Mrs. Mount.
+
+"Only on myself," returned Richard.
+
+"Bravo!" cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
+sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
+
+"I'm sure you're a safe one to back," she added, and seemed to scan his
+points approvingly.
+
+Richard's cheeks mounted bloom.
+
+"Don't you adore champagne?" quoth the dame with a bosom to Ripton.
+
+"Oh, yes!" answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy, "I always
+drink it."
+
+"Do you indeed?" said the enraptured bosom, ogling him. "You would be a
+friend, now! I hope you don't object to a lady joining you now and then.
+Champagne's my folly."
+
+A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre;
+first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till
+those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned behind
+gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of laughter. Each
+one, as her ear received it, caught up her handkerchief, and laughed,
+and looked shocked afterwards, or looked shocked and then spouted
+laughter. The anecdote might have been communicated to the bewildered
+cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a demurer cast, she looked shocked
+without laughing, and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it was
+consigned to burial: but here and there a man's head was seen bent, and
+a lady's mouth moved, though her face was not turned toward him, and
+a man's broad laugh was presently heard, while the lady gazed
+unconsciously before her, and preserved her gravity if she could
+escape any other lady's eyes; failing in which, handkerchiefs were
+simultaneously seized, and a second chime arose, till the tickling force
+subsided to a few chance bursts.
+
+What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought Richard.
+He says they can't laugh, and don't understand humour. It comes, he
+reflected, of his shutting himself from the world. And the idea that
+he was seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him. He talked
+fluently to his dangerous Bellona. He gave her some reminiscences of
+Adrian's whimsies.
+
+"Oh!" said she, "that's your tutor, is it!" She eyed the young man as if
+she thought he must go far and fast.
+
+Ripton felt a push. "Look at that," said the bosom, fuming utter
+disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the
+mignonne. "Now that's what I don't like in company," the bosom inflated
+to observe with sufficient emphasis. "She always will allow it with
+everybody. Give her a nudge."
+
+Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, "Then I will";
+and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing wine in
+his face, and gave the nudge. The mignonne turned an inquiring eye on
+Ripton; a mischievous spark shot from it. She laughed, and said; "Aren't
+you satisfied with the old girl?"
+
+"Impudence!" muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
+
+"Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet--she drinks port when there's
+no more champagne," said the mignonne.
+
+The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the
+mignonne, and between them he was enabled to form a correcter estimate
+of the company, and quite recovered from his original awe: so much so as
+to feel a touch of jealousy at seeing his lively little neighbour still
+held in absolute possession.
+
+Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner in
+the bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures accord
+not save to clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk with three
+or four at the head of the table while she still had passages aside with
+Richard.
+
+The port and claret went very well after the champagne. The ladies
+here did not ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen; they
+maintained their position with honour. Silver was seen far out on
+Thames. The wine ebbed, and the laughter. Sentiment and cigars took up
+the wondrous tale.
+
+"Oh, what a lovely night!" said the ladies, looking above.
+
+"Charming," said the gentlemen, looking below.
+
+The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast.
+Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.
+
+"We are split into couples," said Adrian to Richard, who was standing
+alone, eying the landscape. "Tis the influence of the moon! Apparently
+we are in Cyprus. How has my son enjoyed himself? How likes he the
+society of Aspasia? I feel like a wise Greek to-night."
+
+Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked. Ripton had been
+carried off by the sentimental bosom. He came up to them and whispered:
+"By Jove, Ricky! do you know what sort of women these are?"
+
+Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
+
+"Puritan!" exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back. "Why didn't
+you get tipsy, sir? Don't you ever intoxicate yourself except at lawful
+marriages? Reveal to us what you have done with the portly dame?"
+
+Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and
+watch over him. He was jealous of his innocent Beauty's husband being in
+proximity with such women. Murmuring couples passed them to and fro.
+
+"By Jove, Ricky!" Ripton favoured his friend with another hard whisper,
+"there's a woman smoking!"
+
+"And why not, O Riptonus?" said Adrian. "Art unaware that woman
+cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small
+price for the splendid gem?"
+
+"Well, I don't like women to smoke," said plain Ripton.
+
+"Why mayn't they do what men do?" the hero cried impetuously. "I hate
+that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It's that makes the ruin and
+horrors I see. Why mayn't they do what men do? I like the women who are
+brave enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women are bad, I
+like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show,
+and deceive you in the end."
+
+"Bravo!" shouted Adrian. "There speaks the regenerator."
+
+Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no argument. He
+still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far away,
+lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
+
+The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: "Young men take joy in nothing so much
+as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of experience more
+than knowing that all are not quite so."
+
+The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random
+extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of
+feminine goodness Richard's young bride had inspired in the breast of
+the youth. It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in our
+nature.
+
+Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He wandered about
+the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and threw himself
+down among some bushes on the slope of the hill. Lying there, and
+meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.
+
+"What does he want?" said a woman's voice. "It's another of his
+villanies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I have
+to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him."
+
+"Tragic!" said the Hon. Peter. "Haven't you revenged yourself, Bella,
+pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a commercial transaction. You
+ask for money, and you are to have it--on the conditions: double the
+sum, and debts paid."
+
+"He applies to me!"
+
+"You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you. I think
+Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows. He's not easily
+hoodwinked, you know. He resigns himself to his fate and follows other
+game."
+
+"Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?"
+
+"My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk. I didn't say seduce.
+Hold him in--play with him. Amuse him."
+
+"I don't understand half-measures."
+
+"Women seldom do."
+
+"How I hate you, Brayder!"
+
+"I thank your ladyship."
+
+The two walked farther. Ripton had heard some little of the colloquy. He
+left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of something dark to
+the people he loved, though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter's
+stipulation involved.
+
+On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs.
+Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of parasites got
+on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the
+moonlight curled around them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies
+were in a state of high sentiment. They sang without request. All deemed
+the British ballad-monger an appropriate interpreter of their emotions.
+After good wine, and plenty thereof, fair throats will make men of taste
+swallow that remarkable composer. Eyes, lips, hearts; darts and smarts
+and sighs; beauty, duty; bosom, blossom; false one, farewell! To this
+pathetic strain they melted. Mrs. Mount, though strongly requested,
+declined to sing. She preserved her state. Under the tall aspens
+of Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in their wake.
+Richard's hand lay open by his side. Mrs. Mount's little white hand by
+misadventure fell into it. It was not pressed, or soothed for its fall,
+or made intimate with eloquent fingers. It lay there like a bit of snow
+on the cold ground. A yellow leaf wavering down from the aspens struck
+Richard's cheek, and he drew away the very hand to throw back his hair
+and smooth his face, and then folded his arms, unconscious of offence.
+He was thinking ambitiously of his life: his blood was untroubled, his
+brain calmly working.
+
+"Which is the more perilous?" is a problem put by the Pilgrim: "To meet
+the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?"
+
+Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to
+flirt with one of her Court. The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental.
+One or two rattled, and one was such a good-humoured fellow that Adrian
+could not make him ridiculous. The others seemed to give themselves
+up to a silent waxing in length of limb. However far they sat removed,
+everybody was entangled in their legs. Pursuing his studies, Adrian came
+to the conclusion, that the same close intellectual and moral affinity
+which he had discovered to exist between our nobility and our yeomanry,
+is to be observed between the Guardsman class, and that of the corps de
+ballet: they both live by the strength of their legs, where also their
+wits, if they do not altogether reside there, are principally developed:
+both are volage; wine, tobacco, and the moon, influence both alike; and
+admitting the one marked difference that does exist, it is, after all,
+pretty nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two legs as
+on the point of a toe.
+
+A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about the
+twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required urgent
+persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the end: before
+he had accomplished it, Adrian had contrived to raise a laugh in his
+neighbourhood, so that the company was divided, and the camp split:
+jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment held the other. Ripton,
+blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing a higher degree
+of heat than was possible for the rest. "Are you cold?" she would ask,
+smiling charitably.
+
+"I am," said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
+
+"You always appear to be," the fat one sniffed and snapped.
+
+"Won't you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?" said the naughty little woman.
+
+Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those familiar with the
+ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent. The mignonne was
+heard to whisper: "That poor fellow will certainly be stewed."
+
+Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the
+water was chill and misty. Adrian had beside him the demure one who had
+stopped the circulation of his anecdote. She in nowise objected to the
+fair exchange, but said "Hush!" betweenwhiles.
+
+Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney reach;
+through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and the shadows
+of great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
+
+All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted on
+land. Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs. Mount
+to her home.
+
+"My brougham's here; I shall go alone," said Mrs. Mount. "Some one
+arrange my shawl."
+
+She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as he
+manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
+
+"Which way are you going?" she asked carelessly, and, to his reply as to
+the direction, said: "Then I can give you a lift," and she took his arm
+with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs with him.
+
+Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow: the portly dame
+retained him, and desired him to get her a cab.
+
+"Oh, you happy fellow!" said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
+
+Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get into
+it himself.
+
+"Try and let him come in too?" said the persecuting creature, again
+passing.
+
+"Take liberties with pour men--you shan't with me," retorted the angry
+bosom, and drove off.
+
+"So she's been and gone and run away and left him after all his
+trouble!" cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton's eyes. "Now
+you'll never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women again.
+There! he shall be made happy another time." She gave his nose a comical
+tap, and tripped away with her possessor.
+
+Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts laid
+hold of him. Cabs and carriages rattled past. He was sure he had been
+among members of the nobility that day, though when they went by him
+now they only recognized him with an effort of the eyelids. He began
+to think of the day with exultation, as an event. Recollections of the
+mignonne were captivating. "Blue eyes--just what I like! And such a
+little impudent nose, and red lips, pouting--the very thing I like! And
+her hair? darkish, I think--say brown. And so saucy, and light on her
+feet. And kind she is, or she wouldn't have talked to me like that."
+Thus, with a groaning soul, he pictured her. His reason voluntarily
+consigned her to the aristocracy as a natural appanage: but he did
+amorously wish that Fortune had made a lord of him.
+
+Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the
+conversation he had heard on the hill. He was not one to suspect anybody
+positively. He was timid of fixing a suspicion. It hovered indefinitely,
+and clouded people, without stirring him to any resolve. Still the
+attentions of the lady toward Richard were queer. He endeavoured to
+imagine they were in the nature of things, because Richard was so
+handsome that any woman must take to him. "But he's married," said
+Ripton, "and he mustn't go near these people if he's married." Not a
+high morality, perhaps better than none at all: better for the world
+were it practised more. He thought of Richard along with that sparkling
+dame, alone with her. The adorable beauty of his dear bride, her pure
+heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking of her, he lost sight of the
+mignonne who had made him giddy.
+
+He walked to Richard's hotel, and up and down the street there, hoping
+every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might have returned
+and gone to bed. Two o'clock struck. Ripton could not go away. He was
+sure he should not sleep if he did. At last the cold sent him homeward,
+and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of Piccadilly he met his
+friend patrolling with his head up and that swing of the feet proper to
+men who are chanting verses.
+
+"Old Rip!" cried Richard, cheerily. "What on earth are you doing here at
+this hour of the morning?"
+
+Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. "I wanted to shake your
+hand before I went home."
+
+Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. "That all? You may shake
+my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip! I've been speaking
+about you. Do you know, that--Mrs. Mount--never saw you all the time at
+Richmond, or in the boat!"
+
+"Oh!" Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf "you saw her safe
+home?"
+
+"Yes. I've been there for the last couple of hours--talking. She talks
+capitally: she's wonderfully clever. She's very like a man, only much
+nicer. I like her."
+
+"But, Richard, excuse me--I'm sure I don't mean to offend you--but now
+you're married...perhaps you couldn't help seeing her home, but I think
+you really indeed oughtn't to have gone upstairs."
+
+Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Richard. "You don't suppose I care for any
+woman but my little darling down there." He laughed.
+
+"No; of course not. That's absurd. What I mean is, that people perhaps
+will--you know, they do--they say all manner of things, and that makes
+unhappiness; and I do wish you were going home to-morrow, Ricky. I mean,
+to your dear wife." Ripton blushed and looked away as he spoke.
+
+The hero gave one of his scornful glances. "So you're anxious about my
+reputation. I hate that way of looking on women. Because they have been
+once misled--look how much weaker they are!--because the world has given
+them an ill fame, you would treat them as contagious and keep away from
+them for the sake of your character!
+
+"It would be different with me," quoth Ripton.
+
+"How?" asked the hero.
+
+"Because I'm worse than you," was all the logical explanation Ripton was
+capable of.
+
+"I do hope you will go home soon," he added.
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "and I, so do I hope so. But I've work to do now. I
+dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy would be the last to ask me;--you saw
+her letter yesterday. Now listen to me, Rip. I want to make you be just
+to women."
+
+Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as if
+he had known them and studied them for years. Clever, beautiful, but
+betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to cherish and
+redeem them. "We turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures."
+And the world suffered for it. That--that was the root of all the evil
+in the world!
+
+"I don't feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip! It's strange. I
+knew what they were when we came home in the boat. But I do--it tears
+my heart to see a young girl given over to an old man--a man she doesn't
+love. That's shame!--Don't speak of it."
+
+Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women are betrayed
+by love, Ripton was quite silenced. He, like most young men, had
+pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be sentimental
+when he was not hungry. They walked in the moonlight by the railings of
+the park. Richard harangued at leisure, while Ripton's teeth chattered.
+Chivalry might be dead, but still there was something to do, went the
+strain. The lady of the day had not been thrown in the hero's path
+without an object, he said; and he was sadly right there. He did not
+express the thing clearly; nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean,
+he intended to rescue that lady from further transgressions, and show
+a certain scorn of the world. That lady, and then other ladies unknown,
+were to be rescued. Ripton was to help. He and Ripton were to be the
+knights of this enterprise. When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and
+shivered. Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be
+Titans, for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods,
+would have to be defied and overthrown. And Titan number one flung up
+his handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and
+Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet across
+his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers under his
+coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high seat and was in the mists
+of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets, and the cold
+acting on his friend's eloquence made Ripton's flesh very contrite. The
+poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was good.
+By the time he had got a little warmth about him, his heart gratefully
+strove to encourage him in the conception of becoming a knight and a
+Titan; and so striving Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman.
+
+"Alas!" writes the Pilgrim at this very time to Lady Blandish, "I cannot
+get that legend of the Serpent from me, the more I think. Has he not
+caught you, and ranked you foremost in his legions? For see: till you
+were fashioned, the fruits hung immobile on the boughs. They swayed
+before us, glistening and cold. The hand must be eager that plucked
+them. They did not come down to us, and smile, and speak our language,
+and read our thoughts, and know when to fly, when to follow! how surely
+to have us!
+
+"Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of the Serpent.
+What shall be done with her? I fear the world is wiser than its judges!
+Turn from her, says the world. By day the sons of the world do. It
+darkens, and they dance together downward. Then comes there one of the
+world's elect who deems old counsel devilish; indifference to the end of
+evil worse than its pursuit. He comes to reclaim her. From deepest bane
+will he bring her back to highest blessing. Is not that a bait already?
+Poor fish! 'tis wondrous flattering. The Serpent has slimed her so to
+secure him! With slow weary steps he draws her into light: she clings
+to him; she is human; part of his work, and he loves it. As they mount
+upward, he looks on her more, while she, it may be, looks above. What
+has touched him? What has passed out of her, and into him? The Serpent
+laughs below. At the gateways of the Sun they fall together!"
+
+This alliterative production was written without any sense of the peril
+that makes prophecy.
+
+It suited Sir Austin to write thus. It was a channel to his acrimony
+moderated through his philosophy. The letter was a reply to a vehement
+entreaty from Lady Blandish for him to come up to Richard and forgive
+him thoroughly: Richard's name was not mentioned in it.
+
+"He tries to be more than he is," thought the lady: and she began
+insensibly to conceive him less than he was.
+
+The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification in his
+son's apparent obedience to his wishes and complete submission; a
+gratification he chose to accept as his due, without dissecting or
+accounting for it. The intelligence reiterating that Richard waited, and
+still waited; Richard's letters, and more his dumb abiding and practical
+penitence; vindicated humanity sufficiently to stop the course of
+virulent aphorisms. He could speak, we have seen, in sorrow for this
+frail nature of ours, that he had once stood forth to champion. "But how
+long will this last?" he demanded, with the air of Hippias. He did not
+reflect how long it had lasted. Indeed, his indigestion of wrath had
+made of him a moral Dyspepsy.
+
+It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his
+young wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to
+undertake. Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of hot
+blood, he was not a fool. There had been talk between him and Mrs. Doria
+of his mother. Now that he had broken from his father, his heart spoke
+for her. She lived, he knew: he knew no more. Words painfully hovering
+along the borders of plain speech had been communicated to him, filling
+him with moody imaginings. If he thought of her, the red was on his
+face, though he could not have said why. But now, after canvassing the
+conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a terrible riddle, he
+asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent. As softly as she could
+she told the story. To her the shame was past: she could weep for the
+poor lady. Richard dropped no tears. Disgrace of this kind is always
+present to a son, and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a
+vivid fire in his brain. He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from
+the man. Here was work set to his hand. All her dear husband did was
+right to Lucy. She encouraged him to stay for that purpose, thinking it
+also served another. There was Tom Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there
+was work for him to do. Whether it would please his father he did not
+stop to consider. As to the justice of the act, let us say nothing.
+
+On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe's place of
+residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet
+now went in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful.
+The friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish's town-house, or at the
+Foreys', where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr,
+and staunch conservative, a favourable reception. Pity, deep pity for
+Richard's conduct Ripton saw breathing out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon
+Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of rough commiseration, as a
+young fellow who had run off the road.
+
+Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though for a different cause.
+She doubted if she did well in seconding his father's unwise
+scheme--supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the young husband
+encompassed by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount
+had been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life.
+She touched on delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he
+understood her well enough. "If he loves this person to whom he
+has bound himself, what fear for him? Or are you coming to think it
+something that bears the name of love because we have to veil the
+rightful appellation?" So he responded, remote among the mountains. She
+tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he came to say that he denied
+himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially, that he for a time
+might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread. This was almost too
+much for Lady Blandish. Love's charity boy so loftily serene now that
+she saw him half denuded--a thing of shanks and wrists--was a trial for
+her true heart.
+
+Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his
+marriage. "We'll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I'll do it
+alone--what there is to do." He slightly adverted to a natural want
+of courage in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was
+deficient in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; "I'm sure there never
+was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She's as brave as she's
+lovely, I'll swear she is! Look how she behaved that day! How her voice
+sounded! She was trembling... Brave? She'd follow you into battle,
+Richard!"
+
+And Richard rejoined: "Talk on, dear old Rip! She's my darling love,
+whatever she is! And she is gloriously lovely. No eyes are like hers.
+I'll go down to-morrow morning the first thing."
+
+Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain apart
+from it. So thought Richard for a space.
+
+"But if I go, Rip," he said despondently, "if I go for a day even I
+shall have undone all my work with my father. She says it herself--you
+saw it in her last letter."
+
+"Yes," Ripton assented, and the words "Please remember me to dear Mr.
+Thompson," fluttered about the Old Dog's heart.
+
+It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led her
+through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once dandled
+in long clothes, and helped make a man of, if ever woman did. He
+was walking under the trees beside a lady, talking to her, not
+indifferently. The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe. "I know
+his back," said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it in
+infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry diverged from the
+path, and got before them on the left flank; she stared, retreated, and
+came round upon the right. There was that in the lady's face which Mrs.
+Berry did not like. Her innermost question was, why he was not walking
+with his own wife? She stopped in front of them. They broke, and passed
+about her. The lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he turned to
+look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She had to bob a second time, and then he
+remembered the worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her
+hand so that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely
+agitated. He dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening.
+She heard the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they
+both laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of
+each eye. "I don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and repeated
+it resolutely.
+
+"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her neat inquiry.
+"Where's his wife?" succeeded it. After many interrogations of the sort,
+she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding subsequently,
+brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she wished to get
+rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her emotions on the breast
+of her babe. "I know a lady when I see one," said Mrs. Berry. "I haven't
+lived with 'em for nothing; and if she's a lady bred and born, I wasn't
+married in the church alive."
+
+Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know: "She's
+imitation lady, I'm sure she is!" Berry vowed. "I say she don't look
+proper."
+
+Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was one
+to think of a married man in company with such? "Oh no! it ain't that!"
+Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack. "Belike it's
+some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her looks, and he've
+just met her.... Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!" the relinquished
+spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea of a second man being
+so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled, too!" Mrs. Berry groaned on
+the suspicious side of the debate. "And such a sweet young thing for his
+wife! But no, I'll never believe it. Not if he tell me so himself! And
+men don't do that," she whimpered.
+
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters; soft women
+exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are rapid
+beyond measure. Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she pronounced
+distinctly and without a shadow of dubiosity: "My opinion is--married
+or not married, and wheresomever he pick her up--she's nothin' more
+nor less than a Bella Donna!" as which poisonous plant she forthwith
+registered the lady in the botanical note-book of her brain. It would
+have astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately hit
+off at a glance.
+
+In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied by Ripton.
+Mrs. Berry opened the door to them. She could not wait to get him
+into the parlour. "You're my own blessed babe; and I'm as good as your
+mother, though I didn't suck ye, bein' a maid!" she cried, falling into
+his arms, while Richard did his best to support the unexpected burden.
+Then reproaching him tenderly for his guile--at mention of which Ripton
+chuckled, deeming it his own most honourable portion of the plot--Mrs.
+Berry led them into the parlour, and revealed to Richard who she was,
+and how she had tossed him, and hugged him, and kissed him all over,
+when he was only that big--showing him her stumpy fat arm. "I kissed ye
+from head to tail, I did," said Mrs. Berry, "and you needn't be ashamed
+of it. It's be hoped you'll never have nothin' worse come t'ye, my
+dear!"
+
+Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned her that she
+must not do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it was out of the question now,
+and now that he had a wife, moreover. The young men laughed, and Ripton
+laughing over-loudly drew on himself Mrs. Berry's attention: "But
+that Mr. Thompson there--however he can look me in the face after his
+inn'cence! helping blindfold an old woman! though I ain't sorry for
+what I did--that I'm free for to say, and its' over, and blessed be all!
+Amen! So now where is she and how is she, Mr. Richard, my dear--it's
+only cuttin' off the 's' and you are as you was.--Why didn't ye bring
+her with ye to see her old Berry?"
+
+Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of Wight.
+
+"Oh! and you've left her for a day or two?" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Good God! I wish it had been a day or two," cried Richard.
+
+"Ah! and how long have it been?" asked Mrs. Berry, her heart beginning
+to beat at his manner of speaking.
+
+"Don't talk about it," said Richard.
+
+"Oh! you never been dudgeonin' already? Oh! you haven't been peckin' at
+one another yet?" Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+
+Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.
+
+"Then how long ha' you been divided?"
+
+In a guilty voice Ripton stammered "since September."
+
+"September!" breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her fingers, "September,
+October, Nov--two months and more! nigh three! A young married husband
+away from the wife of his bosom nigh three months! Oh my! Oh my! what do
+that mean?"
+
+"My father sent for me--I'm waiting to see him," said Richard. A few
+more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend the condition of affairs.
+Then Mrs. Berry spread her lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her eyes,
+and spoke.
+
+"My dear young gentleman!--I'd like to call ye my darlin' babe! I'm
+going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye likes it or no; and what
+old Berry says, you won't mind, for she's had ye when there was no
+conventionals about ye, and she has the feelin's of a mother to you,
+though humble her state. If there's one that know matrimony it's me, my
+dear, though Berry did give me no more but nine months of it and I've
+known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants to be woeful wise,
+there it is for ye. For what have been my gain? That man gave me nothin'
+but his name; and Bessy Andrews was as good as Bessy Berry, though both
+is 'Bs,' and says he, you was 'A,' and now you's 'B,' so you're my A
+B, he says, write yourself down that, he says, the bad man, with his
+jokes!--Berry went to service." Mrs. Berry's softness came upon her. "So
+I tell ye, Berry went to service. He left the wife of his bosom forlorn
+and he went to service; because he were allays an ambitious man, and
+wasn't, so to speak, happy out of his uniform--which was his livery--not
+even in my arms: and he let me know it. He got among them kitchen sluts,
+which was my mournin' ready made, and worse than a widow's cap to me,
+which is no shame to wear, and some say becoming. There's no man as ever
+lived known better than my Berry how to show his legs to advantage,
+and gals look at 'em. I don't wonder now that Berry was prostrated. His
+temptations was strong, and his flesh was weak. Then what I say is, that
+for a young married man--be he whomsoever he may be--to be separated
+from the wife of his bosom--a young sweet thing, and he an innocent
+young gentleman!--so to sunder, in their state, and be kep' from each
+other, I say it's as bad as bad can be! For what is matrimony, my
+dears? We're told it's a holy Ordnance. And why are ye so comfortable in
+matrimony? For that ye are not a sinnin'! And they that severs ye they
+tempts ye to stray: and you learn too late the meanin' o' them blessin's
+of the priest--as it was ordained. Separate--what comes? Fust it's like
+the circulation of your blood a-stoppin'--all goes wrong. Then there's
+misunderstandings--ye've both lost the key. Then, behold ye, there's
+birds o' prey hoverin' over each on ye, and it's which'll be snapped up
+fust. Then--Oh, dear! Oh, dear! it be like the devil come into the world
+again." Mrs. Berry struck her hands and moaned. "A day I'll give ye:
+I'll go so far as a week: but there's the outside. Three months dwellin'
+apart! That's not matrimony, it's divorcin'! what can it be to her but
+widowhood? widowhood with no cap to show for it! And what can it be to
+you, my dear? Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor
+man," Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, "he ain't widow woman.
+I don't go to compare you to Berry, my dear young gentleman. Some men's
+hearts is vagabonds born--they must go astray--it's their natur' to. But
+all men are men, and I know the foundation of 'em, by reason of my woe."
+
+Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon.
+The truth in the good creature's address was not to be disputed, or
+despised, notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her
+quaint way of putting it. Ripton nodded encouragingly at every sentence,
+for he saw her drift, and wished to second it.
+
+Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry solemnly
+continued: "We all know what checked prespiration is." But neither
+of the young gentlemen could resist this. Out they burst in a roar of
+laughter.
+
+"Laugh away," said Mrs. Berry. "I don't mind ye. I say again, we all
+do know what checked prespiration is. It fly to the lungs, it gives ye
+mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off. Then I say checked matrimony
+is as bad. It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue that's
+in ye, and you might as well be dead! Them that is joined it's their
+salvation not to separate! It don't so much matter before it. That Mr.
+Thompson there--if he go astray, it ain't from the blessed fold. He hurt
+himself alone--not double, and belike treble, for who can say now what
+may be? There's time for it. I'm for holding back young people so that
+they knows their minds, howsomever they rattles about their hearts. I
+ain't a speeder of matrimony, and good's my reason! but where it's been
+done--where they're lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do
+say this, that to put division between 'em then, it's to make wanderin'
+comets of 'em--creatures without a objeck, and no soul can say what
+they's good for but to rush about!"
+
+Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost for
+the time being.
+
+"My dear old girl," Richard went up to her and, applauding her on the
+shoulder, "you're a very wise old woman. But you mustn't speak to me
+as if I wanted to stop here. I'm compelled to. I do it for her good
+chiefly."
+
+"It's your father that's doin' it, my dear?"
+
+"Well, I'm waiting his pleasure."
+
+"A pretty pleasure! puttin' a snake in the nest of young turtle-doves!
+And why don't she come up to you?"
+
+"Well, that you must ask her. The fact is, she's a little timid
+girl--she wants me to see him first, and when I've made all right, then
+she'll come."
+
+"A little timid girl!" cried Mrs. Berry. "Oh, lor', how she must ha'
+deceived ye to make ye think that! Look at that ring," she held out her
+finger, "he's a stranger: he's not my lawful! You know what ye did to
+me, my dear. Could I get my own wedding-ring back from her? 'No!' says
+she, firm as a rock, 'he said, with this ring I thee wed'--I think I see
+her now, with her pretty eyes and lovesome locks--a darlin'!--And that
+ring she'd keep to, come life, came death. And she must ha' been a rock
+for me to give in to her in that. For what's the consequence? Here am
+I," Mrs. Berry smoothed down the back of her hand mournfully, "here am
+I in a strange ring, that's like a strange man holdin' of me, and me
+a-wearin' of it just to seem decent, and feelin' all over no better than
+a b--a big--that nasty came I can't abide!--I tell you, my dear, she
+ain't soft, no!--except to the man of her heart; and the best of women's
+too soft there--mores our sorrow!"
+
+"Well, well!" said Richard, who thought he knew.
+
+"I agree with you, Mrs. Berry," Ripton struck in, "Mrs. Richard would do
+anything in the world her husband asked her, I'm quite sure."
+
+"Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson! Why, see her! she ain't
+frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in the eyes; she ain't one of
+your hang-down misses. Look how she behaved at the ceremony!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Ripton.
+
+"And if you'd ha' seen her when she spoke to me about my ring! Depend
+upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she blinded you about the nerve she've
+got, it was somethin' she thought she ought to do for your sake, and
+I wish I'd been by to counsel her, poor blessed babe!--And how much
+longer, now, can ye stay divided from that darlin'?"
+
+Richard paced up and down.
+
+"A father's will," urged Mrs. Berry, "that's a son's law; but he mustn't
+go again' the laws of his nature to do it."
+
+"Just be quiet at present--talk of other things, there's a good woman,"
+said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.
+
+"How strange, now, our meetin' like this! meetin' at all, too!" she
+remarked contemplatively. "It's them advertisements! They brings people
+together from the ends of the earth, for good or for bad. I often say,
+there's more lucky accidents, or unlucky ones, since advertisements was
+the rule, than ever there was before. They make a number of romances,
+depend upon it! Do you walk much in the Gardens, my dear?"
+
+"Now and then," said Richard.
+
+"Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers and titled
+people," continued Mrs. Berry. "That was a handsome woman you was
+a-walkin' beside, this mornin'."
+
+"Very," said Richard.
+
+"She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her day ain't past,
+and she know it. I thought at first--by her back--it might ha' been your
+aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do step out well and hold up her shoulders:
+straight as a dart she be! But when I come to see her face--Oh, dear
+me! says I, this ain't one of the family. They none of 'em got such bold
+faces--nor no lady as I know have. But she's a fine woman--that nobody
+can gainsay."
+
+Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman. It was a liberty she took
+to speak in this disrespectful tone of her, and Mrs. Berry was quite
+aware that she was laying herself open to rebuke. She had her end
+in view. No rebuke was uttered, and during her talk she observed
+intercourse passing between the eyes of the young men.
+
+"Look here, Penelope," Richard stopped her at last. "Will it make you
+comfortable if I tell you I'll obey the laws of my nature and go down at
+the end of the week?"
+
+"I'll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Very well, then--be happy--I will. Now listen. I want you to keep your
+rooms for me--those she had. I expect, in a day or two, to bring a lady
+here"--
+
+"A lady?" faltered Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Yes. A lady."
+
+"May I make so bold as to ask what lady?"
+
+"You may not. Not now. Of course you will know."
+
+Mrs. Berry's short neck made the best imitation it could of an offended
+swan's action. She was very angry. She said she did not like so many
+ladies, which natural objection Richard met by saying that there was
+only one lady.
+
+"And Mrs. Berry," he added, dropping his voice. "You will treat her
+as you did my dear girl, for she will require not only shelter but
+kindness. I would rather leave her with you than with any one. She has
+been very unfortunate."
+
+His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated the softness
+of Berry, and it was not until he had gone that she spoke out.
+"Unfort'nate! He's going to bring me an unfort'nate female! Oh! not from
+my babe can I bear that! Never will I have her here! I see it. It's
+that bold-faced woman he's got mixed up in, and she've been and made the
+young man think he'll go for to reform her. It's one o' their arts--that
+is; and he's too innocent a young man to mean anythin' else. But I ain't
+a house of Magdalens no! and sooner than have her here I'd have the roof
+fall over me, I would."
+
+She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.
+
+In love, Mrs. Berry's charity was all on the side of the law, and this
+is the case with many of her sisters. The Pilgrim sneers at them for it,
+and would have us credit that it is their admirable instinct which, at
+the expense of every virtue save one, preserves the artificial barrier
+simply to impose upon us. Men, I presume, are hardly fair judges, and
+should stand aside and mark.
+
+Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard's hotel to let him
+know her determination. She did not find him there. Returning homeward
+through the park, she beheld him on horseback riding by the side of the
+identical lady.
+
+The sight of this public exposure shocked her more than the secret walk
+under the trees... "You don't look near your reform yet," Mrs. Berry
+apostrophized her. "You don't look to me one that'd come the Fair
+Penitent till you've left off bein' fair--if then you do, which some of
+ye don't. Laugh away and show yet airs! Spite o' your hat and feather,
+and your ridin' habit, you're a Belle Donna." Setting her down again
+absolutely for such, whatever it might signify, Mrs. Berry had a
+virtuous glow.
+
+In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at the door.
+"Never!" she rose from her chair to exclaim. "He ain't rided her out in
+the mornin', and been and made a Magdalen of her afore dark?"
+
+A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard. Mrs. Berry feebly
+tried to bar his progress in the passage. He pushed past her, and
+conducted the lady into the parlour without speaking. Mrs. Berry did not
+follow. She heard him murmur a few sentences within. Then he came out.
+All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, "Mr. Richard! if
+that woman stay here, I go forth. My house ain't a penitentiary for
+unfort'nate females, sir"--
+
+He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing her
+indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and spoke words
+in her ear that had awful import to her. She trembled, breathing low:
+"My God, forgive, me!
+
+"Richard?" And her virtue was humbled. "Lady Feverel is it? Your mother,
+Mr. Richard?" And her virtue was humbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad
+circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand,
+will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when
+a robust young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in her
+person. The colloquy was short between Diaper Sandoe and Richard. The
+question was referred to the poor spiritless lady, who, seeing that her
+son made no question of it, cast herself on his hands. Small loss to
+her was Diaper; but he was the loss of habit, and that is something to a
+woman who has lived. The blood of her son had been running so long alien
+from her that the sense of her motherhood smote he now with strangeness,
+and Richard's stern gentleness seemed like dreadful justice come upon
+her. Her heart had almost forgotten its maternal functions. She called
+him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her son. Her voice sounded
+to him like that of a broken-throated lamb, so painful and weak it was,
+with the plaintive stop in the utterance. When he kissed her, her skin
+was cold. Her thin hand fell out of his when his grasp related. "Can
+sin hunt one like this?" he asked, bitterly reproaching himself for the
+shame she had caused him to endure, and a deep compassion filled his
+breast.
+
+Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He thought of all he
+had sacrificed for this woman--the comfortable quarters, the friend, the
+happy flights. He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving
+him in his old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. He wrote as
+pathetically of the break of habit as men feel at the death of love, and
+when we are old and have no fair hope tossing golden locks before us, a
+wound to this our second nature is quite as sad. I know not even if it
+be not actually sadder.
+
+Day by day Richard visited his mother. Lady Blandish and Ripton alone
+were in the secret. Adrian let him do as he pleased. He thought proper
+to tell him that the public recognition he accorded to a particular lady
+was, in the present state of the world, scarcely prudent.
+
+"'Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but the world
+will not think so. No one character is sufficient to cover two--in a
+Protestant country especially. The divinity that doth hedge a Bishop
+would have no chance, in contact with your Madam Danae. Drop the woman,
+my son. Or permit me to speak what you would have her hear."
+
+Richard listened to him with disgust. "Well, you've had my doctorial
+warning," said Adrian; and plunged back into his book.
+
+When Lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations Mrs.
+Berry perpetually opened on the subject of Richard's matrimonial duty,
+another chain was cast about him. "Do not, oh, do not offend your
+father!" was her one repeated supplication. Sir Austin had grown to be a
+vindictive phantom in her mind. She never wept but when she said this.
+
+So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady Blandish as
+the only friend he had among women, bundled off in her black-satin
+dress to obtain an interview with her, and an ally. After coming to an
+understanding on the matter of the visit, and reiterating many of her
+views concerning young married people, Mrs. Berry said: "My lady, if I
+may speak so bold, I'd say the sin that's bein' done is the sin o'
+the lookers-on. And when everybody appear frightened by that young
+gentleman's father, I'll say--hopin' your pardon--they no cause be
+frighted at all. For though it's nigh twenty year since I knew him, and
+I knew him then just sixteen months--no more--I'll say his heart's as
+soft as a woman's, which I've cause for to know. And that's it. That's
+where everybody's deceived by him, and I was. It's because he keeps his
+face, and makes ye think you're dealin' with a man of iron, and all the
+while there's a woman underneath. And a man that's like a woman he's the
+puzzle o' life! We can see through ourselves, my lady, and we can see
+through men, but one o' that sort--he's like somethin' out of nature.
+Then I say--hopin' be excused--what's to do is for to treat him like
+a woman, and not for to let him have his own way--which he don't know
+himself, and is why nobody else do. Let that sweet young couple come
+together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say; and then give him
+time to come round, just like a woman; and round he'll come, and give
+'em his blessin', and we shall know we've made him comfortable. He's
+angry because matrimony have come between him and his son, and
+he, woman-like, he's wantin' to treat what is as if it isn't. But
+matrimony's a holier than him. It began long long before him, and it's
+be hoped will endoor longs the time after, if the world's not coming to
+rack--wishin' him no harm."
+
+Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish's thoughts in bad English. The
+lady took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his wife.
+He wrote, bidding her come. Lucy, however, had wits, and inexperienced
+wits are as a little knowledge. In pursuance of her sage plan to make
+the family feel her worth, and to conquer the members of it one by one,
+she had got up a correspondence with Adrian, whom it tickled. Adrian
+constantly assured her all was going well: time would heal the wound if
+both the offenders had the fortitude to be patient: he fancied he saw
+signs of the baronet's relenting: they must do nothing to arrest those
+favourable symptoms. Indeed the wise youth was languidly seeking to
+produce them. He wrote, and felt, as Lucy's benefactor. So Lucy replied
+to her husband a cheerful rigmarole he could make nothing of, save that
+she was happy in hope, and still had fears. Then Mrs. Berry trained her
+fist to indite a letter to her bride. Her bride answered it by saying
+she trusted to time. "You poor marter" Mrs. Berry wrote back, "I know
+what your sufferin's be. They is the only kind a wife should never hide
+from her husband. He thinks all sorts of things if she can abide being
+away. And you trusting to time, why it's like trusting not to catch cold
+out of your natural clothes." There was no shaking Lucy's firmness.
+
+Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying behind him was
+the life of a fool. What had he done in it? He had burnt a rick and got
+married! He associated the two acts of his existence. Where was the hero
+he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!--a wretch he had taught to
+lie and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash
+from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear! The young
+man sought amusement. He allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and
+sick of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the
+purpose he had in visiting her at all. Her man-like conversation, which
+he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on fair lips.
+
+"Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick," said she. And it came to be Bella
+and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in Richard's letters
+to Lucy.
+
+Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. "I pretend to be no better
+than I am," she said, "and I know I'm no worse than many a woman who
+holds her head high." To back this she told him stories of blooming
+dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.
+
+Also she understood him. "What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
+do. You went and got married like a--hum!--friends must be respectful.
+Go into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or
+two--friends should make themselves useful."
+
+She told him what she liked in him. "You're the only man I was ever
+alone with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I hate
+men who can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute." She
+left him and presently returned with, "Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are
+you?"--arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat
+jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the
+costume. "What do you think of me? Wasn't it a shame to make a woman of
+me when I was born to be a man?"
+
+"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
+those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
+
+"What! you think I don't do it well?"
+
+"Charming! but I can't forget..."
+
+"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.
+
+Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
+arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
+impertinent manner of using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of
+the supreme dandy.
+
+"They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's clothes, and vice
+versaw, I suppose. You'll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my bow
+to the beak, won't you? Say it's becas I'm an honest woman and don't
+care to hide the--a--unmentionables when I wear them--as the t'others
+do," sprinkled with the dandy's famous invocations.
+
+He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
+
+"You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler take me? by Jove!"
+
+And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent
+her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed upon it more.
+There was delicacy in her dandyism. She was a graceful cavalier.
+
+"Sir Julius," as they named the dandy's attire, was frequently called
+for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount. When he beheld Sir Julius
+he thought of the lady, and "vice versaw," as Sir Julius was fond of
+exclaiming.
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
+
+The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius. Or she would sit,
+and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that worthy fop.
+
+She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her the
+cleverest woman he had ever met.
+
+All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold as ice, she
+hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.
+
+A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria's ears. She rushed to Adrian
+first. The wise youth believed there was nothing in it. She sailed down
+upon Richard. "Is this true? that you have been seen going publicly
+about with an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray, relieve me!"
+
+Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt's description in whose
+company he could have been seen.
+
+"Tell me, I say! Don't quibble. Do you know any woman of bad character?"
+
+The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the
+world, Richard admitted to.
+
+Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew, both from the moral
+and the worldly point of view, mentally ejaculating all the while:
+"That ridiculous System! That disgraceful marriage!" Sir Austin in his
+mountain solitude was furnished with serious stuff to brood over.
+
+The rumour came to Lady Blandish. She likewise lectured Richard, and
+with her he condescended to argue. But he found himself obliged to
+instance something he had quite neglected. "Instead of her doing me
+harm, it's I that will do her good."
+
+Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger. "This person must
+be very clever to have given you that delusion, dear."
+
+"She is clever. And the world treats her shamefully."
+
+"She complains of her position to you?"
+
+"Not a word. But I will stand by her. She has no friend but me."
+
+"My poor boy! has she made you think that?"
+
+"How unjust you all are!" cried Richard.
+
+"How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be tempted so!" thought
+Lady Blandish.
+
+He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to address
+her publicly. The world that condemned her and cast her out was no
+better--worse for its miserable hypocrisy. He knew the world now, the
+young man said.
+
+"My child! the world may be very bad. I am not going to defend it. But
+you have some one else to think of. Have you forgotten you have a wife,
+Richard?"
+
+"Ay! you all speak of her now. There's my aunt: 'Remember you have a
+wife!' Do you think I love any one but Lucy? poor little thing! Because
+I am married am I to give up the society of women?"
+
+"Of women!"
+
+"Isn't she a woman?"
+
+"Too much so!" sighed the defender of her sex.
+
+Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings. Richard laughed at him.
+The wise youth sneered at Mrs. Mount. The hero then favoured him with a
+warning equal to his own in emphasis, and surpassing it in sincerity.
+
+"We won't quarrel, my dear boy," said Adrian. "I'm a man of peace.
+Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a combat. Ride your steed
+to virtue's goal! All I say is, that I think he'll upset you, and it's
+better to go at a slow pace and in companionship with the children of
+the sun. You have a very nice little woman for a wife--well, good-bye!"
+
+To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was unendurable to
+Richard; he associated them somewhat after the manner of the rick and
+the marriage. Charming Sir Julius, always gay, always honest, dispersed
+his black moods.
+
+"Why, you're taller," Richard made the discovery.
+
+"Of course I am. Don't you remember you said I was such a little thing
+when I came out of my woman's shell?"
+
+"And how have you done it?"
+
+"Grown to please you."
+
+"Now, if you can do that, you can do anything."
+
+"And so I would do anything."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Honour!"
+
+"Then"...his project recurred to him. But the incongruity of speaking
+seriously to Sir Julius struck him dumb.
+
+"Then what?" asked she.
+
+"Then you're a gallant fellow."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Isn't it enough?"
+
+"Not quite. You were going to say something. I saw it in your eyes."
+
+"You saw that I admired you."
+
+"Yes, but a man mustn't admire a man."
+
+"I suppose I had an idea you were a woman."
+
+"What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an inch," Sir Julius
+turned one heel, and volleyed out silver laughter.
+
+"I don't come much above your shoulder even now," she said, and
+proceeded to measure her height beside him with arch up-glances.
+
+"You must grow more."
+
+"'Fraid I can't, Dick! Bootmakers can't do it."
+
+"I'll show you how," and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and bore the fair
+gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him there exactly on a level
+with his head. "Will that do?"
+
+"Yes! Oh but I can't stay here."
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+He should have known then--it was thundered at a closed door in him,
+that he played with fire. But the door being closed, he thought himself
+internally secure.
+
+Their eyes met. He put her down instantly.
+
+Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue. Seeing that, the wily
+woman resumed her shell. The memory, of Sir Julius breathing about her
+still, doubled the feminine attraction.
+
+"I ought to have been an actress," she said.
+
+Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar wish.
+
+"Yes! Ah! then! if I had been!" sighed Mrs. Mount, gazing on the pattern
+of the carpet.
+
+He took her hand, and pressed it.
+
+"You are not happy as you are?"
+
+"No."
+
+"May I speak to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion, slid to
+the corner toward her ear, as she sat with her head sideways to him,
+listening. When he had gone, she said to herself: "Old hypocrites talk
+in that way; but I never heard of a young man doing it, and not making
+love at the same time."
+
+Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one who had been
+set thinking. He lauded her fair looks.
+
+"Don't make me thrice ashamed," she petitioned.
+
+But it was not only that mood with her. Dauntless defiance, that
+splendidly befitted her gallant outline and gave a wildness to her
+bright bold eyes, when she would call out: "Happy? who dares say I'm not
+happy? D'you think if the world whips me I'll wince? D'you think I care
+for what they say or do? Let them kill me! they shall never get one cry
+out of me!" and flashing on the young man as if he were the congregated
+enemy, add: "There! now you know me!"--that was a mood that well became
+her, and helped the work. She ought to have been an actress.
+
+"This must not go on," said Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria in unison. A
+common object brought them together. They confined their talk to it,
+and did not disagree. Mrs. Doria engaged to go down to the baronet.
+Both ladies knew it was a dangerous, likely to turn out a disastrous,
+expedition. They agreed to it because it was something to do, and doing
+anything is better than doing nothing. "Do it," said the wise youth,
+when they made him a third, "do it, if you want him to be a hermit for
+life. You will bring back nothing but his dead body, ladies--a Hellenic,
+rather than a Roman, triumph. He will listen to you--he will accompany
+you to the station--he will hand you into the carriage--and when you
+point to his seat he will bow profoundly, and retire into his congenial
+mists."
+
+Adrian spoke their thoughts. They fretted; they relapsed.
+
+"Speak to him, you, Adrian," said Mrs. Doria. "Speak to the boy
+solemnly. It would be almost better he should go back to that little
+thing he has married."
+
+"Almost?" Lady Blandish opened her eyes. "I have been advising it for
+the last month and more."
+
+"A choice of evils," said Mrs. Doria's sour-sweet face and shake of the
+head.
+
+Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed, with heroic
+effort, to avoid it by shutting their mouths. What was more, they
+preserved the peace in spite of Adrian's artifices.
+
+"Well, I'll talk to him again," he said. "I'll try to get the Engine on
+the conventional line."
+
+"Command him!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard," said Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke to Richard.
+"You want to reform this woman. Her manner is open--fair and free--the
+traditional characteristic. We won't stop to canvass how that particular
+honesty of deportment that wins your approbation has been gained. In
+her college it is not uncommon. Girls, you know, are not like boys. At
+a certain age they can't be quite natural. It's a bad sign if they don't
+blush, and fib, and affect this and that. It wears off when they're
+women. But a woman who speaks like a man, and has all those excellent
+virtues you admire--where has she learned the trick? She tells you. You
+don't surely approve of the school? Well, what is there in it, then?
+Reform her, of course. The task is worthy of your energies. But, if you
+are appointed to do it, don't do it publicly, and don't attempt it just
+now. May I ask you whether your wife participates in this undertaking?"
+
+Richard walked away from the interrogation. The wise youth, who hated
+long unrelieved speeches and had healed his conscience, said no more.
+
+Dear tender Lucy! Poor darling! Richard's eyes moistened. Her letters
+seemed sadder latterly. Yet she never called to him to come, or he would
+have gone. His heart leapt up to her. He announced to Adrian that he
+should wait no longer for his father. Adrian placidly nodded.
+
+The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded brow and an
+absent voice.
+
+"Richard--I can't call you Dick now, I really don't know why"--she said,
+"I want to beg a favour of you."
+
+"Name it. I can still call you Bella, I suppose?"
+
+"If you care to. What I want to say is this: when you meet me out--to
+cut it short--please not to recognize me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Do you ask to be told that?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"Then look: I won't compromise you."
+
+"I see no harm, Bella."
+
+"No," she caressed his hand, "and there is none. I know that. But,"
+modest eyelids were drooped, "other people do," struggling eyes were
+raised.
+
+"What do we care for other people?"
+
+"Nothing. I don't. Not that!" snapping her finger, "I care for you,
+though." A prolonged look followed the declaration.
+
+"You're foolish, Bella."
+
+"Not quite so giddy--that's all."
+
+He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity. Adrian's abrupt inquiry
+had sunk in his mind, as the wise youth intended it should. He had
+instinctively refrained from speaking to Lucy of this lady. But what a
+noble creature the woman was!
+
+So they met in the park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him; and secresy added
+a new sense to their intimacy.
+
+Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his eloquence.
+
+Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was not mistaken in
+her cleverness. She could make evenings pass gaily, and one was not the
+fellow to the other. She could make you forget she was a woman, and
+then bring the fact startlingly home to you. She could read men with one
+quiver of her half-closed eye-lashes. She could catch the coming mood in
+a man, and fit herself to it. What does a woman want with ideas, who can
+do thus much? Keenness of perception, conformity, delicacy of handling,
+these be all the qualities necessary to parasites.
+
+Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from her tongue. It
+may also have been true that it sickened her. She played on his higher
+nature. She understood spontaneously what would be most strange and
+taking to him in a woman. Various as the Serpent of old Nile, she acted
+fallen beauty, humorous indifference, reckless daring, arrogance in
+ruin. And acting thus, what think you?--She did it so well because she
+was growing half in earnest.
+
+"Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You will not give me up
+quite?"
+
+"Never, Bella."
+
+"I am not so bad as I'm painted!"
+
+"You are only unfortunate."
+
+"Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier."
+
+She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to
+throw heaven's twilight across it. A woman's history, you know: certain
+chapters expunged. It was dark enough to Richard.
+
+"Did you love the man?" he asked. "You say you love no one now."
+
+"Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's daughter. No. I
+did not love him. I have lived to learn it. And now I should hate him,
+if I did not despise him."
+
+"Can you be deceived in love?" said Richard, more to himself than to
+her.
+
+"Yes. When we're young we can be very easily deceived. If there is such
+a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed
+it. Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:--and then it's
+too late! we can't have him."
+
+"Singular!" murmured Richard, "she says just what my father said."
+
+He spoke aloud: "I could forgive you if you had loved him."
+
+"Don't be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?"
+
+"You had some affection for him? He was the first?"
+
+She chose to admit that. "Yes. And the first who talks of love to a girl
+must be a fool if he doesn't blind her."
+
+"That makes what is called first love nonsense."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+He repelled the insinuation. "Because I know it is not, Bella."
+
+Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a
+colder. He thought poorly of girls. A woman a sensible, brave,
+beautiful woman seemed, on comparison, infinitely nobler than those weak
+creatures.
+
+She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul injustice.
+"What am I to do? You tell me to be different. How can I? What am I
+to do? Will virtuous people let me earn my bread? I could not get a
+housemaid's place! They wouldn't have me--I see their noses smelling!
+Yes I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen! Do you expect me
+to bury myself alive? Why, man, I have blood: I can't become a stone.
+You say I am honest, and I will be. Then let me till you that I have
+been used to luxuries, and I can't do without them. I might have married
+men--lots would have had me. But who marries one like me but a fool? and
+I could not marry a fool. The man I marry I must respect. He could not
+respect me--I should know him to be a fools and I should be worse off
+than I am now. As I am now, they may look as pious as they like--I laugh
+at them!"
+
+And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives: horrible exultation
+at the universal peccancy of husbands. This lovely outcast almost made
+him think she had the right on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows
+pierced the holy centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.
+
+Mrs. Mount's house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred to
+shock him there. The young man would ask himself where the difference
+was between her and the Women of society? How base, too, was the army
+of banded hypocrites! He was ready to declare war against them on her
+behalf. His casus beli, accurately worded, would have read curiously.
+Because the world refused to lure the lady to virtue with the offer of a
+housemaid's place, our knight threw down his challenge. But the lady had
+scornfully rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity. Then the form
+of the challenge must be: Because the world declined to support the lady
+in luxury for nothing! But what did that mean? In other words: she was
+to receive the devil's wages without rendering him her services. Such
+an arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil. Heroes
+will have to conquer both before they will get them to subscribe to it.
+
+Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of
+war at all. Lance in rest they challenge and they charge. Like women
+they trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men. Wide fly the
+leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are scattered, they know not
+wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why. 'Tis
+instinct strikes! Surely there is something divine in instinct.
+
+Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero could not charge
+down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille.
+He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the
+Law Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with
+a trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation's direct
+representatives did seem the likelier method. It was likewise out of the
+question that he should enter every house and shop, and battle with its
+master in the cause of Mrs. Mount. Where, then, was his enemy? Everybody
+was his enemy, and everybody was nowhere! Shall he convoke multitudes on
+Wimbledon Common? Blue Policemen, and a distant dread of ridicule, bar
+all his projects. Alas for the hero in our day!
+
+Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at empty
+air.
+
+"What can I do for this poor woman?" cried Richard, after fighting his
+phantom enemy till he was worn out.
+
+"O Rip! old Rip!" he addressed his friend, "I'm distracted. I wish I was
+dead! What good am I for? Miserable! selfish! What have I done but make
+every soul I know wretched about me? I follow my own inclinations--I
+make people help me by lying as hard as they can--and I'm a liar. And
+when I've got it I'm ashamed of myself. And now when I do see something
+unselfish for me to do, I come upon grins--I don't know where to
+turn--how to act--and I laugh at myself like a devil!"
+
+It was only friend Ripton's ear that was required, so his words went
+for little: but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to be
+ashamed of in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth. Richard added his
+customary comment of "Poor little thing!"
+
+He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted. A last letter
+written to his father procured him no reply. Then, said he, I have tried
+my utmost. I have tried to be dutiful--my father won't listen to me. One
+thing I can do--I can go down to my dear girl, and make her happy, and
+save her at least from some of the consequences of my rashness.
+
+"There's nothing better for me!" he groaned. His great ambition must
+be covered by a house-top: he and the cat must warm themselves on the
+domestic hearth! The hero was not aware that his heart moved him to
+this. His heart was not now in open communion with his mind.
+
+Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going--would go. She knew he was
+going to his wife. Far from discouraging him, she said nobly: "Go--I
+believe I have kept you. Let us have an evening together, and then go:
+for good, if you like. If not, then to meet again another time. Forget
+me. I shan't forget you. You're the best fellow I ever knew, Richard.
+You are, on my honour! I swear I would not step in between you and
+your wife to cause either of you a moment's unhappiness. When I can be
+another woman I will, and I shall think of you then."
+
+Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively going to his
+wife. The wise youth modestly veiled his own merit in bringing it about
+by saying: "I couldn't see that poor little woman left alone down there
+any longer."
+
+"Well! Yes!" said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest speech was repeated, "I
+suppose, poor boy, it's the best he can do now."
+
+Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last evening with Mrs.
+Mount.
+
+The enchantress received him in state.
+
+"Do you know this dress? No? It's the dress I wore when I first met
+you--not when I first saw you. I think I remarked you, sir, before
+you deigned to cast an eye upon humble me. When we first met we drank
+champagne together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in the same
+liquor. Will you liquor with me, old boy?"
+
+She was gay. She revived Sir Julius occasionally. He, dispirited, left
+the talking all to her.
+
+Mrs. Mount kept a footman. At a late hour the man of calves dressed the
+table for supper. It was a point of honour for Richard to sit down to it
+and try to eat. Drinking, thanks to the kindly mother nature, who loves
+to see her children made fools of, is always an easier matter.
+The footman was diligent; the champagne corks feebly recalled the
+file-firing at Richmond.
+
+"We'll drink to what we might have been, Dick," said the enchantress.
+
+Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.
+
+His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.
+
+"What! down, my boy?" she cried. "They shall never see me hoist signals
+of distress. We must all die, and the secret of the thing is to die
+game, by Jove! Did you ever hear of Laura Fern? a superb girl! handsomer
+than your humble servant--if you'll believe it--a 'Miss' in the bargain,
+and as a consequence, I suppose, a much greater rake. She was in the
+hunting-field. Her horse threw her, and she fell plump on a stake. It
+went into her left breast. All the fellows crowded round her, and one
+young man, who was in love with her--he sits in the House of Peers
+now--we used to call him `Duck' because he was such a dear--he dropped
+from his horse to his knees: 'Laura! Laura! my darling! speak a word to
+me!--the last!' She turned over all white and bloody! 'I--I shan't be in
+at the death!' and gave up the ghost! Wasn't that dying game? Here's to
+the example of Laura Fenn! Why, what's the matter? See! it makes a man
+turn pale to hear how a woman can die. Fill the glasses, John. Why,
+you're as bad!"
+
+"It's give me a turn, my lady," pleaded John, and the man's hand was
+unsteady as he poured out the wine.
+
+"You ought not to listen. Go, and, drink some brandy."
+
+John footman went from the room.
+
+"My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you've got!"
+
+He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.
+
+"Can't you bear to hear of blood? You know, it was only one naughty
+woman out of the world. The clergyman of the parish didn't refuse to
+give her decent burial. We Christians! Hurrah!"
+
+She cheered, and laughed. A lurid splendour glanced about her like
+lights from the pit.
+
+"Pledge me, Dick! Drink, and recover yourself. Who minds? We must all
+die--the good and the bad. Ashes to ashes--dust to dust--and wine for
+living lips! That's poetry--almost. Sentiment: `May we never say die
+till we've drunk our fill! Not bad--eh? A little vulgar, perhaps, by
+Jove! Do you think me horrid?"
+
+"Where's the wine?" Richard shouted. He drank a couple of glasses in
+succession, and stared about. Was he in hell, with a lost soul raving to
+him?
+
+"Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick! Now we'll be
+companions." She wished that heaven had made her such a man. "Ah! Dick!
+Dick! too late! too late!"
+
+Softly fell her voice. Her eyes threw slanting beams.
+
+"Do you see this?"
+
+She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with gems and coiled
+with a rope of hair in her bosom. It was a gift of his.
+
+"Do you know when I stole the lock? Foolish Dick! you gave me an anchor
+without a rope. Come and see."
+
+She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.
+
+"Don't you recognize your own hair! I should know a thread of mine among
+a million."
+
+Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as he inspected his
+hair on the bosom of Delilah.
+
+"And you knew nothing of it! You hardly know it now you see it! What
+couldn't a woman steal from you? But you're not vain, and that's a
+protection. You're a miracle, Dick: a man that's not vain! Sit here."
+She curled up her feet to give him place on the sofa. "Now let us talk
+like friends that part to meet no more. You found a ship with fever on
+board, and you weren't afraid to come alongside and keep her company.
+The fever isn't catching, you see. Let us mingle our tears together. Ha!
+ha! a man said that once to me. The hypocrite wanted to catch the fever,
+but he was too old. How old are you, Dick?"
+
+Richard pushed a few months forward.
+
+"Twenty-one? You just look it, you blooming boy. Now tell me my age,
+Adonis!--Twenty--what?"
+
+Richard had given the lady twenty-five years.
+
+She laughed violently. "You don't pay compliments, Dick. Best to be
+honest; guess again. You don't like to? Not twenty-five, or twenty-four,
+or twenty-three, or see how he begins to stare!---twenty-two. Just
+twenty-one, my dear. I think my birthday's somewhere in next month. Why,
+look at me, close--closer. Have I a wrinkle?"
+
+"And when, in heaven's name!"...he stopped short.
+
+"I understand you. When did I commence for to live? At the ripe age of
+sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair because of my beauty. He vowed
+he'd die. I didn't want him to do that. So to save the poor man for his
+family, I ran away with him, and I dare say they didn't appreciate the
+sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did. It's the way of the
+world!"
+
+Richard seized some dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a tumbler,
+and drank it off.
+
+John footman entered to clear the table, and they were left without
+further interruption.
+
+"Bella! Bella!" Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as he walked the
+room.
+
+She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened cheek, her
+eyes half-shut and dreamy.
+
+"Bella!" he dropped beside her. "You are unhappy."
+
+She blinked and yawned, as one who is awakened suddenly. "I think you
+spoke," said she.
+
+"You are unhappy, Bella. You can't conceal it. Your laugh sounds like
+madness. You must be unhappy. So young, too! Only twenty-one!"
+
+"What does it matter? Who cares for me?"
+
+The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole shape. She did
+not mistake it for tenderness, as another would have done.
+
+"Who cares for you, Bella? I do. What makes my misery now, but to see
+you there, and know of no way of helping you? Father of mercy! it seems
+too much to have to stand by powerless while such ruin is going on!"
+
+Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment with which his
+frame quaked.
+
+Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids. She glanced up at
+him quickly, then looked down, drew her hand from his, and smoothed it,
+eying it.
+
+"Bella! you have a father alive!"
+
+"A linendraper, dear. He wears a white neck-cloth."
+
+This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone of the
+conversation, for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed the lady's
+lap-dog, whose squeaks and howls were piteous, and demanded the most
+fervent caresses of its mistress. It was: "Oh, my poor pet Mumpsy,
+and he didn't like a nasty great big ugly heavy foot an his poor
+soft silky--mum--mum--back, he didn't, and he soodn't that
+he--mum--mum--soodn't; and he cried out and knew the place to come to,
+and was oh so sorry for what had happened to him--mum--mum--mum--and
+now he was going to be made happy, his mistress make him
+happy--mum--mum--mum--moo-o-o-o."
+
+"Yes!" said Richard, savagely, from the other end of the room, "you care
+for the happiness of your dog."
+
+"A course se does," Mumpsy was simperingly assured in the thick of his
+silky flanks.
+
+Richard looked for his hat. Mumpsy was deposited on the sofa in a
+twinkling.
+
+"Now," said the lady, "you must come and beg Mumpsy's pardon, whether
+you meant to do it or no, because little doggies can't tell that--how
+should they? And there's poor Mumpsy thinking you're a great terrible
+rival that tries to squash him all flat to nothing, on purpose,
+pretending you didn't see; and he's trembling, poor dear wee pet! And
+I may love my dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I won't have him
+ill-treated, for he's never been jealous of you, and he is a darling,
+ten times truer than men, and I love him fifty times better. So come to
+him with me."
+
+First a smile changed Richard's face; then laughing a melancholy laugh,
+he surrendered to her humour, and went through the form of begging
+Mumpsy's pardon.
+
+"The dear dog! I do believe he saw we were getting dull," said she.
+
+"And immolated himself intentionally? Noble animal!"
+
+"Well, we'll act as if we thought so. Let us be gay, Richard, and not
+part like ancient fogies. Where's your fun? You can rattle; why don't
+you? You haven't seen me in one of my characters--not Sir Julius: wait a
+couple of minutes." She ran out.
+
+A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her black hair was
+scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows. She moved
+slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a
+finger at the region of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the
+representation. He did not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly
+charming and exquisitely horrid witch she was. Something in the way her
+underlids worked seemed to remind him of a forgotten picture; but a veil
+hung on the picture. There could be no analogy, for this was beautiful
+and devilish, and that, if he remembered rightly, had the beauty of
+seraphs.
+
+His reflections and her performance were stayed by a shriek. The spirits
+of wine had run over the plate she held to the floor. She had the
+coolness to put the plate down on the table, while he stamped out the
+flame on the carpet. Again she shrieked: she thought she was on fire.
+He fell on his knees and clasped her skirts all round, drawing his arms
+down them several times.
+
+Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, "Do you feel safe now?"
+
+She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair touched his
+cheek.
+
+Said she, "Do you?"
+
+Was she a witch verily? There was sorcery in her breath; sorcery in her
+hair: the ends of it stung him like little snakes.
+
+"How do I do it, Dick?" she flung back, laughing.
+
+"Like you do everything, Bella," he said, and took breath.
+
+"There! I won't be a witch; I won't be a witch: they may burn me to a
+cinder, but I won't be a witch!"
+
+She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.
+
+"I suppose I look a figure. I must go and tidy myself."
+
+"No, don't change. I like to see you so." He gazed at her with a mixture
+of wonder and admiration. "I can't think you the same person--not even
+when you laugh."
+
+"Richard," her tone was serious, "you were going to speak to me of my
+parents."
+
+"How wild and awful you looked, Bella!"
+
+"My father, Richard, was a very respectable man."
+
+"Bella, you'll haunt me like a ghost."
+
+"My mother died in my infancy, Richard."
+
+"Don't put up your hair, Bella."
+
+"I was an only child!"
+
+Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons. He followed the
+abstracted intentness of her look, and came upon her words.
+
+"Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella. Speak of him."
+
+"Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry, '`Tis time'?"
+
+"Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go to him. He
+shall receive you. He shall not refuse--he shall forgive you."
+
+"If I haunt you, you can't forget me, Richard."
+
+"Let me go to your father, Bella let me go to him to-morrow. I'll give
+you my time. It's all I can give. O Bella! let me save you."
+
+"So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty boy! Ha! ha!" and
+away she burst from him, and up flew her hair, as she danced across the
+room, and fell at full length on the sofa.
+
+He felt giddy: bewitched.
+
+"We'll talk of everyday things, Dick," she called to him from the sofa.
+"It's our last evening. Our last? Heigho! It makes me sentimental. How's
+that Mr. Ripson, Pipson, Nipson?--it's not complimentary, but I can't
+remember names of that sort. Why do you have friends of that sort? He's
+not a gentleman. Better is he? Well, he's rather too insignificant for
+me. Why do you sit off there? Come to me instantly. There--I'll sit up,
+and be proper, and you'll have plenty of room. Talk, Dick!"
+
+He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown. They had a
+haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft languor
+circled them. Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red. He was a youth,
+and she an enchantress. He a hero; she a female will-o'-the-wisp.
+
+The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.
+
+"You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?"
+
+He had no thought of departing:
+
+"It's our last night--I suppose it's our last hour together in this
+world--and I don't want to meet you in the next, for poor Dick will have
+to come to such a very, very disagreeable place to make the visit."
+
+He grasped her hand at this.
+
+"Yes, he will! too true! can't be helped: they say I'm handsome."
+
+"You're lovely, Bella."
+
+She drank in his homage.
+
+"Well, we'll admit it. His Highness below likes lovely women, I hear
+say. A gentleman of taste! You don't know all my accomplishments yet,
+Richard."
+
+"I shan't be astonished at anything new, Bella."
+
+"Then hear, and wonder." Her voice trolled out some lively roulades.
+"Don't you think he'll make me his prima donna below? It's nonsense to
+tell me there's no singing there. And the atmosphere will be favourable
+to the voice. No damp, you know. You saw the piano--why didn't you ask
+me to sing before? I can sing Italian. I had a master--who made love
+to me. I forgave him because of the music-stool--men can't help it on a
+music-stool, poor dears!"
+
+She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang--
+
+     "'My heart, my heart--I think 'twill break.'
+
+"Because I'm such a rake. I don't know any other reason. No; I hate
+sentimental songs. Won't sing that. Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy--a...e! How
+ridiculous those women were, coming home from Richmond!
+
+       'Once the sweet romance of story
+         Clad thy moving form with grace;
+        Once the world and all its glory
+         Was but framework to thy face.
+        Ah, too fair!--what I remember
+         Might my soul recall--but no!
+        To the winds this wretched ember
+         Of a fire that falls so low!'
+
+"Hum! don't much like that. Tum-te-tum-tum--accanto al fuoco--heigho! I
+don't want to show off, Dick--or to break down--so I won't try that.
+
+       'Oh! but for thee, oh! but for thee,
+         I might have been a happy wife,
+        And nursed a baby on my knee,
+         And never blushed to give it life.'
+
+"I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn't
+know at all, at all, what it meant. Mustn't sing that sort of song in
+company. We're oh! so proper--even we!
+
+     'If I had a husband, what think you I'd do?
+      I'd make it my business to keep him a lover;
+     For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
+      Some other amusement he'll quickly discover.'
+
+"For such are young gentlemen made of--made of: such are young gentlemen
+made of!"
+
+After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He was in the
+mood when imagination intensely vivifies everything. Mere suggestions of
+music sufficed. The lady in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was
+the lady before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid
+night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd large and close above the
+arid plain this lady leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her
+abandoned heart.
+
+Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.
+
+The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at a leap. In
+Venice she was not happy. He was prepared for the misery of any woman
+anywhere. But, oh! to be with her! To glide with phantom-motion through
+throbbing street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends;
+under storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in dead
+quietness; past grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, and
+out, and on with her, on into the silver infinity shaking over seas!
+
+Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry? Something of the two
+former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him. How many
+instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And this
+enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her touch. She
+was no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might have seen a
+manoeuvre. She liked him--liked none better. She wished him well. Her
+pique was satisfied. Still he was handsome, and he was going. What she
+liked him for, she rather--very slightly--wished to do away with, or
+see if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty
+butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings. No harm intended to the
+innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy
+the marvel of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of
+thinking one could crush it, if one would.
+
+He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in Venice, the spot
+was on her. Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not celestial light
+that illumined her beauty. Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save,
+he was soft to her sin--drowned it in deep mournfulness.
+
+Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing. She
+swam wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.
+
+"I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of course I meant it.
+I must be happy with my best friend going to leave me."
+
+Those witch underlids were working brightly.
+
+"You will not forget me? and I shall try...try..."
+
+Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome fellow.
+
+"If I change--if I can change... Oh! if you could know what a net I'm
+in, Richard!"
+
+Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not
+divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast,
+and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale
+beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.
+
+"Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!"
+
+"Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!"
+
+He cried: "I never will!" and strained her in his arms, and kissed her
+passionately on the lips.
+
+She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head
+with a kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping,
+clinging to him. It was wicked truth.
+
+Not a word of love between them!
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion won?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions
+to other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the
+potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust
+of his friends and special parasite. "Mount's in for it again," they
+said among themselves. "Hang the women!" was a natural sequence. For,
+don't you see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling
+such a very inflammable subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged
+his bow, and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but
+none would perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent
+oaths, that this was a totally different case from the antecedent ones.
+So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man
+with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but
+inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded
+his noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of
+blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt
+the case was different. There is something impressive in a great human
+hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot
+contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible words.
+At first he took refuge in the depths of his contempt for women. Cupid
+gave him line. When he had come to vent his worst of them, the fair face
+now stamped on his brain beamed the more triumphantly: so the harpooned
+whale rose to the surface, and after a few convulsions, surrendered
+his huge length. My lord was in love with Richard's young wife. He gave
+proofs of it by burying himself beside her. To her, could she have seen
+it, he gave further proofs of a real devotion, in affecting, and in her
+presence feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being.
+This wonder, that when near her he should be cool and composed, and
+when away from her wrapped in a tempest of desires, was matter for what
+powers of cogitation the heavy nobleman possessed.
+
+The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press
+the business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than his
+parasite. Almost every evening he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little
+wife apprehended no harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had commended
+her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith. Lady Judith had
+left the Island for London: Lord Mountfalcon remained. There could be no
+harm. If she had ever thought so, she no longer did. Secretly, perhaps,
+she was flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as well educated as it is
+the fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he could talk and
+instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand that he was wicked,
+very wicked, and that she improved him. The heroine, in common with the
+hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world--to do some good: and
+the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.
+Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending!
+Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his
+title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to
+sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villanies
+for him. No alarm was given to Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been
+the case had my lord been over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom to
+have a true friend to support her, and really to be able to do something
+for that friend. Too simple-minded to think much of his lordship's
+position, she was yet a woman. "He, a great nobleman, does not scorn
+to acknowledge me, and think something of me," may have been one of
+the half-thoughts passing through her now and then, as she reflected in
+self-defence on the proud family she had married into.
+
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon.
+Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news. He had
+no sooner broached his lordship's immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon
+began to plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He swore by this
+and that he had come across an angel for his sins, and would do her no
+hurt. The next moment he swore she must be his, though she cursed like
+a cat. His lordship's illustrations were not choice. "I haven't advanced
+an inch," he groaned. "Brayder! upon my soul, that little woman could do
+anything with me. By heaven! I'd marry her to-morrow. Here I am, seeing
+her every day in the week out or in, and what do you think she gets me
+to talk about?--history! Isn't it enough to make a fellow mad? and there
+am I lecturing like a prig, and by heaven! while I'm at it I feel a
+pleasure in it; and when I leave the house I should feel an immense
+gratification in shooting somebody. What do they say in town?"
+
+"Not much," said Brayder, significantly.
+
+"When's that fellow--her husband--coming down?"
+
+"I rather hope we've settled him for life, Mount."
+
+Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
+
+"How d'ye mean?"
+
+Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, "He's in for Don Juan at a
+gallop, that's all."
+
+"The deuce! Has Bella got him?" Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
+
+Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the Sussex coast,
+signed "Richard," and was worded thus:
+
+"My beautiful Devil--!
+
+"Since we're both devils together, and have found each other out, come
+to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry. Come, my bright
+hell-star! I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come to me! You
+have taught me how devils love, and I can't do without you. Come an hour
+after you receive this."
+
+Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
+"Complimentary love-epistle!" he remarked, and rising from his chair and
+striding about, muttered, "The dog! how infamously he treats his wife!"
+
+"Very bad," said Brayder.
+
+"How did you get hold of this?"
+
+"Strolled into Belle's dressing-room, waiting for her turned over her
+pincushion hap-hazard. You know her trick."
+
+"By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank heaven, I haven't
+written her any letters for an age. Is she going to him?"
+
+"Not she! But it's odd, Mount!--did you ever know her refuse money
+before? She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the fragments
+with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt at your
+Academy. I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!"
+
+Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter could
+be made to serve. Both conscientiously agreed that Richard's behaviour
+to his wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no mercy. "But,"
+said his lordship, "it won't do to show the letter. At first she'll be
+swearing it's false, and then she'll stick to him closer. I know the
+sluts."
+
+"The rule of contrary," said Brayder, carelessly. "She must see the
+trahison with her eyes. They believe their eyes. There's your chance,
+Mount. You step in: you give her revenge and consolation--two birds at
+one shot. That's what they like."
+
+"You're an ass, Brayder," the nobleman exclaimed. "You're an infernal
+blackguard. You talk of this little woman as if she and other women were
+all of a piece. I don't see anything I gain by this confounded letter.
+Her husband's a brute--that's clear."
+
+"Will you leave it to me, Mount?"
+
+"Be damned before I do!" muttered my lord.
+
+"Thank you. Now see how this will end: You're too soft, Mount. You'll be
+made a fool of."
+
+"I tell you, Brayder, there's nothing to be done. If I carry her
+off--I've been on the point of doing it every day--what'll come of that?
+She'll look--I can't stand her eyes--I shall be a fool--worse off with
+her than I am now."
+
+Mountfalcon yawned despondently. "And what do you think?" he pursued.
+"Isn't it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth? She's"...he mentioned
+something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
+
+"Hm!" Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on his
+chin. "That's disagreeable, Mount. You don't exactly want to act in that
+character. You haven't got a diploma. Bother!"
+
+"Do you think I love her a bit less?" broke out my lord in a frenzy. "By
+heaven! I'd read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal history
+to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night."
+
+"You're evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount."
+
+The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
+
+"What do they say in town?" he asked again.
+
+Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or widow.
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon resumed, after--to judge by
+the cast of his face--reflecting deeply. "I'll go to her this evening.
+She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer."
+
+"Do you mean to say she don't know it?"
+
+"Hasn't an idea--thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven! I'll be to her."
+
+"A--hm!" went the Honourable Peter. "This way to the sign of the Green
+Man, ladies!"
+
+"Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?"
+
+"Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong. I may have forgotten
+the trick of alighting on my feet. There--there! I'll be sworn she's
+excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested friend."
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon repeated. "She shall know
+what damned misery it is to see her in such a position. I can't hold out
+any longer. Deceit's horrible to such a girl as that. I'd rather have
+her cursing me than speaking and looking as she does. Dear little
+girl!--she's only a child. You haven't an idea how sensible that little
+woman is."
+
+"Have you?" inquired the cunning one.
+
+"My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women," said
+Mountfalcon, evading his parasite's eye as he spoke.
+
+To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his
+parasite simply ingeniously dissipated. Full many a man of God had
+thought it the easier task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
+
+Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat much
+in the shade. She offered to have the candles brought in. He begged her
+to allow the room to remain as it was. "I have something to say to you,"
+he observed with a certain solemnity.
+
+"Yes--to me?" said Lucy, quickly.
+
+Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it, and
+what it exactly was, he did not know.'
+
+"You conceal it admirably," he began, "but you must be very lonely
+here--I fear, unhappy."
+
+"I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord," said Lucy.
+"I am not unhappy." Her face was in shade and could not belie her.
+
+"Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might give
+you, Mrs. Feverel?"
+
+"None indeed that I know of," Lucy replied. "Who can help us to pay for
+our sins?"
+
+"At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you have
+helped me to wash out some of any sins."
+
+"Ah, my lord!" said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet for a woman to
+believe she has drawn the serpent's teeth.
+
+"I tell you the truth," Lord Mountfalcon went on. "What object could
+I have in deceiving you? I know you quite above flattery--so different
+from other women!"
+
+"Oh, pray, do not say that," interposed Lucy.
+
+"According to my experience, then."
+
+"But you say you have met such--such very bad women."
+
+"I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune."
+
+"Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes, and I might say more."
+
+His lordship held impressively mute.
+
+"How strange men are!" thought Lucy. "He had some unhappy secret."
+
+Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various
+pretences during the nobleman's visits, put a stop to the revelation, if
+his lordship intended to make any.
+
+When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: "Do you know, I am
+always ashamed to ask you to begin to read."
+
+Mountfalcon stared. "To read?--oh! ha! yes!" he remembered his evening
+duties. "Very happy, I'm sure. Let me see. Where were we?"
+
+"The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask
+you to read, my lord. It's new to me; like a new world--hearing about
+Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we
+walk upon. It fills my mind. But it must have ceased to interest you,
+and I was thinking that I would not tease you any more."
+
+"Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. 'Pon my honour, I'd read till I
+was hoarse, to hear your remarks."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?"
+
+"Do I look so?"
+
+Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he
+could appear to endow them with mental expression.
+
+"No, you are not," said Lucy. "I must thank you for your forbearance."
+
+The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
+
+Now it was an object of Lucy's to have him reading; for his sake, for
+her sake, and for somebody else's sake; which somebody else was probably
+considered first in the matter. When he was reading to her, he seemed
+to be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no doubts
+or suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while she had him
+employed in that office. So she rose to fetch the book, laid it open
+on the table at his lordship's elbow, and quietly waited to ring for
+candles when he should be willing to commence.
+
+That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce, and
+he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with
+anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak, or
+insinuate. He sat silent and did nothing.
+
+"What I do not like him for," said Lucy, meditatively, "is his changing
+his religion. He would have been such a hero, but for that. I could have
+loved him."
+
+"Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon asked.
+
+"The Emperor Julian."
+
+"Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate but then, you know, he
+meant what he was about. He didn't even do it for a woman."
+
+"For a woman!" cried Lucy. "What man would for a woman?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"You, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes. I'd turn Catholic to-morrow."
+
+"You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord."
+
+"Then I'll unsay it."
+
+Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell to ring for
+lights.
+
+"Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?" said the nobleman.
+
+"Oh yes! yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience I would not
+have."
+
+"If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?"
+
+Lucy's hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful light with
+one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken in this
+way before. He spoke better, too. She missed the aristocratic twang in
+his voice, and the hesitation for words, and the fluid lordliness with
+which he rolled over difficulties in speech.
+
+Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and
+presented Tom Bakewell. There was a double knock at the same instant at
+the street door. Lucy delayed to give orders.
+
+"Can it be a letter, Tom!--so late?" she said, changing colour. "Pray
+run and see."
+
+"That an't powst" Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
+
+"Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, no!--yes, I am, very," said Lucy. Her quick ear caught the tones
+of a voice she remembered. "That dear old thing has come to see me," she
+cried, starting up.
+
+Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
+
+"Mrs. Berry!" said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
+
+"Me, my darlin'!" Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her journey,
+returned the salute. "Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for I ain't
+one to stand by and give the devil his licence--roamin'! and the salt
+sure enough have spilte my bride-gown at the beginnin', which ain't the
+best sign. Bless ye!--Oh, here he is." She beheld a male figure in a
+chair by the half light, and swung around to address him. "You bad man!"
+she held aloft one of her fat fingers, "I've come on ye like a bolt,
+I have, and goin' to make ye do your duty, naughty boy! But your my
+darlin' babe," she melted, as was her custom, "and I'll never meet you
+and not give to ye the kiss of a mother."
+
+Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft woman
+had him by the neck, and was down among his luxurious whiskers.
+
+"Ha!" She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back. "What hair's that?"
+
+Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
+
+"Oh, my gracious!" Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, "I been and kiss a
+strange man!"
+
+Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord to
+excuse the woful mistake.
+
+"Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I'm sure;" said his lordship,
+re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; "may I beg the pleasure of an
+introduction?"
+
+"My husband's dear old nurse--Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, taking her hand to
+lend her countenance. "Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs. Berry."
+
+Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic bobs,
+and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
+
+Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her
+passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars, by
+which it was revealed that the softness of her heart was only equalled
+by the weakness of her stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry down.
+
+"Well, and where's my--where's Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?" Mrs.
+Berry turned from her tale to question.
+
+"Did you expect to see him here?" said Lucy, in a broken voice.
+
+"And where else, my love? since he haven't been seen in London a whole
+fortnight."
+
+Lucy did not speak.
+
+"We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think," said Lord
+Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
+
+Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched it distantly,
+embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house by
+Tom Bakewell.
+
+The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms. "Did ye ever
+know sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!" she
+exclaimed. "I could cry at it, I could! To be goin' and kissin' a
+strange hairy man! Oh dear me! what's cornin' next, I wonder? Whiskers!
+thinks I--for I know the touch o' whiskers--'t ain't like other
+hair--what! have he growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it
+flashed on me I been and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in,
+and I see that great hairy man--beggin' his pardon--nobleman, and if
+I could 'a dropped through the floor out o' sight o' men, drat 'em!
+they're al'ays in the way, that they are!"--
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy checked her, "did you expect to find him here?"
+
+"Askin' that solemn?" retorted Berry. "What him? your husband? O' course
+I did! and you got him--somewheres hid."
+
+"I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days," said Lucy, and her
+tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
+
+"Not heer from him!--fifteen days!" Berry echoed.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell
+me! I've borne it so long. They're cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do
+you know if I have offended him--my husband? While he wrote I did not
+complain. I could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from
+him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents! Do they want to
+take him from me? Do they want me dead? O Mrs. Berry! I've had no one to
+speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying,
+Mrs. Berry!"
+
+Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy's
+lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never
+this excellent creature's system to be miserable in company. The sight
+of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her
+resolutely the other way.
+
+"Fiddle-faddle," she said. "I'd like to see him repent! He won't find
+anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know it. Now,
+look you here, my dear--you blessed weepin' pet--the man that could see
+ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law, and
+not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he ain't got much
+man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my babe! I was sayin',
+look here, to comfort ye--oh, why, to be sure he've got some surprise
+for ye. And so've I, my lamb! Hark, now! His father've come to town,
+like a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring your
+bodies together, as your hearts is, for everlastin'. Now ain't that
+news?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Lucy, "that takes my last hope away. I thought he had gone
+to his father." She burst into fresh tears.
+
+Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
+
+"Belike he's travellin' after him," she suggested.
+
+"Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sieh a man as that. He's a regular
+meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey. Well, so hark you here.
+I says to myself, that knows him--for I did think my babe was in his
+natural nest--I says, the bar'net'll never write for you both to come
+up and beg forgiveness, so down I'll go and fetch you up. For there was
+your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye one
+hour in a young marriage. It's dangerous, it's mad, it's wrong, and it's
+only to be righted by your obeyin' of me, as I commands it: for I has my
+fits, though I am a soft 'un. Obey me, and ye'll be happy tomorrow--or
+the next to it."
+
+Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her self-inflicted
+martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else's guidance
+utterly.
+
+"But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"'Cause, 'cause--who can tell the why of men, my dear? But that he love
+ye faithful, I'll swear. Haven't he groaned in my arms that he couldn't
+come to ye?--weak wretch! Hasn't he swore how he loved ye to me, poor
+young man! But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be. You should 'a
+followed my 'dvice at the fust--'stead o' going into your 'eroics about
+this and t'other." Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
+matrimony, pointed especially at young couples. "I should 'a been a fool
+if I hadn't suffered myself," she confessed, "so I'll thank my Berry if
+I makes you wise in season."
+
+Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into
+the soft woman's kind brown eyes. Endearing phrases passed from mouth
+to mouth. And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very
+secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring herself
+to speak it.
+
+"Well! these's three men in my life I kissed," said Mrs. Berry, too
+much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife's
+struggling bosom, "three men, and one a nobleman! He've got more whisker
+than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought. Ten to one he'll think,
+now, I was glad o' my chance--they're that vain, whether they's lords or
+commons. How was I to know? I nat'ral thinks none but her husband'd
+sit in that chair. Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?" Mrs. Berry
+hardened her eyes, "and your husband away? What do this mean? Tell to
+me, child, what it mean his bein' here alone without ere a candle?"
+
+"Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here," said Lucy. "He is
+very kind. He comes almost every evening."
+
+"Lord Montfalcon--that his name!" Mrs. Berry exclaimed. "I been that
+flurried by the man, I didn't mind it at first. He come every evenin',
+and your husband out o' sight! My goodness me! it's gettin' worse and
+worse. And what do he come for, now, ma'am? Now tell me candid what ye
+do together here in the dark of an evenin'."
+
+Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way--I don't like it," said
+Lucy, pouting.
+
+"What do he come for, I ask?"
+
+"Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely, and wishes to
+amuse me. And he tells me of things I know nothing about and"--
+
+"And wants to be a-teachin' some of his things, mayhap," Mrs. Berry
+interrupted with a ruffled breast.
+
+"You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman," said Lucy,
+chiding her.
+
+"And you're a silly, unsuspectin' little bird," Mrs. Berry retorted,
+as she returned her taps on the cheek. "You haven't told me what ye do
+together, and what's his excuse for comin'."
+
+"Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
+History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the great
+men. And he says I'm not silly, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"That's one bit o' lime on your wings, my bird. History, indeed! History
+to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty History!
+Why, I know that man's name, my dear. He's a notorious living rake, that
+Lord Montfalcon. No woman's safe with him."
+
+"Ah, but he hasn't deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not pretended he was
+good."
+
+"More's his art," quoth the experienced dame. "So you read History
+together in the dark; my dear!"
+
+"I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
+Look! there's the book open ready for him when the candles come in. And
+now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.
+I do love you. Talk of other things."
+
+"So we will," said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy's caresses. "So let us.
+A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich
+a beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
+spot it shall! He won't meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I
+drop him. I'm dyin' for a cup o' tea, my dear."
+
+Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
+dropping him, was continuing to say: "Let him go and boast I kiss
+him; he ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of in a chaste woman's
+kiss--unawares--which men don't get too often in their lives, I can
+assure 'em;"--her eye surveyed Lucy's figure.
+
+Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms,
+and drew her into feminine depths. "Oh, you blessed!" she cried in most
+meaning tone, "you good, lovin', proper little wife, you!"
+
+"What is it, Mrs. Berry!" lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
+eyes.
+
+"As if I couldn't see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or I'd 'a
+marked ye the fast shock. Thinkin' to deceive me!"
+
+Mrs. Berry's eyes spoke generations. Lucy's wavered; she coloured all
+over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.
+
+"You're a sweet one," murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
+rocking her. "You're a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk. Haven't
+told a word to your husband, my dear?" she asked quickly.
+
+Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
+
+"That's right. We'll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
+him, and thinks he--losin' breath 'I'm a father!' Nor a hint even you
+haven't give him?"
+
+Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
+
+"Oh! you are a sweet one," said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more closely
+and lovingly.
+
+Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
+persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
+
+Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
+fingers' ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: "Now this
+right everything--a baby in the balance! Now I say this angel-infant
+come from on high. It's God's messenger, my love! and it's not wrong to
+say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn't 'a had one--not for all
+the tryin' in the world, you wouldn't, and some tries hard enough,
+poor creatures! Now let us rejice and make merry! I'm for cryin' and
+laughin', one and the same. This is the blessed seal of matrimony,
+which Berry never stamp on me. It's be hoped it's a boy. Make that man a
+grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe. Oh! this
+is what I call happiness, and I'll have my tea a little stronger in
+consequence. I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news."
+
+So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate and
+she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste was
+hers.
+
+Says Lucy demurely: "Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
+books."
+
+"Do I?" replies Berry. "Belike I do. Since what you done's so good, my
+darlin', I'm agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They
+can't come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and
+Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your own dear
+way, and that's all I cares for."
+
+"No, but you don't understand," persists Lucy. "I only read sensible
+books, and talk of serious things, because I'm sure... because I have
+heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?"
+
+Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. "Only to think of her bein' that
+thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of one
+religion ain't as good as another, after that. Why, you want to make him
+a historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who've been comin' here
+playin' at wolf, you been and made him--unbeknown to himself--sort o'
+tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that little women ain't got art
+ekal to the cunningest of 'em. Oh! I understand. Why, to be sure, didn't
+I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman: he was a postermost child, and
+afore his birth that women read nothin' but Blair's 'Grave' over and
+over again, from the end to the beginnin';--that's a serious book!--very
+hard readin'!--and at four years of age that child that come of it
+reelly was the piousest infant!--he was like a little curate. His eyes
+was up; he talked so solemn." Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate's
+appearance and manner of speaking. "So she got her wish, for one!"
+
+But at this lady Lucy laughed.
+
+They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to
+sleep with her. "If it's not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin' beside
+a woman," said Mrs. Berry. "I know it were to me shortly after my Berry,
+and I felt it. It don't somehow seem nat'ral after matrimony--a woman in
+your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for the cold sheets do give ye
+the creeps when you've been used to that that's different."
+
+Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then
+Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced linen,
+all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own hands: and
+Mrs. Berry praised them and her. "You been guessing a boy--woman-like,"
+she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed by the fire, and
+knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each other, praying; both
+praying for the unborn child; and Mrs. Berry pressed Lucy's waist the
+moment she was about to breathe the petition to heaven to shield and
+bless that coming life; and thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a
+strong love for her. Then Lucy got into bed first, leaving Berry to put
+out the light, and before she did so, Berry leaned over her, and eyed
+her roguishly, saying, "I never see ye like this, but I'm half in love
+with ye myself, you blushin' beauty! Sweet's your eyes, and your hair do
+take one so--lyin' back. I'd never forgive my father if he kep me away
+from ye four-and-twenty hours just. Husband o' that!" Berry pointed at
+the young wife's loveliness. "Ye look so ripe with kisses, and there
+they are a-languishin'!--... You never look so but in your bed, ye
+beauty!--just as it ought to be." Lucy had to pretend to rise to put out
+the light before Berry would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy. Then
+they lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their
+departure to-morrow, and reviewed Richard's emotions when he came to
+hear he was going to be made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy's
+delicious shivers when Richard was again in his rightful place, which
+she, Bessy Berry, now usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things;
+enough to make one fancy the adage subverted, that stolen fruits are
+sweetest; she drew such glowing pictures of bliss within the law and the
+limits of the conscience, till at last, worn out, Lucy murmured "Peepy,
+dear Berry," and the soft woman gradually ceased her chirp.
+
+Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
+beside her, and listening to Lucy's breath as it came and went;
+squeezing the fair sleeper's hand now and then, to ease her love as
+her reflections warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire
+hills, and sprang white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It
+passed, leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land. The moon shone
+brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark. His bark was savage and
+persistent. She was roused by the noise. By and by she fancied she
+heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that the house-door
+opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in the
+midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and bolted the
+door of the room, assured herself of Lucy's unconsciousness, and went on
+tiptoe to the window. The trees all stood white to the north; the ground
+glittered; the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her
+bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the situation of the
+window permitted. Berry was a soft, not a timid, woman: and it happened
+this night that her thoughts were above the fears of the dark. She was
+sure of the voices; curiosity without a shade of alarm held her on
+the watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel round her neck
+and shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth as well as she
+could, and remained stationary. The low hum of the voices came to a
+break; something was said in a louder tone; the house-door quietly shut;
+a man walked out of the garden into the road. He paused opposite her
+window, and Berry let the blind go back to its place, and peeped from
+behind an edge of it. He was in the shadow of the house, so that it was
+impossible to discern much of his figure. After some minutes he walked
+rapidly away, and Berry returned to the bed an icicle, from which Lucy's
+limbs sensitively shrank.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in
+the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top. Mrs. Berry
+went into the garden. The snow was partially melted; all save one spot,
+just under the portal, and there she saw the print of a man's foot. By
+some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of Richard's
+boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of the boot
+in that solitary footmark. There could be no doubt that it fitted. She
+tried it from heel to toe a dozen times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher
+who says, 'Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not
+arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His
+deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and more
+tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature who
+had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his heart
+of hearts. This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for his
+softness. But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must think
+he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his long absence
+signify?--Something highly unphilosophical. So, though love was strong,
+and was moving him to a straightforward course, the last tug of vanity
+drew him still aslant.
+
+The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
+necessity. As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one who
+entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental duty,
+based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific Humanist, in
+short.
+
+He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish's
+manner when he did appear. "At last!" said the lady, in a sad way that
+sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course,
+nothing to reproach himself with.
+
+But where was Richard?
+
+Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
+
+"If he had gone," said the baronet, "he would have anticipated me by a
+few hours."
+
+This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and
+shown his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at him
+wistfully.
+
+Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not
+seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent,
+more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.
+
+Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin's pitch of
+self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
+
+Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the
+rumour of him that was about.
+
+"If," said the baronet, "this person, his wife, is what you paint her, I
+do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If she is one
+to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him. It is
+impossible."
+
+The lady saw one thing to be done.
+
+"Call her to you," she said. "Have her with you at Raynham. Recognize
+her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
+wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If she
+is with you his way will be clear. Will you do that?"
+
+Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish's proposition was
+far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by nature, have no idea of
+science.
+
+"We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be between
+me and my son."
+
+He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything,
+when he had just brought himself to do so much.
+
+A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
+
+The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
+expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook his
+hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common social
+solicitude. He then said: "During your absence, sir, I have taken the
+liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which you are more
+deeply concerned than myself. I have taken upon myself to find out my
+mother and place her under my care. I trust you will not think I have
+done wrong. I acted as I thought best."
+
+Sir Austin replied: "You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself
+in such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself
+in imagining that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you
+did."
+
+"I have not deceived myself, sir," said Richard, and the interview was
+over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
+satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for tones
+indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard gave
+him none of those. The young man did not even face him as he spoke:
+if their eyes met by chance, Richard's were defiantly cold. His whole
+bearing was changed.
+
+"This rash marriage has altered him," said the very just man of science
+in life: and that meant: "it has debased him."
+
+He pursued his reflections. "I see in him the desperate maturity of a
+suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never
+lost, what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost, perhaps to me!
+lost to him! It may show itself in his children."
+
+The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting embryos:
+but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin. Bitterly he felt
+the injury to himself.
+
+One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at the
+hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told him a tale
+that threw Christian light on one part of Richard's nature. But this
+might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man of
+science. A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought. He sat down
+deliberately to study his son.
+
+No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and drank; joked
+and laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh
+bottle. He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound
+forced. In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth
+who sees a future before him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be
+carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much on his
+mind. The man of science was not reckoning that Richard also might have
+learned to act and wear a mask. Dead subjects--this is to say, people
+not on their guard--he could penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare
+chance, as scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
+examining the structure of the living.
+
+However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were engaged
+to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys', and walked down to her in the
+afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them. Previously the
+offended father had condescended to inform his son that it would shortly
+be time for him to return to his wife, indicating that arrangements
+would ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham. Richard had
+replied nothing; which might mean excess of gratitude, or hypocrisy
+in concealing his pleasure, or any one of the thousand shifts by which
+gratified human nature expresses itself when all is made to run smooth
+with it. Now Mrs. Berry had her surprise ready charged for the young
+husband. She had Lucy in her own house waiting for him. Every day she
+expected him to call and be overcome by the rapturous surprise, and
+every day, knowing his habit of frequenting the park, she marched
+Lucy thither, under the plea that Master Richard, whom she had already
+christened, should have an airing.
+
+The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington
+chestnuts, when these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the hope
+she bore in her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman
+galloping by at the moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or
+twice, to prepare her eyes for the shock, but Lucy's head was still half
+averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry, "Twon't hurt her if she go into his
+arms head foremost." They were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob
+preliminary. Richard held her silent with a terrible face; he grasped
+her arm, and put her behind him. Other people intervened. Lucy saw
+nothing to account for Berry's excessive flutter. Berry threw it on the
+air and some breakfast bacon, which, she said, she knew in the morning
+while she ate it, was bad for the bile, and which probably was the cause
+of her bursting into tears, much to Lucy's astonishment.
+
+"What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"It's all--" Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways,
+"it's all stomach, my dear. Don't ye mind," and becoming aware of her
+unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the elms.
+
+"You have a singular manner with old ladies," said Sir Austin to his
+son, after Berry had been swept aside.
+
+Scarcely courteous. She behaved like a mad woman, certainly."--Are you
+ill, my son?"
+
+Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness.
+The baronet sought Adrian's eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed,
+and he had a glimpse of Richard's countenance while disposing of Berry.
+Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly.
+As she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave
+matters as they were. He answered the baronet's look with a shrug.
+
+"Are you ill, Richard?" Sir Austin again asked his son.
+
+"Come on, sir! come on!" cried Richard.
+
+His father's further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the
+Foreys', gave poor ferry a character which one who lectures on
+matrimony, and has kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear the
+very title of.
+
+"Richard will go to his wife to-morrow," Sir Austin said to Adrian some
+time before they went in to dinner.
+
+Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by
+the side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the
+baronet's acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a
+person, Adrian said: "That was his wife, sir."
+
+Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had
+torn open the young man's skull, and some blast of battle laid his
+palpitating organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and
+his heart; and with the grief and terror of one whose mental habit
+was ever to pierce to extremes. Not altogether conscious that he had
+hitherto played with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into the
+stormful reality of it. He projected to speak plainly to his son on all
+points that night.
+
+"Richard is very gay," Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.
+
+"All will be right with him to-morrow," he replied; for the game had
+been in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine,
+that having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a
+certain extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
+
+"I notice he has rather a wild laugh--I don't exactly like his eyes,"
+said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"You will see a change in him to-morrow," the man of science remarked.
+
+It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In the
+middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law, worthy
+John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was alarmingly
+ill, bidding her come instantly. She cast about for some one to
+accompany her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his consent
+for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him apart, and in
+that interview he said to his son: "My dear Richard! it was my intention
+that we should come to an understanding together this night. But the
+time is short--poor Helen cannot spare many minutes. Let me then say
+that you deceived me, and that I forgive you. We fix our seal on
+the past. You will bring your wife to me when you return." And very
+cheerfully the baronet looked down on the generous future he thus
+founded.
+
+"Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?" said Richard.
+
+"Yes, my son, when you bring her."
+
+"Are you mocking me, sir?"
+
+"Pray, what do you mean?"
+
+"I ask you to receive her at once."
+
+"Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be
+kept from your happiness many days."
+
+"I think it will be some time, sir!" said Richard, sighing deeply.
+
+"And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
+play with your first duty?"
+
+"What is my first duty, sir?"
+
+"Since you are married, to be with your wife."
+
+"I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!" said Richard to
+himself, not intending irony.
+
+"Will you receive her at once?" he asked resolutely.
+
+The baronet was clouded by his son's reception of his graciousness. His
+grateful prospect had formerly been Richard's marriage--the culmination
+of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He now
+looked for a pretty scene in recompense:--Richard leading up his wife
+to him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one
+ostentatious minute in his embrace.
+
+He said: "Before you return, I demur to receiving her."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken all.
+
+"Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash proceeding!"
+the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he had uttered
+the words, Richard's eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It pained him,
+but he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from
+glancing acutely and asking: "Do you?"
+
+"Regret it, sir?" The question aroused one of those struggles in the
+young man's breast which a passionate storm of tears may still,
+and which sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not.
+Richard's eyes had the light of the desert.
+
+"Do you?" his father repeated. "You tempt me--I almost fear you do." At
+the thought--for he expressed his mind--the pity that he had for Richard
+was not pure gold.
+
+"Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is
+to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to misery!
+Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
+over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes, I
+do! Would you?"
+
+His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
+
+Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
+mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and won't
+understand.
+
+"Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said
+gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her because I
+could not do otherwise."
+
+"Your wife, Richard?"
+
+"Yes! my wife!"
+
+"If she had seen you, Richard?"
+
+"God spared her that!"
+
+Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat and
+greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
+Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
+brother's perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare,
+deploring his fatuity.
+
+Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel
+with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has kissed him,
+sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd suggestion
+did more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
+reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might
+be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System in
+difficulties.
+
+"I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the utmost
+doubt of it. "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much liberty
+during his probation."
+
+Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
+
+"Yes, yes; that is on me."
+
+His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
+and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.
+
+Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
+telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or
+possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.
+
+"That child's mind has disease in it... She is not sound," said the
+baronet.
+
+On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry. Her
+wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated,
+she was ushered upstairs into his room.
+
+Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to
+occupy.
+
+"Well' ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for she
+seemed loth to commence.
+
+"Wishin' I hadn't--" Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good
+rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin, you
+don't remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting
+'d be like this. Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no
+more than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,--twenty year! Leastways not
+quite twenty, it ain't."
+
+"Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.
+
+"In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
+married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
+
+Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
+assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience
+to hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally
+courteous.
+
+"He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us
+as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that
+we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so
+sweet! so strong! so fat!"
+
+Adrian laughed aloud.
+
+Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: "I wished
+afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not
+cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel,
+Raynham Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds
+pumlished. And a pension to me now, it's something more than it were.
+For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was--that's a
+bait many a man'll bite, that won't so a forsaken wife!"
+
+"If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the
+baronet interrupted her.
+
+"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord!
+So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me! Believin' our
+idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married--married
+for life! Yes! I don't even like widows. For I can't stop at the grave.
+Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's my husband, and if I'm a body
+at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the husband o'
+my body; and to think of two claimin' of me then--it makes me hot all
+over. Such is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman. No givin' in
+marriage, o' course I know; and if so I'm single."
+
+The baronet suppressed a smile. "Really, my good woman, you wander very
+much."
+
+"Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same,
+and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein'
+done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature
+she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin.
+And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible
+as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o'
+men--unpertected. And it's a young marriage--but there's no fear for
+her, as far as she go. The fear's t'other way. There's that in a man--at
+the commencement--which make of him Lord knows what if you any way
+interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet! It's consolation catch her,
+which is what we mean by seduein'. Whereas a man--he's a savage!"
+
+Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge
+delight.
+
+"Well, ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only
+come to it quickly."
+
+"Then here's my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there ain't
+another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me. And
+as for her, I'll risk sayin'--it's done, and no harm--you might search
+England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's his match like
+his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O Lord
+no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I went,
+and fetched her out of seducers' ways--which they may say what they
+like, but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and
+confidin'--I fetch her, and--the liberty--boxed her safe in my own
+house. So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it's
+him--Mr. Richard--I am bold, I know, but there--I'm in for it, and the
+Lord'll help me! It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm
+from a young marriage. It's him, and--I say nothin' of her, and how
+sweet she bears it, and it's eating her at a time when Natur' should
+have no other trouble but the one that's goin' on it's him, and I
+ask--so bold--shall there--and a Christian gentlemen his father--shall
+there be a tug 'tween him as a son and him as a husband--soon to be
+somethin' else? I speak bold out--I'd have sons obey their fathers, but
+a priest's words spoke over them, which they're now in my ears, I say
+I ain't a doubt on earth--I'm sure there ain't one in heaven--which
+dooty's the holier of the two."
+
+Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the sexes
+were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was
+slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old
+lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred
+that he had latterly followed it out. He sat cross-legged and silent, a
+finger to his temple.
+
+"One gets so addle-gated thinkin' many things," said Mrs. Berry, simply.
+"That's why we see wonder clever people goin' wrong--to my mind. I think
+it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward."
+
+The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she
+had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth,
+by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a
+principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to
+comprehend.
+
+Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time
+to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
+
+He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see his
+cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they
+will both come to me at Raynham."
+
+Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
+perpendicularly. "He pass her like a stranger in the park this evenin',"
+she faltered.
+
+"Ah?" said the baronet. "Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the
+week is over."
+
+Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. "Not of his own accord he pass that
+sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!"
+
+"I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am."
+
+Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
+
+"All's well that ends well," she said to herself. "It's just bad
+inquirin' too close among men. We must take 'em somethin' like
+Providence--as they come. Thank heaven! I kep' back the baby."
+
+In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
+
+Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.
+
+"I think I have not met a better in my life," said the baronet, mingling
+praise and sarcasm.
+
+Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her
+white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head
+to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for
+the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay--the spark gone.
+
+Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have
+spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead,
+and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.
+
+When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish, she, for
+some comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard,
+speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it
+was his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her
+husband that Clare's last request had been that neither of the rings
+should be removed. She had written it; she would not speak it.
+
+"I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me
+between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched."
+
+The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering, as
+she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.
+
+In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare's dead hand,
+Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to
+enter it, reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had buried while she
+lived, arose with her death. He saw it play like flame across her marble
+features. The memory of her voice was like a knife at his nerves. His
+coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was bitter blame.
+
+On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his bedroom,
+with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse could happen
+to a mother than the loss of her child. Choking she said to him, "Read
+this," and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling in his hand. She
+would not breathe to him what it was. She entreated him not to open it
+before her.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "tell me what you think. John must not hear of it.
+I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!"
+
+"My Diary" was written in the round hand of Clare's childhood on the
+first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.
+
+"Richard's fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put it
+under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He does
+not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but
+Richard is not, and never will be."
+
+The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish
+prayer to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her growing mind in
+his history. As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made
+much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.
+
+"We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted each
+other, and I told him he used to call them 'coals-sleeps' when he was
+a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to be
+told he was ever a baby."
+
+He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek
+affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress and
+pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He read
+on:
+
+"Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure
+there is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a great
+General and going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself as a boy
+and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray
+he will never, never be wounded. I wonder what I should feel if Richard
+was ever to die."
+
+Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
+
+"Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me. Richard
+said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is angry with me
+because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I know I am
+not looking after earthworms."
+
+Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.
+
+Then it came to a period when the words: "Richard kissed me," stood by
+themselves, and marked a day in her life.
+
+Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He read
+one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that ambition.
+
+       "Thy truth to me is truer
+        Than horse, or dog, or blade;
+        Thy vows to me are fewer
+        Than ever maiden made.
+
+        Thou steppest from thy splendour
+        To make my life a song:
+        My bosom shall be tender
+        As thine has risen strong."
+
+All the verses were transcribed. "It is he who is the humble knight,"
+Clare explained at the close, "and his lady, is a Queen. Any Queen would
+throw her crown away for him."
+
+It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
+
+"Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men. Something
+tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed in blue. He
+said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek. Richard never kisses
+me on the mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and kissed him while
+he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm under his head, and the other out
+on the bed. I moved away a bit of his hair that was over his eyes.
+I wanted to cut it. I have one piece. I do not let anybody see I am
+unhappy, not even mama. She says I want iron. I am sure I do not. I
+like to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard's is Richard Doria
+Feverel."
+
+His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music of
+that name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow now
+behind the hills of death.
+
+He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to belong
+to her. The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare's. Clare's voice
+clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
+
+Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages. She
+spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.
+
+"I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning. I
+saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His wife must
+be so beautiful! Richard's wife! Perhaps he will love me better now he
+is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful. If I can
+help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God hears poor
+sinners' prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do. They say
+I am good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not looking after
+earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me, God!"
+
+Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey her
+mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.
+
+"I have seen Richard. Richard despises me," was the next entry.
+
+But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine
+handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible
+conclusion.
+
+"I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my
+fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should not
+have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth was on
+mine."
+
+Further: "I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than endure
+it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would do? I
+think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so kind,
+and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I pray
+to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of my God the more I
+pray."
+
+Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be
+mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words in
+earnest? Did she lie there dead--he shrouded the thought.
+
+He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
+
+"A quarter to one o'clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow. I
+shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the fields
+together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children,
+but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he
+said--if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I
+made a vow to wear it for ever and ever... It is not mama's fault. She
+does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward,
+nor am I. He hates cowards.
+
+"I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead
+he will hear what I say.
+
+"I heard just now Richard call distinctly--Clare, come out to me. Surely
+he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very
+cold."
+
+The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if
+her hand had lost mastery over the pen.
+
+"I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I am
+not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words. 'Clari,'
+and 'Don Ricardo,' and his laugh. He used to be full of fun. Once we
+laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a friend, and
+began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a young man he
+would have forgiven me, but I should not have been happier. I must have
+died. God never looks on me.
+
+"It is past two o'clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be very
+cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard."
+
+With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not
+over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of
+existence left half the number of pages white.
+
+Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay,
+the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved--to
+him she had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with
+strange tidings--it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to
+have been speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that
+still heart.
+
+He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her
+alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent
+him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine,
+hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent
+fold. Death in life it sounded.
+
+The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed. She knelt by
+his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but
+neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in
+common. They prayed God to forgive her.
+
+Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother
+breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
+
+After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them
+together.
+
+"Richard," she said, "the worst is over for me. I have no one to love
+but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this...
+Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare my
+brother what I suffer."
+
+He answered the broken spirit: "I have killed one. She sees me as I am.
+I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her
+hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt.
+Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head
+that--No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me.
+If I find it I shall come to claim her. If not, God help us all!"
+
+She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he
+went forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of
+Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely behind.
+
+"Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I'm not a man of fashion,
+happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are you?"
+
+That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.
+
+Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had
+been in the wilderness five years.
+
+"The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton
+is to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a
+cycle's notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out;
+Demos and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see,
+your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five years, and
+you will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an
+equality made perfect by universal prostration."
+
+Austin indulged him in a laugh. "I want to hear about ourselves. How is
+old Ricky?"
+
+"You know of his--what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed to
+jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?--a very charming little woman she
+makes, by the way--presentable! quite old Anacreon's rose in milk. Well!
+everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It continued to
+flourish in spite. It's in a consumption now, though--emaciated, lean,
+raw, spectral! I've this morning escaped from Raynham to avoid the sight
+of it. I have brought our genial uncle Hippias to town--a delightful
+companion! I said to him: 'We've had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers,
+'there's a time when you come to think the Spring old.' You should have
+heard how he trained out the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my
+sap just to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin,
+our uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's guard
+ourselves there, and go and order dinner."
+
+"But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?" said Austin.
+
+"Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!"
+
+"A child? Richard has one?" Austin's clear eyes shone with pleasure.
+
+"I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages. He has one: one
+as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It bore
+the marriage--the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby,
+'twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy. I
+assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every
+hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a
+consummate cure, or a happy release."
+
+By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and smiled sadly.
+
+"How has Ricky turned out?" he asked. "What sort of a character has he?"
+
+"The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it. Character? he
+has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it.
+Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an enthusiasm for
+the maiden days of Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your
+fashion, Austin,--you have something to answer for. Unfortunately he
+began with the feminine side of it. Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain,
+or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the
+soft head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his
+good work. Oh, horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System in
+the flesh, and you have our Richard. The consequence is, that this male
+Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for
+him, the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him
+fruitful within. We heard of him last that he was trying the German
+waters--preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from the
+subjugation of the Teuton. Let's hope they'll wash him. He is in the
+company of Lady Judith Felle--your old friend, the ardent female Radical
+who married the decrepit to carry out her principles. They always marry
+English lords, or foreign princes: I admire their tactics."
+
+"Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but she was always
+too sentimental," said Austin.
+
+"Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I like her for her
+sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are sure to live long and die
+fat. Feeling, that's the slayer, coz. Sentiment! 'tis the cajolery of
+existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable.
+Would that I had more!"
+
+"You're not much changed, Adrian."
+
+"I'm not a Radical, Austin."
+
+Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian's figurative speech,
+instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a
+posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his
+daughter-in-law and grandson. That was what Adrian meant by the efforts
+of the System to swallow the baby.
+
+"We're in a tangle," said the wise youth. "Time will extricate us, I
+presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?"
+
+Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy's place of residence.
+
+"We'll go to her by and by," said Adrian.
+
+"I shall go and see her now," said Austin.
+
+"Well, we'll go and order the dinner first, coz."
+
+"Give me her address."
+
+"Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard," Adrian
+objected. "Don't you care what you eat?" he roared hoarsely, looking
+humorously hurt. "I daresay not. A slice out of him that's handy--sauce
+du ciel! Go, batten on the baby, cannibal. Dinner at seven."
+
+Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy's, and strolled off to do the
+better thing.
+
+Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup.
+Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had vaulted
+lightly and thereby indicated that he was positively coming the next
+day. She forgot him in the bustle of her duties and the absorption
+of her faculties in thoughts of the incomparable stranger Lucy had
+presented to the world, till a knock at the street-door reminded
+her. "There he is!" she cried, as she ran to open to him. "There's my
+stranger come!" Never was a woman's faith in omens so justified. The
+stranger desired to see Mrs. Richard Feverel. He said his name was Mr.
+Austin Wentworth. Mrs. Berry clasped her hands, exclaiming, "Come at
+last!" and ran bolt out of the house to look up and down the street.
+Presently she returned with many excuses for her rudeness, saying: "I
+expected to see her comin' home, Mr. Wentworth. Every day twice a day
+she go out to give her blessed angel an airing. No leavin' the child
+with nursemaids for her! She is a mother! and good milk, too, thank the
+Lord! though her heart's so low."
+
+Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the history of the young
+couple and her participation in it, and admired the beard. "Although
+I'd swear you don't wear it for ornament, now!" she said, having in the
+first impulse designed a stroke at man's vanity.
+
+Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication, and with
+dejected head and joined hands threw out dark hints about Richard.
+
+While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case, Lucy came in
+preceding the baby.
+
+"I am Austin Wentworth," he said, taking her hand. They read each
+other's faces, these two, and smiled kinship.
+
+"Your name is Lucy?"
+
+She affirmed it softly.
+
+"And mine is Austin, as you know."
+
+Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy's charms to subdue him, and presented
+Richard's representative, who, seeing a new face, suffered himself to be
+contemplated before he commenced crying aloud and knocking at the doors
+of Nature for something that was due to him.
+
+"Ain't he a lusty darlin'?" says Mrs. Berry. "Ain't he like his own
+father? There can't be no doubt about zoo, zoo pitty pet. Look at his
+fists. Ain't he got passion? Ain't he a splendid roarer? Oh!" and she
+went off rapturously into baby-language.
+
+A fine boy, certainly. Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for further proof,
+desiring Austin's confirmation as to their being dumplings.
+
+Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid roarer out of the
+room.
+
+"She might a done it here," said Mrs. Berry. "There's no prettier
+sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see that! He's off in his
+heroics--he want to be doin' all sorts o' things: I say he'll never do
+anything grander than that baby. You should 'a seen her uncle over that
+baby--he came here, for I said, you shall see your own family, my dear,
+and so she thinks. He come, and he laughed over that baby in the joy of
+his heart, poor man! he cried, he did. You should see that Mr. Thompson,
+Mr. Wentworth--a friend o' Mr. Richard's, and a very modest-minded young
+gentleman--he worships her in his innocence. It's a sight to see him
+with that baby. My belief is he's unhappy 'cause he can't anyways be
+nurse-maid to him. O Mr. Wentworth! what do you think of her, sir?"
+
+Austin's reply was as satisfactory as a man's poor speech could make it.
+He heard that Lady Feverel was in the house, and Mrs. Berry prepared the
+way for him to pay his respects to her. Then Mrs. Berry ran to Lucy, and
+the house buzzed with new life. The simple creatures felt in Austin's
+presence something good among them. "He don't speak much," said Mrs.
+Berry, "but I see by his eye he mean a deal. He ain't one o' yer
+long-word gentry, who's all gay deceivers, every one of 'em."
+
+Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast. "I wonder what he
+thinks of me, Mrs. Berry? I could not speak to him. I loved him before I
+saw him. I knew what his face was like."
+
+"He looks proper even with a beard, and that's a trial for a virtuous
+man," said Mrs. Berry. "One sees straight through the hair with him.
+Think! he'll think what any man'd think--you a-suckin spite o' all your
+sorrow, my sweet,--and my Berry talkin' of his Roman matrons!--here's
+a English wife'll match 'em all! that's what he thinks. And now that
+leetle dark under yer eye'll clear, my darlin', now he've come."
+
+Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more than the peace
+she had in being near Richard's best friend. When she sat down to tea it
+was with a sense that the little room that held her was her home perhaps
+for many a day.
+
+A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin's dinner. During
+the meal he entertained them with anecdotes of his travels. Poor Lucy
+had no temptation to try to conquer Austin. That heroic weakness of hers
+was gone.
+
+Mrs. Berry had said: "Three cups--I goes no further," and Lucy had
+rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin, who was in the thick of a
+Brazilian forest, asked her if she was a good traveller.
+
+"I mean, can you start at a minute's notice?"
+
+Lucy hesitated, and then said; "Yes," decisively, to which Mrs. Berry
+added, that she was not a "luggage-woman."
+
+"There used to be a train at seven o'clock," Austin remarked, consulting
+his watch.
+
+The two women were silent.
+
+"Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?"
+
+Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+Lucy's lips parted to speak. She could not answer.
+
+Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry's dropping hands.
+
+"Joy and deliverance!" she exclaimed with a foundering voice.
+
+"Will you come?" Austin kindly asked again.
+
+Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, "Yes." Mrs. Berry
+cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones with a
+mighty whisper: "She's thinking what's to be done with baby."
+
+"He must learn to travel," said Austin.
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Berry, "and I'll be his nuss, and bear him, a sweet!
+Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham Abbey! but it's
+nurse-woman now, you must say. Let us be goin' on the spot."
+
+She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool
+the heaven-sent resolve. Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy
+alternately. She was wishing to ask a multitude of questions. His face
+reassured her, and saying: "I will be dressed instantly," she also left
+the room. Talking, bustling, preparing, wrapping up my lord, and looking
+to their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready within the time
+prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming over the baby. "He'll
+sleep it through," she said. "He's had enough for an alderman, and goes
+to sleep sound after his dinner, he do, a duck!" Before they departed,
+Lucy ran up to Lady Feverel. She returned for, the small one.
+
+"One moment, Mr. Wentworth?"
+
+"Just two," said Austin.
+
+Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were full
+of tears.
+
+"She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth."
+
+"She shall," Austin said simply.
+
+Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all
+upon the great act of courage she was performing.
+
+"I do hope baby will not wake," was her chief solicitude.
+
+"He!" cries nurse-woman Berry, from the rear, "his little tum-tum's as
+tight as he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty! and ye may take
+yer oath he never wakes till that's slack. He've got character of his
+own, a blessed!"
+
+There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by storm.
+The baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and rejoicing
+in the pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and to himself.
+Hearing Austin's name sonorously pronounced by the man of calves,
+he looked up from his book, and held out his hand. "Glad to see you,
+Austin." His appearance betokened complete security. The next minute he
+found himself escaladed.
+
+It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room
+besides Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the lamp: Mrs. Berry close to
+the door. The door was half open, and passing through it might be seen
+the petrified figure of a fine man. The baronet glancing over the lamp
+rose at Mrs. Berry's signification of a woman's personality. Austin
+stepped back and led Lucy to him by the hand. "I have brought
+Richard's wife, sir," he said with a pleased, perfectly uncalculating,
+countenance, that was disarming. Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed. She
+felt her two hands taken, and heard a kind voice. Could it be possible
+it belonged to the dreadful father of her husband? She lifted her eyes
+nervously: her hands were still detained. The baronet contemplated
+Richard's choice. Had he ever had a rivalry with those pure eyes? He saw
+the pain of her position shooting across her brows, and, uttering-gentle
+inquiries as to her health, placed her in a seat. Mrs. Berry had already
+fallen into a chair.
+
+"What aspect do you like for your bedroom?--East?" said the baronet.
+
+Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: "Am I to stay?"
+
+"Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once," he pursued.
+"You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will
+feel more at home."
+
+Lucy's colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should
+say, "The day is ours!" Undoubtedly--strange as it was to think it--the
+fortress was carried.
+
+"Lucy is rather tired," said Austin, and to hear her Christian name thus
+bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.
+
+The baronet was about to touch the bell. "But have you come alone?" he
+asked.
+
+At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to require
+effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp,
+her agitation could not escape notice. The blissful bundle shook in her
+arms.
+
+"By the way, what is he to me?" Austin inquired generally as he went and
+unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. "My relationship is not so defined
+as yours, sir."
+
+An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson
+with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment
+the mother of anybody's child.
+
+"I really think he's like Richard," Austin laughed. Lucy looked: I am
+sure he is!
+
+"As like as one to one," Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa
+not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. "And he's
+as healthy as his father was, Sir Austin--spite o' the might 'a beens.
+Reg'lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he come. We knows the
+hour o' the day, and of the night."
+
+"You nurse him yourself, of course?" the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was
+satisfied on that point.
+
+Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the
+consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.
+"'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master
+Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it,
+considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions
+of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.
+
+"He looks healthy," said the baronet, "but I am not a judge of babies."
+
+Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new
+commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the
+housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.
+
+Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: "She is
+extremely well-looking." He replied: "A person you take to at once."
+There it ended.
+
+But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy and
+Mrs. Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to talk about the reception they
+had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms, and
+the solid happiness that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry all the while would
+persist in consulting the looking-glass. Her first distinct answer was,
+"My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?"
+
+"Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would be
+so kind, so considerate?"
+
+"I am sure I looked a frump," returned Mrs. Berry. "Oh dear! two birds
+at a shot. What do you think, now?"
+
+"I never saw so wonderful a likeness," says Lucy.
+
+"Likeness! look at me." Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the palms.
+
+"You're very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?"
+
+"Ain't it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear."
+
+"Go to bed, Berry, dear," says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing way.
+"I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart! You've had so much
+excitement."
+
+"Ha! ha!" Berry laughed hysterically; "she thinks it's about this
+business of hers. Why, it's child's-play, my darlin'. But I didn't look
+for tragedy to-night. Sleep in this house I can't, my love!"
+
+Lucy was astonished. "Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?--Oh! why, you silly
+old thing? I know."
+
+"Do ye!" said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.
+
+"You're afraid of ghosts."
+
+"Belike I am when they're six foot two in their shoes, and bellows when
+you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my Berry!"
+
+"Your husband?"
+
+"Large as life!"
+
+Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as the
+Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that he had
+recognized her and quaked. "Time ain't aged him," said Mrs. Berry,
+"whereas me! he've got his excuse now. I know I look a frump."
+
+Lucy kissed her: "You look the nicest, dearest old thing."
+
+"You may say an old thing, my dear."
+
+"And your husband is really here?"
+
+"Berry's below!"
+
+Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of incredulity.
+
+"What will you do, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"Go, my dear. Leave him to be happy in his own way. It's over atween us,
+I see that. When I entered the house I felt there was something comin'
+over me, and lo and behold ye! no sooner was we in the hall-passage--if
+it hadn't been for that blessed infant I should 'a dropped. I must 'a
+known his step, for my heart began thumpin', and I knew I hadn't got my
+hair straight--that Mr. Wentworth was in such a hurry--nor my best gown.
+I knew he'd scorn me. He hates frumps."
+
+"Scorn you!" cried Lucy, angrily. "He who has behaved so wickedly!"
+
+Mrs. Berry attempted to rise. "I may as well go at once," she whimpered.
+"If I see him I shall only be disgracin' of myself. I feel it all on my
+side already. Did ye mark him, my dear? I know I was vexin' to him at
+times, I was. Those big men are so touchy about their dignity--nat'ral.
+Hark at me! I'm goin' all soft in a minute. Let me leave the house, my
+dear. I daresay it was good half my fault. Young women don't understand
+men sufficient--not altogether--and I was a young woman then; and then
+what they goes and does they ain't quite answerable for: they, feels, I
+daresay, pushed from behind. Yes. I'll go. I'm a frump. I'll go. 'Tain't
+in natur' for me to sleep in the same house."
+
+Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry's shoulders, and forcibly fixed her in
+her seat. "Leave baby, naughty woman? I tell you he shall come to you,
+and fall on his knees to you and beg your forgiveness."
+
+"Berry on his knees!"
+
+"Yes. And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him."
+
+"If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away words, great'll be
+my wonder!" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"We will see," said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do something for the
+good creature that had befriended her.
+
+Mrs. Berry examined her gown. "Won't it seem we're runnin' after him?"
+she murmured faintly.
+
+"He is your husband, Mrs. Berry. He may be wanting to come to you now."
+
+"Oh! Where is all I was goin' to say to that man when we met." Mrs.
+Berry ejaculated. Lucy had left the room.
+
+On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed in black, who
+stopped her and asked if she was Richard's wife, and kissed her, passing
+from her immediately. Lucy despatched a message for Austin, and related
+the Berry history. Austin sent for the great man and said: "Do you
+know your wife is here?" Before Berry had time to draw himself up to
+enunciate his longest, he was requested to step upstairs, and as his
+young mistress at once led the way, Berry could not refuse to put his
+legs in motion and carry the stately edifice aloft.
+
+Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch that night. "He
+began in the old way, my dear, and says I, a true heart and plain words,
+Martin Berry. So there he cuts himself and his Johnson short, and down
+he goes--down on his knees. I never could 'a believed it. I kep my
+dignity as a woman till I see that sight, but that done for me. I was a
+ripe apple in his arms 'fore I knew where I was. There's something about
+a fine man on his knees that's too much for us women. And it reely was
+the penitent on his two knees, not the lover on his one. If he mean it!
+But ah! what do you think he begs of me, my dear?--not to make it known
+in the house just yet! I can't, I can't say that look well."
+
+Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct, and Mrs. Berry
+did her best to look on it in that light.
+
+"Did the bar'net kiss ye when you wished him goodnight?" she asked. Lucy
+said he had not. "Then bide awake as long as ye can," was Mrs. Berry's
+rejoinder. "And now let us pray blessings on that simple-speaking
+gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little."
+
+Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly where her own
+soft heart was concerned. As she secretly anticipated, the baronet came
+into her room when all was quiet. She saw him go and bend over Richard
+the Second, and remain earnestly watching him. He then went to the
+half-opened door of the room where Lucy slept, leaned his ear a moment,
+knocked gently, and entered. Mrs. Berry heard low words interchanging
+within. She could not catch a syllable, yet she would have sworn to the
+context. "He've called her his daughter, promised her happiness, and
+given a father's kiss to her." When Sir Austin passed out she was in a
+deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+Briareus reddening angrily over the sea--what is that vaporous Titan?
+And Hesper set in his rosy garland--why looks he so implacably sweet?
+It is that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work,
+and he has got a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West
+fair Lucy beckons him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How strong and
+fierce the temptation is! how subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his
+reason, his honour. For he loves her; she is still the first and only
+woman to him. Otherwise would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise
+would his limbs be chained while her arms are spread open to him. And
+if he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit, or a thousand? Is
+not love the password to that beckoning bliss? So may we say; but here
+is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.
+
+A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for a dance of
+devils? His education has thus wrought him to think.
+
+He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel base and accept
+the bliss that beckons--he has not fallen so low as that.
+
+Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the Fancy
+led him away from you, high in his conceit? Poor wretch! that thought
+to be he of the hundred hands, and war against the absolute Gods. Jove
+whispered a light commission to the Laughing Dame; she met him; and how
+did he shake Olympus? with laughter?
+
+Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears, than
+one called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever outcast. He
+has not the oblivion of madness. Clothed in the lights of his first
+passion, robed in the splendour of old skies, she meets him everywhere;
+morning, evening, night, she shines above him; waylays him suddenly in
+forest depths; drops palpably on his heart. At moments he forgets; he
+rushes to embrace her; calls her his beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss
+brings agony of shame to his face.
+
+Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him, begging him by the
+love he had for him to return. From that hour Richard burnt unread all
+the letters he received. He knew too well how easily he could persuade
+himself: words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish the
+spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that he clung to in
+desperate self-vindication.
+
+To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous
+and thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one that fair women greatly
+prize, and certain of them professionally follow. Lady Judith, as far as
+her sex would permit, was also of the Titans in their battle against
+the absolute Gods; for which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord
+incapable in all save his acres. Her achievements she kept to her own
+mind: she did not look happy over them. She met Richard accidentally
+in Paris; she saw his state; she let him learn that she alone on earth
+understood him. The consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in
+her train. It soothed him to be near a woman. Did she venture her guess
+as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility women
+have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to participate
+in. She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, much as he might speak of
+his--vaguely, and with self-blame. And she understood him. How the dark
+unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman's eye! We are at compound
+interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!--almost as rich as
+we dreamed! But then the instant we are away from her we find ourselves
+bankrupt, beggared. How is that? We do not ask. We hurry to her and bask
+hungrily in her orbs. The eye must be feminine to be thus creative:
+I cannot say why. Lady Judith understood Richard, and he feeling
+infinitely vile, somehow held to her more feverishly, as one who dreaded
+the worst in missing her. The spirit must rest; he was weak with what he
+suffered.
+
+Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans, male
+and female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift, prone on
+floods of sentiment. The blue-flocked peasant swinging behind his oxen
+of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even
+the doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows. Horrible
+reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it, but it frets at Richard when
+he is out of her shadow. Often wretchedly he watches the young men of
+his own age trooping to their work. Not cloud-work theirs! Work solid,
+unambitious, fruitful!
+
+Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He gaped blindfolded
+for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters. He
+swallowed it comfortably. It was an intoxicating cordial. Himself on
+horseback overriding wrecks of Empires! Well might common sense cower
+with the meaner animals at the picture. Tacitly they agreed to recast
+the civilized globe. The quality of vapour is to melt and shape itself
+anew; but it is never the quality of vapour to reassume the same shapes.
+Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn to a monstrous
+donkey with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes. The
+phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those we see in
+the skies, and equally the sport of the wind. Lady Judith blew. There
+was plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or
+other. You that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see
+the similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish
+to you, that a young man of Richard's age, Richard's education and
+position, should be in this wild state. Had he not been nursed to
+believe he was born for great things? Did she not say she was sure of
+it? And to feel base, yet born for better, is enough to make one grasp
+at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game leg. How intense is
+his faith to quacks! with what a passion of longing is he not seized to
+break somebody's head! They spoke of Italy in low voices. "The time will
+come," said she. "And I shall be ready," said he. What rank was he to
+take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel, general in chief, or
+simple private? Here, as became him, he was much more positive and
+specific than she was: Simple private, he said. Yet he save himself
+caracoling on horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course.
+Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked forth
+under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the
+distance. They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires. Italia mia!
+Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her
+fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the
+Po, and their hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the
+aspirations of a world arise for her, thick and frequent as the puffs of
+smoke from cigars of Pannonian sentries!
+
+So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady
+Judith said she could not part with him. For his sake, mind! This
+Richard verified. Perhaps he had reason to be grateful. The high road
+of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse. He is foolish,
+God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero because he has
+not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it were, anointed by his
+occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
+
+Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must
+term folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and
+somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin
+plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he
+could.
+
+"Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?"
+
+"For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin."
+
+He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at
+heart. Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian
+palace of the West. Austin waited patiently. Lady Judith's old lord
+played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
+Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable a wife was
+to be pardoned for espousing an old man. She was an enthusiast even in
+her connubial duties. She had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion
+she might have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded
+from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from
+nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded person, of that order
+who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in
+their optics. She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she
+was unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin
+easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard. She and Austin
+were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old
+lord.
+
+The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where
+the shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water
+brawling over slabs of slate. A woman passed them bearing in her arms a
+baby, whose mighty size drew their attention.
+
+"What a wopper!" Richard laughed.
+
+"Well, that is a fine fellow," said Austin, "but I don't think he's much
+bigger than your boy."
+
+"He'll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius," Richard was saying. Then
+he looked at Austin.
+
+"What was that you said?" Lady Judith asked of Austin.
+
+"What have I said that deserves to be repeated?" Austin counterqueried
+quite innocently.
+
+"Richard has a son?"
+
+"You didn't know it?"
+
+"His modesty goes very far," said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow of a
+curtsey to Richard's paternity.
+
+Richard's heart throbbed with violence. He looked again in Austin's
+face. Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said nothing
+more on the subject.
+
+"Well!" murmured Lady Judith.
+
+When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: "Austin! you
+were in earnest?"
+
+"You didn't know it, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your father, your aunt.
+I believe Adrian wrote too."
+
+"I tore up their letters," said Richard.
+
+"He's a noble fellow, I can tell you. You've nothing to be ashamed of.
+He'll soon be coming to ask about you. I made sure you knew."
+
+"No, I never knew." Richard walked away, and then said: "What is he
+like?"
+
+"Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother's eyes."
+
+"And she's--"
+
+"Yes. I think the child has kept her well."
+
+"They're both at Raynham?"
+
+"Both."
+
+Hence fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where are the dreams of
+the hero when he learns he has a child? Nature is taking him to her
+bosom. She will speak presently. Every domesticated boor in these
+hills can boast the same, yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
+prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most common
+performance. A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he were trying to
+make out the lineaments of his child.
+
+Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into the
+air, and walked on and on. "A father!" he kept repeating to himself:
+"a child!" And though he knew it not, he was striking the keynotes of
+Nature. But he did know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over
+his whole being.
+
+The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still. He
+left the high road and pierced into the forest. His walk was rapid: the
+leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the
+dells noised to his feet. Something of a religious joy--a strange sacred
+pleasure--was in him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself: and now
+he was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A father! he dared never
+see his child. And he had no longer his phantasies to fall upon. He
+was utterly bare to his sin. In his troubled mind it seemed to him that
+Clare looked down on him--Clare who saw him as he was; and that to her
+eyes it would be infamy for him to go and print his kiss upon his child.
+Then came stern efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his
+face iron.
+
+By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past
+summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his journey's
+end. There he discovered he had a companion in Lady Judith's little dog.
+He gave the friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were silent
+in the forest-silence.
+
+It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged. He
+must advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
+
+An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches. In the dells and
+on the heights was the same dead heat. Here where the brook tinkled it
+was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of water.
+Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white
+fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys were
+clear, defined to the shadows of their verges, the distances sharply
+distinct, and with the colours of day but slightly softened. Richard
+beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle-mark. The
+breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
+heaven. Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched
+panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started
+afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk
+of the forest.
+
+On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey
+topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades. Richard mechanically
+sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to the panting
+of the dog. Sprinkled at his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of
+glow-worms studded the dark dry ground.
+
+He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies were expended
+in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow
+Westward from the South. Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of
+silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the
+van of a tempest. He did not observe them or the leaves beginning to
+chatter. When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a
+huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his mind
+to scale it. He got no nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous
+outstepping. The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky. Then
+heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were singing, the
+earth breathed, it was black before him, and behind. All at once the
+thunder spoke. The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.
+
+Up startled the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the country at the
+foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.
+Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven,
+and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing
+him; filling him with awful rapture. Alone there--sole human creature
+among the grandeurs and mysteries of storm--he felt the representative
+of his kind, and his spirit rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be
+glory, let it be ruin! Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled
+the wrathful crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the
+sky, and great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were
+supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song roused in the
+leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and
+heavier the deluge pressed. A mighty force of water satisfied the desire
+of the earth. Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring,
+Richard had a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion, he was scarcely
+conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was
+refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril.
+He fancied he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never seen the flower in
+Rhineland--never thought of it; and it would hardly be met with in a
+forest. He was sure he smelt it fresh in dews. His little companion
+wagged a miserable wet tail some way in advance. He went an slowly,
+thinking indistinctly. After two or three steps he stooped and stretched
+out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he knew not why, a strong
+wish to verify its growth there. Groping about, his hand encountered
+something warm that started at his touch, and he, with the instinct
+we have, seized it, and lifted it to look at it. The creature was very
+small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, now accustomed to the
+darkness, were able to discern it for what it was, a tiny leveret, and
+ha supposed that the dog had probably frightened its dam just before he
+found it. He put the little thing on one hand in his breast, and stepped
+out rapidly as before.
+
+The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured. So cool and
+easy had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of shelter
+the birds could find, and how the butterflies and moths saved their
+coloured wings from washing. Folded close they might hang under a leaf,
+he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts
+on each side, as one of their children. He was next musing on a strange
+sensation he experienced. It ran up one arm with an indescribable
+thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart. It was purely physical,
+ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all through his
+blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little thing he
+carried in his breast was licking his hand there. The small rough tongue
+going over and over the palm of his hand produced the strange sensation
+he felt. Now that he knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he
+knew the cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle
+scraping continued without intermission as on he walked. What did it say
+to him? Human tongue could not have said so much just then.
+
+A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the
+dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all
+about in his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly.
+Impelled as a man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his
+brain, Richard was passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung with
+votive wreaths, where the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still,
+in the twilight it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked
+within, and saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not many
+steps had he gone ere his strength went out of him, and he shuddered.
+What was it? He asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as lightning the
+Spirit of Life illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child,
+his darling's touch. With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from
+the depths; they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him
+he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.
+
+When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
+birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills. He
+was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn
+under a spacious morning sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming. Lucy had the news first
+in a letter from Ripton Thompson, who met him at Bonn. Ripton did not
+say that he had employed his vacation holiday on purpose to use his
+efforts to induce his dear friend to return to his wife; and finding
+Richard already on his way, of course Ripton said nothing to him, but
+affected to be travelling for his pleasure like any cockney. Richard
+also wrote to her. In case she should have gone to the sea he directed
+her to send word to his hotel that he might not lose an hour. His letter
+was sedate in tone, very sweet to her. Assisted by the faithful female
+Berry, she was conquering an Aphorist.
+
+"Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts," was one of his rough
+notes, due to an observation of Lucy's maternal cares. Let us remember,
+therefore, we men who have drunk of it largely there, that she has it.
+
+Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master Richard's education
+had commenced, and the great future historian he must consequently be.
+This trait in Lucy was of itself sufficient to win Sir Austin.
+
+"Here my plan with Richard was false," he reflected: "in presuming that
+anything save blind fortuity would bring him such a mate as he should
+have." He came to add: "And has got!"
+
+He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten science; for as
+Richard was coming, as all were to be happy, his wisdom embraced them
+all paternally as the author of their happiness. Between him and Lucy a
+tender intimacy grew.
+
+"I told you she could talk, sir," said Adrian.
+
+"She thinks!" said the baronet.
+
+The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle, he settled
+generously. Farmer Blaize should come up to Raynham when he would: Lucy
+must visit him at least three times a week. He had Farmer Blaize and
+Mrs. Berry to study, and really excellent Aphorisms sprang from the
+plain human bases this natural couple presented.
+
+"It will do us no harm," he thought, "some of the honest blood of the
+soil in our veins." And he was content in musing on the parentage of the
+little cradled boy. A common sight for those who had the entry to the
+library was the baronet cherishing the hand of his daughter-in-law.
+
+So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham were beating
+quicker measures as the minutes progressed. That night he would be with
+them. Sir Austin gave Lucy a longer, warmer salute when she came down
+to breakfast in the morning. Mrs. Berry waxed thrice amorous. "It's your
+second bridals, ye sweet livin' widow!" she said. "Thanks be the Lord!
+it's the same man too! and a baby over the bed-post," she appended
+seriously.
+
+"Strange," Berry declared it to be, "strange I feel none o' this to my
+Berry now. All my feelin's o' love seem t'ave gone into you two sweet
+chicks."
+
+In fact, the faithless male Berry complained of being treated badly, and
+affected a superb jealousy of the baby; but the good dame told him
+that if he suffered at all he suffered his due. Berry's position was
+decidedly uncomfortable. It could not be concealed from the lower
+household that he had a wife in the establishment, and for the
+complications this gave rise to, his wife would not legitimately console
+him. Lucy did intercede, but Mrs. Berry, was obdurate. She averred she
+would not give up the child till he was weaned. "Then, perhaps," she
+said prospectively. "You see I ain't so soft as you thought for."
+
+"You're a very unkind, vindictive old woman," said Lucy.
+
+"Belike I am," Mrs. Berry was proud to agree. We like a new character,
+now and then. Berry had delayed too long.
+
+Were it not notorious that the straightlaced prudish dare not listen to,
+the natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry thought it advisable to
+impart to the young wife with regard to Berry's infidelity, and the
+charity women should have toward sinful men, might here be reproduced.
+Enough that she thought proper to broach the matter, and cite her own
+Christian sentiments, now that she was indifferent in some degree.
+
+Oily calm is on the sea. At Raynham they look up at the sky and
+speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded. He comes to throw
+himself on his darling's mercy. Lucy irradiated over forest and sea,
+tempest and peace--to her the hero comes humbly. Great is that day
+when we see our folly! Ripton and he were the friends of old. Richard
+encouraged him to talk of the two he could be eloquent on, and Ripton,
+whose secret vanity was in his powers of speech, never tired of
+enumerating Lucy's virtues, and the peculiar attributes of the baby.
+
+"She did not say a word against me, Rip?"
+
+"Against you, Richard! The moment she knew she was to be a mother, she
+thought of nothing but her duty to the child. She's one who can't think
+of herself."
+
+"You've seen her at Raynham, Rip?"
+
+"Yes, once. They asked me down. And your father's so fond of her--I'm
+sure he thinks no woman like her, and he's right. She is so lovely, and
+so good."
+
+Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his father: too
+British to expose his emotions. Ripton divined how deep and changed they
+were by his manner. He had cast aside the hero, and however Ripton had
+obeyed him and looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him tenfold
+now. He told his friend how much Lucy's mere womanly sweetness and
+excellence had done for him, and Richard contrasted his own profitless
+extravagance with the patient beauty of his dear home angel. He was not
+one to take her on the easy terms that offered. There was that to do
+which made his cheek burn as he thought of it, but he was going to do
+it, even though it lost her to him. Just to see her and kneel to her was
+joy sufficient to sustain him, and warm his blood in the prospect. They
+marked the white cliffs growing over the water. Nearer, the sun made
+them lustrous. Houses and people seemed to welcome the wild youth to
+common sense, simplicity, and home.
+
+They were in town by mid-day. Richard had a momentary idea of not
+driving to his hotel for letters. After a short debate he determined
+to go there. The porter said he had two letters for Mr. Richard
+Feverel--one had been waiting some time. He went to the box and fetched
+them. The first Richard opened was from Lucy, and as he read it, Ripton
+observed the colour deepen on his face, while a quivering smile played
+about his mouth. He opened the other indifferently. It began without
+any form of address. Richard's forehead darkened at the signature. This
+letter was in a sloping feminine hand, and flourished with light strokes
+all over, like a field of the bearded barley. Thus it ran:
+
+"I know you are in a rage with me because I would not consent to ruin
+you, you foolish fellow. What do you call it? Going to that unpleasant
+place together. Thank you, my milliner is not ready yet, and I want to
+make a good appearance when I do go. I suppose I shall have to some day.
+Your health, Sir Richard. Now let me speak to you seriously. Go home to
+your wife at once. But I know the sort of fellow you are, and I must be
+plain with you. Did I ever say I loved you? You may hate me as much as
+you please, but I will save you from being a fool.
+
+"Now listen to me. You know my relations with Mount. That beast Brayder
+offered to pay all my debts and set me afloat, if I would keep you in
+town. I declare on my honour I had no idea why, and I did not agree
+to it. But you were such a handsome fellow--I noticed you in the park
+before I heard a word of you. But then you fought shy--you were just as
+tempting as a girl. You stung me. Do you know what that is? I would
+make you care for me, and we know how it ended, without any intention
+of mine, I swear. I'd have cut off my hand rather than do you any harm,
+upon my honour. Circumstances! Then I saw it was all up between us.
+Brayder came and began to chaff about you. I dealt the animal a stroke
+on the face with my riding-whip--I shut him up pretty quick. Do you
+think I would let a man speak about you?--I was going to swear. You see
+I remember Dick's lessons. O my God! I do feel unhappy.--Brayder offered
+me money. Go and think I took it, if you like. What do I care what
+anybody thinks! Something that black-guard said made me suspicious. I
+went down to the Isle of Wight where Mount was, and your wife was just
+gone with an old lady who came and took her away. I should so have liked
+to see her. You said, you remember, she would take me as a sister, and
+treat me--I laughed at it then. My God! how I could cry now, if water
+did any good to a devil, as you politely call poor me. I called at your
+house and saw your man-servant, who said Mount had just been there. In
+a minute it struck me. I was sure Mount was after a woman, but it never
+struck me that woman was your wife. Then I saw why they wanted me to
+keep you away. I went to Brayder. You know how I hate him. I made love
+to the man to get it out of him. Richard! my word of honour, they have
+planned to carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot seduce her. Talk of
+devils! He's one; but he is not so bad as Brayder. I cannot forgive a
+mean dog his villany.
+
+"Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a man to stop away
+from her another moment. I have no more to say. I suppose we shall not
+see each other again, so good-bye, Dick! I fancy I hear you cursing me.
+Why can't you feel like other men on the subject? But if you were like
+the rest of them I should not have cared for you a farthing. I have not
+worn lilac since I saw you last. I'll be buried in your colour, Dick.
+That will not offend you--will it?
+
+"You are not going to believe I took the money? If I thought you thought
+that--it makes me feel like a devil only to fancy you think it.
+
+"The first time you meet Brayder, cane him publicly.
+
+"Adieu! Say it's because you don't like his face. I suppose devils must
+not say Adieu. Here's plain old good-bye, then, between you and me.
+Good-bye, dear Dick! You won't think that of me?
+
+"May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took or ever will touch
+a scrap of their money. BELLA."
+
+Richard folded up the letter silently.
+
+"Jump into the cab," he said to Ripton.
+
+"Anything the matter, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+The driver received directions. Richard sat without speaking. His friend
+knew that face. He asked whether there was bad news in the letter. For
+answer, he had the lie circumstancial. He ventured to remark that they
+were going the wrong way.
+
+"It'd the right way," cried Richard, and his jaws were hard and square,
+and his eyes looked heavy and full.
+
+Ripton said no more, but thought.
+
+The cabman pulled up at a Club. A gentleman, in whom Ripton recognized
+the Hon. Peter Brayder, was just then swinging a leg over his horse,
+with one foot in the stirrup. Hearing his name called, the Hon. Peter
+turned about, and stretched an affable hand.
+
+"Is Mountfalcon in town?" said Richard taking the horse's reins instead
+of the gentlemanly hand. His voice and aspect were quite friendly.
+
+"Mount?" Brayder replied, curiously watching the action; "yes. He's off
+this evening."
+
+"He is in town?" Richard released his horse. "I want to see him. Where
+is he?"
+
+The young man looked pleasant: that which might have aroused Brayder's
+suspicions was an old affair in parasitical register by this time. "Want
+to see him? What about?" he said carelessly, and gave the address.
+
+"By the way," he sang out, "we thought of putting your name down,
+Feverel." He indicated the lofty structure. "What do you say?"
+
+Richard nodded back at him, crying, "Hurry." Brayder returned the nod,
+and those who promenaded the district soon beheld his body in elegant
+motion to the stepping of his well-earned horse.
+
+"What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for, Richard?" said Ripton.
+
+"I just want to see him," Richard replied.
+
+Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord's residence. He had
+to wait there a space of about ten minutes, when Richard returned with
+a clearer visage, though somewhat heated. He stood outside the cab, and
+Ripton was conscious of being examined by those strong grey eyes. As
+clear as speech he understood them to say to him, "You won't do," but
+which of the many things on earth he would not do for he was at a loss
+to think.
+
+"Go down to Raynham, Ripton. Say I shall be there tonight certainly.
+Don't bother me with questions. Drive off at once. Or wait. Get another
+cab. I'll take this."
+
+Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street. As
+he was on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to get a
+word of elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him.
+
+"You are Feverel's friend?"
+
+Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman, standing at the
+open door of Lord Mountfalcon's house, and a gentleman standing on
+the doorstep, told him that he was addressed by that nobleman. He
+was requested to step into the house. When they were alone, Lord
+Mountfalcon, slightly ruffled, said: "Feverel has insulted me grossly. I
+must meet him, of course. It's a piece of infernal folly!--I suppose he
+is not quite mad?"
+
+Ripton's only definite answer was, a gasping iteration of "My lord."
+
+My lord resumed: "I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far as I
+know. In fact, I had a friendship for him. Is he liable to fits of this
+sort of thing?"
+
+Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: "Fits, my lord?"
+
+"Ah!" went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style. "You know
+nothing of this business, perhaps?"
+
+Ripton said he did not.
+
+"Have you any influence with him?"
+
+"Not much, my lord. Only now and then--a little."
+
+"You are not in the Army?"
+
+The question was quite unnecessary. Ripton confessed to the law, and my
+lord did not look surprised.
+
+"I will not detain you," he said, distantly bowing.
+
+Ripton gave him a commoner's obeisance; but getting to the door, the
+sense of the matter enlightened him.
+
+"It's a duel, my lord?"
+
+"No help for it, if his friends don't shut him up in Bedlam between this
+and to-morrow morning."
+
+Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton's imagination.
+He stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter of
+calamity suddenly opened where happiness had promised.
+
+"A duel! but he won't, my lord,--he mustn't fight, my lord."
+
+"He must come on the ground," said my lord, positively.
+
+Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord Mountfalcon said:
+"I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you. I saw you from the
+window. Your friend is mad. Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad. I
+have particular reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and if an
+apology is to be got out of him when we're on the ground, I'll take it,
+and we'll stop the damned scandal, if possible. You understand? I'm the
+insulted party, and I shall only require of him to use formal words of
+excuse to come to an amicable settlement. Let him just say he regrets
+it. Now, sir," the nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness, "should
+anything happen--I have the honour to be known to Mrs. Feverel--and I
+beg you will tell her. I very particularly desire you to let her know
+that I was not to blame."
+
+Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out. With this on his mind
+Ripton hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at
+Raynham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
+calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.
+Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump
+face,--held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,--sat writing
+at the library table. Round the baronet's chair, in a semi-circle,
+were Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that very ill bird
+at Raynham. They were silent as those who question the flying minutes.
+Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but the feminine eyes
+reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for disquietude, which
+increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in his habitual air of
+speculative repose.
+
+Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak and
+betray his state.
+
+"Pray, put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing," he said,
+half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
+
+Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: "It's no nightmare,
+this!"
+
+His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure. Adrian's
+pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in commiseration
+or infernal glee, none might say.
+
+"What are you writing?" the baronet inquired testily of Adrian, after
+a pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the wise youth's
+coolness.
+
+"Do I disturb you, sir?" rejoined Adrian. "I am engaged on a portion
+of a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under one
+Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and lamented Holy
+Roman. This treats of the management of Youths and Maids, and of certain
+magisterial functions connected therewith. 'It is decreed that these
+officers be all and every men of science,' etc." And Adrian cheerily
+drove his pen afresh.
+
+Mrs. Doria took Lucy's hand, mutely addressing encouragement to her, and
+Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to reply with.
+
+"I fear we must give him up to-night," observed Lady Blandish.
+
+"If he said he would come, he will come," Sir Austin interjected.
+Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly going
+on. He was conscious that nothing save perfect success would now hold
+this self-emancipating mind. She had seen him through.
+
+"He declared to me he would be certain to come," said Ripton; but he
+could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware
+that Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black
+conspirator against their happiness. He determined to tell the baronet
+what he knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.
+
+"What is the time?" he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
+
+"Time for me to be in bed," growled Hippias, as if everybody present had
+been treating him badly.
+
+Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She
+quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: "You had
+better not come down again, my child." She kept her eyes on him. "Oblige
+me by retiring for the night," he added. Lucy shook their hands, and
+went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
+
+"This agitation will be bad for the child," he said, speaking to himself
+aloud.
+
+Lady Blandish remarked: "I think she might just as well have returned.
+She will not sleep."
+
+"She will control herself for the child's sake."
+
+"You ask too much of her."
+
+"Of her, not," he emphasized.
+
+It was twelve o'clock when Hippies shut his watch, and said with
+vehemence: "I'm convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
+decreases!"
+
+"Going back to the pre-Harvey period!" murmured Adrian as he wrote.
+
+Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce
+them to the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was
+sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve. Taking
+it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition, Hippies resumed
+despairingly: "It's a fact. I've brought you to see that. No one can be
+more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse. My system is organically
+sound--I believe: I do every possible thing, and yet I get worse. Nature
+never forgives! I'll go to bed."
+
+The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
+
+Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: "I suppose nothing short of a
+miracle helps us when we have offended her."
+
+"Nothing short of a quack satisfies us," said Adrian, applying wax to an
+envelope of official dimensions.
+
+Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by
+Lucy's last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went round
+to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and
+accompanied him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone, Lady
+Blandish said to the baronet: "He is not coming."
+
+"To-morrow, then, if not tonight," he replied. "But I say he will come
+to-night."
+
+"You do really wish to see him united to his wife?"
+
+The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+"I mean," said, the ungenerous woman, "your System will require no
+further sacrifices from either of them?"
+
+When he did answer, it was to say: "I think her altogether a superior
+person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her."
+
+"Admit that your science does not accomplish everything."
+
+"No: it was presumptuous--beyond a certain point," said the baronet,
+meaning deep things.
+
+Lady Blandish eyed him. "Ah me!" she sighed, "if we would always be true
+to our own wisdom!"
+
+"You are very singular to-night, Emmeline." Sir Austin stopped his walk
+in front of her.
+
+In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely forgiven.
+Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family
+and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would have done more--or
+as much? This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have
+fought it. All the people of position that he was acquainted with would
+have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly. But while the
+baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional education his
+son had received. He, took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his
+System when it was absolutely on trial. False to his son it could not be
+said that he had been false to his System he was. Others saw it plainly,
+but he had to learn his lesson by and by.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table,
+saying, "Well! well!" She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and
+drew forth a little book she recognized. "Ha! what is this?" she said.
+
+"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her. "The stupid fellow
+took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."
+
+It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned over
+the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
+
+She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with the
+mouthpiece of narrower?"
+
+"I do not agree with that," she observed. He was in no humour for
+argument.
+
+"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"
+
+He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings.
+A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority
+rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be flattered by his
+company?"
+
+She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There
+must be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and
+admirable aptitude.
+
+Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?--He who sneers at the
+failings of Humanity!"
+
+"Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame as
+she beamed intellectual raptures.
+
+Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more
+grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at
+the mercy of his feelings."
+
+"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an
+example--strange man that he is!"
+
+Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly
+insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she
+reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great
+man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the
+loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless
+Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's allegiance was his
+for ever. The trial was at hand.
+
+She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on whose
+visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past,
+quietly added: "He is come."
+
+Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
+
+There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir.
+Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that
+her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value--"Such is men!" as the
+soft woman reflected--Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in
+pompous tones and wheedling gestures. "The best word you've spoke for
+many a day," says she, and leaves him unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry
+and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.
+
+"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're got
+to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I could cry to
+your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
+
+"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her knees.
+The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes
+started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing,
+but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to
+still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper
+from bursting Mrs. Berry.
+
+Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the old home that
+had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife and child.
+He might embrace them both: and now the fulness of his anguish and
+the madness of the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he
+tasted hard earthly misery.
+
+Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of heaven
+directed him homeward? And he had come: here he stood: congratulations
+were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was
+invited to drink of it. Which was the dream? his work for the morrow, or
+this? But for a leaden load that he felt like a bullet in his breast,
+he might have thought the morrow with death sitting on it was the dream.
+Yes; he was awake. Now first the cloud of phantasms cleared away: he
+beheld his real life, and the colours of true human joy: and on the
+morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them. That leaden bullet
+dispersed all unrealities.
+
+They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria,
+Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long. They shook his hand: they
+gave him greetings he had never before understood the worth of or the
+meaning. Now that he did they mocked him. There was Mrs. Berry in
+the background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing, there was Tom
+Bakewell grinning. Somehow he loved the sight of these better.
+
+"Ah, my old Penelope!" he said, breaking through the circle of his
+relatives to go to her. "Tom! how are you?"
+
+"Bless ye, my Mr. Richard," whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered, rosily,
+"all's agreeable now. She's waiting up in bed for ye, like a new-born."
+
+The person who betrayed most agitation was, Mrs. Doria. She held
+close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one
+accustomed to masks. "You are pale, Richard?" He pleaded exhaustion.
+"What detained you, dear?" "Business," he said. She drew him imperiously
+apart from the others. "Richard! is it over?" He asked what she meant.
+"The dreadful duel, Richard." He looked darkly. "Is it over? is it done,
+Richard?" Getting no immediate answer, she continued--and such was her
+agitation that the words were shaken by pieces from her mouth: "Don't
+pretend not to understand me, Richard! Is it over? Are you going to die
+the death of my child--Clare's death? Is not one in a family enough?
+Think of your dear young wife--we love her so!--your child!--your
+father! Will you kill us all?"
+
+Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton's communication to
+Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken soul.
+
+Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
+"It's arranged--the matter you allude to."
+
+"Indeed!--truly, dear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me"--but he broke away from her, saying: "You shall hear the
+particulars to-morrow," and she, not alive to double meaning just then,
+allowed him to leave her.
+
+He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he
+would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the
+library. He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat before
+he saw the young hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking bread, and
+eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine, talking of what
+they would. His father's studious mind felt itself years behind him, he
+was so completely altered. He had the precision of speech, the bearing
+of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all that the necessity for cloaking an
+infinite misery gives. But let things be as they might, he was, there.
+For one night in his life Sir Austin's perspective of the future was
+bounded by the night.
+
+"Will your go to your wife now?" he had asked and Richard had replied
+with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better that their
+meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs. The
+others perceived that father and son should now be left alone. Adrian
+went up to him, and said: "I can no longer witness this painful sight,
+so Good-night, Sir Famish! You may cheat yourself into the belief that
+you've made a meal, but depend upon it your progeny--and it threatens
+to be numerous--will cry aloud and rue the day. Nature never forgives!
+A lost dinner can never be replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And
+here--oblige me by taking this," he handed Richard the enormous envelope
+containing what he had written that evening. "Credentials!" he exclaimed
+humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard also the
+words "propagator--species," but had no idea of their import. The wise
+youth looked: You see we've made matters all right for you here, and
+quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
+
+Richard shook his hand, and Ripton's. Then Lady Blandish said her
+good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual
+happiness. The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke
+together outside. Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that the
+duel would not be fought, but Adrian said: "Time enough tomorrow. He's
+safe enough while he's here. I'll stop it to-morrow:" ending with banter
+of Ripton and allusions to his adventures with Miss Random, which must,
+Adrian said, have led him into many affairs of the sort. Certainly
+Richard was there, and while he was there he must be safe. So thought
+Ripton, and went to his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and
+likewise thought him safe while he was there. For once in her life she
+thought it better not to trust to her instinct, for fear of useless
+disturbance where peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to
+her brother. She only looked more deeply into Richard's eyes, as she
+kissed him, praising Lucy. "I have found a second daughter in her, dear.
+Oh! may you both be happy!"
+
+They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they were
+alone. "Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her, Richard.
+I think Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young person,
+possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have never
+before met."
+
+He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some hours
+back he would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.
+
+"You compliment me on my choice, sir?"
+
+Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible and he could speak
+no other way, his bitterness was so intense.
+
+"I think you very fortunate," said his father.
+
+Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal
+feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against the
+chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only when he
+spoke. Fortunate! very fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and
+remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must love Lucy if he
+but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade her to come with
+him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain. But could he blame
+that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself? Not utterly. His father?
+Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was there: it was everywhere
+and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, and looked angrily
+at heaven, and grew reckless.
+
+"Richard," said his father, coming close to him, "it is late to-night.
+I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I should have
+explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think--or at least hope--you
+would have justified me. I had cause to believe that you had not only
+violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It was not so, I now
+know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding has resulted from
+that mistake. But you were married--a boy: you knew nothing of the
+world, little of yourself. To save you in after-life--for there is
+a period when mature men and women who have married young are more
+impelled to temptation than in youth,--though not so exposed to it,--to
+save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and
+learn something of your fellows of both sexes, before settling into a
+state that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the
+woman who is your mate. My System with you would have been otherwise
+imperfect, and you would have felt the effects of it. It is over now.
+You are a man. The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust,
+at an end. I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and
+pray God to conduct and strengthen you both."
+
+Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly. True
+or not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers over, and
+happiness, mockery.
+
+Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.
+
+"We will go to her," said the baronet. "I will leave you at her door."
+
+Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the
+colour rushed, Richard said: "A husband who has been unfaithful to his
+wife may go to her there, sir?"
+
+It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no advice on
+such a matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday he would have
+listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what was to
+be done humbly before God and her: now in the recklessness of his misery
+he had as little pity for any other soul as for his own. Sir Austin's
+brows were deep drawn down.
+
+"What did you say, Richard?"
+
+Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could
+hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and
+cast aside--could it be?
+
+Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last parted.
+What else do you think would have kept me from her?"
+
+Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to her
+now?"
+
+"That will be between us two," was the reply.
+
+Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke from
+a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"--
+
+"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not. Have no fear."
+
+"Then you did not love your wife?"
+
+"Did I not?" A smile passed faintly over Richard's face.
+
+"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"
+
+"So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had
+none."
+
+O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose in
+the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.
+
+"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
+Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true forgiving
+heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.
+
+He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between
+women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical
+and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that to hear him
+one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His
+words were idle.
+
+"She must know it," said Richard, sternly. "I will go to her now, sir,
+if you please."
+
+Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded
+his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He could not induce
+his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being
+interchanged, he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on
+Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange
+thing to have come to. On which should the accusation fall--on science,
+or on human nature?
+
+He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times
+breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted suspicion
+of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he deserved that
+blow from his son which had plunged him into wretchedness. Richard went
+straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and told him to
+have his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East within an
+hour. Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a faithful slave to his
+master, and in doing this he acted to his conception of that high and
+glorious character. He got up and heroically dashed his head into cold
+water. "She shall be ready, sir," he nodded.
+
+"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go on
+being paid to you."
+
+"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.
+
+"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."
+
+"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "God bless me, Mr. Richard"--
+
+"No questions. You'll do what I say."
+
+"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."
+
+The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood; and he had to
+walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous
+conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him
+the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
+
+The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door,
+and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that
+passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in
+her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming woman: for
+pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich
+and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose
+dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart
+thump and his eyes swim.
+
+"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
+fastened on his.
+
+They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her,
+whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her,
+and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the
+oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace.
+Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet
+with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted
+him: their light as the light on a rolling wave. This young creature,
+commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in
+her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly
+love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible
+tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly--far on the horizon of
+memory--the fatal truth returned to him.
+
+Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
+
+The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying
+glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and
+glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling
+wave.
+
+And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And his
+she was! a woman--his wife! The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was
+all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the
+prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this
+time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure--with exultation
+and defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now
+surmounted the first wild passion of their meeting, bent back her head
+from her surrendered body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids
+wistfully quivering: "Come and see him--baby;" and then in great hope of
+the happiness she was going to give her husband, and share with him, and
+in tremour and doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and
+her brows worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of
+separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
+
+"Darling! come and see him. He is here." She spoke more clearly, though
+no louder.
+
+Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered
+himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His heart began rapidly
+throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot covered with lace
+like milky summer cloud.
+
+It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that child's
+face.
+
+"Stop!" he cried suddenly.
+
+Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should have
+been disturbed.
+
+"Lucy, come back."
+
+"What is it, darling?" said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip he
+had unwittingly given her hand.
+
+O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death,
+perhaps die and be torn from his darling--his wife and his child; and
+that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and lean his
+head reproachfully on his young wife's breast--for the last time, it
+might be--he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of
+him.
+
+"Lucy!" She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
+whiteness of his--she bending forward to him, all her faculties strung
+to hearing.
+
+He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the
+horrible wound he was going to lay open to her eyes.
+
+"Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?"
+
+She moved her lips repeating his words.
+
+"Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?"
+
+Her head shook widened eyes.
+
+"Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Darling," she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him, "what
+have I done to make you angry with me?"
+
+"O beloved!" cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes. "O beloved!"
+was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
+
+She waited, reassured, but in terror.
+
+"Lucy. I stayed away from you--I could not come to you, because... I
+dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved! I could not come because I
+was a coward: because--hear me--this was the reason: I have broken my
+marriage oath."
+
+Again her lips moved. She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in them.
+"But you love me? Richard! My husband! you love me?"
+
+"Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you."
+
+"Darling! Kiss me."
+
+"Have you understood what I have told you?"
+
+"Kiss me," she said.
+
+He did not join lips. "I have come to you to-night to ask your
+forgiveness."
+
+Her answer was: "Kiss me."
+
+"Can you forgive a man so base?"
+
+"But you love me, Richard?"
+
+"Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have betrayed you,
+and am unworthy of you--not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your
+feet, to breathe the same air with you."
+
+Her eyes shone brilliantly. "You love me! you love me, darling!" And
+as one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said: "My
+husband! my darling! you will never leave me? We never shall be parted
+again?"
+
+He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing rigid with
+fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth. That kiss in which she
+spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from
+it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her on the
+summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her to him,
+and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child: of the sweet
+wonders of life she had made real to him.
+
+Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs to come made him
+think so. He now followed her leading hand. Lucy whispered: "You mustn't
+disturb him--mustn't touch him, dear!" and with dainty fingers drew off
+the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the child was out along
+the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth was pouted full; the
+dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his plump cheeks. Richard
+stooped lower down to him, hungering for some movement as a sign that he
+lived. Lucy whispered. "He sleeps like you, Richard--one arm under
+his head." Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping tenderness was in
+Richard. He breathed quick and soft, bending lower, till Lucy's curls,
+as she nestled and bent with him, rolled on the crimson quilt of the
+cot. A smile went up the plump cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was
+in rapid motion. The young mother whispered, blushing: "He's dreaming of
+me," and the simple words did more than Richard's eyes to make him see
+what was. Then Lucy began to hum and buzz sweet baby-language, and
+some of the tiny fingers stirred, and he made as if to change his cosy
+position, but reconsidered, and deferred it, with a peaceful little
+sigh. Lucy whispered: "He is such a big fellow. Oh! when you see him
+awake he is so like you, Richard."
+
+He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped there
+in his likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the more
+heavenly it seemed. His son! his child! should he ever see him awake?
+At the thought, he took the words that had been spoken, and started from
+the dream he had been in. "Will he wake soon, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept him awake for
+you, but he was so sleepy."
+
+Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he saw the eyes of
+his boy, and had him once on his heart, he never should have force to
+leave him. Then he looked down on him, again struggled to tear himself
+away. Two natures warred in his bosom, or it may have been the Magian
+Conflict still going on. He had come to see his child once and to make
+peace with his wife before it should be too late. Might he not stop
+with them? Might he not relinquish that devilish pledge? Was not divine
+happiness here offered to him?--If foolish Ripton had not delayed to
+tell him of his interview with Mountfalcon all might have been well. But
+pride said it was impossible. And then injury spoke. For why was he
+thus base and spotted to the darling of his love? A mad pleasure in the
+prospect of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for
+him, once more blackened his brain. If he would stay he could not. So
+he resolved, throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but oh,
+the pain!
+
+Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child's cot.
+She marvelled at such excess of emotion. But when his chest heaved, and
+the extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized him, her heart
+sank, and she tried to get him in her arms. He turned away from her and
+went to the window. A half-moon was over the lake.
+
+"Look!" he said, "do you remember our rowing there one night, and we saw
+the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could have come early to-night that
+we might have had another row, and I have heard you sing there!"
+
+"Darling!" said she, "will it make you happier if I go with you now? I
+will."
+
+"No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!"
+
+"Oh, no! that I'm not. I thought so once. I know I am not now."
+
+"Yes! to have lived--the child on your heart--and never to have uttered
+a complaint!--you are brave. O my Lucy! my wife! you that have made
+me man! I called you a coward. I remember it. I was the coward--I the
+wretched vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you now. You are brave,
+and you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or three, I may be back--back
+for good, if you will accept me. Promise me to go to bed quietly. Kiss
+the child for me, and tell him his father has seen him. He will learn to
+speak soon. Will he soon speak, Lucy?"
+
+Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one arm of
+his with both her hands.
+
+"Going?" she presently gasped.
+
+"For two or three days. No more--I hope."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes. Now."
+
+"Going now? my husband!" her faculties abandoned her.
+
+"You will be brave, my Lucy!"
+
+"Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it takes you from me?" But
+questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried piteously
+to him to stay--not to leave them. Then she dragged him to the little
+sleeper, and urged him to pray by his side, and he did, but rose
+abruptly from his prayer when he had muttered a few broken words--she
+praying on with tight-strung nerves, in the faith that what she said to
+the interceding Mother above would be stronger than human hands on him.
+Nor could he go while she knelt there.
+
+And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering. She
+came to him, quiet. "I knew you would remain." And taking his hand,
+innocently fondling it: "Am I so changed from her he loved? You will not
+leave me, dear?" But dread returned, and the words quavered as she spoke
+them.
+
+He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood. She drew
+his hand to her heart, and strained it there under one breast. "Come:
+lie on my heart," she murmured with a smile of holy sweetness.
+
+He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of hell,
+kissed her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried to the
+door. It was over in an instant. She cried out his name, clinging to him
+wildly, and was adjured to be brave, for he would be dishonoured if he
+did not go. Then she was shaken off.
+
+Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child,
+which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any
+answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter. There
+she saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor senseless:--she
+had taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as
+her strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
+
+"Oh my! oh my!" Mrs. Berry moaned, "and I just now thinkin' they was so
+happy!"
+
+Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to revive
+Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.
+
+"Go to his father," said Mrs. Berry. "Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O! Go, my
+love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after 'm. This is what men
+brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah! Or you take blessed baby, and
+I'll go."
+
+The baronet himself knocked at the door. "What is this?" he said. "I
+heard a noise and a step descend."
+
+"It's Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and
+babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy--Oh, my goodness! what sorrow's come on us!"
+and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently, and
+Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips
+and tears dropping over him. And if the Scientific Humanist to the day
+of his death forgets the sight of those two poor true women jigging on
+their wretched hearts to calm the child, he must have very little of the
+human in him.
+
+There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+"His ordeal is over. I have just come from his room and seen him bear
+the worst that could be. Return at once--he has asked for you. I can
+hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.
+
+"Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard
+from Ralph Morton. Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord
+Mountfalcon, and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast. His father
+started immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in company with
+his aunt and his child. The wound was not dangerous. He was shot in the
+side somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part. We thought all would
+be well. Oh! how sick I am of theories, and Systems, and the pretensions
+of men! There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still
+unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could hardly bear the
+sight of his composure. I shall hate the name of Science till the day I
+die. Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people!
+
+"They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely, where we still
+remain, and the people try as much as they can do to compensate for
+our discomforts by their kindness. The French poor people are very
+considerate where they see suffering. I will say that for them. The
+doctors had not allowed his poor Lucy to go near him. She sat outside
+his door, and none of us dared disturb her. That was a sight for
+Science. His father and myself, and Mrs. Berry, were the only ones
+permitted to wait on him, and whenever we came out, there she sat, not
+speaking a word--for she had been told it would endanger his life--but
+she looked such awful eagerness. She had the sort of eye I fancy mad
+persons have. I was sure her reason was going. We did everything we
+could think of to comfort her. A bed was made up for her and her meals
+were brought to her there. Of course there was no getting her to eat.
+What do you suppose his alarm was fixed on? He absolutely said to
+me--but I have not patience to repeat his words. He thought her to blame
+for not commanding herself for the sake of her maternal duties. He had
+absolutely an idea of insisting that she should make an effort to suckle
+the child. I shall love that Mrs. Berry to the end of my days. I really
+believe she has twice the sense of any of us--Science and all. She asked
+him plainly if he wished to poison the child, and then he gave way, but
+with a bad grace.
+
+"Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him. I remember that you said Richard
+had done wrong. Yes; well, that may be. But his father eclipsed his
+wrong in a greater wrong--a crime, or quite as bad; for if he deceived
+himself in the belief that he was acting righteously in separating
+husband and wife, and exposing his son as he did, I can only say that
+there are some who are worse than people who deliberately commit crimes.
+No doubt Science will benefit by it. They kill little animals for the
+sake of Science.
+
+"We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician from Dieppe, a
+very skilful man. It was he who told us where the real danger lay. We
+thought all would be well. A week had passed, and no fever supervened.
+We told Richard that his wife was coming to him, and he could bear
+to hear it. I went to her and began to circumlocute, thinking she
+listened--she had the same eager look. When I told her she might go
+in with me to see her dear husband, her features did not change. M.
+Despres, who held her pulse at the time, told me, in a whisper, it was
+cerebral fever--brain fever coming on. We have talked of her since. I
+noticed that though she did not seem to understand me, her bosom heaved,
+and she appeared to be trying to repress it, and choke something. I
+am sure now, from what I know of her character, that she--even in the
+approaches of delirium--was preventing herself from crying out. Her last
+hold of reason was a thought for Richard. It was against a creature like
+this that we plotted! I have the comfort of knowing that I did my
+share in helping to destroy her. Had she seen her husband a day or two
+before--but no! there was a new System to interdict that! Or had she not
+so violently controlled her nature as she did, I believe she might have
+been saved.
+
+"He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb. Will you
+believe that when he saw his son's wife--poor victim! lying delirious,
+he could not even then see his error. You said he wished to take
+Providence out of God's hands. His mad self-deceit would not leave him.
+I am positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her
+for not having considered the child. Indeed he made a remark to me that
+it was unfortunate 'disastrous,' I think he said--that the child should
+have to be fed by hand. I dare say it is. All I pray is that this young
+child may be saved from him. I cannot bear to see him look on it. He
+does not spare himself bodily fatigue--but what is that? that is the
+vulgarest form of love. I know what you will say. You will say I have
+lost all charity, and I have. But I should not feel so, Austin, if I
+could be quite sure that he is an altered man even now the blow has
+struck him. He is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is
+evident, but I have doubts. He heard her while she was senseless call
+him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his
+mouth contract as if he had been touched. Perhaps, when he thinks, his
+mind will be clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone. I do not
+imagine he will abuse women any more. The doctor called her a 'forte
+et belle jeune femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God
+moulded clay upon. A noble soul 'forte et belle!' She lies upstairs.
+If he can look on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never
+enlighten him."
+
+She died five days after she had been removed. The shock had utterly
+deranged her. I was with her. She died very quietly, breathing her last
+breath without pain--asking for no one--a death I should like to die.
+
+"Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She screamed that she was
+'drowning in fire,' and that her husband would not come to her to save
+her. We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible
+to prevent Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and it produced an
+effect like fever on him. Whenever she called he answered. You could not
+hear them without weeping. Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with him,
+and his father moved from one to the other.
+
+"But the trial for us came when she was gone. How to communicate it to
+Richard--or whether to do so at all! His father consulted with us. We
+were quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it while he
+was in that state. I can admit now--as things have turned out--we were
+wrong. His father left us--I believe he spent the time in prayer--and
+then leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in so many words,
+that his Lucy was no more. I thought it must kill him. He listened, and
+smiled. I never saw a smile so sweet and so sad. He said he had seen her
+die, as if he had passed through his suffering a long time ago. He
+shut his eyes. I could see by the motion of his eyeballs up that he was
+straining his sight to some inner heaven.--I cannot go on.
+
+"I think Richard is safe. Had we postponed the tidings, till he came
+to his clear senses, it must have killed him. His father was right
+for once, then. But if he has saved his son's body, he has given the
+death-blow to his heart. Richard will never be what he promised.
+
+"A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the quarrel. I
+have had an interview with Lord M. this morning. I cannot say I think
+him exactly to blame: Richard forced him to fight. At least I do not
+select him the foremost for blame. He was deeply and sincerely affected
+by the calamity he has caused. Alas! he was only an instrument.
+Your poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks strange things of her
+daughter's death. She is only happy in drudging. Dr. Bairam says we
+must under any circumstances keep her employed. Whilst she is doing
+something, she can chat freely, but the moment her hands are not
+occupied she gives me an idea that she is going into a fit.
+
+"We expect the dear child's uncle to-day. Mr. Thompson is here. I have
+taken him upstairs to look at her. That poor young man has a true heart.
+
+"Come at once. You will not be in time to see her. She will lie at
+Raynham. If you could you would see an angel. He sits by her side for
+hours. I can give you no description of her beauty.
+
+"You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want you, for your
+presence will make me more charitable than I find it possible to be.
+Have you noticed the expression in the eyes of blind men? That is just
+how Richard looks, as he lies there silent in his bed--striving to image
+her on his brain."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS
+
+     A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization
+     A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth
+     A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit
+     A young philosopher's an old fool!
+     After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship
+     Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon
+     Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes
+     An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer
+     And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true
+     And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous"
+     As when nations are secretly preparing for war
+     Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beauty
+     Cold charity to all
+     Come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything
+     Complacent languor of the wise youth
+     Feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being
+     Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?"
+     Gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little
+     Habit had legalized his union with her
+     Hermits enamoured of wind and rain
+     Hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman
+     Heroine, in common with the hero, has her ambition to be of use
+     His equanimity was fictitious
+     His fancy performed miraculous feats
+     How many instruments cannot clever women play upon
+     Huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded
+     I rather like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!
+     I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care
+     I ain't a speeder of matrimony
+     I cannot get on with Gibbon
+     In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck!
+     In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood..."
+     Intensely communicative, but inarticulate
+     It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach
+     It is no use trying to conceal anything from him
+     It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age
+     January was watering and freezing old earth by turns
+     Just bad inquirin' too close among men
+     Laying of ghosts is a public duty
+     Minutes taken up by the grey puffs from their mouths
+     No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards
+     On the threshold of Puberty, there is one Unselfish Hour
+     Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder
+     Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher
+     Rogue on the tremble of detection
+     Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual
+     Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on
+     Serene presumption
+     She can make puddens and pies
+     South-western Island has few attractions to other than invalids
+     Take 'em somethin' like Providence--as they come
+     Task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women
+     The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing
+     The world is wise in its way
+     The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable
+     The born preacher we feel instinctively to be our foe
+     There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness
+     They believe that the angels have been busy about them
+     This was a totally different case from the antecedent ones
+     Those days of intellectual coxcombry
+     Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity
+     To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman
+     Troublesome appendages of success
+     Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted
+     Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered
+     Wise in not seeking to be too wise
+     Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man
+     Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters
+     Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh
+     You've got no friend but your bed
+     Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete
+by George Meredith
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD FEVEREL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 4412.txt or 4412.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        https://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/1/4412/
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/4412.zip b/old/4412.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7afdd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/4412.zip
diff --git a/old/gm18v10.txt b/old/gm18v10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7479500
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gm18v10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,19960 @@
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal of Richard Feverel by Meredith, complete
+#18 in our series by George Meredith
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before distributing this or any other
+Project Gutenberg file.
+
+We encourage you to keep this file, exactly as it is, on your
+own disk, thereby keeping an electronic path open for future
+readers.  Please do not remove this.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when anyone starts to
+view the etext. Do not change or edit it without written permission.
+The words are carefully chosen to provide users with the
+information they need to understand what they may and may not
+do with the etext.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These Etexts Are Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get etexts, and
+further information, is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
+organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-6221541
+
+
+
+Title: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, complete
+
+Author: George Meredith
+
+Release Date: September, 2003 [Etext #4412]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on December 28, 2001]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, by Meredith, All
+*********This file should be named gm18v10.txt or gm18v10.zip**********
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gm18v11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gm18v10a.txt
+
+This etext was produced by Pat Castevans  <patcat@ctnet.net>
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+Project Gutenberg Etexts are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep etexts in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our etexts one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+etexts, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any Etext before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2001 as we release over 50 new Etext
+files per month, or 500 more Etexts in 2000 for a total of 4000+
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+should reach over 300 billion Etexts given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third
+of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 4,000 Etexts.  We need
+funding, as well as continued efforts by volunteers, to maintain
+or increase our production and reach our goals.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of November, 2001, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware,
+Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky,
+Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma,
+Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,
+Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia,
+Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in about 45 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+All donations should be made to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fundraising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fundraising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this etext,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the etext,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart
+and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.]
+[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales
+of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or
+software or any other related product without express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Pat Castevans  <patcat@ctnet.net>
+and David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By George Meredith
+
+1905
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I.        THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+II.       FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE STRENGTH
+III.      THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+IV.       ARSON
+V.        ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
+VI.       JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
+VII.      DAPHNE'S BOWER
+VIII.     THE BITTER CUP
+IX.       A FINE DISTINCTION
+X.        RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL
+XI.       THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER
+XII.      THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
+XIII.     THE MAGNETIC AGE
+XIV.      AN ATTRACTION
+XV.       FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
+XVI.      UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON
+XVII.     GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD
+XVIII.    THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA
+XIX.      A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE
+XX.       CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO
+XXI.      RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON
+XXII.     INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER
+XXIII.    CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE
+XXIV.     OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL
+XXV.      IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP
+XXVI.     RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO
+XXVII.    CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE
+XXVIII.   PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS
+XIX.      THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE OF THE FIRST
+XXX.      CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST
+XXXI.     THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON
+XXXII.    PROCESSION OF THE CAKE
+XXXIII.   NURSING THE DEVIL
+XXXIV.    CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE
+XXXV.     CLARE'S MARRIAGE
+XXXVI.    A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
+XXXVII.   MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY
+XXXVIII.  AN ENCHANTRESS
+XXXIX.    THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE RESCUE!
+XL.       CLARE'S DIARY
+XLI.      AUSTIN RETURNS
+XLII.     NATURE SPEAKS
+XLIII.    AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+XLIV.     THE LAST SCENE
+XLV.      LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+
+BOOK 1.
+
+I.        THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
+II.       SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY
+          THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM
+III.      THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+IV.       ARSON
+V.        ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
+VI.       JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
+VII.      DAPHNE'S BOWER
+VIII.     THE BITTER CUP
+IX.       A FINE DISTINCTION
+X.        RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE
+          OCCASION OF AN APHORISM
+XI.       IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN
+          A LETTER
+
+
+
+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.  Dialer
+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 neat 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.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth
+After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship
+Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes
+An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer
+Complacent languor of the wise youth
+Huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded
+It is no use trying to conceal anything from him
+It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach
+Minutes taken up by the grey puffs from their mouths
+No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards
+Rogue on the tremble of detection
+Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual
+She can make puddens and pies
+The born preacher we feel instinctively to be our foe
+There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness
+Those days of intellectual coxcombry
+Troublesome appendages of success
+Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v1
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+1905
+
+
+
+BOOK 2.
+
+XII.      THE BLOSSOMING SEASON
+XIII.     THE MAGNETIC AGE
+XIV.      AN ATTRACTION
+XV.       FERDINAND AND MIRANDA
+XVI.      UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON
+XVII.     GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD
+XVIII.    THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA
+XIX.      A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY WHISTLE
+XX.       CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY THE HERO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and, as the mystery of the apparition
+that had frightened little Clare was never solved on the stage of events
+at Raynham, where dread walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a
+moment.  Morally superstitious as the baronet was, the character of his
+mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency in the affairs of men,
+and, when the matter was made clear to him, it shook off a weight of
+weakness and restored his mental balance; so that from this time he went
+about more like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly the
+great truth, that This World is well designed.  Nay, he could laugh on
+hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family
+members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit, Algernon's
+Leg.
+
+Mrs. Doria was outraged.  She maintained that her child had
+seen----  Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal
+property.  After satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her,
+Sir Austin, moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her
+Ghost could write words in the flesh.  It was a letter from the unhappy
+lady who had given Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply telling him
+his house would be disturbed by her no more.  Cold lines, but penned by
+what heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of
+soul!  Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a
+man fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will
+act when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
+for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning by
+stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the
+family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
+sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to this
+boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and father.  A
+few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her.  "Let this
+be her penance, not inflicted by me!"  Mrs. Doria bowed to the System for
+another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for herself.
+
+Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
+disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty fingers on a
+greasy guitar.  The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small
+hires.  His fame has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased.  What
+he can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of the
+juniper is in requisition, and it seems that those small hires cannot be
+performed without it.  Returning from her wretched journey to her
+wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a mild reproof from easy-going
+Diaper,--a reproof so mild that he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom
+writing metrically now, he took to talking it.  With a fluent sympathetic
+tear, he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by these
+proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to elucidate wherefore.
+Pluming a smile upon his succulent mouth, he told her that the poverty
+she lived in was utterly unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had
+reason to believe--could assure her--that an annuity was on the point of
+being granted her by her husband.  And Diaper broke his bud of a smile
+into full flower as he delivered this information.  She learnt that he
+had applied to her husband for money.  It is hard to have one's prop of
+self-respect cut away just when we are suffering a martyr's agony at the
+stake.  There was a five minutes' tragic colloquy in the recesses behind
+the scenes,--totally tragic to Diaper, who had fondly hoped to bask in
+the warm sun of that annuity, and re-emerge from his state of grub.  The
+lady then wrote the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister.  The
+atmosphere behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the Ghost,
+we will return and face the curtain.
+
+That infinitesimal dose of The World which Master Ripton Thompson had
+furnished to the System with such instantaneous and surprising effect was
+considered by Sir Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time
+quite sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation to
+Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own age to rub his
+excessive vitality against, and wanted none.  His hands were full enough
+with Tom Bakewell.  Moreover, his father and he were heart in heart.  The
+boy's mind was opening, and turned to his father affectionately reverent.
+At this period, when the young savage grows into higher influences, the
+faculty of worship is foremost in him.  At this period Jesuits will stamp
+the future of their chargeling flocks; and all who bring up youth by a
+System, and watch it, know that it is the malleable moment.  Boys
+possessing any mental or moral force to give them a tendency, then
+predestinate their careers; or, if under supervision, take the impress
+that is given them: not often to cast it off, and seldom to cast it off
+altogether.
+
+In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood and
+Adolescence--The Blossoming Season--on the threshold of Puberty, there is
+one Unselfish Hour--say, Spiritual Seed-time."
+
+He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard, and that the
+most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example, should be of a kind to
+germinate in him the love of every form of nobleness.
+
+"I am only striving to make my son a Christian," he said, answering them
+who persisted in expostulating with the System.  And to these
+instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous," he told his son, "and
+then serve your country with heart and soul."  The youth was instructed
+to cherish an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read
+history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose; for one day
+Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and with his hand to his chin,
+against a pedestal supporting the bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero
+of our Parliament, his eyes streaming with tears.
+
+People said the baronet carried the principle of Example so far that he
+only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother Hippias at Raynham in order
+to exhibit to his son the woeful retribution nature wreaked upon a life
+of indulgence; poor Hippias having now become a walking complaint.  This
+was unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration to
+disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood afforded him, and did
+not spare his brother, for whom Richard entertained a contempt in
+proportion to his admiration of his father, and was for flying into
+penitential extremes which Sir Austin had to soften.
+
+The boy prayed with his father morning and night.
+
+"How is it, sir," he said one night, "I can't get Tom Bakewell to pray?"
+
+"Does he refuse?" Sir Austin asked.
+
+"He seems to be ashamed to," Richard replied.  "He wants to know what is
+the good? and I don't know what to tell him."
+
+"I'm afraid it has gone too far with him," said Sir Austin, "and until he
+has had some deep sorrows he will not find the divine want of Prayer.
+Strive, my son, when you represent the people, to provide for their
+education.  He feels everything now through a dull impenetrable rind.
+Culture is half-way to heaven.  Tell him, my son, should he ever be
+brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and that his
+prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The Pilgrim's Scrip):
+
+"'Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.'"
+
+"I will, sir," said Richard, and went to sleep happy.
+
+Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived.  Conscience was
+beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known to
+men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this side,
+now on that.
+
+The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments
+in his pupil, soberly cynical.  He was under Sir Austin's interdict not
+to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of a
+felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of
+sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of
+his various changes.  The Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the
+Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin), little better than a
+month: the religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when
+he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Burnley, and the
+domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and hard
+to bear;--he tried to convert Adrian!  All the while Tom was being
+exercised like a raw recruit.  Richard had a drill-sergeant from the
+nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself, and
+marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke his
+heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic to take in the rudiments
+of letters: for the boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.
+
+Richard's pride also was cast aside.  He affected to be, and really
+thought he was, humble.  Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to
+him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of
+them.
+
+"I an animal!" cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled
+by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters.  Sir Austin had
+him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.
+
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
+Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him.  She too was
+growing, but nobody cared how she grew.  Outwardly even her mother seemed
+absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree, and
+Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.
+
+Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy.  She would tell him: "If I had been
+a girl, I would have had you for my husband."  And he with the frankness
+of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would have had you?"
+causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her
+say she would have had him?  Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning
+of!
+
+"You don't read your father's Book," she said.  Her own copy was bound in
+purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier
+books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian
+remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at
+him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her
+brother would not be on his guard.
+
+"See here," said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one of
+the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must clay-enclose us
+ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human creature in our
+path.  "Can you understand it, child?"
+
+Richard informed her that when she read he could.
+
+"Well, then, my squire," she touched his cheek and ran her fingers
+through his hair, "learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon
+with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise man to
+guide me."
+
+"Is my father very wise?" Richard asked.
+
+"I think so," the lady emphasized her individual judgment.
+
+"Do you--" Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his
+heart.
+
+"Do I--what?" she calmly queried.
+
+"I was going to say, do you--I mean, I love him so much."
+
+Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.
+
+They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it;
+always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the
+sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally
+disturb him.
+
+Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it was part of Sir
+Austin's principle of education that his boy should be thoroughly joyous
+and happy; and whenever Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of his
+pupil's advancement, which he did pretty liberally, diversions were
+planned, just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard
+was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he attended to his
+studies.  The System flourished.  Tall, strong, bloomingly healthy, he
+took the lead of his companions on land and water, and had more than one
+bondsman in his service besides Ripton Thompson--the boy without a
+Destiny!  Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing up a trifle too
+conscious of it.  His generosity to his occasional companions was
+princely, but was exercised something too much in the manner of a prince;
+and, notwithstanding his contempt for baseness, he would overlook that
+more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded an utter
+servility when it had once been rendered susceptible.  If Richard had his
+followers he had also his feuds.  The Papworths were as subservient as
+Ripton, but young Ralph Morton, the nephew of Mr. Morton, and a match for
+Richard in numerous promising qualities, comprising the noble science of
+fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind too openly,
+and moreover would not be snubbed.  There was no middle course for
+Richard's comrades between high friendship or absolute slavery.  He was
+deficient in those cosmopolite habits and feelings which enable boys and
+men to hold together without caring much for each other; and, like every
+insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which he was quite
+aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior nature.  Young Ralph was
+a lively talker: therefore, argued Richard's vanity, he had no intellect.
+He was affable: therefore he was frivolous.  The women liked him:
+therefore he was a butterfly.  In fine, young Ralph was popular, and our
+superb prince, denied the privilege of despising, ended by detesting him.
+
+Early in the days of their contention for leadership, Richard saw the
+absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival.  Ralph was an Eton boy, and
+hence, being robust, a swimmer and a cricketer.  A swimmer and a
+cricketer is nowhere to be scorned in youth's republic.  Finding that
+manoeuvre would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to entrench
+himself behind his greater wealth and his position; but he soon abandoned
+that also, partly because his chilliness to ridicule told him he was
+exposing himself, and chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous.  And so
+he was dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck of
+champions.  For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away the belt:
+Richard's middle-stump tottered before his ball, and he could seldom pick
+up more than three eggs underwater to Ralph's half-dozen.  He was beaten,
+too, in jumping and running.  Why will silly mortals strive to the
+painful pinnacles of championship?  Or why, once having reached them, not
+have the magnanimity and circumspection to retire into private life
+immediately?  Stung by his defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent
+Papworths to Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton;
+matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once, trice, or
+thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop Morton, would require
+for the undertaking.  It was accepted, and a reply returned, equally
+formal in the trumpeting of Christian names, wherein Ralph Barthrop
+Morton acknowledged the challenge of Richard Doria Feverel, and was his
+man.  The match came off on a midsummer morning, under the direction of
+Captain Algernon.  Sir Austin was a spectator from the cover of a
+plantation by the river-side, unknown to his son, and, to the scandal of
+her sex, Lady Blandish accompanied the baronet.  He had invited her
+attendance, and she, obeying her frank nature, and knowing what The
+Pilgrim's Scrip said about prudes, at once agreed to view the match,
+pleasing him mightily.  For was not here a woman worthy the Golden Ages
+of the world? one who could look upon man as a creature divinely made,
+and look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted, by the Serpent!  Such
+a woman was rare.  Sir Austin did not discompose her by uttering his
+praises.  She was conscious of his approval only in an increased
+gentleness of manner, and something in his voice and communications, as
+if he were speaking to a familiar, a very high compliment from him.
+While the lads were standing ready for the signal to plunge from the
+steep decline of greensward into the shining waters, Sir Austin called
+upon her to admire their beauty, and she did, and even advanced her head
+above his shoulder delicately.  In so doing, and just as the start was
+given, a bonnet became visible to Richard.  Young Ralph was heels in air
+before he moved, and then he dropped like lead.  He was beaten by several
+lengths.
+
+The result of the match was unaccountable to all present, and Richard's
+friends unanimously pressed him to plead a false start.  But though the
+youth, with full confidence in his better style and equal strength, had
+backed himself heavily against his rival, and had lost his little river-
+yacht to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort.  It was the Bonnet had
+beaten him, not Ralph.  The Bonnet, typical of the mystery that caused
+his heart those violent palpitations, was his dear, detestable enemy.
+
+And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition turned towards
+a field where Ralph could not rival him, and where the Bonnet was
+etherealized, and reigned glorious mistress.  A cheek to the pride of a
+boy will frequently divert him to the path where lie his subtlest powers.
+Richard gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he relinquished
+the material world to young Ralph, and retired into himself, where he was
+growing to be lord of kingdoms where Beauty was his handmaid, and History
+his minister and Time his ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride;
+where he walked in a realm vaster and more gorgeous than the great
+Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been.  For there is no princely
+wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to equal this early one that is made
+bountifully common to so many, when the ripening blood has put a spark to
+the imagination, and the earth is seen through rosy mists of a thousand
+fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires; panting for bliss and taking
+it as it comes; making of any sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment
+they carry with them, a key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure.  The
+passions then are gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons they grow
+to.  They have their teeth and their talons, but they neither tear nor
+bite.  They are in counsel and fellowship with the quickened heart and
+brain.  The whole sweet system moves to music.
+
+Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit of his son,
+which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked down to be expected, as due to
+his plan.  The blushes of the youth, his long vigils, his clinging to
+solitude, his abstraction, and downcast but not melancholy air, were
+matters for rejoicing to the prescient gentleman.  "For it comes," said
+he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically on the
+youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, "it comes of a
+thoroughly sane condition.  The blood is healthy, the mind virtuous:
+neither instigates the other to evil, and both are perfecting toward the
+flower of manhood.  If he reach that pure--in the untainted fulness and
+perfection of his natural powers--I am indeed a happy father!  But one
+thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he knew paradise,
+and could read God's handwriting on the earth!  Now those abominations
+whom you call precocious boys--your little pet monsters, doctor!--and who
+can wonder that the world is what it is? when it is full of them--as they
+will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives, how can
+they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other than sons of
+selfishness and the Devil?  But my boy," and the baronet dropped his
+voice to a key that was touching to hear, "my boy, if he fall, will fall
+from an actual region of purity.  He dare not be a sceptic as to that.
+Whatever his darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind
+him.  So much is secure."
+
+To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two, in a tone of
+profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn discordances with received
+opinion so seriously as to convey the impression of a spiritual insight,
+is the peculiar gift by which monomaniacs, having first persuaded
+themselves, contrive to influence their neighbours, and through them to
+make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill.  Sir
+Austin had this gift.  He spoke as if he saw the truth, and, persisting
+in it so long, he was accredited by those who did not understand him, and
+silenced them that did.
+
+"We shall see," was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
+unbelievers.
+
+So far certainly the experiment had succeeded.  A comelier, bracer,
+better boy was nowhere to be met.  His promise was undeniable.  The
+vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour and had not yet been proved by
+the buffets of the elements on the great ocean, had made a good trial
+trip, and got well through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell
+Comedy witnessed to at Raynham.  No augury could be hopefuller.  The
+Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal severe, the Destiny dark, that
+could destroy so bright a Spring!  But, bright as it was, the baronet
+relaxed nothing of his vigilant supervision.  He said to his intimates:
+"Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought, in this
+Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future.  The living Tree now
+requires incessant watchfulness." And, acting up to his light, Sir Austin
+did watch.  The youth submitted to an examination every night before he
+sought his bed; professedly to give an account of his studies, but really
+to recapitulate his moral experiences of the day.  He could do so, for he
+was pure.  Any wildness in him that his father noted, any remoteness or
+richness of fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the
+Blossoming Season.  There is nothing like a theory for binding the wise.
+Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward, knew less of his son than
+the servant of his household.  And he was deaf, as well as blind.  Adrian
+thought it his duty to tell him that the youth was consuming paper.  Lady
+Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning propensities.  Sir Austin from
+his lofty watch-tower of the System had foreseen it, he said.  But when
+he came to hear that the youth was writing poetry, his wounded heart had
+its reasons for being much disturbed.
+
+"Surely," said Lady Blandish, "you knew he scribbled?"
+
+"A very different thing from writing poetry," said the baronet.  "No
+Feverel has ever written poetry."
+
+"I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy," the lady remarked.  "He rhymes
+very prettily to me."
+
+A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor of poetry, quieted
+Sir Austin's fears.
+
+The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative faculty;
+and the Professor, that he was equally so in the rhythmic, and instanced
+several consoling false quantities in the few effusions submitted to him.
+Added to this, Sir Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his
+best, done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of doing: he
+had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed his virgin
+manuscript to the flames: which made Lady Blandish sigh forth, "Poor
+boy!"
+
+Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition.  For a youth in his
+Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet, to be requested to destroy
+his first-born, without a reason (though to pretend a reason cogent
+enough to justify the request were a mockery), is a piece of abhorrent
+despotism, and Richard's blossoms withered under it.  A strange man had
+been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his skull with
+sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while, in an infallible
+voice, declaring him the animal he was making him feel such an animal!
+Not only his blossoms withered, his being seemed to draw in its shoots
+and twigs.  And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man having departed,
+his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner, stated that it would
+give him pleasure to see those same precocious, utterly valueless,
+scribblings among the cinders, the last remaining mental blossoms
+spontaneously fell away.  Richard's spirit stood bare.  He protested not.
+Enough that it could be wished!  He would not delay a minute in doing it.
+Desiring his father to follow him, he went to a drawer in his room, and
+from a clean-linen recess, never suspected by Sir Austin, the secretive
+youth drew out bundle after bundle: each neatly tied, named, and
+numbered: and pitched them into flames.  And so Farewell my young
+Ambition! and with it farewell all true confidence between Father and
+Son.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age: the Age
+of violent attractions, when to hear mention of love is dangerous, and to
+see it, a communication of the disease.  People at Raynham were put on
+their guard by the baronet, and his reputation for wisdom was severely
+criticized in consequence of the injunctions he thought fit to issue
+through butler and housekeeper down to the lower household, for the
+preservation of his son from any visible symptom of the passion.  A
+footman and two housemaids are believed to have been dismissed on the
+report of heavy Benson that they were in or inclining to the state; upon
+which an undercook and a dairymaid voluntarily threw up their places,
+averring that "they did not want no young men, but to have their sex
+spied after by an old wretch like that," indicating the ponderous butler,
+"was a little too much for a Christian woman," and then they were
+ungenerous enough to glance at Benson's well-known marital calamity,
+hinting that some men met their deserts.  So intolerable did heavy
+Benson's espionage become, that Raynham would have grown depopulated of
+its womankind had not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the baronet
+what a fearful arm his butler was wielding.  Sir Austin acknowledged it
+despondently.  "It only shows," said he, with a fine spirit of justice,
+"how all but impossible it is to legislate where there are women!"
+
+"I do not object," he added; "I hope I am too just to object to the
+exercise of their natural inclinations.  All I ask from them is
+discreetness."
+
+"Ay," said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.
+
+"No gadding about in couples," continued the baronet, "no kissing in
+public.  Such occurrences no boy should witness.  Whenever people of both
+sexes are thrown together, they will be silly; and where they are high-
+fed, uneducated, and barely occupied, it must be looked for as a matter
+of course.  Let it be known that I only require discreetness."
+
+Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the Abbey.  Under
+Adrian's able tuition the fairest of its domestics acquired that virtue.
+
+Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household.  Sir Austin, who
+had not previously appeared to notice the case of Lobourne's hopeless
+curate, now desired Mrs. Doria to interdict, or at least discourage, his
+visits, for the appearance of the man was that of an embodied sigh and
+groan.
+
+"Really, Austin!" said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her brother more
+awake than she had supposed, "I have never allowed him to hope."
+
+"Let him see it, then," replied the baronet; "let him see it."
+
+"The man amuses me," said Mrs. Doria.  "You know, we have few amusements
+here, we inferior creatures.  I confess I should like a barrel-organ
+better; that reminds one of town and the opera; and besides, it plays
+more than one tune.  However, since you think my society bad for him, let
+him stop away."
+
+With the self-devotion of a woman she grew patient and sweet the moment
+her daughter Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view.
+Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins, Richard and
+Clare; had already beheld them espoused and fruitful.  For this she
+yielded the pleasures of town; for this she immured herself at Raynham;
+for this she bore with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences,
+things abhorrent to her, and heaven knows what forms of torture and self-
+denial, which are smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary
+martyrs--a mother with a daughter to marry.  Mrs. Doria, an amiable
+widow, had surely married but for her daughter Clare.  The lady's hair no
+woman could possess without feeling it her pride.  It was the daily theme
+of her lady's-maid,--a natural aureole to her head.  She was gay, witty,
+still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she sacrificed
+it to accomplish her daughter's!  sacrificed, as with heroic scissors,
+hair, wit, gaiety--let us not attempt to enumerate how much! more than
+may be said.  And she was only one of thousands; thousands who have no
+portion of the hero's reward; for he may reckon on applause, and
+condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they, poor slaves! must look for
+nothing but the opposition of their own sex and the sneers of ours.  O,
+Sir Austin! had you not been so blinded, what an Aphorism might have
+sprung from this point of observation!  Mrs. Doria was coolly told,
+between sister and brother, that during the Magnetic Age her daughter's
+presence at Raynham was undesirable.  Instead of nursing offence, her
+sole thought was the mountain of prejudice she had to contend against.
+She bowed, and said, Clare wanted sea-air--she had never quite recovered
+the shock of that dreadful night.  How long, Mrs. Doria wished to know,
+might the Peculiar Period be expected to last?
+
+"That," said Sir Austin, "depends.  A year, perhaps.  He is entering on
+it.  I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen.  Clare is now--how old?"
+
+"Seventeen."
+
+"She is marriageable."
+
+"Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don't name such a thing.  My child
+shall not be robbed of her youth."
+
+"Our women marry early, Helen."
+
+"My child shall not!"
+
+The baronet reflected a moment.  He did not wish to lose his sister.
+
+"As you are of that opinion, Helen," said he, "perhaps we may still make
+arrangements to retain you with us.  Would you think it advisable to send
+Clare--she should know discipline--to some establishment for a few
+months?"
+
+"To an asylum, Austin?" cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her indignation as
+well as she could.
+
+"To some select superior seminary, Helen.  There are such to be found."
+
+"Austin!" Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in her
+eyes.  "Unjust! absurd!" she murmured.  The baronet thought it a natural
+proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.
+
+"I cannot leave my child."  Mrs. Doria trembled.  "Where she goes, I go.
+I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no value to
+the world, but she is my child.  I will see, poor dear, that you have no
+cause to complain of her."
+
+"I thought," Sir Austin remarked, "that you acquiesced in my views with
+regard to my son."
+
+"Yes--generally," said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had not
+before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol
+in his house--an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than wood
+or brass or gold.  But she had bowed to the Idol too long--she had too
+entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency.  She had, and
+she dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics, in teaching
+her daughter to bow to the Idol also.  Love of that kind Richard took for
+tribute.  He was indifferent to Clare's soft eyes.  The parting kiss he
+gave her was ready and cold as his father could desire.  Sir Austin now
+grew eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but Richard thought
+his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship awkward, and all
+manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and worthless.  To what end?
+sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he was relieved
+of his father's society, what was the good of anything?  Whatever he did-
+-whichever path he selected, led back to Raynham.  And whatever he did,
+however wretched and wayward he showed himself, only confirmed Sir Austin
+more and more in the truth of his previsions.  Tom Bakewell, now the
+youth's groom, had to give the baronet a report of his young master's
+proceedings, in common with Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell,
+Tom spoke out.  "He do ride like fire every day to Pig's Snout," naming
+the highest hill in the neighbourhood, "and stand there and stare, never
+movin', like a mad 'un.  And then hoam agin all slack as if he'd been
+beaten in a race by somebody."
+
+"There is no woman in that!" mused the baronet.  "He would have ridden
+back as hard as he went," reflected this profound scientific humanist,
+"had there been a woman in it.  He would shun vast expanses, and seek
+shade, concealment, solitude.  The desire for distances betokens
+emptiness and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an image
+we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty."
+
+Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of cynicism.
+
+"Exactly," said the baronet.  "As I foresaw.  At this period an insatiate
+appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate.  Nothing but the
+quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will
+satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied!  Hence his
+bitterness.  Life can furnish no food fitting for him.  The strength and
+purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and roam
+through the Inane.  Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs earth has
+to offer to high natures, as she offers to low ones debauchery.  'Tis a
+sign, this sourness, that he is subject to none of the empiricisms that
+are afloat.  Now to keep him clear of them!"
+
+The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus.  As yet, however, it
+could not be said that Sir Austin's System had failed.  On the contrary,
+it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed
+the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent.  Where, they asked, was such
+another young man to be found?
+
+"Oh!" said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, "if men could give their hands to
+women unsoiled--how different would many a marriage be!  She will be a
+happy girl who calls Richard husband."
+
+"Happy, indeed!" was the baronet's caustic ejaculation.  "But where shall
+I meet one equal to him, and his match?"
+
+"I was innocent when I was a girl," said the lady.
+
+Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.
+
+"Do you think no girls innocent?"
+
+Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.
+
+"No, that you know they are not," said the lady, stamping.  "But they are
+more innocent than boys, I am sure."
+
+"Because of their education, madam.  You see now what a youth can be.
+Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather--to speak more humbly--
+when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall have
+virtuous young men."
+
+"It's too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them," said
+the lady, pouting and laughing.
+
+"It is never too late for beauty to waken love," returned the baronet,
+and they trifled a little.  They were approaching Daphne's Bower, which
+they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending
+midsummer day.
+
+The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for
+serious converse.
+
+"I shall believe again in Arthur's knights," she said.  "When I was a
+girl I dreamed of one."
+
+"And he was in quest of the San Greal?"
+
+"If you like."
+
+"And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more tangible San
+Blandish?"
+
+"Of course you consider it would have been so," sighed the lady,
+ruffling.
+
+"I can only judge by our generation," said Sir Austin, with a bend of
+homage.
+
+The lady gathered her mouth.  "Either we are very mighty or you are very
+weak."
+
+"Both, madam."
+
+"But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love virtue, and truth,
+and lofty souls, in men: and, when we meet those qualities in them, we
+are constant, and would die for them--die for them.  Ah! you know men but
+not women."
+
+"The knights possessing such distinctions must be young, I presume?" said
+Sir Austin.
+
+"Old, or young!"
+
+"But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?"
+
+"They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Yes--ah!" said the lady.  "Intellect may subdue women--make slaves of
+them; and they worship beauty perhaps as much as you do.  But they only
+love for ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature."
+
+Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.
+
+"And did you encounter the knight of your dream?"
+
+"Not then."  She lowered her eyelids.  It was prettily done.
+
+"And how did you bear the disappointment?"
+
+"My dream was in the nursery.  The day my frock was lengthened to a gown
+I stood at the altar.  I am not the only girl that has been made a woman
+in a day, and given to an ogre instead of a true knight."
+
+"Good God!" exclaimed Sir Austin, "women have much to bear."
+
+Here the couple changed characters.  The lady became gay as the baronet
+grew earnest.
+
+"You know it is our lot," she said.  "And we are allowed many amusements.
+If we fulfil our duty in producing children, that, like our virtue, is
+its own reward.  Then, as a widow, I have wonderful privileges."
+
+"To preserve which, you remain a widow?"
+
+"Certainly," she responded.  "I have no trouble now in patching and
+piecing that rag the world calls--a character.  I can sit at your feet
+every day unquestioned.  To be sure, others do the same, but they are
+female eccentrics, and have cast off the rag altogether."
+
+Sir Austin drew nearer to her.  "You would have made an admirable mother,
+madam."
+
+This from Sir Austin was very like positive wooing.
+
+"It is," he continued, "ten thousand pities that you are not one."
+
+"Do you think so?" She spoke with humility.
+
+"I would," he went on, "that heaven had given you a daughter."
+
+"Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?"
+
+"Our blood, madam, should have been one!"
+
+The lady tapped her toe with her parasol.  "But I am a mother," she said.
+"Richard is my son.  Yes! Richard is my boy," she reiterated.
+
+Sir Austin most graciously appended, "Call him ours, madam," and held his
+head as if to catch the word from her lips, which, however, she chose to
+refuse, or defer.  They made the coloured West a common point for their
+eyes, and then Sir Austin said:
+
+"As you will not say 'ours,' let me.  And, as you have therefore an equal
+claim on the boy, I will confide to you a project I have lately
+conceived."
+
+The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming proposal, but
+for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was almost tantamount to a
+declaration.  So Lady Blandish thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed
+smile, as she perused the ground while listening to the project.  It
+concerned Richard's nuptials.  He was now nearly eighteen.  He was to
+marry when he was five-and-twenty.  Meantime a young lady, some years his
+junior, was to be sought for in the homes of England, who would be every
+way fitted by education, instincts, and blood--on each of which
+qualifications Sir Austin unreservedly enlarged--to espouse so perfect a
+youth and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation of
+the Feverels.  The baronet went on to say that he proposed to set forth
+immediately, and devote a couple of months, to the first essay in his
+Coelebite search.
+
+"I fear," said Lady Blandish, when the project had been fully unfolded,
+"you have laid down for yourself a difficult task.  You must not be too
+exacting."
+
+"I know it."  The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.
+
+"Even in England she will be rare.  But I confine myself to no class.  If
+I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what you call high blood.  I
+believe many of the middle classes are frequently more careful--more
+pure-blooded--than our aristocracy.  Show me among them a God-fearing
+family who educate their children--I should prefer a girl without
+brothers and sisters--as a Christian damsel should be educated--say, on
+the model of my son, and she may be penniless, I will pledge her to
+Richard Feverel."
+
+Lady Blandish bit her lip.  "And what do you do with Richard while you
+are absent on this expedition?"
+
+"Oh!" said the baronet, "he accompanies his father."
+
+"Then give it up.  His future bride is now pinafored and bread-and-
+buttery.  She romps, she cries, she dreams of play and pudding.  How can
+he care for her?  He thinks more at his age of old women like me.  He
+will be certain to kick against her, and destroy your plan, believe me,
+Sir Austin."
+
+"Ay? ay? do you think that?" said the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.
+
+"Ay! true," he muttered.  "Adrian said the same.  He must not see her.
+How could I think of it!  The child is naked woman.  He would despise
+her.  Naturally!"
+
+"Naturally!" echoed the lady.
+
+"Then, madam," and the baronet rose, "there is one thing for me to
+determine upon.  I must, for the first time in his life, leave him."
+
+"Will you, indeed?" said the lady.
+
+"It is my duty, having thus brought him up, to see that he is properly
+mated,--not wrecked upon the quicksands of marriage, as a youth so
+delicately trained might be; more easily than another!  Betrothed, he
+will be safe from a thousand snares.  I may, I think, leave him for a
+term.  My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his season."
+
+"And under whose charge will you leave him?" Lady Blandish inquired.
+
+She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir Austin on the upper
+steps, under a clear summer twilight.
+
+"Madam!" he took her hand, and his voice was gallant and tender, "under
+whose but yours?"
+
+As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and raised it to his
+lips.
+
+Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in wedlock.  She did
+not withdraw her hand.  The baronet's salute was flatteringly reverent.
+He deliberated over it, as one going through a grave ceremony.  And he,
+the scorner of women, had chosen her for his homage!  Lady Blandish
+forgot that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it.  She received the
+exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet: for in love we must
+deserve nothing or the fine bloom of fruition is gone.
+
+The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had not recovered
+from his profound inclination, when a noise from the neighbouring
+beechwood startled the two actors in this courtly pantomime.  They turned
+their heads, and beheld the hope of Raynham on horseback surveying the
+scene.  The next moment he had galloped away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a rapid canter, and
+his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich untasted world, and the
+great Realm of Mystery, from which he was now restrained no longer.
+Months he had wandered about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing,
+knocking at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer.  He had the
+key now.  His own father had given it to him.  His heart was a lightning
+steed, and bore him on and on over limitless regions bathed in superhuman
+beauty and strangeness, where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon
+close green swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon savage
+forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in golden courts lit to a
+glorious day by ladies' eyes, one pair of which, dimly visioned,
+constantly distinguishable, followed him through the boskage and dwelt
+upon him in the press, beaming while he bent above a hand glittering
+white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night.
+
+Awhile the heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act of
+consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the small white
+hand.  Only to do that, and die! cried the Magnetic Youth: to fling the
+Jewel of Life into that one cup and drink it off!  He was intoxicated by
+anticipation.  For that he was born.  There was, then, some end in
+existence, something to live for! to kiss a woman's hand, and die!  He
+would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to relieve his
+swarming sensations.  Scarce was he seated when the pen was dashed aside,
+the paper sent flying with the exclamation, "Have I not sworn I would
+never write again?"  Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve.  The nonsense
+that was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency
+for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his oath,
+and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of composition before
+pride could speak a word.  Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had
+been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a time, and a
+single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were demanding the
+first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed
+impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite
+as much as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw
+down the powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length
+and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.
+
+Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went
+forth into the air.  A lamp was still burning in his father's room, and
+Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on
+the watch.  Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold
+against the hues of dawn.
+
+Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of
+fever.  Richard took to it instinctively.  The clear fresh water,
+burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep
+shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel.  Overhead solitary
+morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still,
+delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he was
+heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of river-
+reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant of the
+stream.  Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was rowing
+toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here and
+there.  It was not a dream, now he knew.  There was a secret abroad.  The
+woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds.  Oh, why
+could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should draw
+down ladies' eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur!  To such a
+meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had pulled
+through his first feverish energy.
+
+He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude
+which follows strenuous exercise, when be heard a hail and his own name
+called.  It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption
+of miserable masculine prose.  Heartily wishing him abed with the rest of
+mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped ashore.  Ralph immediately seized
+his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a talk with him, and
+dragged the Magnetic Youth from his water-dreams, up and down the wet
+mown grass.  That he had to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and
+Richard, though he barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival's
+gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience; whereat Ralph,
+as one who branches into matter somewhat foreign to his mind, but of
+great human interest and importance, put the question to him:
+
+"I say, what woman's name do you like best?"
+
+"I don't know any," quoth Richard, indifferently.  "Why are you out so
+early?"
+
+In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary might be
+considered a pretty name.
+
+Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at Raynham, half the
+women cooks, and all the housemaids enjoyed that name; the name of Mary
+was equivalent for women at home.
+
+"Yes, I know," said Ralph.  "We have lots of Marys.  It's so common.  Oh!
+I don't like Mary best.  What do you think?"
+
+Richard thought it just like another.
+
+"Do you know," Ralph continued, throwing off the mask and plunging into
+the subject, "I'd do anything on earth for some names--one or two.  It's
+not Mary, nor Lucy.  Clarinda's pretty, but it's like a novel.  Claribel,
+I like.  Names beginning with 'Cl' I prefer.  The 'Cl's' are always
+gentle and lovely girls you would die for!  Don't you think so?"
+
+Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to inspire that
+emotion.  Indeed these urgent appeals to his fancy in feminine names at
+five o'clock in the morning slightly surprised him, though he was but
+half awake to the outer world.  By degrees he perceived that Ralph was
+changed.  Instead of the lusty boisterous boy, his rival in manly
+sciences, who spoke straightforwardly and acted up to his speech, here
+was an abashed and blush-persecuted youth, who sued piteously for a
+friendly ear wherein to pour the one idea possessing him.  Gradually,
+too, Richard apprehended that Ralph likewise was on the frontiers of the
+Realm of Mystery, perhaps further toward it than he himself was; and
+then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was revealed to him the wonderful
+beauty and depth of meaning in feminine names.  The theme appeared novel
+and delicious, fitted to the season and the hour.  But the hardship was,
+that Richard could choose none from the number; all were the same to him;
+he loved them all.
+
+"Don't you really prefer the 'Cl's'?" said Ralph, persuasively.
+
+"Not better than the names ending in 'a' and 'y,' Richard replied,
+wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently ahead of him.
+
+"Come under these trees," said Ralph.  And under the trees Ralph
+unbosomed.  His name was down for the army: Eton was quitted for ever.
+In a few months he would have to join his regiment, and before he left he
+must say goodbye to his friends....  Would Richard tell him Mrs. Forey's
+address? he had heard she was somewhere by the sea.  Richard did not
+remember the address, but said he would willingly take charge of any
+letter and forward it.
+
+Ralph dived his hand into his pocket.  "Here it is.  But don't let
+anybody see it."
+
+"My aunt's name is not Clare," said Richard, perusing what was composed
+of the exterior formula.  "You've addressed it to Clare herself."
+
+That was plain to see.
+
+"Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish," Richard continued
+in a low tone, transferring the names, and playing on the musical strings
+they were to him.  Then he said: "Names of ladies!  How they sweeten
+their names!"
+
+He fixed his eyes on Ralph.  If he discovered anything further he said
+nothing, but bade the good fellow good-bye, jumped into his boat, and
+pulled down the tide.  The moment Ralph was hidden by an abutment of the
+banks, Richard perused the address.  For the first time it struck him
+that his cousin Clare was a very charming creature: he remembered the
+look of her eyes, and especially the last reproachful glance she gave him
+at parting.  What business had Ralph to write to her?  Did she not belong
+to Richard Feverel?  He read the words again and again: Clare Doria
+Forey.  Why, Clare was the name he liked best--nay, he loved it.  Doria,
+too--she shared his own name with him.  Away went his heart, not at a
+canter now, at a gallop, as one who sights the quarry.  He felt too weak
+to pull.  Clare Doria Forey--oh, perfect melody!  Sliding with the tide,
+he heard it fluting in the bosom of the hills.
+
+When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs that the Fates
+are behindhand in furnishing a temple for the flame.
+
+Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the thunder below,
+lilies, golden and white, were swaying at anchor among the reeds.
+Meadow-sweet hung from the banks thick with weed and trailing bramble,
+and there also hung a daughter of earth.  Her face was shaded by a broad
+straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the sun,
+and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising eyes.  Across her
+shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose curls, brown in shadow, almost
+golden where the ray touched them.  She was simply dressed, befitting
+decency and the season.  On a closer inspection you might see that her
+lips were stained.  This blooming young person was regaling on
+dewberries.  They grew between the bank and the water.  Apparently she
+found the fruit abundant, for her hand was making pretty progress to her
+mouth.  Fastidious youth, which revolts at woman plumping her exquisite
+proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we must suppose) joyfully
+have her scraggy to have her poetical, can hardly object to dewberries.
+Indeed the act of eating them is dainty and induces musing.  The dewberry
+is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister.  You eat: mouth, eye,
+and hand are occupied, and the undrugged mind free to roam.  And so it
+was with the damsel who knelt there.  The little skylark went up above
+her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a
+dewy copse dark over her nodding hat the blackbird fluted, calling to her
+with thrice mellow note: the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green
+osiers: a bow-winged heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude a boat
+slipped toward her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked the
+fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading her
+territories, and as if she wished not for one, or knew not her wishes.
+Surrounded by the green shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the
+weir-fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers,
+she was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible
+attraction.  The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the
+weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision.  Stiller and stiller grew
+nature, as at the meeting of two electric clouds.  Her posture was so
+graceful, that though he was making straight for the weir, he dared not
+dip a scull.  Just then one enticing dewberry caught her eyes.  He was
+floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand stretched low, and could not
+gather what it sought.  A stroke from his right brought him beside her.
+The damsel glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over the
+brink.  Richard sprang from his boat into the water.  Pressing a hand
+beneath her foot, which she had thrust against the crumbling wet sides of
+the bank to save herself, he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain
+safe earth, whither he followed her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.  The world lay
+wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists, remote, a phantom to the vivid
+reality of this white hand which had drawn him thither away thousands of
+leagues in an eye-twinkle.  Hark, how Ariel sang overhead!  What
+splendour in the heavens!  What marvels of beauty about his enchanted
+brows!  And, O you wonder!  Fair Flame! by whose light the glories of
+being are now first seen....Radiant Miranda!  Prince Ferdinand is at your
+feet.
+
+Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and thus
+transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose it?...
+
+The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye.  It was the First Woman
+to him.
+
+And she--mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one princely youth.
+
+So to each other said their changing eyes in the moment they stood
+together; he pale, and she blushing.
+
+She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held fair among rival
+damsels.  On a magic shore, and to a youth educated by a System, strung
+like an arrow drawn to the head, he, it might be guessed, could fly fast
+and far with her.  The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her
+eyes, bore witness to the body's virtue; and health and happy blood were
+in her bearing.  Had she stood before Sir Austin among rival damsels,
+that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation of his System, would have
+thrown her the handkerchief for his son.  The wide summer-hat, nodding
+over her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing heavy
+curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls, waves of
+hair call them, rippling at the ends, went like a sunny red-veined
+torrent down her back almost to her waist: a glorious vision to the
+youth, who embraced it as a flower of beauty, and read not a feature.
+There were curious features of colour in her face for him to have read.
+Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing the action of
+the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending to the temples long and
+level: you saw that she was fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and
+by the pliability of her brows that the wonderful creature used her
+faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer.  Under the dark
+thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving a wealth of darkness to
+the full frank blue eyes, a mystery of meaning--more than brain was ever
+meant to fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
+Ferdinand.  For when nature turns artist, and produces contrasts of
+colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what the Oracle, shall match
+the depth of its lightest look?
+
+Prince Ferdinand was also fair.  In his slim boating-attire his figure
+looked heroic.  His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his
+forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away
+slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward
+curve of his brows there--felt more than seen, so slight it was--and gave
+to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a
+flattering charm.  An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
+far with her!  He leaned a little forward, drinking her in with all his
+eyes, and young Love has a thousand.  Then truly the System triumphed,
+just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw
+the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have
+pointed to his son again, and said to the world, "Match him!"  Such keen
+bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
+powers of soul in him to experience.
+
+"O Women!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts,
+"Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not to
+learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
+putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!"
+
+If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero, and
+was not present, or their fates might have been different.
+
+So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they
+came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.
+
+She spoke to thank him for his aid.  She used quite common simple words;
+and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
+she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
+was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish
+to be chronicled.
+
+The couple were again mute.  Suddenly Miranda, with an exclamation of
+anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows playing over her lovely face,
+clapped her hands, crying aloud, "My book! my book!" and ran to the bank.
+
+Prince Ferdinand was at her side.  "What have you lost?" he said.
+
+"My book!" she answered, her delicious curls swinging across her
+shoulders to the stream.  Then turning to him, "Oh, no, no! let me
+entreat you not to," she said; "I do not so very much mind losing it."
+And in her eagerness to restrain him she unconsciously laid her gentle
+hand upon his arm, and took the force of motion out of him.
+
+"Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book," she continued,
+withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening.  "Pray, do not!"
+
+The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes.  No sooner was the spell of
+contact broken than he jumped in.  The water was still troubled and
+discoloured by his introductory adventure, and, though he ducked his head
+with the spirit of a dabchick, the book was missing.  A scrap of paper
+floating from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if fire
+had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse element to the
+other, was all he could lay hold of; and he returned to land
+disconsolately, to hear Miranda's murmured mixing of thanks and pretty
+expostulations.
+
+"Let me try again," he said.
+
+"No, indeed!" she replied, and used the awful threat: "I will run away if
+you do," which effectually restrained him.
+
+Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and brightened, as she
+cried, "There, there! you have what I want.  It is that.  I do not care
+for the book.  No, please!  You are not to look at it.  Give it me."
+
+Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly spoken, Richard had
+glanced at the document and discovered a Griffin between two
+Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver: and below--O wonderment immense! his
+own handwriting!
+
+He handed it to her.  She took it, and put it in her bosom.
+
+Who would have thought, that, where all else perished, Odes, Idyls,
+Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be miraculously
+reserved for such a starry fate--passing beatitude!
+
+As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard strove to remember the
+hour and the mood of mind in which he had composed the notable
+production.  The stars were invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to
+tell him where then his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was
+complacent enough to do so, and described her in a couplet
+
+         "Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
+          As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair."
+
+And surely no words could be more prophetic.  Here were two blue eyes and
+golden hair; and by some strange chance, that appeared like the working
+of a divine finger, she had become the possessor of the prophecy, she
+that was to fulfil it!  The youth was too charged with emotion to speak.
+Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had some trifling burden on
+her conscience, for she seemed to grow embarrassed.  At last she drew up
+her chin to look at her companion under the nodding brim of her hat (and
+the action gave her a charmingly freakish air), crying, "But where are
+you going to?  You are wet through.  Let me thank you again; and, pray,
+leave me, and go home and change instantly."
+
+"Wet?" replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of tender interest; "not
+more than one foot, I hope.  I will leave you while you dry your
+stockings in the sun."
+
+At this she could not withhold a shy laugh.
+
+"Not I, but you.  You would try to get that silly book for me, and you
+are dripping wet.  Are you not very uncomfortable?"
+
+In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.
+
+"And you really do not feel that you are wet?"
+
+He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
+
+She pursed her dewberry mouth in the most comical way, and her blue eyes
+lightened laughter out of the half-closed lids.
+
+"I cannot help it," she said, her mouth opening, and sounding harmonious
+bells of laughter in his ears.  "Pardon me, won't you?"
+
+His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration of her.
+
+"Not to feel that you have been in the water, the very moment after!" she
+musically interjected, seeing she was excused.
+
+"It's true," he said; and his own gravity then touched him to join a duet
+with her, which made them no longer feel strangers, and did the work of a
+month of intimacy.  Better than sentiment, laughter opens the breast to
+love; opens the whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here
+and there for a solitary arrow.  Hail the occasion propitious, O British
+young! and laugh and treat love as an honest God, and dabble not with the
+sentimental rouge.  These two laughed, and the souls of each cried out to
+other, "It is I it is I."
+
+They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and the sun dried
+his light river clothing, and they strolled toward the blackbird's copse,
+and stood near a stile in sight of the foam of the weir and the many-
+coloured rings of eddies streaming forth from it.
+
+Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the weir, and was
+swinging, bottom upward, broadside with the current down the rapid
+backwater.
+
+"Will you let it go?" said the damsel, eying it curiously.
+
+"It can't be stopped," he replied, and could have added: "What do I care
+for it now!"
+
+His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned.  His new life was
+with her, alive, divine.
+
+She flapped low the brim of her hat.  "You must really not come any
+farther," she softly said.
+
+"And will you go, and not tell me who you are?" he asked, growing bold as
+the fears of losing her came across him.  "And will you not tell me
+before you go"--his face burned--"how you came by that--that paper?"
+
+She chose to select the easier question for answer: "You ought to know
+me; we have been introduced."  Sweet was her winning off-hand affability.
+
+"Then who, in heaven's name, are you?  Tell me!  I never could have
+forgotten you."
+
+"You have, I think," she said.
+
+"Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget you!"
+
+She looked up at him.
+
+"Do you remember Belthorpe?"
+
+"Belthorpe!  Belthorpe!" quoth Richard, as if he had to touch his brain
+to recollect there was such a place.  "Do you mean old Blaize's farm?"
+
+"Then I am old Blaize's niece."  She tripped him a soft curtsey.
+
+The magnetized youth gazed at her.  By what magic was it that this divine
+sweet creature could be allied with that old churl!
+
+"Then what--what is your name?" said his mouth, while his eyes added, "O
+wonderful creature!  How came you to enrich the earth?"
+
+"Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?" she peered at him from
+a side-bend of the flapping brim.
+
+"The Desboroughs of Dorset?"  A light broke in on him.  "And have you
+grown to this?  That little girl I saw there!"
+
+He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the vision.  She
+could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of his eyes.  Her volubility
+fluttered under his deeply wistful look, and now neither voice was high,
+and they were mutually constrained.
+
+"You see," she murmured, "we are old acquaintances."
+
+Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned, "You are
+very beautiful!"
+
+The words slipped out.  Perfect simplicity is unconsciously audacious.
+Her overpowering beauty struck his heart, and, like an instrument that is
+touched and answers to the touch, he spoke.
+
+Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible directness;
+but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked her lips.  She turned
+away from them, her bosom a little rebellious.  Praise so passionately
+spoken, and by one who has been a damsel's first dream, dreamed of
+nightly many long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her
+thoughts in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
+would.  She quickened her steps.
+
+"I have offended you!" said a mortally wounded voice across her shoulder.
+
+That he should think so were too dreadful.
+
+"Oh no, no! you would never offend me."  She gave him her whole sweet
+face.
+
+"Then why--why do you leave me?"
+
+"Because," she hesitated, "I must go."
+
+"No.  You must not go.  Why must you go?  Do not go."
+
+"Indeed I must," she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad brim of her
+hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his assent to her rational
+resolve, shyly looking at him, she held her hand out, and said, "Good-
+bye," as if it were a natural thing to say.
+
+The hand was pure white--white and fragrant as the frosted blossom of a
+Maynight.  It was the hand whose shadow, cast before, he had last night
+bent his head reverentially above, and kissed--resigning himself
+thereupon over to execution for payment of the penalty of such daring--by
+such bliss well rewarded.
+
+He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.
+
+"Good-bye," she said again, as frankly as she could, and at the same time
+slightly compressing her fingers on his in token of adieu.  It was a
+signal for his to close firmly upon hers.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Pray, let me," she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in wrinkles.
+
+"You will not go?"  Mechanically he drew the white hand nearer his
+thumping heart.
+
+"I must," she faltered piteously.
+
+"You will not go?"
+
+"Oh yes! yes!"
+
+"Tell me.  Do you wish to go?"
+
+The question was a subtle one.  A moment or two she did not answer, and
+then forswore herself, and said, Yes.
+
+"Do you--you wish to go?"  He looked with quivering eyelids under hers.
+
+A fainter Yes responded.
+
+"You wish--wish to leave me?"  His breath went with the words.
+
+"Indeed I must."
+
+Her hand became a closer prisoner.
+
+All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through her frame.  From
+him to her it coursed, and back from her to him.  Forward and back love's
+electric messenger rushed from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it
+surged tumultuously against the bars of its prison, crying out for its
+mate.  They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these fair
+heavens of the morning.
+
+When he could get his voice it said, "Will you go?"
+
+But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely bend upward her
+gentle wrist.
+
+"Then, farewell!" he said, and, dropping his lips to the soft fair hand,
+kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away from her, ready for death.
+
+Strange, that now she was released she should linger by him.  Strange,
+that his audacity, instead of the executioner, brought blushes and timid
+tenderness to his side, and the sweet words, "You are not angry with me?"
+
+"With you, O Beloved!" cried his soul.  "And you forgive me, fair
+charity!"
+
+"I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you again," she said,
+and again proffered her hand.
+
+The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him.  The gracious
+glory of heaven fell upon his soul.  He touched her hand, not moving his
+eyes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell,
+passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of
+the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.
+
+And away with her went the wild enchantment.  He looked on barren air.
+But it was no more the world of yesterday.  The marvellous splendours had
+sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his
+bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes
+them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings ghosts of the
+vanished sun.
+
+There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring
+it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it.  Soft flushed cheeks!
+sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his
+ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you?  Nay, how could he let
+you go?  And he seriously asked himself that question.
+
+To-morrow this place will have a memory--the river and the meadow, and
+the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
+skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned
+chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries.  To-day the
+grass is grass: his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.
+Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does
+he taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place
+to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his for ever.
+
+Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy.  Erelong he meets Ralph, and
+discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere.  He and Ralph
+and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical
+discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
+those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's.  "Fair! fair! all of them fair!"
+sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our
+perdition!  I think we have in this country what will match the Italian
+or the Greek."  His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before
+the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine's hair is a dark luxuriance,
+dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-
+haired Wonders.  They have no mutual confidences, but they are singularly
+kind to each other, these three children of instinct.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
+future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of
+families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not
+degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an open
+leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly
+dropped his eye.  There were names historic and names mushroomic; names
+that the Conqueror might have called in his muster-roll; names that had
+been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum of civilized lifer by a
+millwheel or a merchant-stool.  Against them the baronet had written M.
+or Po. or Pr.--signifying, Money, Position, Principles, favouring the
+latter with special brackets.  The wisdom of a worldly man, which he
+could now and then adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round
+of visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician
+thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the rats who know best the merits
+of a house, and on what sort of foundation it may be standing.
+
+Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind.  The memory of his
+misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it
+were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no
+wife and his son no mother.  He wandered on foot through the streets the
+first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows and
+bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as
+destitute as the poorest vagrant.  He had almost forgotten how to find
+his way about, and came across his old mansion in his efforts to regain
+his hotel.  The windows were alight--signs of merry life within.  He
+stared at it from the shadow of the opposite side.  It seemed to him he
+was a ghost gazing upon his living past.  And then the phantom which had
+stood there mocking while he felt as other men--the phantom, now flesh
+and blood reality, seized and convulsed his heart, and filled its
+unforgiving crevices with bitter ironic venom.  He remembered by the time
+reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the house at his
+disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something of the sort.  In the
+morning, too, he remembered that he had divorced the world to wed a
+System, and must be faithful to that exacting Spouse, who, now alone of
+things on earth, could fortify and recompense him.
+
+Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and emotion due to such
+a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of the honour.  He was a thin stately
+man of law, garbed as one who gave audience to acred bishops, and
+carrying on his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment
+skins, and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to increase
+his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain.  After congratulating
+Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two or three suits, and being
+assured that the baronet's business in town had no concern therewith, Mr.
+Thompson ventured to hope that the young heir was all his father could
+desire him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a pattern to
+the youth of the Age.
+
+"A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!" said the old lawyer, shaking his
+head.  "We must keep our eyes on them--keep awake!  The mischief is done
+in a minute."
+
+"We must take care to have seen where we planted, and that the root was
+sound, or the mischief will do itself in site of, or under the very
+spectacles of, supervision," said the baronet.
+
+His legal adviser murmured "Exactly," as if that were his own idea,
+adding, "It is my plan with Ripton, who has had the honour of an
+introduction to you, and a very pleasant time he spent with my young
+friend, whom he does not forget.  Ripton follows the Law.  He is articled
+to me, and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence.  I
+bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at night.  I think I
+may say that I am quite content with him."
+
+"Do you think," said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, "that you can trace
+every act of his to its motive?"
+
+The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that this might be
+repeated.
+
+"Do you"--Sir Austin held the same searching expression--"do you
+establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition: do you base your
+watchfulness on so thorough an acquaintance with his character, so
+perfect a knowledge of the instrument, that all its movements--even the
+eccentric ones--are anticipated by you, and provided for?"
+
+The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to entreat
+another repetition.  Winking with the painful deprecation of a deaf man,
+Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely, coughed conciliatingly, and said he was
+afraid he could not affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to
+say that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at school.
+
+"I find," Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed his inspecting
+pose and mien, "there are fathers who are content to be simply obeyed.
+Now I require not only that my son should obey; I would have him
+guiltless of the impulse to gainsay my wishes--feeling me in him stronger
+than his undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my
+responsibility ends and his commences.  Man is a self-acting machine.  He
+cannot cease to be a machine; but, though self-acting, he may lose the
+powers of self-guidance, and in a wrong course his very vitalities hurry
+him to perdition.  Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic
+diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold watch over
+him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit for what machinal duties
+he may have to perform"...
+
+Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully.  He was utterly lost.  He
+respected Sir Austin's estates too much to believe for a moment he was
+listening to downright folly.  Yet how otherwise explain the fact of his
+excellent client being incomprehensible to him?  For a middle-aged
+gentleman, and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing,
+will rarely have a notion of accusing his understanding; and Mr. Thompson
+had not the slightest notion of accusing his.  But the baronet's
+condescension in coming thus to him, and speaking on the subject nearest
+his heart, might well affect him, and he quickly settled the case in
+favour of both parties, pronouncing mentally that his honoured client had
+a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that no wonder he experienced
+difficulty in giving it fitly significant words.
+
+Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the Mechanism, for
+his lawyer's edification.  At a recurrence of the word "healthy" Mr.
+Thompson caught him up:
+
+"I apprehended you!  Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin! entirely!  Allow
+me to ring for my son Ripton.  I think, if you condescend to examine him,
+you will say that regular habits, and a diet of nothing but law-reading--
+for other forms of literature I strictly interdict--have made him all
+that you instance."
+
+Mr. Thompson's hand was on the bell.  Sir Austin arrested him.
+
+"Permit me to see the lad at his occupation," said he.
+
+Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential clerk,
+Mr. Beazley, a veteran of law, now little better than a document, looking
+already signed and sealed, and shortly to be delivered, who enjoined
+nothing from his pupil and companion save absolute silence, and sounded
+his praises to his father at the close of days when it had been rigidly
+observed--not caring, or considering, the finished dry old document that
+he was, under what kind of spell a turbulent commonplace youth could be
+charmed into stillness for six hours of the day.  Ripton was supposed to
+be devoted to the study of Blackstone.  A tome of the classic legal
+commentator lay extended outside his desk, under the partially lifted lid
+of which nestled the assiduous student's head--law being thus brought
+into direct contact with his brain-pan.  The office-door opened, and he
+heard not; his name was called, and he remained equally moveless.  His
+method of taking in Blackstone seemed absorbing as it was novel.
+
+"Comparing notes, I daresay," whispered Mr. Thompson to Sir Austin.  "I
+call that study!"
+
+The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.
+
+"Is it like this every day, Beazley?" Mr. Thompson asked with parental
+pride.
+
+"Ahem!" the old clerk replied, "he is like this every day, sir.  I could
+not ask more of a mouse."
+
+Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk.  His proximity roused one of
+Ripton's senses, which blew a pall to the others.  Down went the lid of
+the desk.  Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in Ripton's
+face.  He slouched from his perch with the air of one who means rather to
+defend his position than welcome a superior, the right hand in his
+waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching at his vacant stool.
+
+Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth's shoulder, and said, leaning his
+head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, "I am glad to find
+my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied.  I know what study is
+myself.  But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly!  Come! you must not
+be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread again.
+Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the visits of your client."
+
+So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson, that,
+seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and sneaking
+defiance, he thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and desired him
+to inform the baronet what particular part of Blackstone he was absorbed
+in mastering at that moment.
+
+Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious
+articulation, "The Law of Gravelkind."
+
+"What Law?" said Sir Austin, perplexed.
+
+"Gravelkind," again rumbled Ripton's voice.
+
+Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation.  The old lawyer was
+shaking his law-box.
+
+"Singular!" he exclaimed.  "He will make that mistake!  What law, sir?"
+
+Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father's
+face, and corrected himself.  "Gavelkind, sir."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief.  "Gravelkind, indeed!
+Gavelkind!  An old Kentish"--He was going to expound, but Sir Austin
+assured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, "I should
+like to look at your son's notes, or remarks on the judiciousness of that
+family arrangement, if he had any."
+
+"You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered," said Mr.
+Thompson to the sucking lawyer; "a very good plan, which I have always
+enjoined on you.  Were you not?"
+
+Ripton stammered that he was afraid he hid not any notes to show, worth
+seeing.
+
+"What were you doing then, sir?"
+
+"Making notes," muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.
+
+"Exhibit!"
+
+Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and at
+the confidential clerk.  He took out his key.  It would not fit the hole.
+
+"Exhibit!" was peremptorily called again.
+
+In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton discovered
+that the desk was already unlocked.  Mr. Thompson marched to it, and held
+the lid aloft.  A book was lying open within, which Ripton immediately
+hustled among a mass of papers and tossed into a dark corner, not before
+the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by Sir Austin's eye.
+
+The baronet smiled, and said, "You study Heraldry, too?  Are you fond of
+the science?"
+
+Ripton replied that he was very fond of it--extremely attached, and threw
+a further pile of papers into the dark corner.
+
+The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them was
+tedious and vain.  Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were found,
+that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of his son's
+exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of Gavelkind.
+
+Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those scraps
+he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner.  Ripton, though he
+consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.
+
+"What have we here?" said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded paper
+addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them
+forth, one by one.  Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read
+aloud:
+
+               "To the Editor of the 'Jurist.'
+
+"Sir,--In your recent observations on the great case of Crim"--
+
+Mr. Thompson hem'd! and stopped short, like a man who comes unexpectedly
+upon a snake in his path.  Mr. Beazley's feet shuffled.  Sir Austin
+changed the position of an arm.
+
+"It's on the other side, I think," gasped Ripton.
+
+Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.
+
+"To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond Court,
+Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U Five pounds,
+when I can pay.
+
+                         "Signed: RIPTON THOMPSON."
+
+Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly appended:
+
+"(Mem. Document not binding.)"
+
+There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment and
+reproach passed round the office.  Sir Austin assumed an attitude.  Mr.
+Thompson shed a glance of severity on his confidential clerk, who parried
+by throwing up his hands.
+
+Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his father's
+nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked "Legal
+Considerations."  Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding his
+son.  In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their
+offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up to a
+certain point, for the good of both.  He therefore opened the paper,
+expecting something worse than what he had hitherto seen, despite its
+formal heading, and he was not disappointed.
+
+The "Legal Considerations" related to the Case regarding, which Ripton
+had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to the Editor of
+the "Jurist," and was indeed a great case, and an ancient; revived
+apparently for the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities
+of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr. Ripton Thompson, whose
+assistance the Attorney-General, in his opening statement, congratulated
+himself on securing; a rather unusual thing, due probably to the eminence
+and renown of that youthful gentleman at the Bar of his country.  So much
+was seen from the copy of a report purporting to be extracted from a
+newspaper, and prefixed to the Junior Counsel's remarks, or Legal
+Considerations, on the conduct of the Case, the admissibility and non-
+admissibility of certain evidence, and the ultimate decision of the
+judges.
+
+Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of one
+prepared to do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a town-
+crier, varied by a bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song tone,
+deliberately read:
+
+                    "VULCAN v. MARS.
+
+"The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on
+behalf of the Plaintiff.  Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital
+Opportunity, for the Defendant."
+
+"Oh!" snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate
+Ripton over his spectacles, "your notes are on that issue, sir!  Thus you
+employ your time, sir!"
+
+With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired immediately
+behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was pushed by the
+devil of his rancour to continue reading:
+
+"This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of
+particulars"...
+
+"Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial," said Mr. Thompson.
+"Ah!--what do you mean here, sir,--but enough!  I think we may be excused
+your Legal Considerations on such a Case.  This is how you employ your
+law-studies, sir!  You put them to this purpose?  Mr. Beazley! you will
+henceforward sit alone.  I must have this young man under my own eye.
+Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to a scene
+so disagreeable.  It was a father's duty not to spare him."
+
+Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutes might have done after passing
+judgment on the scion of his house.
+
+"These papers," he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious lucubrations in
+a waving judicial hand, "I shall retain.  The day will come when he will
+regard them with shame.  And it shall be his penance, his punishment, to
+do so!  Stop!" he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk,
+"have you more of them, sir; of a similar description?  Rout them out!
+Let us know you at your worst.  What have you there--in that corner?"
+
+Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to old briefs on
+important cases.
+
+Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old briefs, and
+turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed, but without much
+remarking it, for his suspicions had not risen to print.
+
+"A Manual of Heraldry?" the baronet politely, and it may be ironically,
+inquired, before it could well escape.
+
+"I like it very much," said Ripton, clutching the book in dreadful
+torment.
+
+"Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest correct."  The baronet
+proffered a hand for the book.
+
+"A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves," cried Ripton, still clutching it
+nervously.
+
+Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing, drew the book from
+Ripton's hold; whereupon the two seniors laid their grey heads together
+over the title-page.  It set forth in attractive characters beside a
+coloured frontispiece, which embodied the promise displayed there, the
+entrancing adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.
+
+Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to
+consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his
+sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them.  As it was, he contented
+himself by looking Black Holes and Iron Rods at the detected youth, who
+sat on his perch insensible to what might happen next, collapsed.
+
+Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a "Pah!"  He, however,
+took her up again, and strode away with her.  Sir Austin gave Ripton a
+forefinger, and kindly touched his head, saying, "Good-bye, boy!  At some
+future date Richard will be happy to see you at Raynham."
+
+Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.
+
+"Is it possible," quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had ushered his
+client into his private room, "that you will consent, Sir Austin, to see
+him and receive him again?"
+
+"Certainly," the baronet replied.  "Why not?  This by no means astonishes
+me.  When there is no longer danger to my son he will be welcome as he
+was before.  He is a schoolboy.  I knew it.  I expected it.  The results
+of your principle, Thompson!"
+
+"One of the very worst books of that abominable class!" exclaimed the old
+lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece, from which brazen Miss
+Random smiled bewitchingly out, as if she had no doubt of captivating
+Time and all his veterans on a fair field.  "Pah!" he shut her to with
+the energy he would have given to the office of publicly slapping her
+face; "from this day I diet him on bread and water--rescind his pocket-
+money!--How he could have got hold of such a book!  How he--!  And what
+ideas!  Concealing them from me as he has done so cunningly!  He trifles
+with vice!  His mind is in a putrid state!  I might have believed--I did
+believe--I might have gone on believing--my son Ripton to be a moral
+young man!"  The old lawyer interjected on the delusion of fathers, and
+sat down in a lamentable abstraction.
+
+"The lad has come out!" said Sir Austin.  "His adoption of the legal form
+is amusing.  He trifles with vice, true: people newly initiated are as
+hardy as its intimates, and a young sinner's amusements will resemble
+those of a confirmed debauchee.  The satiated, and the insatiate,
+appetite alike appeal to extremes.  You are astonished at this revelation
+of your son's condition.  I expected it; though assuredly, believe me,
+not this sudden and indisputable proof of it.  But I knew that the seed
+was in him, and therefore I have not latterly invited him to Raynham.
+School, and the corruption there, will bear its fruits sooner or later.
+I could advise you, Thompson, what to do with him: it would be my plan."
+
+Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he should esteem it an
+honour to be favoured with Sir Austin Feverel's advice: secretly
+resolute, like a true Briton, to follow his own.
+
+"Let him, then," continued the baronet, "see vice in its nakedness.
+While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him!  Vice, taken little by
+little, usurps gradually the whole creature.  My counsel to you,
+Thompson, would be, to drag him through the sinks of town."
+
+Mr. Thompson began to blink again.
+
+"Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin!  Do not fear me, air.  I have no
+tenderness for vice."
+
+"That is not what is wanted, Thompson.  You mistake me.  He should be
+dealt with gently.  Heavens! do you hope to make him hate vice by making
+him a martyr for its sake?  You must descend from the pedestal of age to
+become his Mentor: cause him to see how certainly and pitilessly vice
+itself punishes: accompany him into its haunts"--
+
+"Over town?" broke forth Mr. Thompson.
+
+"Over town," said the baronet.
+
+"And depend upon it," he added, "that, until fathers act thoroughly up to
+their duty, we shall see the sights we see in great cities, and hear the
+tales we hear in little villages, with death and calamity in our homes,
+and a legacy of sorrow and shame to the generations to come.  I do aver,"
+he exclaimed, becoming excited, "that, if it were not for the duty to my
+son, and the hope I cherish in him, I, seeing the accumulation of misery
+we are handing down to an innocent posterity--to whom, through our sin,
+the fresh breath of life will be foul--I--yes!  I would hide my name!
+For whither are we tending?  What home is pure absolutely?  What cannot
+our doctors and lawyers tell us?"
+
+Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.
+
+"And what is to come of this?"  Sir Austin continued.  "When the sins of
+the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is not perdition the final sum of
+things?  And is not life, the boon of heaven, growing to be the devil's
+game utterly?  But for my son, I would hide my name.  I would not
+bequeath it to be cursed by them that walk above my grave!"
+
+This was indeed a terrible view of existence.  Mr. Thompson felt uneasy.
+There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness in his speech, that
+silenced remonstrating reason and the cry of long years of comfortable
+respectability.  Mr. Thompson went to church regularly; paid his rates
+and dues without overmuch, or at least more than common, grumbling.  On
+the surface he was a good citizen, fond of his children, faithful to his
+wife, devoutly marching to a fair seat in heaven on a path paved by
+something better than a thousand a year.  But here was a man sighting him
+from below the surface, and though it was an unfair, unaccustomed, not to
+say un-English, method of regarding one's fellow-man, Mr. Thompson was
+troubled by it.  What though his client exaggerated?  Facts were at the
+bottom of what he said.  And he was acute--he had unmasked Ripton!  Since
+Ripton's exposure he winced at a personal application in the text his
+client preached from.  Possibly this was the secret source of part of his
+anger against that peccant youth.
+
+Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered visage and a
+pitiable contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly up from his chair.
+Apparently he was about to speak, but he straightway turned and went
+meditatively to a side-recess in the room, whereof he opened a door, drew
+forth a tray and a decanter labelled Port, filled a glass for his client,
+deferentially invited him to partake of it; filled another glass for
+himself, and drank.
+
+That was his reply.
+
+Sir Austin never took wine before dinner.  Thompson had looked as if he
+meant to speak: he waited for Thompson's words.
+
+Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in his glass, the
+eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his client.
+
+Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this precious draught, and
+turned its flavour over and over with an aspect of potent Judicial wisdom
+(one might have thought that he was weighing mankind m the balance), the
+old lawyer heaved, and said, sharpening his lips over the admirable
+vintage, "The world is in a very sad state, I fear, Sir Austin!"
+
+His client gazed at him queerly.
+
+"But that," Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing by his gaze
+the glowing intestinal congratulations going on within him, "that is, I
+think you would say, Sir Austin--if I could but prevail upon you--a
+tolerably good character wine!"
+
+"There's virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!" Sir Austin murmured, without
+disturbing his legal adviser's dimples.
+
+The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that such a wine was
+not to be had everywhere.
+
+They were then outwardly silent for a apace.  Inwardly one of them was
+full of riot and jubilant uproar: as if the solemn fields of law were
+suddenly to be invaded and possessed by troops of Bacchanals: and to
+preserve a decently wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on terms with
+his companion, he had to grimace like a melancholy clown in a pantomime.
+
+Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair.  The baronet was still expectant.
+Mr. Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied his glass.  He combated the
+change that had come over him.  He tried not to see Ruby.  He tried to
+feel miserable, and it was not in him.  He spoke, drawing what
+appropriate inspirations he could from his client's countenance, to show
+that they had views in common: "Degenerating sadly, I fear!"
+
+The baronet nodded.
+
+"According to what my wine-merchants say," continued Mr. Thompson, "there
+can be no doubt about it."
+
+Sir Austin stared.
+
+"It's the grape, or the ground, or something," Mr. Thompson went on.
+"All I can say is, our youngsters will have a bad look-out!  In my
+opinion Government should be compelled to send out a Commission to
+inquire into the cause.  To Englishmen it would be a public calamity.  It
+surprises me--I hear men sit and talk despondently of this extraordinary
+disease of the vine, and not one of them seems to think it incumbent on
+him to act, and do his best to stop it."  He fronted his client like a
+man who accuses an enormous public delinquency.  "Nobody makes a stir!
+The apathy of Englishmen will become proverbial.  Pray, try it, Sir
+Austin!  Pray, allow me.  Such a wine cannot disagree at any hour.  Do!
+I am allowanced two glasses three hours before dinner.  Stomachic.  I
+find it agree with me surprisingly: quite a new man.  I suppose it will
+last our time.  It must!  What should we do?  There's no Law possible
+without it.  Not a lawyer of us could live.  Ours is an occupation which
+dries the blood."
+
+The scene with Ripton had unnerved him, the wine had renovated, and
+gratitude to the wine inspired his tongue.  He thought that his client,
+of the whimsical mind, though undoubtedly correct moral views, had need
+of a glass.
+
+"Now that very wine--Sir Austin--I think I do not err in saying, that
+very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher Feverel, used to taste
+whenever he came to consult my father, when I was a boy.  And I remember
+one day being called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me out a glass.
+I wish I could call in Ripton now, and do the same.  No! Leniency in such
+a case as that!--The wine would not hurt him--I doubt if there be much
+left for him to welcome his guests with.  Ha! ha!  Now if I could
+persuade you, Sir Austin, as you do not take wine before dinner, some day
+to favour me with your company at my little country cottage I have a wine
+there--the fellow to that--I think you would, I do think you would"--Mr.
+Thompson meant to say, he thought his client would arrive at something of
+a similar jocund contemplation of his fellows in their degeneracy that
+inspirited lawyers after potation, but condensed the sensual promise into
+"highly approve."
+
+Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour mouth comically
+compressed.
+
+It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and Thompson after,
+were two different men.  To indoctrinate him now was too late: it was
+perhaps the time to make the positive use of him he wanted.
+
+He pencilled on a handy slip of paper: "Two prongs of a fork; the World
+stuck between them--Port and the Palate: 'Tis one which fails first--Down
+goes World;" and again the hieroglyph--"Port-spectacles."  He said, "I
+shall gladly accompany you this evening, Thompson," words that
+transfigured the delighted lawyer, and ensigned the skeleton of a great
+Aphorism to his pocket, there to gather flesh and form, with numberless
+others in a like condition.
+
+"I came to visit my lawyer," he said to himself.  "I think I have been
+dealing with The World in epitome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse of Raynham,
+the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in town, looking out a bride
+for his only son and uncorrupted heir.  Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the
+excellent authority.  Doctor Bairam had safely delivered Mrs. Deborah
+Gossip of this interesting bantling, which was forthwith dandled in
+dozens of feminine laps.  Doctor Bairam could boast the first interview
+with the famous recluse.  He had it from his own lips that the object of
+the baronet was to look out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted
+heir; "and," added the doctor, "she'll be lucky who gets him."  Which was
+interpreted to mean, that he would be a catch; the doctor probably
+intending to allude to certain extraordinary difficulties in the way of a
+choice.
+
+A demand was made on the publisher of The Pilgrim's Scrip for all his
+outstanding copies.  Conventionalities were defied.  A summer-shower of
+cards fell on the baronet's table.
+
+He had few male friends.  He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal.  The
+cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband, if
+there was a husband, evidently dragged in for propriety's sake.  He
+perused the cards and smiled.  He knew their purpose.  What terrible
+light Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them!  Heavens! in what a
+state was the blood of this Empire.
+
+Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates, Lord
+Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of
+Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine
+crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that
+they did not fancy themselves the worse for it.  He found one with an
+imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters.  "So much," he
+wrote in the Note-book, "for the Wild Oats theory!"
+
+Darley was proud of his daughters' white and pink skins.  "Beautiful
+complexions," he called them.  The eldest was in the market, immensely
+admired.  Sir Austin was introduced to her.  She talked fluently and
+sweetly.  A youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even a
+man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair.
+There was something poetic about her.  And she was quite well, she said,
+the baronet frequently questioning her on that point.  She intimated that
+she was robust; but towards the close of their conversation her hand
+would now and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully an
+instant, saying, "Isn't it odd?  Dora, Adela, and myself, we all feel the
+same queer sensation--about the heart, I think it is--after talking
+much."
+
+Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, "Wild oats!
+wild oats!"
+
+He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.
+
+Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.
+
+"It's all nonsense, Feverel," he said, "about bringing up a lad out of
+the common way.  He's all the better for a little racketing when he's
+green--feels his bone and muscle learns to know the world.  He'll never
+be a man if he hasn't played at the old game one time in his life, and
+the earlier the better.  I've always found the best fellows were wildish
+once.  I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn; besides, he's
+got an excuse for it then.  You can't expect to have a man, if he doesn't
+take a man's food.  You'll have a milksop.  And, depend upon it, when he
+does break out he'll go to the devil, and nobody pities him.  Look what
+those fellows the grocers, do when they get hold of a young--what d'ye
+call 'em?--apprentice.  They know the scoundrel was born with a sweet
+tooth.  Well! they give him the run of the shop, and in a very short time
+he soberly deals out the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract a
+morsel even for the pleasure of stealing.  I know you have contrary
+theories.  You hold that the young grocer should have a soul above sugar.
+It won't do!  Take my word for it, Feverel, it's a dangerous experiment,
+that of bringing up flesh and blood in harness.  No colt will bear it, or
+he's a tame beast.  And look you: take it on medical grounds.  Early
+excesses the frame will recover from: late ones break the constitution.
+There's the case in a nutshell.  How's your son?"
+
+"Sound and well!" replied Sir Austin.  "And yours?"
+
+"Oh, Lipscombe's always the same!" Lord Heddon sighed peevishly.  "He's
+quiet--that's one good thing; but there's no getting the country to take
+him, so I must give up hopes of that."
+
+Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin surveyed him, and
+was not astonished at the refusal of the country to take him.
+
+"Wild oats!" he thought, as he contemplated the headless, degenerate,
+weedy issue and result.
+
+Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the marriage of their
+offspring as a matter of course.  "And if I were not a coward," Sir
+Austin confessed to himself, "I should stand forth and forbid the banns!
+This universal ignorance of the inevitable consequence of sin is
+frightful!  The wild oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have struck the
+world, and rendered it morally insensible."  However, they silenced him.
+He was obliged to spare their feelings on a subject to him so deeply
+sacred.  The healthful image of his noble boy rose before him, a
+triumphant living rejoinder to any hostile argument.
+
+He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought the third
+generation of wild oats would be a pretty thin crop!
+
+Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor Bairam physician could
+recollect a progenitorial blot, either on the male or female side, were
+not numerous.  "Only," said the doctors "you really must not be too
+exacting in these days, my dear Sir Austin.  It is impossible to contest
+your principle, and you are doing mankind incalculable service in calling
+its attention to this the gravest of its duties: but as the stream of
+civilization progresses we must be a little taken in the lump, as it
+were.  The world is, I can assure you--and I do not look only above the
+surface, you can believe--the world is awakening to the vital importance
+of the question."
+
+"Doctor," replied Sir Austin, "if you had a pure-blood Arab barb would
+you cross him with a screw?"
+
+"Decidedly not," said the doctor.
+
+"Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to match my son
+according to his merits," Sir Austin returned.  "I trust the world is
+awakening, as you observe.  I have been to my publisher, since my arrival
+in town, with a manuscript 'Proposal for a New System of Education of our
+British Youth,' which may come in opportunely.  I think I am entitled to
+speak on that subject."
+
+"Certainly," said the doctor.  "You will admit, Sir Austin, that,
+compared with continental nations--our neighbours, for instance--we shine
+to advantage, in morals, as in everything else.  I hope you admit that?"
+
+"I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a lower standard,"
+said the baronet.  "If I compare the enlightenment of your views--for you
+admit my principle--with the obstinate incredulity of a country doctor's,
+who sees nothing of the world, you are hardly flattered, I presume?"
+
+Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison, assuredly,
+he interjected.
+
+"Besides," added the baronet, "the French make no pretences, and thereby
+escape one of the main penalties of hypocrisy.  Whereas we!--but I am not
+their advocate, credit me.  It is better, perhaps, to pay our homage to
+virtue.  At least it delays the spread of entire corruptness."
+
+Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently endeavoured to
+assist his search for a mate worthy of the pure-blood barb, by putting
+several mamas, whom he visited, on the alert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Away with Systems!  Away with a corrupt World!  Let us breathe the air of
+the Enchanted Island.
+
+Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red gold is on the pine-
+stems.  The sun is coming down to earth, and walks the fields and the
+waters.
+
+The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the waters shout to
+him golden shouts.  He comes, and his heralds run before him, and touch
+the leaves of oaks and planes and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems
+redder gold; leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded banks,
+where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline, and bramble-shoots wander
+amid moist rich herbage.  The plumes of the woodland are alight; and
+beyond them, over the open, 'tis a race with the long-thrown shadows; a
+race across the heaths and up the hills, till, at the farthest bourne of
+mounted eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers and rest.
+
+Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland.  The ray treads softly there.
+A film athwart the pathway quivers many-hued against purple shade
+fragrant with warm pines, deep moss-beds, feathery ferns.  The little
+brown squirrel drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a
+chance tuneless note.  From silence into silence things move.
+
+Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven the conscious
+full heart within.  The flaming West, the crimson heights, shower their
+glories through voluminous leafage.  But these are bowers where deep
+bliss dwells, imperial joy, that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in
+which the young lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad.  Descend,
+great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and pass from us!
+You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to you, and all heavenly
+pageants, are the ministers and the slaves of the throbbing content
+within.
+
+For this is the home of the enchantment.  Here, secluded from vexed
+shores, the prince and princess of the island meet: here like darkling
+nightingales they sit, and into eyes and ears and hands pour endless
+ever-fresh treasures of their souls.
+
+Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships going down in a
+calm, groans of a System which will not know its rightful hour of
+exultation, complain to the universe.  You are not heard here.
+
+He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her great boldness,
+has called him by his, Richard.  Those two names are the key-notes of the
+wonderful harmonies the angels sing aloft.
+
+"Lucy! my beloved!"
+
+"O Richard!"
+
+Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a sheep-boy pipes
+to meditative eve on a penny-whistle.
+
+Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has but two stops;
+and yet, you see, the cunning musician does thus much with it!
+
+Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon waves of feeling,
+and of feeling compact, that bursts only when the sweeping volume is too
+wild, and is no more than their sigh of tenderness spoken.
+
+Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures had unblunted
+edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it as natural food.  To
+gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows
+into the mellow bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet; or,
+it may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them.  And they are pleased.
+He is still the cunning musician.  They languish, and taste ecstasy: but
+it is, however sonorous, an earthly concert.  For them the spheres move
+not to two notes.  They have lost, or forfeited and never known, the
+first super-sensual spring of the ripe senses into passion; when they
+carry the soul with them, and have the privileges of spirits to walk
+disembodied, boundlessly to feel.  Or one has it, and the other is a dead
+body.  Ambrosia let them eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple to
+whom Love's simple bread and water is a finer feast.
+
+Pipe, happy sheep-bop, Love!  Irradiated angels, unfold your wings and
+lift your voices!
+
+They have out-flown philosophy.  Their instinct has shot beyond the ken
+of science.  They were made for their Eden.
+
+"And this divine gift was in store for me!"
+
+So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is their recurring
+refrain to the harmonies.  How it illumined the years gone by and
+suffused the living Future!
+
+"You for me: I for you!"
+
+"We are born for each other!"
+
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them from their
+cradles.  The celestial hosts have worthily striven to bring them
+together.  And, O victory! O wonder! after toil and pain, and
+difficulties exceeding, the celestial hosts have succeeded!
+
+"Here we two sit who are written above as one!"
+
+Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!
+
+The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky.  In the West the sea of
+sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire
+before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her
+shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.
+
+"Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?"
+
+"O Richard! yes; for I remembered you."
+
+"Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?"
+
+"I did!"
+
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise, the fair Immortal
+journeys onward.  Fronting her, it is not night but veiled day.  Full
+half the sky is flushed.  Not darkness, not day, but the nuptials of the
+two.
+
+"My own! my own for ever!  You are pledged to me?  Whisper!"
+
+He hears the delicious music.
+
+"And you are mine?"
+
+A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pinewood where they sit,
+and for answer he has her eyes turned to him an instant, timidly
+fluttering over the depths of his, and then downcast; for through her
+eyes her soul is naked to him.
+
+"Lucy! my bride! my life!"
+
+The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of the pine.  The
+soft beam travels round them, and listens to their hearts.  Their lips
+are locked.
+
+Pipe no more, Love, for a time!  Pipe as you will you cannot express
+their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and of the sacredness of it
+nothing.  St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of
+Paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which Love is but one,
+from her you may hear it.
+
+So Love is silent.  Out in the world there, on the skirts of the
+woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent squint
+down the length of his penny-whistle, and, with a flourish
+correspondingly awry, he also marches into silence, hailed by supper.
+The woods are still.  There is heard but the night-jar spinning on the
+pine-branch, circled by moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood of dragons.
+Wherever there is romance, these monsters come by inimical attraction.
+Because the heavens are certainly propitious to true lovers, the beasts
+of the abysses are banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable sad
+victories; and every love-tale is an Epic Par of the upper and lower
+powers.  I wish good fairies were a little more active.  They seem to be
+cajoled into security by the happiness of their favourites; whereas the
+wicked are always alert, and circumspect.  They let the little ones shut
+their eyes to fancy they are not seen, and then commence.
+
+These appointments and meetings, involving a start from the dinner-table
+at the hour of contemplative digestion and prime claret; the hour when
+the wise youth Adrian delighted to talk at his ease--to recline in dreamy
+consciousness that a work of good was going on inside him; these
+abstractions from his studies, excesses of gaiety, and glumness, heavings
+of the chest, and other odd signs, but mainly the disgusting behaviour of
+his pupil at the dinner-table, taught Adrian to understand, though the
+young gentleman was clever in excuses, that he had somehow learnt there
+was another half to the divided Apple of Creation, and had embarked upon
+the great voyage of discovery of the difference between the two halves.
+With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether he might be in the
+observatory or the practical stage of the voyage.  For himself, as a man
+and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its being either; and he
+had only to consider which was temporarily most threatening to the
+ridiculous System he had to support.  Richard's absence annoyed him.  The
+youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when he
+left table, Adrian had to sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth
+Century, from both of whom he had extracted all the amusement that could
+be got, and he saw his digestion menaced by the society of two ruined
+stomachs, who bored him just when he loved himself most.  Poor Hippias
+was now so reduced that he had profoundly to calculate whether a
+particular dish, or an extra-glass of wine, would have a bitter effect on
+him and be felt through the remainder of his years.  He was in the habit
+of uttering his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic doubts of
+experience, and the succulent insinuations of appetite, contended hotly.
+It was horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian for tempting him to
+a decision in favour of the moment.
+
+"Happy to take wine with you," Adrian would say, and Hippias would regard
+the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.
+
+"Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!" the Eighteenth
+Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends her own practice.
+
+"It's this literary work!" interjects Hippias, handling his glass of
+remorse.  "I don't know what else it can be.  You have no idea how
+anxious I feel.  I have frightful dreams.  I'm perpetually anxious."
+
+"No wonder," says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to which an
+absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought poor Hippias.
+"No wonder.  Ten years of Fairy Mythology!  Could anyone hope to sleep in
+peace after that?  As to your digestion, no one has a digestion who is in
+the doctor's hands.  They prescribe from dogmas, and don't count on the
+system.  They have cut you down from two bottles to two glasses.  It's
+absurd.  You can't sleep, because your system is crying out for what it's
+accustomed to."
+
+Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggerdly confidence, but assures Adrian
+that he really should not like to venture on a bottle now: it would be
+rank madness to venture on a bottle now, he thinks.  Last night only,
+after partaking, under protest, of that rich French dish, or was it the
+duck?--Adrian advised him to throw the blame on that vulgar bird.--Say
+the duck, then.  Last night, he was no sooner stretched in bed, than he
+seemed to be of an enormous size all his limbs--his nose, his mouth, his
+toes--were elephantine!  An elephant was a pigmy to him.  And his
+hugeousness seemed to increase the instant he shut his eyes.  He turned
+on this side; he turned on that.  He lay on his back; he tried putting
+his face to the pillow; and he continued to swell.  He wondered the room
+could hold him--he thought he must burst it--and absolutely lit a candle,
+and went to the looking-glass to see whether he was bearable.
+
+By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably.  He had,
+however, a genial auditor in the Eighteenth Century, who declared it to
+be a new disease, not known in her day, and deserving investigation.  She
+was happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of the
+complex order, and a potion soon righted her.  In fact, her system
+appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment and medicine, on which the
+battle was fought, and, when over, she was none the worse, as she
+joyfully told Hippias.  Never looked ploughman on prince, or village
+belle on Court Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century Hippias
+expended in his gaze on the Eighteenth.  He was too serious to note much
+the laughter of the young men.
+
+This 'Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus,' as Adrian designated the malady of
+Hippias, was repeated regularly ever evening.  It was natural for any
+youth to escape as quick as he could from such a table of stomachs.
+
+Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter from the
+baronet, describing the house and maternal System of a Mrs. Caroline
+Grandison, and the rough grain of hopefulness in her youngest daughter,
+spurred him to think of his duties, and see what was going on.  He gave
+Richard half-an-hour's start, and then put on his hat to follow his own
+keen scent, leaving Hippias and the Eighteenth Century to piquet.
+
+In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not unknown to him,
+one Molly Davenport by name, a buxom lass, who, on seeing him, invoked
+her Good Gracious, the generic maid's familiar, and was instructed by
+reminiscences vivid, if ancient, to giggle.
+
+"Are you looking for your young gentleman?" Molly presently asked.
+
+Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see if the coast
+was clear, and replied to her, "I am, miss.  I want you to tell me about
+him."
+
+"Dear!" said the buxom lass, "was you coming for me to-night to know?"
+
+Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.
+
+"'Cause I can't stop out long to-night," Molly explained, taking the
+rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.
+
+"You may go in when you please, miss.  Is that any one coming?  Come here
+in the shade."
+
+"Now, get along!" said Miss Molly.
+
+Adrian spoke with resolution.  "Listen to me, Molly Davenport!"  He put a
+coin in her hand, which had a medical effect in calming her to attention.
+"I want to know whether you have seen him at all?"
+
+"Who?  Your young gentleman?  I sh'd think I did.  I seen him to-night
+only.  Ain't he grooved handsome.  He's al'ays about Beltharp now.  It
+ain't to fire no more ricks.  He's afire 'unself.  Ain't you seen 'em
+together?  He's after the missis"--
+
+Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and confine herself to
+particulars.  This buxom lass then told him that her young missis and
+Adrian's young gentleman were a pretty couple, and met one another every
+night.  The girl swore for their innocence.
+
+"As for Miss Lucy, she haven't a bit of art in her, nor have he."
+
+"They're all nature, I suppose," said Adrian.  "How is it I don't see her
+at church?"
+
+"She's Catholic, or some think," said Molly.  "Her father was, and a
+leftenant.  She've a Cross in her bedroom.  She don't go to church.  I
+see you there last Sunday a-lookin' so solemn," and Molly stroked her
+hand down her chin to give it length.
+
+Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts.  It was dark, and in the dark he
+was indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested by the lass, but he
+wanted to hear facts, and he again bribed her to impart nothing but
+facts.  Upon which she told him further, that her young lady was an
+innocent artless creature who had been to school upwards of three years
+with the nuns, and had a little money of her own, and was beautiful
+enough to be a lord's lady, and had been in love with Master Richard ever
+since she was a little girl.  Molly had got from a friend of hers up at
+the Abbey, Mary Garner, the housemaid who cleaned Master Richard's room,
+a bit of paper once with the young gentleman's handwriting, and had given
+it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy had given her a gold sovereign for it-
+-just for his handwriting!  Miss Lucy did not seem happy at the farm,
+because of that young Tom, who was always leering at her, and to be sure
+she was quite a lady, and could play, and sing, and dress with the best.
+
+"She looks like angels in her nightgown!" Molly wound up.
+
+The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the first time as if
+there were a distinction of position between them, petitioned: "Mr.
+Harley! you won't go for doin' any harm to 'em 'cause of what I said,
+will you now?  Do say you won't now, Mr. Harley!  She is good, though
+she's a Catholic.  She was kind to me when I was ill, and I wouldn't have
+her crossed--I'd rather be showed up myself, I would!"
+
+The wise youth gave no positive promise to Molly, and she had to read his
+consent in a relaxation of his austerity.  The noise of a lumbering foot
+plodding down the lane caused her to be abruptly dismissed.  Molly took
+to flight, the lumbering foot accelerated its pace, and the pastoral
+appeal to her flying skirts was heard--"Moll! you theyre!  It be I--
+Bantam!"  But the sprightly Silvia would not stop to his wooing, and
+Adrian turned away laughing at these Arcadians.
+
+Adrian was a lazy dragon.  All he did for the present was to hint and
+tease.  "It's the Inevitable!" he said, and asked himself why he should
+seek to arrest it.  He had no faith in the System.  Heavy Benson had.
+Benson of the slow thick-lidded antediluvian eye and loose-crumpled skin;
+Benson, the Saurian, the woman-hater; Benson was wide awake.  A sort of
+rivalry existed between the wise youth and heavy Benson.  The fidelity of
+the latter dependant had moved the baronet to commit to him a portion of
+the management of the Raynham estate, and this Adrian did not like.  No
+one who aspires to the honourable office of leading another by the nose
+can tolerate a party in his ambition.  Benson's surly instinct told him
+he was in the wise youth's way, and he resolved to give his master a
+striking proof of his superior faithfulness.  For some weeks the Saurian
+eye had been on the two secret creatures.  Heavy Benson saw letters come
+and go in the day, and now the young gentleman was off and out every
+night, and seemed to be on wings.  Benson knew whither he went, and the
+object he went for.  It was a woman--that was enough.  The Saurian eye
+had actually seen the sinful thing lure the hope of Raynham into the
+shades.  He composed several epistles of warning to the baronet of the
+work that was going on; but before sending one he wished to record a
+little of their guilty conversation; and for this purpose the faithful
+fellow trotted over the dews to eavesdrop, and thereby aroused the good
+fairy, in the person of Tom Bakewell, the sole confidant of Richard's
+state.
+
+Tom said to his young master, "Do you know what, sir?  You be watched!"
+
+Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom hung his arms, and
+aped the respectable protrusion of the butler's head.
+
+"It's he, is it?" cried Richard.  "He shall rue it, Tom.  If I find him
+near me when we're together he shall never forget it."
+
+"Don't hit too hard, sir," Tom suggested.  "You hit mortal hard when
+you're in earnest, you know."
+
+Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and told Tom to be
+within hail to-morrow night--he knew where.  By the hour of the
+appointment it was out of the lover's mind.
+
+Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian's pointed
+invitation.  According to custom, Richard started up and off, with few
+excuses.  The lady exhibited no surprise.  She and Adrian likewise
+strolled forth to enjoy the air of the Summer night.  They had no
+intention of spying.  Still they may have thought, by meeting Richard and
+his inamorata, there was a chance of laying a foundation of ridicule to
+sap the passion.  They may have thought so--they were on no spoken
+understanding.
+
+"I have seen the little girl," said Lady Blandish.  "She is pretty--she
+would be telling if she were well set up.  She speaks well.  How absurd
+it is of that class to educate their women above their station!  The
+child is really too good for a farmer.  I noticed her before I knew of
+this; she has enviable hair.  I suppose she doesn't paint her eyelids.
+Just the sort of person to take a young man.  I thought there was
+something wrong.  I received, the day before yesterday, an impassioned
+poem evidently not intended for me.  My hair was gold.  My meeting him
+was foretold.  My eyes were homes of light fringed with night.  I sent it
+back, correcting the colours."
+
+"Which was death to the rhymes," said Adrian.  "I saw her this morning.
+The boy hasn't bad taste.  As you say, she is too good for a farmer.
+Such a spark would explode any System.  She slightly affected mine.  The
+Huron is stark mad about her."
+
+"But we must positively write and tell his father," said Lady Blandish.
+
+The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a trifle.  The lady
+said she would have an interview with Richard, and then write, as it was
+her duty to do.  Adrian shrugged, and was for going into the scientific
+explanation of Richard's conduct, in which the lady had to discourage
+him.
+
+"Poor boy!" she sighed.  "I am really sorry for him.  I hope he will not
+feel it too strongly.  They feel strongly, father and son."
+
+"And select wisely," Adrian added.
+
+"That's another thing," said Lady Blandish.
+
+Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county people, about
+whom, it seemed, there was little or no scandal afloat: of the lady's
+loss of the season in town, which she professed not to regret, though she
+complained of her general weariness: of whether Mr. Morton of Poer Hall
+would propose to Mrs. Doria, and of the probable despair of the hapless
+curate of Lobourne; and other gossip, partly in French.
+
+They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through the park to
+Lobourne.  The moon had risen.  The atmosphere was warm and pleasant.
+
+"Quite a lover's night," said Lady Blandish.
+
+"And I, who have none to love pity me!"  The wise youth attempted a sigh.
+
+"And never will have," said Lady Blandish, curtly.  "You buy your loves."
+
+Adrian protested.  However, he did not plead verbally against the
+impeachment, though the lady's decisive insight astonished him.  He began
+to respect her, relishing her exquisite contempt, and he reflected that
+widows could be terrible creatures.
+
+He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady Blandish, knowing her
+romantic.  This mixture of the harshest common sense and an air of "I
+know you men," with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise
+youth more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses would have
+done.  He looked at the lady.  Her face was raised to the moon.  She knew
+nothing--she had simply spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge,
+and had forgotten her words.  Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or
+whatever feeling it was, for the baronet, was sincere, and really the
+longing for a virtuous man.  Perhaps she had tried the opposite set
+pretty much.  Adrian shrugged.  Whenever the wise youth encountered a
+mental difficulty he instinctively lifted his shoulders to equal
+altitudes, to show that he had no doubt there was a balance in the case--
+plenty to be said on both sides, which was the same to him as a definite
+solution.
+
+At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park, wrapped in
+themselves, piped to by tireless Love, Richard and Lucy sat, toying with
+eternal moments.  How they seem as if they would never end!  What mere
+sparks they are when they have died out!  And how in the distance of time
+they revive, and extend, and glow, and make us think them full the half,
+and the best of the fire, of our lives!
+
+With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers ceased to be so
+shy of common themes, and their speech did not reject all as dross that
+was not pure gold of emotion.
+
+Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody at Raynham.
+Whoever had been about Richard since his birth, she must know the history
+of, and he for a kiss will do her bidding.
+
+Thus goes the tender duet:
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.--Darling!  Beloved!"
+
+"My own! Richard!"
+
+"You should know my cousin Austin.  You shall know him.  He would take to
+you best of them all, and you to him.  He is in the tropics now, looking
+out a place--it's a secret--for poor English working-men to emigrate to
+and found a colony in that part of the world:--my white angel!"
+
+"Dear love!"
+
+"He is such a noble fellow!  Nobody here understands him but me.  Isn't
+it strange?  Since I met you I love him better!  That's because I love
+all that's good and noble better now--Beautiful!  I love--I love you!"
+
+"My Richard!"
+
+"What do you think I've determined, Lucy?  If my father--but no!  my
+father does love me.--No! he will not; and we will be happy together
+here.  And I will win my way with you.  And whatever I win will be yours;
+for it will be owing to you.  I feel as if I had no strength but yours--
+none! and you make me--O Lucy!"
+
+His voice ebbs.  Presently Lucy murmurs--
+
+"Your father, Richard."
+
+"Yes, my father?"
+
+"Dearest Richard!  I feel so afraid of him."
+
+"He loves me, and will love you, Lucy."
+
+"But I am so poor and humble, Richard."
+
+"No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy."
+
+"You think so, because you"--
+
+"What?"
+
+"Love me," comes the blushing whisper, and the duet gives place to dumb
+variations, performed equally in concert.
+
+It is resumed.
+
+"You are fond of the knights, Lucy.  Austin is as brave as any of them.--
+My own bride!  Oh, how I adore you!  When you are gone, I could fall upon
+the grass you tread upon, and kiss it.  My breast feels empty of my
+heart--Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a knight, and
+have won honour and glory for you.  Oh! one can do nothing now.  My lady-
+love!  My lady-love!--A tear?--Lucy?"
+
+"Dearest!  Ah, Richard!  I am not a lady."
+
+"Who dares say that?  Not a lady--the angel I love!"
+
+"Think, Richard, who I am."
+
+"My beautiful!  I think that God made you, and has given you to me."
+
+Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward to thank her
+God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and she is so radiant in her
+pure beauty that the limbs of the young man tremble.
+
+"Lucy!  O heavenly spirit!  Lucy!"
+
+Tenderly her lips part--"I do not weep for sorrow,"
+
+The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his soul.
+
+They lean together--shadows of ineffable tenderness playing on their
+thrilled cheeks and brows.
+
+He lifts her hand, and presses his mouth to it.  She has seen little of
+mankind, but her soul tells her this one is different from others, and at
+the thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart will
+break--tears of boundless thanksgiving.  And he, gazing on those soft,
+ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace of her loose falling
+tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire streaming through his
+members.
+
+It is long ere they speak in open tones.
+
+"O happy day when we met!"
+
+What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.
+
+"O glorious heaven looking down on us!"
+
+Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath that bending
+benediction.
+
+"O eternity of bliss!"
+
+Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.
+
+"Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place where you are some
+day to live.  Come, and I will row you on the lake.  You remember what
+you said in your letter that you dreamt?--that we were floating over the
+shadow of the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the
+cypress, and they handed us each a sprig.  Why, darling, it was the best
+omen in the world, their felling the old trees.  And you write such
+lovely letters.  So pure and sweet they are.  I love the nuns for having
+taught you."
+
+"Ah, Richard!  See! we forget!  Ah!" she lifts up her face pleadingly, as
+to plead against herself, "even if your father forgives my birth, he will
+not my religion.  And, dearest, though I would die for you I cannot
+change it.  It would seem that I was denying God; and--oh! it would make
+me ashamed of my love."
+
+"Fear nothing!"  He winds her about with his arm.  "Come!  He will love
+us both, and love you the more for being faithful to your father's creed.
+You don't know him, Lucy.  He seems harsh and stern--he is full of
+kindness and love.  He isn't at all a bigot.  And besides, when he hears
+what the nuns have done for you, won't he thank them, as I do?  And--oh!
+I must speak to him soon, and you must be prepared to see him soon, for I
+cannot bear your remaining at Belthorpe, like a jewel in a sty.  Mind!
+I'm not saying a word against your uncle.  I declare I love everybody and
+everything that sees you and touches you.  Stay! it is a wonder how you
+could have grown there.  But you were not born there, and your father had
+good blood.  Desborough!--here was a Colonel Desborough--never mind!
+Come!"
+
+She dreads to.  She begs not to.  She is drawn away.
+
+The woods are silent, and then--
+
+"What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?" says a very different
+voice.
+
+Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert.  Lady
+Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings, gazing through a
+vista of the lower greenwood which opened out upon the moon-lighted
+valley, her hands clasped round one knee, her features almost stern in
+their set hard expression.
+
+They had heard, by involuntarily overhearing about as much as may be
+heard in such positions, a luminous word or two.
+
+The lady did not answer.  A movement among the ferns attracted Adrian,
+and he stepped down the decline across the pine-roots to behold heavy
+Benson below; shaking fern-seed and spidery substances off his crumpled
+skin.
+
+"Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?" called Benson, starting, as he puffed, and
+exercised his handkerchief.
+
+"Is it you, Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon these
+Mysteries?"  Adrian called back, and coming close to him, added, "You
+look as if you had just been well thrashed."
+
+"Isn't it dreadful, sir?" snuffled Benson.  "And his father in ignorance,
+Mr. Hadrian!"
+
+"He shall know, Benson!  He shall know how, you have endangered your
+valuable skin in his service.  If Mr. Richard had found you there just
+now I wouldn't answer for the consequences."
+
+"Ha!" Benson spitefully retorted.  "This won't go on; Mr. Hadrian.  It
+shan't, sir.  It will be put a stop to tomorrow, sir.  I call it
+corruption of a young gentleman like him, and harlotry, sir, I call it.
+I'd have every jade flogged that made a young innocent gentleman go on
+like that, sir."
+
+"Then, why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson?  Ah, I see! you waited--
+what?  This is not the first time you have been attendant on Apollo and
+Miss Dryope?  You have written to headquarters?"
+
+"I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed her of Benson's
+zeal.  The lady's eyes flashed.  "I hope Richard will treat him as he
+deserves," she said.
+
+"Shall we home?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Do me a favour;" the lady replied.  "Get my carriage sent round to meet
+me at the park-gates."
+
+"Won't you?"--
+
+"I want to be alone."
+
+Adrian bowed and left her.  She was still sitting with her hands clasped
+round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn valley.
+
+"An odd creature!" muttered the wise youth.  "She's as odd as any of
+them.  She ought to be a Feverel.  I suppose she's graduating for it.
+Hang that confounded old ass of a Benson!  He has had the impudence to
+steal a march on me!"
+
+
+The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake.  The moon was
+climbing high.  As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy, sang to him softly.  She
+sang first a fresh little French song, reminding him of a day when she
+had been asked to sing to him before, and he did not care to hear.  "Did
+I live?" he thinks.  Then she sang to him a bit of one of those majestic
+old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may hear them, seem to build up
+cathedral walls about you.  The young man dropped the sculls.  The
+strange solemn notes gave a religions tone to his love, and wafted him
+into the knightly ages and the reverential heart of chivalry.
+
+Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her voice: the moon
+stepping over and through white shoal's of soft high clouds above and
+below: floating to her void--no other breath abroad!  His soul went out
+of his body as he listened.
+
+They must part.  He rows her gently shoreward.
+
+"I never was so happy as to-night," she murmurs.
+
+"Look, my Lucy.  The lights of the old place are on the lake.  Look where
+you are to live."
+
+"Which is your room, Richard?"
+
+He points it out to her.
+
+"O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on you!  I should ask
+nothing more.  How happy she must be!"
+
+"My darling angel-love.  You shall be happy; but all shall wait on you,
+and I foremost, Lucy."
+
+"Dearest! may I hope for a letter?"
+
+"By eleven to-morrow.  And I?"
+
+"Oh! you will have mine, Richard."
+
+"Tom shall wait far it.  A long one, mind!  Did you like my last song?"
+
+She pats her hand quietly against her bosom, and he knows where it rests.
+O love!  O heaven!
+
+They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of the boat against the
+shingle.  He jumps out, and lifts her ashore.
+
+"See!" she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides--"See!" and
+prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little, "the cypress does point
+towards us.  O Richard! it does!"
+
+And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting in her arch
+grave ways--
+
+"Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy.  She mustn't dream, my
+darling! or dream only of me."
+
+"Dearest! but I do."
+
+"To-morrow, Lucy!  The letter in the morning, and you at night.  O happy
+to-morrow!"
+
+"You will be sure to be there, Richard?"
+
+"If I am not dead, Lucy."
+
+"O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that.  I shall not survive you."
+
+"Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die.  Death or life,
+with you!  Who is it yonder?  I see some one--is it Tom?  It's Adrian!"
+
+"Is it Mr. Harley?"  The fair girl shivered.
+
+"How dares he come here!" cried Richard.
+
+The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly circled the lake.
+They were stealing away when he called.  His call was repeated.  Lucy
+entreated Richard to go to him; but the young man preferred to summon his
+attendant, Tom, from within hail, and send him to know what was wanted.
+
+"Will he have seen me?  Will he have known me?" whispered Lucy,
+tremulously.
+
+"And if he does, love?" said Richard.
+
+"Oh! if he does, dearest--I don't know, but I feel such a presentiment.
+You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard.  Is he good?"
+
+"Good?"  Richard clutched her hand for the innocent maiden phrase.  "He's
+very fond of eating; that's all I know of Adrian."
+
+Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.
+
+"Well, Tom?"
+
+"Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir," said Tom.
+
+"Do go to him, dearest!  Do go!" Lucy begs him.
+
+"Oh, how I hate Adrian!"  The young man grinds his teeth.
+
+"Do go!" Lucy urges him.  "Tom--good Tom--will see me home.  To-morrow,
+dear love!  To-morrow!"
+
+"You wish to part from me?"
+
+"Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now.  It may be news of
+importance, dearest.  Think, Richard!"
+
+"Tom! go back!"
+
+At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off a dozen paces,
+and sees nothing.  Then the precious charge is confided to him.  A heart
+is cut in twain.
+
+Richard made his way to Adrian.  "What is it you want with me, Adrian?"
+
+"Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?" was Adrian's answer.
+"I want nothing with you, except to know whether you have seen Benson."
+
+"Where should I see Benson?  What do I know of Benson's doings?"
+
+"Of course not--such a secret old fist as he is!  I want some one to tell
+him to order Lady Blandish's carriage to be sent round to the park-gates.
+I thought he might be round your way over there--I came upon him
+accidentally just now in Abbey-wood.  What's the matter, boy?"
+
+"You saw him there?"
+
+"Hunting Diana, I suppose.  He thinks she's not so chaste as they say,"
+continued Adrian.  "Are you going to knock down that tree?"
+
+Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the tough wood.  He
+left it and went to an ash.
+
+"You'll spoil that weeper," Adrian cried.  "Down she comes!  But good-
+night, Ricky.  If you see Benson mind you tell him."
+
+Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight on the white road
+while Adrian spoke.  The wise youth chuckled and strolled round the lake,
+glancing over his shoulder every now and then.
+
+It was not long before he heard a bellow for help--the roar of a dragon
+in his throes.  Adrian placidly sat down on the grass, and fixed his eyes
+on the water.  There, as the roar was being repeated amid horrid
+resounding echoes, the wise youth mused in this wise--
+
+"'The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,' says The
+Pilgrim's Scrip, or words to that effect.  The heavens evidently love
+Benson, seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot.  Master Ricky is
+a peppery young man.  He gets it from the apt Gruffudh.  I rather believe
+in race.  What a noise that old ruffian makes!  He'll require poulticing
+with The Pilgrim's Scrip.  We shall have a message to-morrow, and a
+hubbub, and perhaps all go to town, which won't be bad for one who's been
+a prey to all the desires born of dulness.  Benson howls: there's life in
+the old dog yet!  He bays the moon.  Look at her.  She doesn't care.
+It's the same to her whether we coo like turtle-doves or roar like twenty
+lions.  How complacent she looks!  And yet she has dust as much sympathy
+for Benson as for Cupid.  She would smile on if both were being birched.
+Was that a raven or Benson?  He howls no more.  It sounds guttural: frog-
+like--something between the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse raven's croak.
+The fellow'll be killing him.  It's time to go to the rescue.  A
+deliverer gets more honour by coming in at the last gasp than if he
+forestalled catastrophe.--Ho, there, what's the matter?"
+
+So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the scene of
+battle, where stood St. George puffing over the prostrate Dragon.
+
+"Holloa, Ricky! is it you?"  said Adrian.  "What's this?  Whom have we
+here?--Benson, as I live!"
+
+"Make this beast get up," Richard returned, breathing hard, and shaking
+his great ash-branch.
+
+"He seems incapable, my dear boy.  What have you been up to?--Benson!
+Benson!--I say, Ricky, this looks bad."
+
+"He's shamming!" Richard clamoured like a savage.  "Spy upon me, will he?
+I tell you, he's shamming.  He hasn't had half enough.  Nothing's too bad
+for a spy.  Let him getup!"
+
+"Insatiate youth! do throw away that enormous weapon."
+
+"He has written to my father," Richard shouted.  "The miserable spy!  Let
+him get up!"
+
+"Ooogh?  I won't!" huskily groaned Benson.  "Mr. Hadrian, you're a
+witness--he's my back!"--  Cavernous noises took up the tale of his
+maltreatment.
+
+"I daresay you love your back better than any part of your body now,"
+Adrian muttered.  "Come, Benson! be a man.  Mr. Richard has thrown away
+the stick.  Come, and get off home, and let's see the extent of the
+damage."
+
+"Ooogh! he's a devil!  Mr. Hadrian, sir, he's a devil!" groaned Benson,
+turning half over in the road to ease his aches.
+
+Adrian caught hold of Benson's collar and lifted him to a sitting
+posture.  He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful pupil's hand could do
+in wrath.  The wretched butler's coat was slit and welted; his hat
+knocked in; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and trembled if
+his pitiless executioner stirred a foot.  Richard stood over him,
+grasping his great stick; no dawn of mercy for Benson in any corner of
+his features.
+
+Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and immediately gasped,
+"I won't get up!  I won't!  He's ready to murder me again!--Mr. Hadrian!
+if you stand by and see it, you're liable to the law, sir--I won't get up
+while he's near."  No persuasion could induce Benson to try his legs
+while his executioner stood by.
+
+Adrian took Richard aside: "You've almost killed the poor devil, Ricky.
+You must be satisfied with that.  Look at his face."
+
+"The coward bobbed while I struck" said Richard.  "I marked his back.  He
+ducked.  I told him he was getting it worse."
+
+At so civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his mouth wide.
+
+"Did you really?  I admire that.  You told him he was getting it worse?"
+
+Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of laughter out.
+
+"Come," he said, "Excalibur has done his word.  Pitch him into the lake.
+And see--here comes the Blandish.  You can't be at it again before a
+woman.  Go and meet her, and tell her the noise was an ox being
+slaughtered.  Or say Argus."
+
+With a whirr that made all Benson's bruises moan and quiver, the great
+ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung off to intercept Lady Blandish.
+
+Adrian got Benson on his feet.  The heavy butler was disposed to summon
+all the commiseration he could feel for his bruised flesh.  Every half-
+step he attempted was like a dislocation.  His groans and grunts were
+frightful.
+
+"How much did that hat cost, Benson?" said Adrian, as he put it on his
+head.
+
+"A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!"  Benson caressed its
+injuries.
+
+"The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have heard of!"  said
+Adrian.
+
+Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter.
+
+"He's a devil, Mr. Hadrian!  He's a devil, sir, I do believe, sir.
+Ooogh! he's a devil!--I can't move, Mr. Hadrian.  I must be fetched.  And
+Dr. Clifford must be sent for, sir.  I shall never be fit for work again.
+I haven't a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon Venus.  I hope
+the maids will nurse you properly.  Let me see: you are friends with the
+housekeeper, aren't you?  All depends upon that."
+
+"I'm only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian," the miserable butler snarled.
+
+"Then you've got no friend but your bed.  Get to it as quick as possible,
+Benson."
+
+"I can't move."  Benson made a resolute halt.  "I must be fetched," he
+whinnied.  "It's a shame to ask me to move, Mr. Hadrian."
+
+"You will admit that you are heavy, Benson," said Adrian, "so I can't
+carry you.  However, I see Mr. Richard is very kindly returning to help
+me."
+
+At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and shambled on.
+
+Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.
+
+"I have been horribly frightened," she said.  "Tell me, what was the
+meaning of those cries I heard?"
+
+"Only some one doing justice on a spy," said Richard, and the lady
+smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand through his hair.
+
+"Was that all?  I should have done it myself if I had been a man.  Kiss
+me."
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true
+And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous"
+In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood..."
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty
+On the threshold of Puberty, there is one Unselfish Hour
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them
+Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise
+You've got no friend but your bed
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v2
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+1905
+
+
+
+BOOK 3.
+
+XXI.      RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON
+XXII.     INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER
+XXIII.    CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE
+XXIV.     OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL
+XXV.      IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP
+XXVI.     RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO
+XXVII.    CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+By twelve o'clock at noon next day the inhabitants of Raynham Abbey knew
+that Berry, the baronet's man, had arrived post-haste from town, with
+orders to conduct Mr. Richard thither, and that Mr. Richard had refused
+to go, had sworn he would not, defied his father, and despatched Berry to
+the Shades.  Berry was all that Benson was not.  Whereas Benson hated
+woman, Berry admired her warmly.  Second to his own stately person, woman
+occupied his reflections, and commanded his homage.  Berry was of
+majestic port, and used dictionary words.  Among the maids of Raynham his
+conscious calves produced all the discord and the frenzy those adornments
+seem destined to create in tender bosoms.  He had, moreover, the
+reputation of having suffered for the sex; which assisted his object in
+inducing the sex to suffer for him.  What with his calves, and his
+dictionary words, and the attractive halo of the mysterious
+vindictiveness of Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the lower
+household was a mighty man below, and he moved as one.
+
+On hearing the tumult that followed Berry's arrival, Adrian sent for him,
+and was informed of the nature of his mission, and its result.
+
+"You should come to me first," said Adrian.  "I should have imagined you
+were shrewd enough for that, Berry?"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Adrian," Berry doubled his elbow to explain.  "Pardon me,
+sir.  Acting recipient of special injunctions I was not a free agent."
+
+"Go to Mr. Richard again, Berry.  There will be a little confusion if he
+holds back.  Perhaps you had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy.
+A slight hint will do.  And here--Berry!  when you return to town, you
+had better not mention anything--to quote Johnson--of Benson's
+spiflication."
+
+"Certainly not, sir."
+
+The wise youth's hint had the desired effect on Richard.
+
+He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and, mounting his
+horse, galloped to the Bellingham station.
+
+Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his hotel, when
+the Hope of Raynham burst into his room.
+
+The baronet was not angry with his son.  On the contrary, for he was
+singularly just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he had
+been thinking all day after the receipt of Benson's letter that he was
+deficient in cordiality, and did not, by reason of his excessive anxiety,
+make himself sufficiently his son's companion: was not enough, as he
+strove to be, mother and father to him.; preceptor and friend; previsor
+and associate.  He had not to ask his conscience where he had lately been
+to blame towards the System.  He had slunk away from Raynham in the very
+crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this young woman of the parish (as Benson
+had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was the  consequence.
+
+Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample on
+them.  To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any
+time--doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it
+were.  It gave him a strange pleasure, nevertheless.  And the youth
+seemed to answer to it; he was excited.  Was his love, then, beginning to
+correspond with his father's as in those intimate days before the
+Blossoming Season?
+
+But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out,
+"My dear, dear father!  You are safe!  I feared--You are better, sir?
+Thank God!"  Sir Austin stood away from him.
+
+"Safe?" he said.  "What has alarmed you?"
+
+Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand
+and kissed it.
+
+Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.
+
+"Those doctors are such fools!" Richard broke out.  "I was sure they were
+wrong.  They don't know headache from apoplexy.  It's worth the ride,
+sir, to see you.  You left Raynham so suddenly.--But you are well!
+It was not an attack of real apoplexy?"
+
+His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not.  Richard
+pursued:
+
+"If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if coroners' inquests
+sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of mare-slaughter.
+Cassandra'll be knocked up.  I was too early for the train at Bellingham,
+and I wouldn't wait.  She did the distance in four hours and three-
+quarters.  Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?"
+
+"It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope," said the baronet, not so
+well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought
+the youth to him in such haste.
+
+"I'm ready," replied Richard.  "I shall be in time to return by the last
+train to-night.  I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest."
+
+His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with
+an eagerness that might pass for appetite.
+
+"All well at Raynham?" said the baronet.
+
+"Quite, sir."
+
+"Nothing new?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"The same as when I left?"
+
+"No change whatever!"
+
+"I shall be glad to get back to the old place," said the baronet.  "My
+stay in town has certainly been profitable.  I have made some pleasant
+acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late
+autumn--people you may be pleased to know.  They are very anxious to see
+Raynham."
+
+"I love the old place," cried Richard.  "I never wish to leave it."
+
+"Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town."
+
+"Was I, sir?  How odd!  Well! I don't want to remain here.  I've seen
+enough of it."
+
+"How did you find your way to me?"
+
+Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick, and
+the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, "There's no place like
+home!"
+
+The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him with
+a double-dealing sentence--
+
+"To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the world,
+is youth's foolishness, my son.  Reverence time!  A better maxim that
+than your Horatian."
+
+"He knows all!" thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues from his
+father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.
+
+Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much
+briskness, "I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk.  Will you come with
+me to the station?"
+
+The baronet did not answer.
+
+Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father's eyes
+fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty
+glass.
+
+"I think we will have a little more claret," said the baronet.
+
+Claret was brought, and they were left alone.
+
+The baronet then drew within arm's-reach of his son, and began:
+
+"I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
+years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry to
+be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I should not
+have complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank me.
+Perhaps, as it is, I never may.  Everything, save selfishness, has its
+recompense.  I shall be content if you prosper."
+
+He fetched a breath and continued: "You had in your infancy a great
+loss."  Father and son coloured simultaneously.  "To make that good to
+you I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself entirely
+to your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the
+son I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God's creatures.  But for
+that very reason you are open to be tempted the most, and to sink the
+deepest.  It was the first of the angels who made the road to hell."
+
+He paused again.  Richard fingered at his watch.
+
+"In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood.  We go to wreck very
+easily.  It sounds like superstition; I cannot but think we are tried as
+most men are not.  I see it in us all.  And you, my son, are compounded
+of two races.  Your passions are violent.  You have had a taste of
+revenge.  You have seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws
+rivers of blood.  But there is now in you another power.  You are
+mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic battles are changed to
+real ones.  And you come upon it laden equally with force to create and
+to destroy."  He deliberated to announce the intelligence, with deep
+meaning: "There are women in the world, my son!"
+
+The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.
+
+"It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial.  It is
+when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some find
+it, a gift of blessedness.  They are our ordeal.  Love of any human
+object is the soul's ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not."
+
+The young man heard the whistle of the train.  He saw the moon-lighted
+wood, and the vision of his beloved.  He could barely hold himself down
+and listen.
+
+"I believe," the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of belief,
+"good women exist."
+
+Oh, if he knew Lucy!
+
+"But," and he gazed on Richard intently, "it is given to very few to meet
+them on the threshold--I may say, to none.  We find them after hard
+buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness
+has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast.  For women are not the end,
+but the means, of life.  In youth we think them the former, and
+thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select a mate--or
+worse--with that sole view.  I believe women punish us for so perverting
+their uses.  They punish Society."
+
+The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into
+consequences.
+
+'Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,' says
+The Pilgrim's Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak with
+moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the
+case.
+
+Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.
+
+Cold Blood said, "It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the ripe
+fruit of our animal being."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is a divinity!  All that is worth living for in the
+world."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often
+leads to perdition."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "Lead whither it will, I follow it."
+
+Cold Blood said: "It is a name men and women are much in the habit of
+employing to sanctify their appetites."
+
+Hot Blood felt: "It is worship; religion; life!"
+
+And so the two parallel lines ran on.
+
+The baronet became more personal:
+
+"You know my love for you, my son.  The extent of it you cannot know; but
+you must know that it is something very deep, and--I do not wish to speak
+of it--but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude, since the only
+true expression of it is his son's moral good.  If you care for my love,
+or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep you what I
+have made you, and guard you from the snares besetting you.  It was in my
+hands once.  It is ceasing to be so.  Remember, my son, what my love is.
+It is different, I fear, with most fathers: but I am bound up in your
+welfare: what you do affects me vitally.  You will take no step that is
+not intimate with my happiness, or my misery.  And I have had great
+disappointments, my son."
+
+So far it was well.  Richard loved his father, and even in his frenzied
+state he could not without emotion hear him thus speak.
+
+Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he was
+winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the dryness of
+his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young men fancying
+themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green, absolutely wanting
+to be--that most awful thing, which the wisest and strongest of men
+undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification and penance--
+married!  He sketched the Foolish Young Fellow--the object of general
+ridicule and covert contempt.  He sketched the Woman--the strange thing
+made in our image, and with all our faculties--passing to the rule of one
+who in taking her proved that he could not rule himself, and had no
+knowledge of her save as a choice morsel which he would burn the whole
+world, and himself in the bargain, to possess.  He harped upon the
+Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin tingle
+and was half suffocated with shame and rage.
+
+After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite
+undone his work.  He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman.  He might
+accord to her her due position, and paint her fair: he might be shrewd,
+jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.
+
+Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: "Have you anything
+to tell me, Richard?" and hoping for a confession, and a thorough re-
+establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him cold: "I have
+not."
+
+The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.
+
+Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window.  In
+the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining
+faintly, feeling the moon.  The moon was rising: the woods were lifting
+up to her: his star of the woods would be there.  A bed of moss set about
+flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland
+keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.
+
+A succession of hard sighs brought his father's hand on his shoulder.
+
+"You have nothing you could say to me, my son?  Tell me, Richard!
+Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of
+untruth!"
+
+"Nothing at all, sir," the young man replied, meeting him with the full
+orbs of his eyes.
+
+The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.
+
+At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he
+said: "Do you intend me to stay here, sir?  Am I not to return to Raynham
+at all to-night?"
+
+His father was again falsely jocular:
+
+"What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes' start?"
+
+"Cassandra will take me," said the young man earnestly.  "I needn't ride
+her hard, sir.  Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried?  I should
+be down with him in little better than three hours."
+
+"Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked."
+
+"Well, I could stable him in the village.  Dowling knows the horse, and
+would treat him properly.  May I have him, sir?"
+
+The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked.  At least, if he missed
+his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same air, marking
+what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed night-talk of the
+trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances that were like hope
+half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as Hesper, since he knew her.
+There were two swallows under the eaves shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows:
+two swallows, mates in one nest, blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-
+cheeped to the sole-lying beauty in her bed.  Around these birds the
+lover's heart revolved, he knew not why.  He associated them with all his
+close-veiled dreams of happiness.  Seldom a morning passed when he did
+not watch them leave the nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the
+happy stillness of dawn.  It seemed to him now that if he could be at
+Raynham to see them in to-morrow's dawn he would be compensated for his
+incalculable loss of to-night: he would forgive and love his father,
+London, the life, the world.  Just to see those purple backs and white
+breasts flash out into the quiet morning air!  He wanted no more.
+
+The baronet's trifling had placed this enormous boon within the young
+man's visionary grasp.
+
+He still went on trying the boy's temper.
+
+"You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham.  It is unfair
+to disturb the maids."
+
+Richard overrode every objection.
+
+"Well, then, my son," said the baronet, preserving his
+half-jocular air, "I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in
+town."
+
+"Then you have not been ill at all, sir!" cried Richard, as in his
+despair he seized the whole plot.
+
+"I have been as well as you could have desired me to be," said his
+father.
+
+"Why did they lie to me?" the young man wrathfully exclaimed.
+
+"I think, Richard, you can best answer that," rejoined Sir Austin, kindly
+severe.
+
+Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented Richard
+from expostulating further.  Sir Austin saw him grinding his passion into
+powder for future explosion, and thought it best to leave him for awhile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the teachings of
+the System in a new atmosphere.  He had to sit and listen to men of
+science who came to renew their intimacy with his father, and whom of all
+men his father wished him to respect and study; practically scientific
+men being, in the baronet's estimation, the only minds thoroughly mated
+and enviable.  He had to endure an introduction to the Grandisons, and
+meet the eyes of his kind, haunted as he was by the Foolish Young Fellow.
+The idea that he might by any chance be identified with him held the poor
+youth in silent subjection.  And it was horrible.  For it was a continued
+outrage on the fair image he had in his heart.  The notion of the world
+laughing at him because he loved sweet Lucy stung him to momentary
+frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in his spirit.  Also the
+System desired to show him whither young women of the parish lead us, and
+he was dragged about at nighttime to see the sons and daughters of
+darkness, after the fashion prescribed to Mr. Thompson; how they danced
+and ogled down the high road to perdition.  But from this sight possibly
+the teacher learnt more than his pupil, since we find him seriously
+asking his meditative hours, in the Note-book: "Wherefore Wild Oats are
+only of one gender?" a question certainly not suggested to him at
+Raynham; and again--"Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an
+importance?"...to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for he gives
+it no other in the Note-book.  But, as I apprehend, he had come to plead
+in behalf of women here, and had deduced something from positive
+observation.  To Richard the scenes he witnessed were strange wild
+pictures, likely if anything to have increased his misanthropy, but for
+his love.
+
+Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the first
+two weeks of exile.  They ceased; and now Richard fell into such
+despondency that his father in alarm had to take measures to hasten their
+return to Raynham.  At the close of the third week Berry laid a pair of
+letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the breakfast-table, and,
+after reading one attentively, the baronet asked his son if he was
+inclined to quit the metropolis.
+
+"For Raynham, air?" cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, "As you will!"
+aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young Fellow.
+
+Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their instant
+return to Raynham.
+
+The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son's wishes
+was a composition of the wise youth Adrian's, and ran thus:
+
+"Benson is doggedly recovering.  He requires great indemnities.  Happy
+when a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household!  I quite agree
+with you that our faithful fool is the best servant of great schemes.
+Benson is now a piece of history.  I tell him that this is indemnity
+enough, and that the sweet Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being
+half-flayed before she will condescend to notice them; but Benson, I
+regret to say, rejects the comfort so fine a reflection should offer, and
+had rather keep his skin and live opaque.  Heroism seems partly a matter
+of training.  Faithful folly is Benson's nature: the rest has been thrust
+upon.
+
+"The young person has resigned the neighbourhood.  I had an interview
+with the fair Papist myself, and also with the man Blaize.  They were
+both sensible, though one swore and the other sighed.  She is pretty.  I
+hope she does not paint.  I can affirm that her legs are strong, for she
+walks to Bellingham twice a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having
+confessed and been made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back the
+brisker, of which my Protestant muscular systems is yet aware.  It was on
+the road to Bellingham I engaged her.  She is well in the matter of hair.
+Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a fair match.  Has it never
+struck you that Woman is nearer the vegetable than Man?--Mr. Blaize
+intends her for his son a junction that every lover of fairy mythology
+must desire to see consummated.  Young Tom is heir to all the agremens of
+the Beast.  The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very Proculus
+among them.  Possibly the envious men say it for the maids.  Beauty does
+not speak bad grammar--and altogether she is better out of the way."
+
+The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady's letter, and said:
+
+"I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability, and heartily
+sad it has made me.  She is indeed very much above her station--pity that
+it is so!  She is almost beautiful--quite beautiful at times, and not in
+any way what you have been led to fancy.  The poor child had no story to
+tell.  I have again seen her, and talked with her for an hour as kindly
+as I could.  I could gather nothing more than we know.  It is just a
+woman's history as it invariably commences.  Richard is the god of her
+idolatry.  She will renounce him, and sacrifice herself for his sake.
+Are we so bad?  She asked me what she was to do.  She would do whatever
+was imposed upon her--all but pretend to love another, and that she never
+would, and, I believe, never will.  You know I am sentimental, and I
+confess we dropped a few tears together.  Her uncle has sent her for the
+Winter to the institution where it appears she was educated, and where
+they are very fond of her and want to keep her, which it would be a good
+thing if they were to do.  The man is a good sort of man.  She was
+entrusted to him by her father, and he never interferes with her
+religion, and is very scrupulous about all that pertains to it, though,
+as he says, he is a Christian himself.  In the Spring (but the poor child
+does not know this) she is to come back, and be married to his lout of a
+son.  I am determined to prevent that.  May I not reckon on your promise
+to aid me?  When you see her, I am sure you will.  It would be sacrilege
+to look on and permit such a thing.  You know, they are cousins.  She
+asked me, where in the world there was one like Richard?  What could I
+answer?  They were your own words, and spoken with a depth of conviction!
+I hope he is really calm.  I shudder to think of him when he comes, and
+discovers what I have been doing.  I hope I have been really doing right!
+A good deed, you say, never dies; but we cannot always know--I must rely
+on you.  Yes, it is; I should think, easy to suffer martyrdom when one is
+sure of one's cause! but then one must be sure of it.  I have done
+nothing lately but to repeat to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C.
+7, P.S.; and it has consoled me, I cannot say why, except that all wisdom
+consoles, whether it applies directly or not:
+
+"'For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to Him; that
+they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength.'
+
+"I like to know of what you are thinking when you composed this or that
+saying--what suggested it.  May not one be admitted to inspect the
+machinery of wisdom?  I feel curious to know how thoughts--real thoughts
+--are born.  Not that I hope to win the secret.  Here is the beginning of
+one (but we poor women can never put together even two of the three ideas
+which you say go to form a thought): 'When a wise man makes a false step,
+will he not go farther than a fool?'  It has just flitted through me.
+
+"I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence the
+readings.  I dislike the sneering essence of his writings.  I keep
+referring to his face, until the dislike seems to become personal.
+How different is it with Wordsworth!  And yet I cannot escape from the
+thought that he is always solemnly thinking of himself (but I do
+reverence him).  But this is curious; Byron was a greater egoist, and yet
+I do not feel the same with him.  He reminds me of a beast of the desert,
+savage and beautiful; and the former is what one would imagine a superior
+donkey reclaimed from the heathen to be--a very superior donkey, I mean,
+with great power of speech and great natural complacency, and whose
+stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission.  The worst is that
+no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior donkey, so my simile
+is unfair and false.  Is it not strange?  I love Wordsworth best, and yet
+Byron has the greater power over me.  How is that?"
+
+("Because," Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil, "women are
+cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their hearts
+to Excellence and Nature's Inspiration.")
+
+The letter pursued:
+
+"I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni.  The latter offends me.
+I suppose we women do not really care for humour.  You are right in
+saying we have none ourselves, and 'cackle' instead of laugh.  It is true
+(of me, at least) that 'Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat man.'
+I want to know what he illustrates.  And Don Quixote--what end can be
+served in making a noble mind ridiculous?--I hear you say--practical.  So
+it is.  We are very narrow, I know.  But we like wit--practical again!
+Or in your words (when I really think they generally come to my aid--
+perhaps it is that it is often all your thought); we 'prefer the rapier
+thrust, to the broad embrace, of Intelligence.'"
+
+He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as
+he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what.  There are
+ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to
+us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the
+filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much less
+to others.  Why did he twice throw a look into the glass in the act of
+passing it?  He stood for a moment with head erect facing it.  His eyes
+for the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey
+gathered brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had traced over the
+circles half up his high straight forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose
+over his forehead and fell away in the fashion of Richard's plume.  His
+general appearance showed the tints of years; but none of their weight,
+and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone.  It was so far
+satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential
+self through the mask we wear.
+
+Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he
+presented to the lady's discriminative regard.  Of her feelings he had
+not a suspicion.  But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women can,
+when it pleases them, and when their feelings are not quite boiling under
+the noonday sun, seize all the sides of a character, and put their
+fingers on its weak point.  He was cognizant of the total absence of the
+humorous in himself (the want that most shut him out from his fellows),
+and perhaps the clear-thoughted, intensely self-examining gentleman
+filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the poet, she gazes on as one
+of the superior--grey beasts!
+
+He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that great-
+mindedness, and could snatch at times very luminous glances at the broad
+reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow compass holds
+up for us to see ourselves in when we will.  Unhappily, the faculty of
+laughter, which is due to this gift, was denied him; and having seen, he,
+like the companion of friend Balsam, could go no farther.  For a good
+wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the blight of self-
+deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had given a healthier view of
+our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
+
+Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain and
+brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to feel
+infallible, as a man with a System should feel; and because he could not
+do so, after much mental conflict, he descended to entertain a personal
+antagonism to the young woman who had stepped in between his experiment
+and success.  He did not think kindly of her.  Lady Blandish's encomiums
+of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed him.  Forgetful that he had in a
+measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common ground of fathers,
+and demanded, "Why he was not justified in doing all that lay in his
+power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon the first
+creature with a pretty face he encountered?"  Deliberating thus, he lost
+the tenderness he should have had for his experiment--the living, burning
+youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took a rigorous tone.
+It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that the uncle of this
+young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme of marrying her to
+his son, should not only not be thwarted in his object but encouraged and
+even assisted.  At least, not thwarted.  Sir Austin had no glass before
+him while these ideas hardened in his mind, and he had rather forgotten
+the letter of Lady Blandish.
+
+Father and son were alone in the railway carriage.  Both were too
+preoccupied to speak.  As they neared Bellingham the dark was filling the
+hollows of the country.  Over the pine-hills beyond the station a last
+rosy streak lingered across a green sky.  Richard eyed it while they flew
+along.  It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his love,
+and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids.  The sad beauty of
+that one spot in the heavens seemed to call out to his soul to swear to
+his Lucy's truth to him: was like the sorrowful visage of his fleur-de-
+luce as he called her, appealing to him for faith.  That tremulous tender
+way she had of half-closing and catching light on the nether-lids, when
+sometimes she looked up in her lover's face--as look so mystic-sweet that
+it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he saw it yonder, and his
+blood thrilled.
+
+Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our
+grosser being melts; and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking, stand
+etherealized, trembling with new joy?  They come but rarely; rarely even
+in love, when we fondly think them revelations.  Mere sensations they
+are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the spiritual scale
+than so many translucent glorious polypi that quiver on the shores, the
+hues of heaven running through them.  Yet in the harvest of our days it
+is something for the animal to have had such mere fleshly polypian
+experiences to look back upon, and they give him an horizon--pale seas of
+luring splendour.   One who has had them (when they do not bound him) may
+find the Isles of Bliss sooner than another.  Sensual faith in the upper
+glories is something.  "Let us remember," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "that
+Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of the
+Highest.  She is not all dust, but a living portion of the spheres.  In
+aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that through Nature
+only can we ascend.  Cherished, trained, and purified, she is then partly
+worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so.  St. Simeon saw the
+Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog."
+
+It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young
+man, he knew not how it was, for sadness and his forebodings vanished.
+The soft wand touched him.  At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly,
+Richard might have fallen upon his heart.  He could not.
+
+He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue
+his System by plotting.  Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the
+creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and
+vindictive as jealousy of woman.
+
+Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about the
+Bellingham station.  Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the train,
+and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the chest.
+Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master, he went
+into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had received
+private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his young master's
+mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of firs unenclosed on
+the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his retainer's zest for
+conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the part most favoured
+with shelter and concealment, found him furtively whiffing tobacco.
+
+"What news, Tom?  Is there an illness?"
+
+Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
+agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract
+thought or sudden difficulty.
+
+"No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard," he whinnied with a false grin,
+as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action.
+
+"Speak out!" he was commanded.  "I haven't had a letter for a week!"
+
+Richard learnt the news.  He took it with surprising outward calm, only
+getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very hard at Tom
+without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making him
+sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once rather than fix
+him in that owl-like way.
+
+"Go on!" said Richard, huskily.  "Yes?  She's gone!  Well?"
+
+Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
+recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name
+of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a
+wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till
+morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained.  Hereat the
+tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks.  Tom said he had
+tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a
+terrible sum--that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please his
+young master on his return.  "Likewise something in Lat'n," added Tom.
+"Nom'tive Mouser!--'nough to make ye mad, sir!" he exclaimed with pathos.
+The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.
+
+Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
+sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
+along with young Tom Blaize.  "She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,"
+said Tom, "and cryin' don't spoil them."  For which his hand was
+wrenched.
+
+Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady
+had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much as
+to sap, Good-bye, Tom!  "And though she couldn't see me," said Tom, "I
+took off my hat.  I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like
+me."  He was at high-pressure sentiment--what with his education for a
+hero and his master's love-stricken state.
+
+"You saw no more of her, Tom?"
+
+"No, sir.  That was the last!"
+
+"That was the last you saw of her, Tom?"
+
+"Well, sir, I saw nothin' more."
+
+"And so she went out of sight!"
+
+"Clean gone, that she were, sir."
+
+"Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have
+they taken her to?"
+
+These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven rather
+than to Tom.
+
+"Why didn't she write?" they were resumed.  "Why did she leave?  She's
+mine.  She belongs to me!  Who dared take her away?  Why did she leave
+without writing?--Tom!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to the
+word of command.  He expected a variation of the theme from the change of
+tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again, "Where
+have they taken her to?" and this was even more perplexing to Tom than
+his hard sum in arithmetic had been.  He could only draw down the corners
+of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
+
+"She had been crying--you saw that, Tom?"
+
+"No mistake about that, Mr. Richard.  Cryin' all night and all day, I
+sh'd say."
+
+"And she was crying when you saw her?"
+
+"She look'd as if she'd just done for a moment, sir."
+
+"But her face was white?"
+
+"White as a sheet."
+
+Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view
+from these facts.  He was in a cage, always knocking against the same
+bars, fly as he might.  Her tears were the stars in his black night.  He
+clung to them as golden orbs.  Inexplicable as they were, they were at
+least pledges of love.
+
+The hues of sunset had left the West.  No light was there but the
+steadfast pale eye of twilight.  Thither he was drawn.  He mounted
+Cassandra, saying: "Tell them something, Tom.  I shan't be home to
+dinner," and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe,
+whereat he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he
+advanced.  His jewel was stolen,--he must gaze upon the empty box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded, grass-bordered
+lane leading down from Raynham to Belthorpe.  The pale eye of twilight
+was shut.  The wind had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was
+now flying broad and unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy--the
+charioted South-west at full charge behind his panting coursers.  As he
+neared the farm his heart fluttered and leapt up.  He was sure she must
+be there.  She must have returned.  Why should she have left for good
+without writing?  He caught suspicion by the throat, making it voiceless,
+if it lived: he silenced reason.  Her not writing was now a proof that
+she had returned.  He listened to nothing but his imperious passion, and
+murmured sweet words for her, as if she were by: tender cherishing
+epithet's of love in the nest.  She was there--she moved somewhere about
+like a silver flame in the dear old house, doing her sweet household
+duties.  His blood began to sing: O happy those within, to see her, and
+be about her!  By some extraordinary process he contrived to cast a sort
+of glory round the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself.  And oh! to
+have companionship with a seraph one must know a seraph's bliss, and was
+not young Tom to be envied?  The smell of late clematis brought on the
+wind enwrapped him, and went to his brain, and threw a light over the old
+red-brick house, for he remembered where it grew, and the winter rose-
+tree, and the jessamine, and the passion-flower: the garden in front with
+the standard roses tended by her hands; the long wall to the left striped
+by the branches of the cherry, the peep of a further garden through the
+wall, and then the orchard, and the fields beyond--the happy circle of
+her dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on the darkness.
+And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled this light and inspired
+the momentary calm he experienced: it was despair exaggerating delusion,
+wilfully building up on a groundless basis.  "For the tenacity of true
+passion is terrible," says The Pilgrim's Scrip: "it will stand against
+the hosts of heaven, God's great array of Facts, rather than surrender
+its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb--sent to the lowest
+pit!"  He knew she was not there; she was gone.  But the power of a will
+strained to madness fought at it, kept it down, conjured forth her ghost,
+and would have it as he dictated.  Poor youth! the great array of facts
+was in due order of march.
+
+He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud; almost a cry for
+her escaped him.  He had not noticed the opening of a door and the noise
+of a foot along the gravel walk.  He was leaning over Cassandra's uneasy
+neck watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed him out of
+the darkness.
+
+"Be that you, young gentleman?--Mr. Fev'rel?"
+
+Richard's trance was broken.  "Mr. Blaize!" he said; recognizing the
+farmer's voice.
+
+"Good even'n t' you, sir," returned the farmer.  "I knew the mare though
+I didn't know you.  Rather bluff to-night it be.  Will ye step in, Mr.
+Fev'rel? it's beginning' to spit,--going to be a wildish night, I
+reckon."
+
+Richard dismounted.  The farmer called one of his men to hold the mare,
+and ushered the young man in.  Once there, Richard's conjurations ceased.
+There was a deadness about the rooms and passages that told of her
+absence.  The walls he touched--these were the vacant shells of her.  He
+had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what strange
+sweetness, and what pangs!
+
+Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the table in open-
+mouthed examination of an ancient book of the fashions for a summer month
+which had elapsed during his mother's minority.  Young Tom was
+respectfully studying the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite
+work.  He also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of wonder.
+
+"What, Tom!" the farmer sang out as soon as he had opened the door;
+"there ye be! at yer Folly agin, are ye?  What good'll them fashens do to
+you, I'd like t'know?  Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr. Fev'rel's
+mare.  He's al'ays at that ther' Folly now.  I say there never were a
+better name for a book than that ther' Folly!  Talk about attitudes!"
+
+The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned his visitor
+to do likewise.
+
+"It's a comfort they're most on 'em females," he pursued, sounding a
+thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably in his seat.  "It
+don't matter much what they does, except pinchin' in--waspin' it at the
+waist.  Give me nature, I say--woman as she's made! eh, young gentleman?"
+
+"You seem very lonely here," said Richard, glancing round, and at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Lonely?" quoth the farmer.  "Well, for the matter o' that, we be!--jest
+now, so't happens; I've got my pipe, and Tom've got his Folly.  He's on
+one side the table, and I'm on t'other.  He gapes, and I gazes.  We are a
+bit lonesome.  But there--it's for the best!"
+
+Richard resumed, "I hardly expected to see you to-night, Mr. Blaize."
+
+"Y'acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I does ye honour for
+it!" said Farmer Blaize with sudden energy and directness.
+
+The thing implied by the farmer's words caused Richard to take a quick
+breath.  They looked at each other, and looked away, the farmer thrumming
+on the arm of his chair.
+
+Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent miniatures of
+high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the anterior generation, trying their
+best not to grin, and high-waisted old ladies smiling an encouraging
+smile through plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably executed half-
+figure of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a telescope under his left
+arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their kith and kin.  His eyes were
+blue, his hair light, his bearing that of a man who knows how to carry
+his head and shoulders.  The artist, while giving him an epaulette to
+indicate his rank, had also recorded the juvenility which a lieutenant in
+the naval service can retain after arriving at that position, by painting
+him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips.  To this portrait Richard's
+eyes were directed.  Farmer Blaize observed it, and said--
+
+"Her father, sir!"
+
+Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.
+
+"Yes," said the farmer, "pretty well.  Next best to havin' her, though
+it's a long way off that!"
+
+"An old family, Mr. Blaize--is it not?" Richard asked in as careless a
+tone as he could assume.
+
+"Gentlefolks--what's left of 'em," replied the farmer with an equally
+affected indifference.
+
+"And that's her father?" said Richard, growing bolder to speak of her.
+
+"That's her father, young gentleman!"
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard turned to face him, and burst out, "where is she?"
+
+"Gone, sir! packed off!--Can't have her here now."  The farmer thrummed a
+step brisker, and eyed the young man's wild face resolutely.
+
+"Mr. Blaize," Richard leaned forward to get closer to him.  He was
+stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or doing: "Where has she
+gone?  Why did she leave?"
+
+"You needn't to ask, sir--ye know," said the farmer, with a side shot of
+his head.
+
+"But she did not--it was not her wish to go?"
+
+"No!  I think she likes the place.  Mayhap she likes't too well!"
+
+"Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr. Blaize?"
+
+The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who made her unhappy.
+"Nobody can't accuse me.  Tell ye what, sir.  I wunt have the busybodies
+set to work about her, and there's all the matter.  So let you and I come
+to an understandin'."
+
+A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright.  He forgot
+it the next minute, and said humbly: "Am I the cause of her going?"
+
+"Well!" returned the farmer, "to speak straight--ye be!"
+
+"What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back again" the young
+hypocrite asked.
+
+"Now," said the farmer, "you're coming to business.  Glad to hear ye talk
+in that sensible way, Mr. Feverel.  You may guess I wants her bad enough.
+The house ain't itself now she's away, and I ain't myself.  Well, sir!
+This ye can do.  If you gives me your promise not to meddle with her at
+all--I can't mak' out how you come to be acquainted; not to try to get
+her to be meetin' you--and if you'd 'a seen her when she left, you would
+--when did ye meet?--last grass, wasn't it?--your word as a gentleman not
+to be writing letters, and spyin' after her--I'll have her back at once.
+Back she shall come!"
+
+"Give her up!" cried Richard.
+
+"Ay, that's it!" said the farmer.  "Give her up."
+
+The young man checked the annihilation of time that was on his mouth.
+
+"You sent her away to protect her from me, then?" he said savagely.
+
+"That's not quite it, but that'll do," rejoined the farmer.
+
+"Do you think I shall harm her, sir?"
+
+"People seem to think she'll harm you, young gentleman," the farmer said
+with some irony.
+
+"Harm me--she?  What people?"
+
+"People pretty intimate with you, sir."
+
+"What people?  Who spoke of us?"  Richard began to scent a plot, and
+would not be balked.
+
+"Well, sir, look here," said the farmer.  "It ain't no secret, and if it
+be, I don't see why I'm to keep it.  It appears your education's
+peculiar!"  The farmer drawled out the word as if he were describing the
+figure of a snake.  "You ain't to be as other young gentlemen.  All the
+better!  You're a fine bold young gentleman, and your father's a right to
+be proud of ye.  Well, sir--I'm sure I thank him for't he comes to hear
+of you and Luce, and of course he don't want nothin' o' that--more do I.
+I meets him there!  What's more I won't have nothin' of it.  She be my
+gal.  She were left to my protection.  And she's a lady, sir. Let me tell
+ye, ye won't find many on 'em so well looked to as she be--my Luce!
+Well, Mr. Fev'rel, it's you, or it's her--one of ye must be out o' the
+way.  So we're told.  And Luce--I do believe she's just as anxious about
+yer education as yer father she says she'll go, and wouldn't write, and'd
+break it off for the sake o' your education.  And she've kep' her word,
+haven't she?--She's a true'n.  What she says she'll do!--True blue she
+be, my Luce!  So now, sir, you do the same, and I'll thank ye."
+
+Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and seen it
+gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may conceive the mind of
+the lover as he listened to this speech.
+
+His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and sank deep.  "Mr.
+Blaize," he said, "this is very kind of the people you allude to, but I
+am of an age now to think and act for myself--I love her, sir!"  His
+whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face quivered.
+
+"Well!" said the farmer, appeasingly, "we all do at your age--somebody or
+other.  It's natural!"
+
+"I love her!" the young man thundered afresh, too much possessed by his
+passion to have a sense of shame in the confession.  "Farmer!" his voice
+fell to supplication, "will you bring her back?"
+
+Farmer Blaize made a queer face.  He asked--what for? and where was the
+promise required?--But was not the lover's argument conclusive?  He said
+he loved her! and he could not see why her uncle should not in
+consequence immediately send for her, that they might be together.  All
+very well, quoth the farmer, but what's to come of it?--What was to come
+of it?  Why, love, and more love!  And a bit too much! the farmer added
+grimly.
+
+"Then you refuse me, farmer," said Richard.  "I must look to you for
+keeping her away from me, not to--to--these people.  You will not have
+her back, though I tell you I love her better than my life?"
+
+Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a reason and an
+objection of his own.  And it was, that her character was at stake, and
+God knew whether she herself might not be in danger.  He spoke with a
+kindly candour, not without dignity.  He complimented Richard personally,
+but young people were young people; baronets' sons were not in the habit
+of marrying farmers' nieces.
+
+At first the son of a System did not comprehend him.  When he did, he
+said: "Farmer! if I give you my word of honour, as I hope for heaven, to
+marry her when I am of age, will you have her back?"
+
+He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head
+doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly.
+Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these
+signs, and observed: "It's not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?"
+
+The farmer signified it was not that.
+
+"It's because my father is against me," Richard went on, and undertook to
+show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely and
+for ever resist his son's inclinations.  Argument being a cool field
+where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the
+tramroad of his passion, and went ahead.  He drew pictures of Lucy, of
+her truth, and his own.  He took leaps from life to death, from death to
+life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent.  Perhaps he did move
+the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so
+visible a sacrifice of his pride.
+
+Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless.  His jewel he must
+have.
+
+The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth botheration.
+"May smoke heer now," he said.  "Not when--somebody's present.  Smoke in
+the kitchen then.  Don't mind smell?"
+
+Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and
+lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
+
+"Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin' to this?"
+ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco.  "You
+didn't think much of her that day, young gentleman!  I introduced ye.
+Well! things comes about.  Can't you wait till she returns in due course,
+now?"
+
+This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another
+torrent.
+
+"It's queer," said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his
+wrinkled-up temples.
+
+Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as no
+aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and
+staring at Richard an instant:
+
+"Look, young gentleman!  My word's gone.  I've spoke it.  I've given 'em
+the 'surance she shan't be back till the Spring, and then I'll have her,
+and then--well!  I do hope, for more reasons than one, ye'll both be
+wiser--I've got my own notions about her.  But I an't the man to force a
+gal to marry 'gainst her inclines.  Depend upon it I'm not your enemy,
+Mr. Fev'rel.  You're jest the one to mak' a young gal proud.  So wait,--
+and see.  That's my 'dvice.  Jest tak' and wait.  I've no more to say."
+
+Richard's impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his notions
+concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they were
+serious.
+
+The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with "Wait
+till the Spring!  Wait till the Spring!" dinning despair in his ears,
+stood up to depart.  Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly
+way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions to
+his Folly, did not appear.  A maid rushed by Richard in the passage, and
+slipped something into his grasp, which fixed on it without further
+consciousness than that of touch.  The mare was led forth by the Bantam.
+A light rain was falling down strong warm gusts, and the trees were noisy
+in the night.  Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give him
+his hand, and say all was well.  He liked the young man for his
+earnestness and honest outspeaking.  Richard could not say all was well,
+but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer's in a sharp squeeze,
+when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.
+
+A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw its glowing grey
+image on the waters of the Abbey-lake.  Before sunrise Tom Bakewell was
+abroad, and met the missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra
+leisurely along the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at.
+Cassandra's flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped: all that was in
+her had been taken out by that wild night.  On what heaths and heavy
+fallows had she not spent her noble strength, recklessly fretting through
+the darkness!
+
+"Take the mare," said Richard, dismounting and patting her between the
+eyes.  "She's done up, poor old gal!  Look to her, Tom, and then come to
+me in my room."
+
+Tom asked no questions.
+
+Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard's birth, and though Tom
+was close, the condition of the mare, and the young gentleman's strange
+freak in riding her out all night becoming known, prepared everybody at
+Raynham for the usual bad-luck birthday, the prophets of which were full
+of sad gratification.  Sir Austin had an unpleasant office to require of
+his son; no other than that of humbly begging Benson's pardon, and
+washing out the undue blood he had spilt in taking his Pound of Flesh.
+Heavy Benson was told to anticipate the demand for pardon, and practised
+in his mind the most melancholy Christian deportment he could assume on
+the occasion.  But while his son was in this state, Sir Austin considered
+that he would hardly be brought to see the virtues of the act, and did
+not make the requisition of him, and heavy Benson remained drawn up
+solemnly expectant at doorways, and at the foot of the staircase, a
+Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a step in advance of the young
+man, while Richard heedlessly passed him, as he passed everybody else,
+his head bent to the ground, and his legs bearing him like random
+instruments of whose service he was unconscious.  It was a shock to
+Benson's implicit belief in his patron; and he was not consoled by the
+philosophic explanation, "That Good in a strong many-compounded nature is
+of slower growth than any other mortal thing, and must not be forced."
+Damnatory doctrines best pleased Benson.  He was ready to pardon, as a
+Christian should, but he did want his enemy before him on his knees.  And
+now, though the Saurian Eye saw more than all the other eyes in the
+house, and saw that there was matter in hand between Tom and his master
+to breed exceeding discomposure to the System, Benson, as he had not
+received his indemnity, and did not wish to encounter fresh perils for
+nothing, held his peace.
+
+Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast of his son,
+without conceiving the depths of distrust his son cherished or quite
+measuring the intensity of the passion that consumed him.  He was very
+kind and tender with him.  Like a cunning physician who has,
+nevertheless, overlooked the change in the disease superinduced by one
+false dose, he meditated his prescriptions carefully and confidently,
+sure that he knew the case, and was a match for it.  He decreed that
+Richard's erratic behaviour should pass unnoticed.  Two days before the
+birthday, he asked him whether he would object to having company?  To
+which Richard said: "Have whom you will, sir."  The preparation for
+festivity commenced accordingly.
+
+On the birthday eve he dined with the rest.  Lady Blandish was there, and
+sat penitently at his right.  Hippias prognosticated certain indigestion
+for himself on the morrow.  The Eighteenth Century wondered whether she
+should live to see another birthday.  Adrian drank the two-years' distant
+term of his tutorship, and Algernon went over the list of the Lobourne
+men who would cope with Bursley on the morrow.  Sir Austin gave ear and a
+word to all, keeping his mental eye for his son.  To please Lady Blandish
+also, Adrian ventured to make trifling jokes about London's Mrs.
+Grandison; jokes delicately not decent, but so delicately so, that it was
+not decent to perceive it.
+
+After dinner Richard left them.  Nothing more than commonly peculiar was
+observed about him, beyond the excessive glitter of his eyes, but the
+baronet said, "Yes, yes! that will pass."  He and Adrian, and Lady
+Blandish, took tea in the library, and sat till a late hour discussing
+casuistries relating mostly to the Apple-disease.  Converse very amusing
+to the wise youth, who could suggest to the two chaste minds situations
+of the shadiest character, with the air of a seeker after truth, and lead
+them, unsuspecting, where they dared not look about them.  The Aphorist
+had elated the heart of his constant fair worshipper with a newly rounded
+if not newly conceived sentence, when they became aware that they were
+four.  Heavy Benson stood among them.  He said he had knocked, but
+received no answer.  There was, however, a vestige of surprise and
+dissatisfaction on his face beholding Adrian of the company, which had
+not quite worn away, and gave place, when it did vanish, to an aspect of
+flabby severity.
+
+"Well, Benson? well?" said the baronet.
+
+The unmoving man replied: "If you please, Sir Austin--Mr. Richard!"
+
+"Well!"
+
+"He's out!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"With Bakewell!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"And a carpet-bag!"
+
+The carpet-bag might be supposed to contain that funny thing called a
+young hero's romance in the making.
+
+Out Richard was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell carried.  He
+was on the road to Bellingham, under heavy rain, hasting like an escaped
+captive, wild with joy, while Tom shook his skin, and grunted at his
+discomforts.  The mail train was to be caught at Bellingham.  He knew
+where to find her now, through the intervention of Miss Davenport, and
+thither he was flying, an arrow loosed from the bow: thither, in spite of
+fathers and friends and plotters, to claim her, and take her, and stand
+with her against the world.
+
+They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham, and Tom's
+visions were of hot drinks.  He hinted the necessity for inward
+consolation to his master, who could answer nothing but "Tom! Tom! I
+shall see her tomorrow!"  It was bad--travelling in the wet, Tom hinted
+again, to provoke the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and
+furiously shaken into the bargain.  Passing the principal inn of the
+place, Tom spoke plainly for brandy.
+
+"No!" cried Richard, "there's not a moment to be lost!" and as he said
+it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering indistinctly of faintness,
+and that there was no time to lose.  Tom lifted him in his arms, and got
+admission to the inn.  Brandy, the country's specific, was advised by
+host and hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving him sufficiently to
+cry out, "Tom! the bell's ringing: we shall be late," after which he fell
+back insensible on the sofa where they had stretched him.  Excitement of
+blood and brain had done its work upon him.  The youth suffered them to
+undress him and put him to bed, and there he lay, forgetful even of love;
+a drowned weed borne onward by the tide of the hours.  There his father
+found him.
+
+Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful?  He had looked forward to such a
+crisis as that point in the disease his son was the victim of, when the
+body would fail and give the spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing
+very well that the seeds of the evil were not of the spirit.  Moreover,
+to see him and have him was a repose after the alarm Benson had sounded.
+"Mark!" he said to Lady Blandish, "when he recovers he will not care for
+her."
+
+The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on first hearing of
+Richard's seizure.
+
+"What an iron man you can be," she exclaimed, smothering her intuitions.
+She was for giving the boy his bauble; promising it him, at least, if he
+would only get well and be the bright flower of promise he once was.
+
+"Can you look on him," she pleaded, "can you look on him and persevere?"
+
+It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so deeply.  The youth
+lay in his strange bed, straight and motionless, with fever on his
+cheeks, and altered eyes.
+
+Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-
+shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments,
+guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter.  The old doctor
+did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his
+prescriptions like a piano to the musician.  "But," he said at a family
+consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young
+man, "drugs are not much in cases of this sort.  Change!  That's what's
+wanted, and as soon as may be.  Distraction!  He ought to see the world,
+and know what he is made of.  It's no use my talking, I know," added the
+doctor.
+
+"On the contrary," said Sir Austin, "I am quite of your persuasion.  And
+the world he shall see--now."
+
+"We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor," Adrian remarked.
+
+"But, doctor," said Lady Blandish, "have you known a case of this sort
+before."
+
+"Never, my lady," said the doctor, "they're not common in these parts.
+Country people are tolerably healthy-minded."
+
+"But people--and country people--have died for love, doctor?"
+
+The doctor had not met any of them.
+
+"Men, or women?" inquired the baronet.
+
+Lady Blandish believed mostly women.
+
+"Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded women," said the
+baronet.  "No! you are both looking at the wrong end.  Between a highly-
+cultured being, and an emotionless animal, there is all the difference in
+the world.  But of the two, the doctor is nearer the truth.  The healthy
+nature is pretty safe.  If he allowed for organization he would be right
+altogether.  To feel, but not to feel to excess, that is the problem."
+
+         "If I can't have the one I chose,
+          To some fresh maid I will propose,"
+
+Adrian hummed a country ballad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+When the young Experiment again knew the hours that rolled him onward, he
+was in his own room at Raynham.  Nothing had changed: only a strong fist
+had knocked him down and stunned him, and he opened his eyes to a grey
+world: he had forgotten what he lived for.  He was weak and thin, and
+with a pale memory of things.  His functions were the same, everything
+surrounding him was the same: he looked upon the old blue hills, the far-
+lying fallows, the river, and the woods: he knew them, they seemed to
+have lost recollection of him.  Nor could he find in familiar human faces
+the secret of intimacy of heretofore.  They were the same faces: they
+nodded and smiled to him.  What was lost he could not tell.  Something
+had been knocked out of him!  He was sensible of his father's sweetness
+of manner, and he was grieved that he could not reply to it, for every
+sense of shame and reproach had strangely gone.  He felt very useless.
+In place of the fiery love for one, he now bore about a cold charity to
+all.
+
+Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose, and while it
+died another heart was pushing forth the Primrose of Autumn.
+
+The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her admirer, now
+positively proved, were exciting matters to Lady Blandish.  She was
+rebuked for certain little rebellious fancies concerning him that had
+come across her enslaved mind from time to time.  For was he not almost a
+prophet?  It distressed the sentimental lady that a love like Richard's
+could pass off in mere smoke, and words such as she had heard him speak
+in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness.  Nay, it humiliated her personally,
+and the baronet's shrewd prognostication humiliated her.  For how should
+he know, and dare to say, that love was a thing of the dust that could be
+trodden out under the heel of science?  But he had said so; and he had
+proved himself right.  She heard with wonderment that Richard of his own
+accord had spoken to his father of the folly he had been guilty of, and
+had begged his pardon.  The baronet told her this, adding that the youth
+had done it in a cold unwavering way, without a movement of his features:
+had evidently done it to throw off the burden of the duty, he had
+conceived.  He had thought himself bound to acknowledge that he had been
+the Foolish Young Fellow, wishing, possibly, to abjure the fact by an set
+of penance.  He had also given satisfaction to Benson, and was become a
+renovated peaceful spirit, whose main object appeared to be to get up his
+physical strength by exercise and no expenditure of speech.
+
+In her company he was composed and courteous; even when they were alone
+together, he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy.  Sober he seemed, as
+one who has recovered from a drunkenness and has determined to drink no
+more.  The idea struck her that he might be playing a part, but Tom
+Bakewell, in a private conversation they had, informed her that he had
+received an order from his young master, one day while boxing with him,
+not to mention the young lady's name to him as long as he lived; and Tom
+could only suppose that she had offended him.  Theoretically wise Lady
+Blandish had always thought the baronet; she was unprepared to find him
+thus practically sagacious.  She fell many degrees; she wanted something
+to cling to; so she clung to the man who struck her low.  Love, then, was
+earthly; its depth could be probed by science!  A man lived who could
+measure it from end to end; foretell its term; handle the young cherub as
+were he a shot owl!  We who have flown into cousinship with the empyrean,
+and disported among immortal hosts, our base birth as a child of Time is
+made bare to us!--our wings are cut!  Oh, then, if science is this
+victorious enemy of love, let us love science! was the logic of the
+lady's heart; and secretly cherishing the assurance that she should
+confute him yet, and prove him utterly wrong, she gave him the fruits of
+present success, as it is a habit of women to do; involuntarily partly.
+The fires took hold of her.  She felt soft emotions such as a girl feels,
+and they flattered her.  It was like youth coming back.  Pure women have
+a second youth.  The Autumn primrose flourished.
+
+We are advised by The Pilgrim's Scrip that--
+
+"The ways of women, which are Involution, and their practices, which are
+Opposition, are generally best hit upon by guess work, and a bold word;"
+--it being impossible to track them and hunt them down in the ordinary
+style.
+
+So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed, let us each of
+us venture a guess and say a bold word as to how it came that the lady,
+who trusted love to be eternal, grovelled to him that shattered her
+tender faith, and loved him.
+
+Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and gossips had
+maligned the lady.  Just when the gossips grew tired of their slander,
+and inclined to look upon her charitably, she set about to deserve every
+word they had said of her; which may instruct us, if you please, that
+gossips have only to persist in lying to be crowned with verity, or that
+one has only to endure evil mouths for a period to gain impunity.  She
+was always at the Abbey now.  She was much closeted with the baronet.  It
+seemed to be understood that she had taken Mrs. Doria's place.  Benson in
+his misogynic soul perceived that she was taking Lady Feverel's: but any
+report circulated by Benson was sure to meet discredit, and drew the
+gossips upon himself; which made his meditations tragic.  No sooner was
+one woman defeated than another took the field!  The object of the System
+was no sooner safe than its great author was in danger!
+
+"I can't think what has come to Benson" he said to Adrian.
+
+"He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several pounds of lead,"
+returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr. Clifford's manner.  "Change is
+what he wants! distraction! send him to Wales for a month, sir, and let
+Richard go with him.  The two victims of woman may do each other good."
+
+"Unfortunately I can't do without him," said the baronet.
+
+"Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all day, and on our
+chests all night!" Adrian ejaculated.
+
+"I think while he preserves this aspect we won't have him at the dinner-
+table," said the baronet.
+
+Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions; and added:
+"You know, sir, what he says?"
+
+Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him that Benson's
+excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused by anxiety for the safety
+of his master.
+
+"You must pardon a faithful fool, sir," he continued, for the baronet
+became red, and exclaimed:
+
+"His stupidity is past belief!  I have absolutely to bolt my study-door
+against him."
+
+Adrian at once beheld a charming scene in the interior of the study, not
+unlike one that Benson had visually witnessed.  For, like a wary prophet,
+Benson, that he might have warrant for what he foretold of the future,
+had a care to spy upon the present: warned haply by The Pilgrim's Scrip,
+of which he was a diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically:
+"Could we see Time's full face, we were wise of him."  Now to see Time's
+full face, it is sometimes necessary to look through keyholes, the
+veteran having a trick of smiling peace to you on one cheek and grimacing
+confusion on the other behind the curtain.  Decency and a sense of honour
+restrain most of us from being thus wise and miserable for ever.
+Benson's excuse was that he believed in his master, who was menaced.  And
+moreover, notwithstanding his previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was
+sweet to him.  So he peeped, and he saw a sight.  He saw Time's full
+face; or, in other words, he saw the wiles of woman and the weakness of
+man: which is our history, as Benson would have written it, and a great
+many poets and philosophers have written it.
+
+Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that Benson had seen:
+a somewhat different operation from the plucking of the Spring one: very
+innocent!  Our staid elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks
+she has, a reason or two about the roots.  She is not all instinct.  "For
+this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him to be the flower
+of men, I give myself to him!"  She makes that lofty inward exclamation
+while the hand is detaching her from the roots.  Even so strong a self-
+justification she requires.  She has not that blind glory in excess which
+her younger sister can gild the longest leap with.  And if, moth-like,
+she desires the star, she is nervously cautious of candles.  Hence her
+circles about the dangerous human flame are wide and shy.  She must be
+drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh reason.  She loves to sentimentalize.
+Lady Blandish had been sentimentalizing for ten years.  She would have
+preferred to pursue the game.  The dark-eyed dame was pleased with her
+smooth life and the soft excitement that did not ruffle it.  Not
+willingly did she let herself be won.
+
+"Sentimentalists," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "are they who seek to enjoy
+without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing done."
+
+"It is," the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, "a happy pastime
+and an important science to the timid, the idle, and the heartless; but a
+damning one to them who have anything to forfeit."
+
+However, one who could set down the dying for love, as a sentimentalism,
+can hardly be accepted as a clear authority.  Assuredly he was not one to
+avoid the incurring of the immense debtorship in any way: but he was a
+bondsman still to the woman who had forsaken him, and a spoken word would
+have made it seem his duty to face that public scandal which was the last
+evil to him.  What had so horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard had
+already beheld in Daphne's Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white
+hand!  Doubtless the keyhole somehow added to Benson's horror.  The two
+similar performances, so very innocent, had wondrous opposite
+consequences.  The first kindled Richard to adore Woman; the second
+destroyed Benson's faith in Man.  But Lady Blandish knew the difference
+between the two.  She understood why the baronet did not speak; excused,
+and respected him for it.  She was content, since she must love, to love
+humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his sorrows to comfort her.  A
+hundred fresh reasons for loving him arose and multiplied every day.  He
+read to her the secret book in his own handwriting, composed for
+Richard's Marriage Guide: containing Advice and Directions to a Young
+Husband, full of the most tender wisdom and delicacy; so she thought;
+nay, not wanting in poetry, though neither rhymed nor measured.  He
+expounded to her the distinctive character of the divers ages of love,
+giving the palm to the flower she put forth, over that of Spring, or the
+Summer rose.  And while they sat and talked; "My wound has healed," he
+said.  "How?" she asked.  "At the fountain of your eyes," he replied, and
+drew the joy of new life from her blushes, without incurring further
+debtor ship for a thing done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero, and a
+consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at his chariot-
+wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he has made an actual
+start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us, albeit the head
+of our fates.  By this you perceive the true hero, whether he be a prince
+or a pot-boy, that he does not plot; Fortune does all for him.  He may be
+compared to one to whom, in an electric circle, it is given to carry the
+battery.
+
+We caper and grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the
+power.  'Tis all Fortune's, whose puppet he is.  She deals her
+dispensations through him.  Yea, though our capers be never so comical,
+he laughs not.  Intent upon his own business, the true hero asks little
+services of us here and there; thinks it quite natural that they should
+be acceded to, and sees nothing ridiculous in the lamentable contortions
+we must go through to fulfil them.  Probably he is the elect of Fortune,
+because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own business:
+"Which is," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "with men to be valued equal to
+that force which in water makes a stream."  This prelude was necessary to
+the present chapter of Richard's history.
+
+It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was busy
+with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang, and Hippias
+Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move within him.  He
+communicated his delightful new sensations to the baronet, his brother,
+whose constant exclamation with regard to him, was: "Poor Hippias!  All
+his machinery is bare!" and had no hope that he would ever be in a
+condition to defend it from view.  Nevertheless Hippias had that hope,
+and so he told his brother, making great exposure of his machinery to
+effect the explanation.  He spoke of all his physical experiences
+exultingly, and with wonder.  The achievement of common efforts, not
+usually blazoned, he celebrated as triumphs, and, of course, had Adrian
+on his back very quickly.  But he could bear him, or anything, now.  It
+was such ineffable relief to find himself looking out upon the world of
+mortals instead of into the black phantasmal abysses of his own
+complicated frightful structure.   "My mind doesn't so much seem to haunt
+itself, now," said Hippias, nodding shortly and peering out of intense
+puckers to convey a glimpse of what hellish sufferings his had been: "I
+feel as if I had come aboveground."
+
+A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never gets
+sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it is he whose groaning
+petitions for charity do at last rout that Christian virtue.  Lady
+Blandish, a charitable soul, could not listen to Hippias, though she had
+a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir Austin had also small patience
+with his brother's gleam of health, which was just enough to make his
+disease visible.  He remembered his early follies and excesses, and bent
+his ear to him as one man does to another who complains of having to pay
+a debt legally incurred.
+
+"I think," said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias were
+received, "that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach, it's best
+to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent."
+
+Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or
+real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious.  He
+advised his uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful
+impressions in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits.  He made Hippias
+visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village, who bewailed the
+loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and did his best to waken him up,
+and give the outer world a stronger hold on him.  He succeeded in nothing
+but in winning his uncle's gratitude.  The season bloomed scarce longer
+than a week for Hippias, and then began to languish.  The poor Dyspepsy's
+eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he went underground again.  He
+announced that he felt  "spongy things"--one of the more constant throes
+of his malady.  His bitter face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid
+hallucinations.  He told Richard he must give up going about with him:
+people telling of their ailments made him so uncomfortable--the birds
+were so noisy, pairing--the rude bare soil sickened him.
+
+Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father's.  He asked what
+the doctors said.
+
+"Oh! the doctors!" cried Hippias with vehement scepticism.  "No man of
+sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder.  Do you happen to have
+heard of any new remedy then, Richard?  No?  They advertise a great many
+cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy.  I wonder whether one
+can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures?  I see no reason why
+there should be no cure for such a disease?--Eh?  And it's just one of
+the things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one who
+is in the beaten track.  Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've often
+thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some of the
+extraordinary digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his gastric
+juices, there is really no manner of reason why we should not comfortably
+dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and one might eat
+French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what's to follow.  And
+this makes me think that those fellows may, after all, have got some
+truth in them: some secret that, of course, they require to be paid for.
+We distrust each other in this world too much, Richard.  I've felt
+inclined once or twice--but it's absurd!--If it only alleviated a few of
+my sufferings I should be satisfied.  I've no hesitation in saying that I
+should be quite satisfied if it only did away with one or two, and left
+me free to eat and drink as other people do.  Not that I mean to try
+them.  It's only a fancy--Eh?  What a thing health is, my dear boy!  Ah!
+if I were like you!  I was in love once!"
+
+"Were you!" said Richard, coolly regarding him.
+
+"I've forgotten what I felt!" Hippias sighed.  "You've very much
+improved, my dear boy."
+
+"So people say," quoth Richard.
+
+Hippias looked at him anxiously: "If I go to town and get the doctor's
+opinion about trying a new course--Eh, Richard? will you come with me?  I
+should like your company.  We could see London together, you know.  Enjoy
+ourselves," and Hippias rubbed his hands.
+
+Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his uncle's
+eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where they were--an
+answer that might mean anything.  Hippias immediately became possessed by
+the beguiling project.  He went to the baronet, and put the matter before
+him, instancing doctors as the object of his journey, not quacks, of
+course; and requesting leave to take Richard.  Sir Austin was getting
+uneasy about his son's manner.  It was not natural.  His heart seemed to
+be frozen: he had no confidences: he appeared to have no ambition--to
+have lost the virtues of youth with the poison that had passed out of
+him.  He was disposed to try what effect a little travelling might have
+on him, and had himself once or twice hinted to Richard that it would be
+good for him to move about, the young man quietly replying that he did
+not wish to quit Raynham at all, which was too strict a fulfilment of his
+father's original views in educating him there entirely.  On the day that
+Hippias made his proposal, Adrian, seconded by Lady Blandish, also made
+one.  The sweet Spring season stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not
+to pastoral measures: to the joys of the operatic world and bravura
+glories.  He also suggested that it would be advisable to carry Richard
+to town for a term, and let him know his position, and some freedom.  Sir
+Austin weighed the two proposals.  He was pretty certain that Richard's
+passion was consumed, and that the youth was now only under the burden of
+its ashes.  He had found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn: a
+great lock of golden hair.  He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling
+about for it with faint hands, never asked for it.  This precious lock
+(Miss Davenport had thrust it into his hand at Belthorpe as Lucy's last
+gift), what sighs and tears it had weathered!  The baronet laid it in
+Richard's sight one day, and beheld him take it up, turn it over, and
+drop it down again calmly, as if he were handling any common curiosity.
+It pacified him on that score.  The young man's love was dead.  Dr.
+Clifford said rightly: he wanted distractions.  The baronet determined
+that Richard should go.  Hippias and Adrian then pressed their several
+suits as to which should have him.  Hippias, when he could forget
+himself, did not lack sense.  He observed that Adrian was not at present
+a proper companion for Richard, and would teach him to look on life from
+the false point.
+
+"You don't understand a young philosopher," said the baronet.
+
+"A young philosopher's an old fool!" returned Hippias, not thinking that
+his growl had begotten a phrase.
+
+His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
+"Excellent! worthy of your best days!  You're wrong, though, in applying
+it to Adrian.  He has never been precocious.  All he has done has been to
+bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and sees.  I think,
+however," the baronet added, "he may want faith in the better qualities
+of men."  And this reflection inclined him not to let his son be alone
+with Adrian.  He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his father's
+wishes tended, and decided so to please him.  Naturally it annoyed Adrian
+extremely.  He said to his chief:
+
+"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir.  I don't see that we derive
+any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty years
+of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional
+tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered
+Quackem's Pill.  My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I would rather
+society were not intimate with them under their several headings."
+Adrian enumerated some of the most abhorrent.  "You know him, sir.  If he
+conceives a duty, he will do it in the face of every decency--all the
+more obstinate because the conception is rare.  If he feels a little
+brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that makes us
+famous!  We go down to posterity with heightened characteristics, to say
+nothing of a contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned
+inside-out to the rabble.  I confess I don't desire to have my machinery
+made bare to them."
+
+Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to Dr.
+Bairam.  He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in about two
+weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective Summer
+campaign.  The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came.
+Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put into his
+hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his pocket-expenses.
+He did not want it, he said, but she told him he was a young man, and
+would soon make that fly when he stood on his own feet.  The old lady did
+not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her
+grandnephew to understand that, should he require more, he knew where to
+apply, and secrets would be kept.  His father presented him with a
+hundred pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care
+for money.  "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.
+
+Hippias had few injunctions to observe.  They were to take up quarters at
+the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the house not being
+altogether wholesome.  The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of the
+imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man's movements, and
+letting him imagine he was under surveillance.  Richard having been, as
+it were, pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom
+again, in complete independence, as far as he could feel.  So did the
+sage decree; and we may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his
+previsions, and how successful they must have been, had not Fortune, the
+great foe to human cleverness, turned against him, or he against himself.
+
+The departure took place on a fine March morning.  The bird of Winter
+sang from the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of Summer.
+Adrian rode between Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham station, and
+vented his disgust on them after his own humorous fashion, because it did
+not rain and damp their ardour.  In the rear came Lady Blandish and the
+baronet, conversing on the calm summit of success.
+
+"You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself," she said, pointing
+with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure of the young man.
+
+"Outwardly, perhaps," he answered, and led to a discussion on Purity and
+Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.
+
+"But you do not," said the baronet.  "And there I admire the always true
+instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form, and
+seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a
+characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted--how soon!  For there are
+questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when,
+hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest soul
+becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do battle.
+Strength indicates a boundless nature--like the Maker.  Strength is a God
+to you--Purity a toy.  A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of playing
+with it," he added, with unaccustomed slyness.
+
+The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that the
+constraint on his mind had left him.  It was for women to fight their
+fight now; she only took part in it for amusement.  This is how the ranks
+of our enemies are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a champion in
+their midst than she betrays them.
+
+"I see," she said archly, "we are the lovelier vessels; you claim the
+more direct descent.  Men are seedlings: Women--slips!  Nay, you have
+said so," she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.
+
+"But I never printed it."
+
+"Oh! what you speak answers for print with me."
+
+Exquisite Blandish!  He could not choose but love her.
+
+"Tell me what are your plans?" she asked.  "May a woman know?"
+
+He replied, "I have none or you would share them.  I shall study him in
+the world.  This indifference must wear off.  I shall mark his
+inclinations now, and he shall be what he inclines to.  Occupation will
+be his prime safety.  His cousin Austin's plan of life appears most to
+his taste, and he can serve the people that way as well as in Parliament,
+should he have no stronger ambition.  The clear duty of a man of any
+wealth is to serve the people as he best can.  He shall go among Austin's
+set, if he wishes it, though personally I find no pleasure in rash
+imaginations, and undigested schemes built upon the mere instinct of
+principles."
+
+"Look at him now," said the lady.  "He seems to care for nothing; not
+even for the beauty of the day."
+
+"Or Adrian's jokes," added the baronet.
+
+Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a
+confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his chin to
+one, and to the other, with audible asides.  Richard he treated as a new
+instrument of destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering
+metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting condition; and he got so
+much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the
+mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal
+insult for his hearers not to laugh.  The wise youth's dull life at
+Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional
+joker.
+
+"Oh! the Spring! the Spring!" he cried, as in scorn of his sallies they
+exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him.  "You
+seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles, rooks,
+and daws.  Why can't you let them alone?"
+
+                   'Wind bloweth,
+                    Cock croweth,
+                         Doodle-doo;
+                    Hippy verteth,
+                    Ricky sterteth,
+                         Sing Cuckoo!'
+
+There's an old native pastoral!--Why don't you write a Spring sonnet,
+Ricky?  The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the
+strawberry.  Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for.  What kind of
+berry was that I saw some verses of yours about once?--amatory verses to
+some kind of berry--yewberry, blueberry, glueberry!  Pretty verses,
+decidedly warm.  Lips, eyes, bosom, legs--legs?  I don't think you gave
+her any legs.  No legs and no nose.  That appears to be the poetic taste
+of the day.  It shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for a
+chaste people.
+
+          'O might I lie where leans her lute!'
+
+and offend no moral community.  That's not a bad image of yours, my dear
+boy:
+
+              'Her shape is like an antelope
+               Upon the Eastern hills.'
+
+But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be considered
+correct when you give her no legs?  You will see at the ballet that you
+are in error about women at present, Richard.  That admirable institution
+which our venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction
+of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you.  I assure you I used,
+from reading The Pilgrim's Scrip, to imagine all sorts of things about
+them, till I was taken there, and learnt that they are very like us after
+all, and then they ceased to trouble me.  Mystery is the great danger to
+youth, my son!  Mystery is woman's redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the
+Ordeal!  I'm aware that you've had your lessons in anatomy, but nothing
+will persuade you that an anatomical figure means flesh and blood.  You
+can't realize the fact.  Do you intend to publish when you're in town?
+It'll be better not to put your name.  Having one's name to a volume of
+poems is as bad as to an advertising pill."
+
+"I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish," quoth Richard.
+"Hark at that old blackbird, uncle."
+
+"Yes!" Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his
+contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, "fine old fellow!"
+
+"What a chuckle he gives out before he flies!  Not unlike July
+nightingales.  You know that bird I told you of--the blackbird that had
+its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell's bird from
+the tree opposite.  A rascal knocked it over the day before yesterday,
+and the dame says her bird hasn't sung a note since."
+
+"Extraordinary!" Hippias muttered abstractedly.  "I remember the verses."
+
+"But where's your moral?" interposed the wrathful Adrian. "Where's
+constancy rewarded?
+
+              'The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
+               With orange-tawny bill;
+               The rascal with his aim so true;
+               The Poet's little quill!'
+
+"Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the poet!
+Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who
+for three entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a
+defunct male.  I suppose that's what Ricky dwells on."
+
+"As you please, my dear Adrian," says Richard, and points out larch-buds
+to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.
+
+The wise youth was driven to extremity.  Such a lapse from his pupil's
+heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not believe
+in.  "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his turn, and pretending
+to interpret his fits of song:
+
+"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my Fiesco?--
+Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train has started--
+jolly! jolly! jolly!  We'll be winners yet!
+
+"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"
+
+"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a manner
+mildly affable.
+
+Adrian shrugged.  "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he
+emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for
+which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into
+Bellingham.
+
+There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and gala
+waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had
+preceded his master in charge of the baggage.  He likewise was bound for
+London.  Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet:
+"The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;" but he paid no
+heed to the words.  Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look
+took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the
+nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could
+supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was not stiffened by the
+eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival.  The baronet, Lady
+Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's adieux
+across the palings.  He shook hands with each of them in the same kindly
+cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on his style of doing
+it.  The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into one of
+the carriages.
+
+Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at war
+with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern life;
+and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant
+watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active forties,
+cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he but
+sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this, and smile
+wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System incarnate, wave a
+serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor morbidly unwilling to try
+his luck alone for a term of two weeks.  At present, I am aware, an
+audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on
+incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing.  An audience will come
+to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work: who, as
+it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds of
+March when they do not blow.  To them will nothing be trivial, seeing
+that they will have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around
+us, whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes.
+And they will perceive, moreover, that in real life all hangs together:
+the train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon the
+field of thousands.  They will see the links of things as they pass, and
+wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter came out of
+that small one.
+
+Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet's gratification
+at his son's demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience
+not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some excited
+apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went
+sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young
+man throw himself back in the carriage violently laughing.  Science was
+at a loss to account for that.  Sir Austin checked his mind from
+inquiring, that he might keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it
+odd, and the jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight,
+remained with him as he rode home.
+
+Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say: "You see it was
+the very thing he wanted.  He has got his natural spirits already."
+
+"It was," Adrian put in his word, "the exact thing he wanted.  His
+spirits have returned miraculously."
+
+"Something amused him," said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing
+train.
+
+"Probably something his uncle said or did," Lady Blandish suggested, and
+led off at a gallop.
+
+Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct.  The cause for Richard's
+laughter was simple enough.  Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed
+on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells
+in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express
+his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the
+Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which
+unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,
+
+                   "Hippy verteth,
+                    Sing cuckoo!"
+
+in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized
+him.
+
+                    "Hippy verteth!"
+
+Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so
+immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
+
+"Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy," said Hippias, and
+was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest "ha! ha!"
+
+"Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?" cried Richard.
+
+"I really don't know," Hippias chuckled.
+
+"Nor I, uncle!  Sing, cuckoo!"
+
+They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable.  Hippias
+not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like
+any blithe creature of the season.  He remembered old legal jokes, and
+anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at him--
+he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his own
+transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes, now and
+then, that it might not last, and that he must go underground again, lent
+him a look of pathos and humour which tickled his youthful companion
+irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.
+
+"I tell you what, uncle," said Richard, "I think travelling's a capital
+thing."
+
+"The best thing in the world, my dear boy," Hippias returned.  "It makes
+me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before, instead of
+chaining myself to a task.  We're quite different beings in a minute.  I
+am.  Hem! what shall we have for dinner?"
+
+"Leave that to me, uncle.  I shall order for you.  You know, I intend to
+make you well.  How gloriously we go along!  I should like to ride on a
+railway every day."
+
+Hippias remarked: "They say it rather injures the digestion."
+
+"Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow."
+
+"Perhaps I shall do something yet," sighed Hippias, alluding to the vast
+literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of.  "I hope I shall have a good
+night to-night."
+
+"Of course you will!  What! after laughing like that?"
+
+"Ugh!" Hippias grunted, "I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment you get
+into bed!"
+
+"The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment I wake.  Health's
+everything!"
+
+"Health's everything!" echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.
+
+"And if you'll put yourself in my hands," Richard continued, "you shall
+do just as I do.  You shall be well and strong, and sing 'Jolly!' like
+Adrian's blackbird.  You shall, upon my honour, uncle!"
+
+He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery--no less than
+twelve a day--that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness
+almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his own.
+
+"Mind," quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, "mind your dishes are
+not too savoury!"
+
+"Light food and claret!  Regular meals and amusement!  Lend your heart to
+all, but give it to none!" exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters,
+"Yes! yes!" and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his not
+following that maxim earlier.
+
+"Love ruins us, my dear boy," he said, thinking to preach Richard a
+lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:
+
+              "The love of Monsieur Francatelli,
+               It was the ruin of--et coetera."
+
+Hippias blinked, exclaiming, "Really, my dear boy!  I never saw you so
+excited."
+
+"It's the railway!  It's the fun, uncle!"
+
+"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden Bride!
+Keep her if you can.  That's a pretty fable of your father's.  I gave him
+the idea, though.  Austin filches a great many of my ideas!"
+
+"Here's the idea in verse, uncle:
+
+              'O sunless walkers by the tide!
+               O have you seen the Golden Bride!
+               They say that she is fair beyond
+               All women; faithful, and more fond!
+
+"You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by the
+brink of a stream.  They howl, and answer:
+
+               Faithful she is, but she forsakes:
+               And fond, yet endless woe she makes:
+               And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd;
+               To know her not till she is lost!'
+
+"Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the
+fabulist pursues:
+
+              'She hath a palace in the West:
+               Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:
+               And him the Morning Star awakes
+               Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
+
+               So lives he till he sees, alas!
+               The maids of baser metal pass.'
+
+"And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with one
+of them.  There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy Maid,
+and others of them.  First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds her
+only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina, till
+he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less obscure
+become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her radiance shines
+forth, my uncle."
+
+"Verse rather blunts the point.  Well, keep to her, now you've got her,"
+says Hippias.
+
+"We will, uncle!--Look how the farms fly past!  Look at the cattle in the
+fields!  And how the lines duck, and swim up!
+
+         'She claims the whole, and not the part--
+          The coin of an unused heart!
+          To gain his Golden Bride again,
+          He hunts with melancholy men,'
+
+--and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!"
+
+"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias
+interjected. "You don't rhyme badly.  But stick to prose.  Poetry's a
+Base-metal maid.  I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion.
+I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."
+
+"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard.  "You shall ride in the park with
+me every day to get an appetite.  You and I and the Golden Bride.  You
+know that little poem of Sandoe's?
+
+         'She rides in the park on a prancing bay,
+            She and her squires together;
+          Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,
+            And toss with the tossing feather.
+
+         'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
+            Is the beautiful face as it passes;
+          The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+            The coxcombs lift their glasses.
+
+         'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
+            The ice-wall that guards her securely;
+          You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
+            As the heart that can image her purely.'
+
+"Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's?  I suppose they quarrelled.
+He understands the heart.  What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?
+
+         'True, Madam, you may think to part
+            Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
+          But Beauty's for the largest heart,
+            And all abysses Love can bridge!
+
+"Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words."
+
+"Largest heart!" he sneered.  "What's a 'glacier-ridge'?  I've never seen
+one.  I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.'  But don't go parading your
+admiration of that person, Richard.  Your father will speak to you on the
+subject when he thinks fit."
+
+"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard.  "What a pity!" and he
+murmured to a pleased ear:
+
+               "Beauty's for the largest heart!"
+
+The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of
+passengers at a station.  Richard examined their faces with pleasure.
+All faces pleased him.  Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and
+his Golden Bride.  As he could not well talk his thoughts before them, he
+looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape, projecting
+all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing hazily on the
+wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great service he was to
+be to his fellow-creatures.  In the midst of his reveries he was landed
+in London.  Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage door.  A glance told
+Richard that his squire had something curious on his mind; and he gave
+Tom the word to speak out.  Tom edged his master out of hearing, and
+began sputtering a laugh.
+
+"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said.  "That young Tom!  He've come to
+town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more than a
+stag.  He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know
+how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis.  Look at him,
+Mr. Richard!  There he goes."
+
+Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.
+
+"Who has he come for?" Richard asked.
+
+"Don't you know, sir?  You don't like me to mention the name," mumbled
+Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.
+
+"Is it for her, Tom?"
+
+"Miss Lucy, sir."
+
+Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out
+of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him
+into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left,
+always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to
+appear at his ease.  Even when they were seated in the conveyance,
+Hippias could not persuade him to drive off.  He made the excuse that he
+did not wish to start till there was a clear road.  At last young Tom
+cast anchor by a policeman, and, doubtless at the official's suggestion,
+bashfully took seat in a cab, and was shot into the whirlpool of London.
+Richard then angrily asked his driver what he was waiting for.
+
+"Are you ill, my boy?" said Hippias.  "Where's your colour?"
+
+He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow would
+drive fast.
+
+"I hate slow motion after being in the railway," he said.
+
+Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.
+
+"Nothing, uncle! nothing!" said Richard, looking fiercely candid.
+
+They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch
+from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such
+pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the
+heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart--the struggle of life and
+death in him--grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries
+out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead
+river.  And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the
+old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of
+the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is,
+the old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his
+passion filing him afresh.  Still was fair Lucy the one woman to Richard.
+He had forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence.  Must the
+maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy's shape.  Thinking
+of her now so near him--his darling! all her graces, her sweetness, her
+truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her true--swam in a
+thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic, and full of glory,
+that now wrung his heart, and now elated it.  As well might a ship
+attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the violent emotion that began
+to rage in his breast.  "I shall not see her!" he said to himself
+exultingly, and at the same instant thought, how black was every corner
+of the earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless
+the place he was going to!  Then he determined to bear it; to live in
+darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom.  "For
+if I chose I could see her--this day within an hour!--I could see her,
+and touch her hand, and, oh, heaven!--But I do not choose."  And a great
+wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only to swell again more
+stormily.
+
+Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was
+uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this
+Babylon alone.  And flying from point to point, it struck him that they
+had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of
+the way--they had been miserably plotting against him once more.  "They
+shall see what right they have to fear me.  I'll shame them!" was the
+first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and see
+her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not
+to be one of the conspirators.  Nevertheless, after forming that resolve,
+he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the wheels that bore
+him away from it--perhaps because he knew, as some do when passion is
+lord, that his intelligence juggled with him; though none the less keenly
+did he feel his wrongs and suspicions.  His Golden Bride was waning fast.
+But when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: "We shall soon be there!" the
+spell broke.  Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to speak to Tom,
+and would ride with him the rest of the journey.  He knew well enough
+which line of railway his Lucy must come by.  He had studied every town
+and station on the line.  Before his uncle could express more than a mute
+remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom Bakewell, who came behind with
+the boxes and baggage in a companion cab, his head a yard beyond the
+window to make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle preceding.
+
+"What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is," said Hippias.  "We're in
+the very street!"
+
+Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to arrange
+everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his bow.
+
+"Mr. Richard, sir?--evaporated?" was Berry's modulated inquiry.
+
+"Behind--among the boxes, fool!" Hippias growled, as he received Berry's
+muscular assistance to alight.  "Lunch ready--eh!"
+
+"Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir--been in attendance one
+quarter of an hour.  Heah!" Berry sang out to the second cab, which, with
+its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces distant.
+At his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on them, and
+went off in a contrary direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to consult
+his gold watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and the
+forthcoming dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk's office where
+he sat, and a man of a scowling countenance, who looked a villain, and
+whom he was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his hands, nodding that it
+would be prudent for him to read, and be silent.  Ripton obeyed in alarm.
+Apparently the contents of the letter relieved his conscience; for he
+reached down his hat, and told Mr. Beazley to inform his father that he
+had business of pressing importance in the West, and should meet him at
+the station.  Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the paternal Thompson
+without delay, and together making their observations from the window,
+they beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton darted and was
+followed by one in groom's dress.  It was Saturday, the day when Ripton
+gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself upon his
+family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son's arm as he walked down to
+the station; but that third glass of Port which always stood for his
+second, and the groom's suggestion of aristocratic acquaintances,
+prevented Mr. Thompson from interfering: so Ripton was permitted to
+depart.
+
+In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held.  It had the
+preciseness of an imperial mandate.
+
+Dear Ripton,--You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately.  Not a word
+to a soul.  Then come along with Tom.  R.D.F."
+
+"Lodgings for a lady!" Ripton meditated aloud: "What sort of lodgings?
+Where am I to get lodgings?  Who's the lady?--I say!" he addressed the
+mysterious messenger.  "So you're Tom Bakewell, are you, Tom?"
+
+Tom grinned his identity.
+
+"Do you remember the rick, Tom?  Ha! ha!  We got out of that neatly.  We
+might all have been transported, though.  I could have convicted you,
+Tom, safe!  It's no use coming across a practised lawyer.  Now tell me."
+Ripton having flourished his powers, commenced his examination: "Who's
+this lady?"
+
+"Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir," Tom resumed his scowl to
+reply.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton acquiesced.  "Is she young, Tom?"
+
+Tom said she was not old.
+
+"Handsome, Tom?"
+
+"Some might think one thing, some another," Tom said.
+
+"And where does she come from now?" asked Ripton, with the friendly
+cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.
+
+"Comes from the country, sir."
+
+"A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?"
+
+Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a look.  Tom's face
+was a dead blank.
+
+"Ah!" Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite him.  "Why, you're
+quite a scholar, Tom!  Mr. Richard is well.  All right at home?"
+
+"Come to town this mornin' with his uncle," said Tom.  "All well, thank
+ye, sir."
+
+"Ha!" cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, "now I see.  You all came to
+town to-day, and these are your boxes outside.  So, so!  But Mr. Richard
+writes for me to get lodgings for a lady.  There must be some mistake--he
+wrote in a hurry.  He wants lodgings for you all--eh?"
+
+"'M sure I d'n know what he wants," said Tom.  "You'd better go by the
+letter, sir."
+
+Ripton re-consulted that document.  "'Lodgings for a lady, and then come
+along with Tom.  Not a word to a soul.' I say! that looks like--but he
+never cared for them.  You don't mean to say, Tom, he's been running away
+with anybody?"
+
+Tom fell back upon his first reply: "Better wait till ye see Mr. Richard,
+sir," and Ripton exclaimed: "Hanged if you ain't the tightest witness I
+ever saw!  I shouldn't like to have you in a box.  Some of you country
+fellows beat any number of cockneys.  You do!"
+
+Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and Ripton, as
+nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering how to perform
+his friend's injunctions; deciding firstly, that a lady fresh from the
+country ought to lodge near the parks, in which direction he told the
+cabman to drive.  Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined the
+hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.
+
+It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do have beneficent
+omens to prepare them for their parts when the hero is in full career, so
+that they really may be nerved to meet him; ay, and to check him in his
+course, had they that signal courage.  For instance, Mrs. Elizabeth
+Berry, a ripe and wholesome landlady of advertised lodgings, on the
+borders of Kensington, noted, as she sat rocking her contemplative person
+before the parlour fire this very March afternoon, a supernatural
+tendency in that fire to burn all on one side: which signifies that a
+wedding approaches the house.  Why--who shall say?  Omens are as
+impassable as heroes.  It may be because in these affairs the fire is
+thought to be all on one side.  Enough that the omen exists, and spoke
+its solemn warning to the devout woman.  Mrs. Berry, in her circle, was
+known as a certificated lecturer against the snares of matrimony.  Still
+that was no reason why she should not like a wedding.  Expectant,
+therefore, she watched the one glowing cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing
+tremours beheld a cab of many boxes draw up by her bit of garden, and a
+gentleman emerge from it in the set of consulting an advertisement paper.
+The gentleman required lodgings for a lady.  Lodgings for a lady Mrs.
+Berry could produce, and a very roseate smile for a gentleman; so much so
+that Ripton forgot to ask about the terms, which made the landlady in
+Mrs. Berry leap up to embrace him as the happy man.  But her experienced
+woman's eye checked her enthusiasm.  He had not the air of a bridegroom:
+he did not seem to have a weight on his chest, or an itch to twiddle
+everything with his fingers.  At any rate, he was not the bridegroom for
+whom omens fly abroad.  Promising to have all ready for the lady within
+an hour, Mrs. Berry fortified him with her card, curtsied him back to his
+cab, and floated him off on her smiles.
+
+The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of intrigue through
+London streets, now proceeded sedately to finish its operations.  Ripton
+was landed at a hotel in Westminster.  Ere he was halfway up the stairs,
+a door opened, and his old comrade in adventure rushed down.  Richard
+allowed no time for salutations.  "Have you done it?" was all he asked.
+For answer Ripton handed him Mrs. Berry's card.  Richard took it, and
+left him standing there.  Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard the
+gracious rustle of feminine garments above.  Richard came a little in
+advance, leading and half-supporting a figure in a black-silk mantle and
+small black straw bonnet; young--that was certain, though she held her
+veil so close he could hardly catch the outlines of her face; girlishly
+slender, and sweet and simple in appearance.  The hush that came with
+her, and her soft manner of moving, stirred the silly youth to some of
+those ardours that awaken the Knight of Dames in our bosoms.  He felt
+that he would have given considerable sums for her to lift her veil.  He
+could see that she was trembling--perhaps weeping.  It was the master of
+her fate she clung to.  They passed him without speaking.  As she went
+by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a glimpse of noble tresses and a
+lovely neck; great golden curls hung loosely behind, pouring from under
+her bonnet.  She looked a captive borne to the sacrifice.  What Ripton,
+after a sight of those curls, would have given for her just to lift her
+veil an instant and strike him blind with beauty, was, fortunately for
+his exchequer, never demanded of him.  And he had absolutely been
+composing speeches as he came along in the cab! gallant speeches for the
+lady, and sly congratulatory ones for his friend, to be delivered as
+occasion should serve, that both might know him a man of the world, and
+be at their ease.  He forgot the smirking immoralities he had revelled
+in.  This was clearly serious.  Ripton did not require to be told that
+his friend was in love, and meant that life and death business called
+marriage, parents and guardians consenting or not.
+
+Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly, "I want you now to
+go to my uncle at our hotel.  Keep him quiet till I come.  Say I had to
+see you--say anything.  I shall be there by the dinner hour.  Rip! I must
+talk to you alone after dinner."
+
+Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home.  He was very
+curious to hear the plot of the New Comedy; and besides, there was
+Richard's face questioning him sternly and confidently for signs of
+unhesitating obedience.  He finished his grimaces by asking the name and
+direction of the hotel.  Richard pressed his hand.  It is much to obtain
+even that recognition of our devotion from the hero.
+
+Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by his chuckles and
+grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work cut out for him.  In a few
+minutes they had driven to their separate destinations; Ripton was left
+to the unusual exercise of his fancy.  Such is the nature of youth and
+its thirst for romance, that only to act as a subordinate is pleasant.
+When one unfurls the standard of defiance to parents and guardians, he
+may be sure of raising a lawless troop of adolescent ruffians, born
+rebels, to any amount.  The beardless crew know that they have not a
+chance of pay; but what of that when the rosy prospect of thwarting their
+elders is in view?  Though it is to see another eat the Forbidden Fruit,
+they will run all his risks with him.  Gaily Ripton took rank as
+lieutenant in the enterprise, and the moment his heart had sworn the
+oaths, he was rewarded by an exquisite sense of the charms of existence.
+London streets wore a sly laugh to him.  He walked with a dandified heel.
+The generous youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and glanced intimately
+at the ladies, overflowingly happy.  The crossing-sweepers blessed him.
+He hummed lively tunes, he turned over old jokes in his mouth unctuously,
+he hugged himself, he had a mind to dance down Piccadilly, and all
+because a friend of his was running away with a pretty girl, and he was
+in the secret.
+
+It was only when he stood on the doorstep of Richard's hotel, that his
+jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering that he had then to
+commence the duties of his office, and must fabricate a plausible story
+to account for what he knew nothing about--a part that the greatest of
+sages would find it difficult to perform.  The young, however, whom sages
+well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties to the
+level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias's angry complaints
+against the friend he serenely inquired for, gave Ripton his cue.
+
+"We're in the very street--within a stone's-throw of the house, and he
+jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into another; he must be mad--that
+boy's got madness in him!--and carries off all the boxes--my dinner-
+pills, too! and keeps away the whole of the day, though he promised to go
+to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me," said Hippias,
+venting an enraged snarl to sum up his grievances.
+
+Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say he's been to the doctor?" Hippias cried out.
+
+"He has called on him twice, sir," said Ripton, expressively.  "On
+leaving me he was going a third time.  I shouldn't wonder that's what
+detains him--he's so determined."
+
+By fine degrees Ripton ventured to grow circumstantial, saying that
+Richard's case was urgent and required immediate medical advice; and that
+both he and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose an hour in
+obtaining it.
+
+"He's alarmed about himself," said Ripton, and tapped his chest.
+
+Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his nephew of any
+physical affliction.
+
+"He was afraid of making you anxious, I think, sir."
+
+Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering at the
+alphabet to recollect the first letter of the doctor's name.  They had
+met in the hall below, and were laughing heartily as they entered the
+room.  Ripton jumped up to get the initiative.
+
+"Have you seen the doctor?" he asked, significantly plucking at Richard's
+fingers.
+
+Richard was all abroad at the question.
+
+Algernon clapped him on the back.  "What the deuce do you want with
+doctor, boy?"
+
+The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they were.  "Oh, ay! the
+doctor!" he said, smiling frankly at his lieutenant." Why, he tells me
+he'd back me to do Milo's trick in a week from the present day.--Uncle,"
+he came forward to Hippias, "I hope you'll excuse me for running off as I
+did.  I was in a hurry.  I left something at the railway.  This stupid
+Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself.  The fact was, I wanted to
+fetch the doctor to see you here--so that you might have no trouble, you
+know.  You can't bear the sight of his instruments and skeletons--I've
+heard you say so.  You said it set all your marrow in revolt--'fried your
+marrow,' I think were the words, and made you see twenty thousand
+different ways of sliding down to the chambers of the Grim King.  Don't
+you remember?"
+
+Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not believe the story.
+Irritation at the mad ravishment of his pill-box rendered him
+incredulous.  As he had no means of confuting his nephew, all he could do
+safely to express his disbelief in him, was to utter petulant remarks on
+his powerlessness to appear at the dinner-table that day: upon which--
+Berry just then trumpeting dinner--Algernon seized one arm of the
+Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the laughing couple bore him into
+the room where dinner was laid, Ripton sniggering in the rear, the really
+happy man of the party.
+
+They had fun at the dinner-table.  Richard would have it; and his gaiety,
+his by-play, his princely superiority to truth and heroic promise of
+overriding all our laws, his handsome face, the lord and possessor of
+beauty that he looked, as it were a star shining on his forehead, gained
+the old complete mastery over Ripton, who had been, mentally at least,
+half patronizing him till then, because he knew more of London and life,
+and was aware that his friend now depended upon him almost entirely.
+
+After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his lieutenant's eye
+across the table, and said:
+
+"We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip, before you go.  Do
+you think the old lady has any chance?"
+
+"Not a bit!" said Ripton, authoritatively.
+
+"But it's worth fighting--eh, Rip?"
+
+"Oh, certainly!" was Ripton's mature opinion.
+
+Richard observed that Ripton's father seemed doubtful.  Ripton cited his
+father's habitual caution.  Richard made a playful remark on the
+necessity of sometimes acting in opposition to fathers.  Ripton agreed to
+it--in certain cases.
+
+"Yes, yes! in certain cases," said Richard.
+
+"Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!" Algernon interjected; Hippias adding:
+"And lay, too!"
+
+The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious dialogue, well kept
+up on both sides, and in the end desired a statement of the old lady's
+garrulous case; Hippias offering to decide what her chances were in law,
+and Algernon to give a common-sense judgment.
+
+"Rip will tell you," said Richard, deferentially signalling the lawyer.
+"I'm a bad hand at these matters.  Tell them how it stands, Rip."
+
+Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours to right his
+position on his chair, and, inwardly praying speed to the claret jug to
+come and strengthen his wits, began with a careless aspect: "Oh, nothing!
+She very curious old character!  She--a--wears a wig.  She--a--very
+curious old character indeed!  She--a--quite the old style.  There's no
+doing anything with her!" and Ripton took a long breath to relieve
+himself after his elaborate fiction.
+
+"So it appears," Hippias commented, and Algernon asked: "Well?  and about
+her wig?  Somebody stole it?" while Richard, whose features were grim
+with suppressed laughter, bade the narrator continue.
+
+Ripton lunged for the claret jug.  He had got an old lady like an
+oppressive bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless as she was.  In
+the pangs of ineffectual authorship his ideas shot at her wig, and then
+at her one characteristic of extreme obstinacy, and tore back again at
+her wig, but she would not be animated.  The obstinate old thing would
+remain a bundle.  Law studies seemed light in comparison with this
+tremendous task of changing an old lady from a doll to a human creature.
+He flung off some claret, perspired freely, and, with a mental tribute to
+the cleverness of those author fellows, recommenced: "Oh, nothing!  She--
+Richard knows her better than I do--an old lady--somewhere down in
+Suffolk.  I think we had better advise her not to proceed.  The expenses
+of litigation are enormous!  She--I think we had better advise her to
+stop short, and not make any scandal."
+
+"And not make any scandal!" Algernon took him up.  "Come, come!  there's
+something more than a wig, then?"
+
+Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no.  The luckless
+fictionist looked straight at his pitiless leader, and blurted out
+dubiously, "She--there's a daughter."
+
+"Born with effort!" ejaculated Hippias.  "Must give her pause after that!
+and I'll take the opportunity to stretch my length on the sofa.  Heigho!
+that's true what Austin says: 'The general prayer should be for a full
+stomach, and the individual for one that works well; for on that basis
+only are we a match for temporal matters, and able to contemplate
+eternal.'  Sententious, but true.  I gave him the idea, though!  Take
+care of your stomachs, boys! and if ever you hear of a monument proposed
+to a scientific cook or gastronomic doctor, send in your subscriptions.
+Or say to him while he lives, Go forth, and be a Knight!  Ha!  They have
+a good cook at this house.  He suits me better than ours at Raynham.  I
+almost wish I had brought my manuscript to town, I feel so much better.
+Aha! I didn't expect to digest at all without my regular incentive.  I
+think I shall give it up.--What do you say to the theatre to-night,
+boys!"
+
+Richard shouted, "Bravo, uncle!"
+
+"Let Mr. Thompson finish first," said Algernon.  "I want to hear the
+conclusion of the story.  The old girl has a wig and a daughter.  I'll
+swear somebody runs away with one of the two!  Fill your glass,
+Mr. Thompson, and forward!"
+
+"So somebody does," Ripton received his impetus.  "And they're found in
+town together," he made a fresh jerk.  "She--a--that is, the old lady--
+found them in company."
+
+"She finds him with her wig on in company!" said Algernon.  "Capital!
+Here's matter for the lawyers!"
+
+"And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances of
+aggravation?" Hippias observed, humorously twinkling with his stomachic
+contentment.
+
+"It's the daughter," Ripton sighed, and surrendering to pressure, hurried
+on recklessly, "A runaway match--beautiful girl!--the only son of a
+baronet--married by special licence.  A--the point is," he now brightened
+and spoke from his own element, "the point is whether the marriage can be
+annulled, as she's of the Catholic persuasion and he's a Protestant, and
+they're both married under age.  That's the point."
+
+Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and saw things more
+distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader's horrified face.
+
+The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when Richard sent
+his chair to the floor, crying, "What a muddle you're in, Rip!  You're
+mixing half-a-dozen stories together.  The old lady I told you about was
+old Dame Bakewell, and the dispute was concerning a neighbour of hers who
+encroached on her garden, and I said I'd pay the money to see her
+righted!"
+
+"Ah," said Ripton, humbly, "I was thinking of the other.  Her garden!
+Cabbages don't interest me"--
+
+"Here, come along," Richard beckoned to him savagely.  "I'll be back in
+five minutes, uncle," he nodded coolly to either.
+
+The young men left the room.  In the hall-passage they met Berry, dressed
+to return to Raynham.  Richard dropped a helper to the intelligence into
+his hand, and warned him not to gossip much of London.  Berry bowed
+perfect discreetness.
+
+"What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and Catholics
+marrying, Rip?" said Richard, as soon as they were in the street.
+
+"Why," Ripton answered, "I was so hard pushed for it, 'pon my honour, I
+didn't know what to say.  I ain't an author, you know; I can't make a
+story.  I was trying to invent a point, and I couldn't think of any
+other, and I thought that was just the point likely to make a jolly good
+dispute.  Capital dinners they give at those crack hotels.  Why did you
+throw it all upon me?  I didn't begin on the old lady."
+
+The hero mused, "It's odd!  It's impossible you could have known!  I'll
+tell you why, Rip!  I wanted to try you.  You fib well at long range, but
+you don't do at close quarters and single combat.  You're good behind
+walls, but not worth a shot in the open.  I just see what you're fit for.
+You're staunch--that I am certain of.  You always were.  Lead the way to
+one of the parks--down in that direction.  You know?--where she is!"
+
+Ripton led the way.  His dinner had prepared this young Englishman to
+defy the whole artillery of established morals.  With the muffled roar of
+London around them, alone in a dark slope of green, the hero, leaning on
+his henchman, and speaking in a harsh clear undertone, delivered his
+explanations.  Doubtless the true heroic insignia and point of view will
+be discerned, albeit in common private's uniform.
+
+"They've been plotting against me for a year, Rip!  When you see her,
+you'll know what it was to have such a creature taken away from you.  It
+nearly killed me.  Never mind what she is.  She's the most perfect and
+noble creature God ever made!  It's not only her beauty--I don't care so
+much about that!--but when you've once seen her, she seems to draw music
+from all the nerves of your body; but she's such an angel.  I worship
+her.  And her mind's like her face.  She's pure gold.  There, you'll see
+her to-night.
+
+"Well," he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous prospect,
+"they got her away, and I recovered.  It was Mister Adrian's work.
+What's my father's objection to her?  Because of her birth?  She's
+educated; her manners are beautiful--full of refinement--quick and soft!
+Can they show me one of their ladies like her?--she's the daughter of a
+naval lieutenant!  Because she's a Catholic?  What has religion to do
+with"--he pronounced "Love!" a little modestly--as it were a blush in his
+voice.
+
+"Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her.  It shows how
+we know ourselves!  And I cared for nothing.  I felt as if I had no
+blood.  I tried to imitate my dear Austin.  I wish to God he were here.
+I love Austin.  He would understand her.  He's coming back this year, and
+then--but it'll be too late then.--Well, my father's always scheming to
+make me perfect--he has never spoken to me a word about her, but I can
+see her in his eyes--he wanted to give me a change, he said, and asked me
+to come to town with my uncle Hippy, and I consented.  It was another
+plot to get me out of the way!  As I live, I had no more idea of meeting
+her than of flying to heaven!"
+
+He lifted his face.  "hook at those old elm branches!  How they seem to
+mix among the stars!--glittering fruits of Winter!"
+
+Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty bound to say, Yes!
+though he observed no connection between them and the narrative.
+
+"Well," the hero went on, "I came to town.  There I heard she was coming,
+too--coming home.  It must have been fate, Ripton!  Heaven forgive me!  I
+was angry with her, and I thought I should like to see her once--only
+once--and reproach her for being false--for she never wrote to me.  And,
+oh, the dear angel! what she must have suffered!--I gave my uncle the
+slip, and got to the railway she was coming by.  There was a fellow going
+to meet her--a farmer's son--and, good God! they were going to try and
+make her marry him!  I remembered it all then.  A servant of the farm had
+told me.  That fellow went to the wrong station, I suppose, for we saw
+nothing of him.  There she was--not changed a bit!--looking lovelier than
+ever!  And when she saw me, I knew in a minute that she must love me till
+death!--You don't know what it is yet, Rip!--Will you believe, it?--
+Though I was as sure she loved me and had been true as steel, as that I
+shall see her to-night, I spoke bitterly to her.  And she bore it meekly-
+-she looked like a saint.  I told her there was but one hope of life for
+me--she must prove she was true, and as I give up all, so must she.  I
+don't know what I said.  The thought of losing her made me mad.  She
+tried to plead with me to wait--it was for my sake, I know.  I pretended,
+like a miserable hypocrite, that she did not love me at all.  I think I
+said shameful things.  Oh what noble creatures women are!  She hardly had
+strength to move.  I took her to that place where you found us, Rip! she
+went down on her knees to me, I never dreamed of anything in life so
+lovely as she looked then. Her eyes were thrown up, bright with a crowd
+of tears--her dark brows bent together, like Pain and Beauty meeting in
+one; and her glorious golden hair swept off her shoulders as she hung
+forward to my hands.--Could I lose such a prize.--If anything could have
+persuaded me, would not that?--I thought of Dante's Madonna--Guido's
+Magdalen.--Is there sin in it?  I see none!  And if there is, it's all
+mine!  I swear she's spotless of a thought of sin.  I see her very soul?
+Cease to love her?  Who dares ask me?  Cease to love her?  Why, I live on
+her!--To see her little chin straining up from her throat, as she knelt
+to me!--there was one curl that fell across her throat"....
+
+Ripton listened for more.  Richard had gone off in a muse at the picture.
+
+"Well?" said Ripton, "and how about that young farmer fellow?"
+
+The hero's head was again contemplating the starry branches.  His
+lieutenant's question came to him after an interval.
+
+"Young Tom?  Why, it's young Torn Blaize--son of our old enemy, Rip!  I
+like the old man now.  Oh! I saw nothing of the fellow."
+
+"Lord!" cried Ripton, "are we going to get into a mess with Blaizes
+again?  I don't like that!"
+
+His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.
+
+"But when he goes to the train, and finds she's not there?"  Ripton
+suggested.
+
+"I've provided for that.  The fool went to the South-east instead of the
+South-west.  All warmth, all sweetness, comes with the South-west!--I've
+provided for that, friend Rip.  My trusty Tom awaits him there, as if by
+accident.  He tells him he has not seen her, and advises him to remain in
+town, and go for her there to-morrow, and the day following.  Tom has
+money for the work.  Young Tom ought to see London, you know, Rip!--like
+you.  We shall gain some good clear days.  And when old Blaize hears of
+it--what then?  I have her! she's mine!--Besides, he won't hear for a
+week.  This Tom beats that Tom in cunning, I'll wager.  Ha!  ha!" the
+hero burst out at a recollection.  "What do you think, Rip?  My father
+has some sort of System with me, it appears, and when I came to town the
+time before, he took me to some people--the Grandisons--and what do you
+think? one of the daughters is a little girl--a nice little thing enough
+very funny--and he wants me to wait for her!  He hasn't said so, but I
+know it.  I know what he means.  Nobody understands him but me.  I know
+he loves me, and is one of the best of men--but just consider!--a little
+girl who just comes up to my elbow.  Isn't it ridiculous?  Did you ever
+hear such nonsense?"
+
+Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was foolish.
+
+"No, no!  The die's cast!" said Richard.  "They've been plotting for a
+year up to this day, and this is what comes of it!  If my father loves
+me, he will love her.  And if he loves me, he'll forgive my acting
+against his wishes, and see it was the only thing to be done.  Come! step
+out! what a time we've been!" and away he went, compelling Ripton to the
+sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a column of grenadiers.
+
+Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it endowed a man with
+wind so that he could breathe great sighs, while going at a tremendous
+pace, and experience no sensation of fatigue.  The hero was communing
+with the elements, his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he pleased.
+Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the discrepancy between the
+pedestrian powers of the two, aimed their wit at Mr. Thompson junior's
+expense.  The pace, and nothing but the pace, induced Ripton to proclaim
+that they had gone too far, when they discovered that they had over shot
+the mark by half a mile.  In the street over which stood love's star, the
+hero thundered his presence at a door, and evoked a flying housemaid, who
+knew not Mrs. Berry.  The hero attached significance to the fact that his
+instincts should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that
+house.  The door being shut he stood in dead silence.
+
+"Haven't you got her card?" Ripton inquired, and heard that it was in the
+custody of the cabman.  Neither of them could positively bring to mind
+the number of the house.
+
+"You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the Forty Thieves,"
+Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met with no response.
+
+Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love!  The hero heavily
+descended the steps.
+
+Ripton murmured that they were done for.  His commander turned on him,
+and said: "Take all the houses on the opposite side, one after another.
+I'll take these."  With a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether
+subdued by Richard's native superiority to adverse circumstances.
+
+Then were families aroused.  Then did mortals dimly guess that something
+portentous was abroad.  Then were labourers all day in the vineyard,
+harshly wakened from their evening's nap.  Hope and Fear stalked the
+street, as again and again the loud companion summonses resounded.
+Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully.  He had Mrs. Berry before him,
+profuse of mellow curtsies.
+
+Richard ran to her and caught her hands: "She's well?--upstairs?"
+
+"Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and fluttering-
+like," Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone.  The lover had flown aloft.
+
+The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own private parlour, there
+to wait till he was wanted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence, punish one of
+the two lightly," is the dictum of The Pilgrim's's Scrip.
+
+It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of action, and
+occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the wild horses that are
+ever fretting to gallop off with them.  But when they have given the
+reins and the whip to another, what are they to do?  They may go down on
+their knees, and beg and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or moderate
+his pace.  Alas!  each fresh thing they do redoubles his ardour: There is
+a power in their troubled beauty women learn the use of, and what wonder?
+They have seen it kindle Ilium to flames so often!  But ere they grow
+matronly in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore, and do not, in
+truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of loveliness.  They
+resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy; pleasant to them,
+because they attribute it to excessive love.  And so the very sensible
+things which they can and do say, are vain.
+
+I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest.  Are not those
+their own horses in yonder team?  Certainly, if they were quite in
+earnest, they might soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter.  A
+hundred different ways of disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will point
+you out one or two that shall be instantly efficacious.  For Love, the
+charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love keeps his legs
+to the end.  Granted dear women are not quite in earnest, still the mere
+words they utter should be put to their good account.  They do mean them,
+though their hearts are set the wrong way.  'Tis a despairing, pathetic
+homage to the judgment of the majority, in whose faces they are flying.
+Punish Helen, very young, lightly.  After a certain age you may select
+her for special chastisement.  An innocent with Theseus, with Paris she
+is an advanced incendiary.
+
+The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to
+recall her stunned senses.  Her bonnet was un-removed, her hands clasped
+on her knees; dry tears in her eyes.  Like a dutiful slave, she rose to
+him.  And first he claimed her mouth.  There was a speech, made up of all
+the pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love could gather, awaiting
+him there; but his kiss scattered it to fragments.  She dropped to her
+seat weeping, and hiding her shamed cheeks.
+
+By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew it to
+her lips.
+
+He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.
+
+"Keep your eyes so."
+
+She could not.
+
+"Do you fear me, Lucy?"
+
+A throbbing pressure answered him.
+
+"Do you love me, darling?"
+
+She trembled from head to foot.
+
+"Then why do you turn from me?"
+
+She wept: "O Richard, take me home! take me home!"
+
+"Look at me, Lucy!"
+
+Her head shrank timidly round.
+
+"Keep your eyes on me, darling!  Now speak!"
+
+But she could not look and speak too.  The lover knew his mastery when he
+had her eyes.
+
+"You wish me to take you home?"
+
+She faltered: "O Richard? it is not too late."
+
+"You regret what you have done for me?"
+
+"Dearest! it is ruin."
+
+"You weep because you have consented to be mine?"
+
+"Not for me! O Richard!"
+
+"For me you weep?  Look at me!  For me?"
+
+"How will it end!  O Richard!"
+
+"You weep for me?"
+
+"Dearest!  I would die for you!"
+
+"Would you see me indifferent to everything in the world?  Would you have
+me lost?  Do you think I will live another day in England without you?  I
+have staked all I have on you, Lucy.  You have nearly killed me once.  A
+second time, and the earth will not be troubled by me.  You ask me to
+wait, when they are plotting against us on all sides?  Darling Lucy! look
+on me.  Fix--your fond eyes on me.  You ask me to wait when here you are
+given to me when you have proved my faith--when we know we love as none
+have loved.  Give me your eyes!  Let them tell me I have your heart!"
+
+Where was her wise little speech?  How could she match such mighty
+eloquence?  She sought to collect a few more of the scattered fragments.
+
+"Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and by, and then--oh!
+if you take me home now"--
+
+The lover stood up.  "He who has been arranging that fine scheme to
+disgrace and martyrize you?  True, as I live! that's the reason of their
+having you back.  Your old servant heard him and your uncle discussing
+it.  He!--Lucy! he's a good man, but he must not step in between you and
+me.  I say God has given you to me."
+
+He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
+
+She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning, and she was
+weaker and softer.
+
+Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first law to her?
+Why should she not believe that she would wreck him by resisting?  And if
+she suffered, oh sweet to think it was for his sake!  Sweet to shut out
+wisdom; accept total blindness, and be led by him!
+
+The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further.  She rustled her garments
+ominously, and vanished.
+
+"Oh, my own Richard!" the fair girl just breathed.
+
+He whispered, "Call me that name."
+
+She blushed deeply.
+
+"Call me that name," he repeated.  "You said it once today."
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+Not that."
+
+"O darling!"
+
+"Not that."
+
+"Husband!"
+
+She was won.  The rosy gate from which the word had issued was closed
+with a seal.
+
+Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of beauty that
+night.  He received a lesson in the art of pumping from the worthy
+landlady below, up to an hour when she yawned, and he blinked, and their
+common candle wore with dignity the brigand's hat of midnight, and cocked
+a drunken eye at them from under it.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A young philosopher's an old fool!
+Cold charity to all
+I cannot get on with Gibbon
+In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood.  We go to wreck!
+Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v3
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+1905
+
+
+
+BOOK 4.
+
+XXVIII.   RELATES HOW PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE
+          CONDUCTED UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS
+XIX.      IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE COMEDY TAKES
+          THE PLACE OF THE FIRST
+XXX.      CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST
+XXXI.     THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON
+XXXII.    PROCESSION OF THE CAKE
+XXXIII.   NURSING THE DEVIL
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Beauty, of course, is for the hero.  Nevertheless, it is not always he on
+whom beauty works its most conquering influence.  It is the dull
+commonplace man into whose slow brain she drops like a celestial light,
+and burns lastingly.  The poet, for instance, is a connoisseur of beauty:
+to the artist she is a model.  These gentlemen by much contemplation of
+her charms wax critical.  The days when they had hearts being gone, they
+are haply divided between the blonde and the brunette; the aquiline nose
+and the Proserpine; this shaped eye and that.  But go about among simple
+unprofessional fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here and there you shall
+find some barbarous intelligence which has had just strength enough to
+conceive, and has taken Beauty as its Goddess, and knows but one form to
+worship, in its poor stupid fashion, and would perish for her.  Nay,
+more: the man would devote all his days to her, though he is dumb as a
+dog.  And, indeed, he is Beauty's Dog.  Almost every Beauty has her Dog.
+The hero possesses her; the poet proclaims her; the painter puts her upon
+canvas; and the faithful Old Dog follows her: and the end of it all is
+that the faithful Old Dog is her single attendant.  Sir Hero is revelling
+in the wars, or in Armida's bowers; Mr. Poet has spied a wrinkle; the
+brush is for the rose in its season.  She turns to her Old Dog then.  She
+hugs him; and he, who has subsisted on a bone and a pat till there he
+squats decrepit, he turns his grateful old eyes up to her, and has not a
+notion that she is hugging sad memories in him: Hero, Poet, Painter, in
+one scrubby one!  Then is she buried, and the village hears languid
+howls, and there is a paragraph in the newspapers concerning the
+extraordinary fidelity of an Old Dog.
+
+Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the Fair Persian,
+and the change in the obscure monotony of his life by his having quarters
+in a crack hotel, and living familiarly with West-End people--living on
+the fat of the land (which forms a stout portion of an honest youth's
+romance), Ripton Thompson breakfasted next morning with his chief at
+half-past eight.  The meal had been fixed overnight for seven, but Ripton
+slept a great deal more than the nightingale, and (to chronicle his exact
+state) even half-past eight rather afflicted his new aristocratic senses
+and reminded him too keenly of law and bondage.  He had preferred to
+breakfast at Algernon's hour, who had left word for eleven.  Him,
+however, it was Richard's object to avoid, so they fell to, and Ripton no
+longer envied Hippias in bed.  Breakfast done, they bequeathed the
+consoling information for Algernon that they were off to hear a popular
+preacher, and departed.
+
+"How happy everybody looks!" said Richard, in the quiet Sunday streets.
+
+"Yes--jolly!" said Ripton.
+
+"When I'm--when this is over, I'll see that they are, too--as many as I
+can make happy," said the hero; adding softly: "Her blind was down at a
+quarter to six.  I think she slept well!"
+
+"You've been there this morning?" Ripton exclaimed; and an idea of what
+love was dawned upon his dull brain.
+
+"Will she see me, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes.  She'll see you to-day.  She was tired last night."
+
+"Positively?"
+
+Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.
+
+"Here," he said, coming under some trees in the park, "here's where I
+talked to you last night.  What a time it seems!  How I hate the night!"
+
+On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion of him, Ripton
+hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and mysterious acquaintance with
+the sex.  Headings of certain random adventures he gave.
+
+"Well!" said his chief, "why not marry her?"
+
+Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, "Oh!" and had a taste of the feeling
+of superiority, destined that day to be crushed utterly.
+
+He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry's charge for a term that caused him
+dismal fears that the Fair Persian still refused to show her face, but
+Richard called out to him, and up Ripton went, unaware of the
+transformation he was to undergo.  Hero and Beauty stood together to
+receive him.  From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously
+agreeable smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the room his
+cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes had strained beyond their exact
+meaning.  Lucy, with one hand anchored to her lover, welcomed him kindly.
+He relieved her shyness by looking so extremely silly.  They sat down,
+and tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little master of
+his tongue as he was of his eyes.  After an interval, the Fair Persian
+having done duty by showing herself, was glad to quit the room.  Her lord
+and possessor then turned inquiringly to Ripton.
+
+"You don't wonder now, Rip?" he said.
+
+"No, Richard!" Ripton waited to reply with sufficient solemnity, "indeed
+I don't!"
+
+He spoke differently; he looked differently.  He had the Old Dog's eyes
+in his head.  They watched the door she had passed through; they listened
+for her, as dogs' eyes do.  When she came in, bonneted for a walk, his
+agitation was dog-like.  When she hung on her lover timidly, and went
+forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or anything save the secret
+raptures the sight of her gave him, which are the Old Dog's own.  For
+beneficent Nature requites him: His sensations cannot be heroic, but they
+have a fulness and a wagging delight as good in their way.  And this
+capacity for humble unaspiring worship has its peculiar guerdon.  When
+Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what will he think of himself?
+Let no one despise the Old Dog.  Through him doth Beauty vindicate her
+sex.
+
+It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss of beholding
+her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did, and observed her
+offensively, and stared, and turned their heads back, and interchanged
+comments on her, and became in a minute madly in love with her, he had to
+smother low growls.  They strolled about the pleasant gardens of
+Kensington all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and round the
+windless waters, talking, and soothing the wild excitement of their
+hearts.  If Lucy spoke, Ripton pricked up his ears.  She, too, made the
+remark that everybody seemed to look happy, and he heard it with thrills
+of joy.  "So everybody is, where you are!" he would have wished to say,
+if he dared, but was restrained by fears that his burning eloquence would
+commit him.  Ripton knew the people he met twice.  It would have been
+difficult to persuade him they were the creatures of accident.
+
+From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton's frowned protest, Richard boldly
+struck into the park, where solitary carriages were beginning to perform
+the circuit.  Here Ripton had some justification for his jealous pangs.
+The young girl's golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily sad, face;
+her gentle graceful figure in the black straight dress she wore; a sort
+of half-conventual air she had--a mark of something not of class, that
+was partly beauty's, partly maiden innocence growing conscious, partly
+remorse at her weakness and dim fear of the future it was sowing--did
+attract the eye-glasses.  Ripton had to learn that eyes are bearable, but
+eye-glasses an abomination.  They fixed a spell upon his courage; for
+somehow the youth had always ranked them as emblems of our nobility, and
+hearing two exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to front and rear several
+times, drawl in gibberish generally imputed to lords, that his heroine
+was a charming little creature, just the size, but had no style,--he was
+abashed; he did not fly at them and tear them.  He became dejected.
+Beauty's dog is affected by the eye-glass in a manner not unlike the
+common animal's terror of the human eye.
+
+Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that he heard.  He
+repeated to Lucy Diaper Sandoe's verses--
+
+         "The cockneys nod to each other aside,
+          The coxcombs lift their glasses,"
+
+and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the park, and
+shine among the highest.
+
+They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering through the bare
+trees across the water, and the bright-edged rack.  The lover, his
+imagination just then occupied in clothing earthly glories in celestial,
+felt where his senses were sharpest the hand of his darling falter, and
+instinctively looked ahead.  His uncle Algernon was leisurely jolting
+towards them on his one sound leg.  The dismembered Guardsman talked to a
+friend whose arm supported him, and speculated from time to time on the
+fair ladies driving by.  The two white faces passed him unobserved.
+Unfortunately Ripton, coming behind, went plump upon the Captain's live
+toe--or so he pretended, crying, "Confound it, Mr. Thompson! you might
+have chosen the other."
+
+The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered that it was
+extraordinary.
+
+"Not at all," said Algernon.  "Everybody makes up to that fellow.
+Instinct, I suppose!"
+
+He had not to ask for his nephew.  Richard turned to face the matter.
+
+"Sorry I couldn't wait for you this morning, uncle," he said, with the
+coolness of relationship.  "I thought you never walked so far."
+
+His voice was in perfect tone--the heroic mask admirable.
+
+Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and contrived to
+allude to the popular preacher.  He was instantly introduced to Ripton's
+sister, Miss Thompson.
+
+The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his nephew's choice of
+a minister.  After a few stray remarks, and an affable salute to Miss
+Thompson, he hobbled away, and then the three sealed volcanoes breathed,
+and Lucy's arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to the heroic
+pitch.
+
+This incident quickened their steps homeward to the sheltering wings of
+Mrs. Berry.  All that passed between them on the subject comprised a
+stammered excuse from Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured
+rejoinder from Richard, that he had gained a sister by it: at which
+Ripton ventured to wish aloud Miss Desborough would only think so, and a
+faint smile twitched poor Lucy's lips to please him.  She hardly had
+strength to reach her cage.  She had none to eat of Mrs. Berry's nice
+little dinner.  To be alone, that she might cry and ease her heart of its
+accusing weight of tears, was all she prayed for.  Kind Mrs. Berry,
+slipping into her bedroom to take off her things, found the fair body in
+a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing her completely and putting
+her to bed.
+
+"Just an hour's sleep, or so," the mellifluous woman explained the case
+to the two anxious gentlemen.  "A quiet sleep and a cup of warm tea goes
+for more than twenty doctors, it do--when there's the flutters," she
+pursued.  "I know it by myself.  And a good cry beforehand's better than
+the best of medicine."
+
+She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired to her softer
+charge and sweeter babe, reflecting, "Lord! Lord! the three of 'em don't
+make fifty!  I'm as old as two and a half of 'em, to say the least."
+Mrs. Berry used her apron, and by virtue of their tender years took them
+all three into her heart.
+
+Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a morsel.
+
+"Did you see the change come over her?" Richard whispered.
+
+Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.
+
+The lover flung down his knife and fork: "What could I do?  If I had said
+nothing, we should have been suspected.  I was obliged to speak.  And she
+hates a lie!  See! it has struck her down.  God forgive me!"
+
+Ripton affected a serene mind: "It was a fright, Richard," he said.
+"That's what Mrs. Berry means by flutters.  Those old women talk in that
+way.  You heard what she said.  And these old women know.  I'll tell you
+what it is.  It's this, Richard!--it's because you've got a fool for your
+friend!"
+
+"She regrets it," muttered the lover.  "Good God! I think she fears me."
+He dropped his face in his hands.
+
+Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his comfort: "It's
+because you've got a fool for your friend!"
+
+Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused.  The sun was buried
+alive in cloud.  Ripton saw himself no more in the opposite window.  He
+watched the deplorable objects passing on the pavement.  His aristocratic
+visions had gone like his breakfast.  Beauty had been struck down by his
+egregious folly, and there he stood--a wretch!
+
+Richard came to him: "Don't mumble on like that, Rip!" he said.  "Nobody
+blames you."
+
+"Ah! you're very kind, Richard," interposed the wretch, moved at the face
+of misery he beheld.
+
+"Listen to me, Rip!  I shall take her home to-night.  Yes!  If she's
+happier away from me!--do you think me a brute, Ripton?  Rather than have
+her shed a tear, I'd!--I'll take her home to-night!"
+
+Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience,
+people perhaps might talk.
+
+The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he said:
+"If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue?  If no one sees or
+hears of me, what can they say?  O Rip! I'll give her up.  I'm wrecked
+for ever!  What of that?  Yes--let them take her!  The world in arms
+should never have torn her from me, but when she cries--Yes! all's over.
+I'll find him at once."
+
+He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve.  Ripton
+looked on, wretcheder than ever.
+
+The idea struck him:--"Suppose, Richard, she doesn't want to go?"
+
+It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians
+and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their
+righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack and sent
+him home to his naughty Mother.  Alas!(it is The Pilgrim's Scrip
+interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief!  In bustles
+Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the two knights helmed,
+and sees, though 'tis dusk, that they wear doubtful brows, and guesses
+bad things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.
+
+"Dear! dear!" she exclaimed, "and neither of you eaten a scrap!  And
+there's my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever see!"
+
+"Ha?" cried the lover, illuminated.
+
+"Soft as a baby!" Mrs. Berry averred.  "I went to look at her this very
+moment, and there's not a bit of trouble in her breath.  It come and it
+go like the sweetest regular instrument ever made.  The Black Ox haven't
+trod on her foot yet!  Most like it was the air of London.  But only
+fancy, if you had called in a doctor!  Why, I shouldn't have let her take
+any of his quackery.  Now, there!"
+
+Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with a
+curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs.
+Berry's speech, he drew forth a little glove--dropped there by some freak
+of chance.
+
+"Keep me, keep me, now you have me!" sang the little glove, and amused
+the lover with a thousand conceits.
+
+"When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?" he asked.
+
+"Oh! we mustn't go for disturbing her," said the guileful good creature.
+"Bless ye! let her sleep it out.  And if you young gentlemen was to take
+my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a appetite--everybody should
+eat! it's their sacred duty, no matter what their feelings be! and I say
+it who'm no chicken!--I'll frickashee this--which is a chicken--against
+your return.  I'm a cook, I can assure ye!"
+
+The lover seized her two hands.  "You're the best old soul in the world!"
+he cried.  Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him.  "We won't disturb
+her.  Let her sleep.  Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry.  Will you?  And we'll
+call to inquire after her this evening, and come and see her to-morrow.
+I'm sure you'll be kind to her.  There! there!"  Mrs. Berry was preparing
+to whimper.  "I trust her to you, you see.  Good-bye, you dear old soul."
+
+He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with his
+uncles, happy and hungry.
+
+Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry into
+their confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save their names,
+so that they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of that trump of a
+woman, and yet have nothing to fear from her.  Lucy was to receive the
+name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and best-looking sister.  The
+heartless fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of hers.
+
+"Letitia!" mused Richard.  "I like the name.  Both begin with L.  There's
+something soft--womanlike--in the L.'s."
+
+Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper.  The
+lover roamed through his golden groves.  "Lucy Feverel! that sounds
+better!  I wonder where Ralph is.  I should like to help him.  He's in
+love with my cousin Clare.  He'll never do anything till he marries.  No
+man can.  I'm going to do a hundred things when it's over.  We shall
+travel first.  I want to see the Alps.  One doesn't know what the earth
+is till one has seen the Alps.  What a delight it will be to her!  I
+fancy I see her eyes gazing up at them.
+
+    'And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
+       With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
+       Past weeping for mortality's distress--
+     Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.
+          And fills, but does not fall;
+          Softly I hear it call
+     At heaven's gate, till Sister Seraphs press
+     To look on you their old love from the skies:
+     Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!
+
+"Beautiful!  These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a friend
+of my father's.  I intend to find him and make them friends again.  You
+don't care for poetry.  It's no use your trying to swallow it, Rip!"
+
+"It sounds very nice," said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.
+
+"The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East," the hero
+continued.  "She's ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave heart!
+Oh, the glorious golden East!  I dream of the desert.  I dream I'm chief
+of an Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our mares, and
+hurry to the rescue of my darling!  And we push the spears, and we
+scatter them, and I come to the tent where she crouches, and catch her to
+my saddle, and away!--Rip! what a life!"
+
+Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.
+
+"And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin's life, with her to
+help me.  First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country heart and
+soul.  A wise man told me that.  I think I shall do something."
+
+Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover.  Now life
+was a narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged, flew
+illimitably.  An hour ago and food was hateful.  Now he manfully
+refreshed his nature, and joined in Algernon's encomiums on Miss Letitia
+Thompson.
+
+Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the hero's
+band.  Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the reality which
+was a dream.  She awoke calling for some friend, "Margaret!" and heard
+one say, "My name is Bessy Berry, my love!  not Margaret."  Then she
+asked piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her dear friend,
+and Mrs. Berry whispered, "Sure you've got a dearer!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the strangeness
+of her state.
+
+Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the bedclothes
+quietly.
+
+Her name was breathed.
+
+"Yes, my love?" she said.
+
+"Is he here?"
+
+"He's gone, my dear."
+
+"Gone?--Oh, where?"  The young girl started up in disorder.
+
+"Gone, to be back, my love!  Ah! that young gentleman!" Mrs. Berry
+chanted: "Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!"
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?" Lucy wept for the famine-struck
+hero, who was just then feeding mightily.
+
+Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of his
+heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of women;
+and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle.
+She wanted one to pour her feelings out to.  She slid her hand from under
+the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's, and kissed it.  The good creature
+required no further avowal of her secret, but forthwith leaned her
+consummate bosom to the pillow, and petitioned heaven to bless them
+both!--Then the little bride was alarmed, and wondered how Mrs. Berry
+could have guessed it.
+
+"Why," said Mrs. Berry, "your love is out of your eyes, and out of
+everything ye do."  And the little bride wondered more.  She thought she
+had been so very cautious not to betray it.  The common woman in them
+made cheer together after their own April fashion.  Following which Mrs.
+Berry probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match; but
+the little bride's lips were locked.  She only said her lover was above
+her in station.
+
+"And you're a Catholic, my dear!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And him a Protestant."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Dear, dear!--And why shouldn't ye be?" she ejaculated, seeing sadness
+return to the bridal babe.  "So as you was born, so shall ye be!  But
+you'll have to make your arrangements about the children.  The girls to
+worship with yet, the boys with him.  It's the same God, my dear!  You
+mustn't blush at it, though you do look so pretty.  If my young gentleman
+could see you now!"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Berry!" Lucy murmured.
+
+"Why, he will, you know, my dear!"
+
+"Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"And you that can't bear the thoughts of it!  Well, I do wish there was
+fathers and mothers on both sides and dock-ments signed, and bridesmaids,
+and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in spite of them."
+
+She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she
+drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for.  The one fact
+that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her; she would
+not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and history, however sadly
+she yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother Confessor.
+
+Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of
+matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.
+
+"And when you see your ticket," said Mrs. Berry, "you shan't know whether
+it's a prize or a blank.  And, Lord knows! some go on thinking it's a
+prize when it turns on 'em and tears 'em.  I'm one of the blanks, my
+dear!  I drew a blank in Berry.  He was a black Berry to me, my dear!
+Smile away! he truly was, and I  a-prizin' him as proud as you can
+conceive!  My dear!"  Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron.
+"We hadn't been a three months man and wife, when that man--it wasn't
+the honeymoon, which some can't say--that man--Yes! he kicked me.
+His wedded wife he kicked!  Ah!" she sighedto Lucy's large eyes,
+"I could have borne that.  A blow don't touch the heart," the poor
+creature tapped her sensitive side.  "I went on loving of him, for
+I'm a soft one.  Tall as a Grenadier he is, and when out of service
+grows his moustache.  I used to call him my body-guardsman like a
+Queen!  I flattered him like the fools we women are.  For, take my word
+for it, my dear, there's nothing here below so vain as a man!  That I
+know.  But I didn't deserve it....  I'm a superior cook ....  I did not
+deserve that noways."  Mrs. Berry thumped her knee, and accentuated up
+her climax: "I mended his linen.  I saw to his adornments--he called his
+clothes, the bad man!  I was a servant to him, my dear! and there--it was
+nine months--nine months from the day he swear to protect and cherish and
+that--nine calendar months, and my gentleman is off with another woman!
+Bone of his bone!--pish!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over
+vividly.  "Here's my ring.  A pretty ornament!  What do it mean?  I'm for
+tearin' it off my finger a dozen times in the day.  It's a symbol?  I
+call it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive to wear it, that's a widow and
+not a widow, and haven't got a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I've
+looked, my dear, and"--she spread out her arms--"Johnson haven't got a
+name for me!"
+
+At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into sobs.  Lucy spoke
+gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson.  The sorrows of Autumn
+have no warning for April.  The little bride, for all her tender pity,
+felt happier when she had heard her landlady's moving tale of the
+wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one hero
+who was hers.  Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she fell,
+shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry!  I'm so young!  Think of me--only just seventeen!"
+
+Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance.  "Young, my dear!
+Nonsense!  There's no so much harm in being young, here and there.  I
+knew an Irish lady was married at fourteen.  Her daughter married close
+over fourteen.  She was a grandmother by thirty!  When any strange man
+began, she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore.  They'd
+stare!  Bless you! the grandmother could have married over and over
+again.  It was her daughter's fault, not hers, you know."
+
+"She was three years younger," mused Lucy.
+
+"She married beneath her, my dear.  Ran off with her father's bailiff's
+son.  'Ah, Berry!' she'd say, 'if I hadn't been foolish, I should be my
+lady now--not Granny!'  Her father never forgave her--left all his
+estates out of the family."
+
+"Did her husband always love her?" Lucy preferred to know.
+
+"In his way, my dear, he did," said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
+matrimonial wisdom.  "He couldn't help himself.  If he left off, he began
+again.  She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable.  Cook! there
+wasn't such another cook out of a Alderman's kitchen; no, indeed!  And
+she a born lady!  That tells ye it's the duty of all women!  She had her
+saying 'When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen fire!'
+and a good saying it is to treasure.  Such is man! no use in havin' their
+hearts if ye don't have their stomachs."
+
+Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You know
+nothing about that yet, my dear.  Only mind me and mark me: don't neglect
+your cookery.  Kissing don't last: cookery do!"
+
+Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim'S Scrip, she broke
+off to go posseting for her dear invalid.  Lucy was quite well; very
+eager to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come.
+Mrs. Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little bride,
+positively commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be
+nursed and cherished.  For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten minutes alone
+with the hero could only be had while the little bride was in that
+unattainable position.
+
+Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained.  The night
+did not pass before she learnt, from the hero's own mouth, that Mr.
+Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his
+union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress to
+an immense property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and because his
+darling Letitia was a Catholic--Letitia, the sole daughter of a brave
+naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to
+sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son.  Mrs. Berry listened
+credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect that the
+wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of young
+ones.  The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion
+over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and
+entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no
+conspirators like women.  Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his
+rank merely titular.  He had never been married--he knew nothing about
+licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult--he
+had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given to the clergyman
+of the parish where one of the parties was resident.  How should he?  All
+his forethought was comprised in the ring, and whenever the discussion of
+arrangements for the great event grew particularly hot and important, he
+would say, with a shrewd nod: "We mustn't forget the ring, you know, Mrs.
+Berry!" and the new member was only prevented by natural complacence from
+shouting: "Oh, drat ye! and your ring too."  Mrs. Berry had acted
+conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns, and by licence, and to have
+such an obvious requisite dinned in her ears was exasperating.  They
+could not have contracted alliance with an auxiliary more invaluable, an
+authority so profound; and they acknowledged it to themselves.  The hero
+marched like an automaton at her bidding; Lieutenant Thompson was
+rejoiced to perform services as errand-boy in the enterprise.
+
+"It's in hopes you'll be happier than me, I do it," said the devout and
+charitable Berry.  "Marriages is made in heaven, they say; and if that's
+the case, I say they don't take much account of us below!"
+
+Her own woeful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for his
+story of cruel parents.
+
+Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt out
+the wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and suppliant.
+
+"Oh, he'll come!" said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic wrinkles: "he'll
+come of his own accord.  Never anywhere will he meet such a cook as Bessy
+Berry!  And he know her value in his heart of hearts.  And I do believe,
+when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to him again, and not
+slapping his impidence in the face--I'm that soft!  I always was--in
+matrimony, Mr. Richards!"
+
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and arsenals
+hammer night and day, and busy contractors measure time by inches, and
+the air hums around: for leagues as it were myriads of bees, so the house
+and neighbourhood of the matrimonial soft one resounded in the heroic
+style, and knew little of the changes of light decreed by Creation.  Mrs.
+Berry was the general of the hour.  Down to Doctors' Commons she
+expedited the hero, instructing him how boldly to face the Law, and fib:
+for that the Law never could mist a fib and a bold face.  Down the hero
+went, and proclaimed his presence.  And lo! the Law danced to him its
+sedatest lovely bear's-dance.  Think ye the Lawless susceptible to him
+than flesh and blood?  With a beautiful confidence it put the few
+familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the
+bond, and took the fee.  It must be an old vagabond at heart that can
+permit the irrevocable to go so cheap, even to a hero.  For only mark him
+when he is petitioned by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so
+easily!  That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a
+needle, through which the lean purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more
+readily than the portly; but once through, all are camels alike, the lean
+purse an especially big camel.  Dispensing tremendous marriage as it
+does, the Law can have no conscience.
+
+"I hadn't the slightest difficulty," said the exulting hero.
+
+"Of course not!" returns Mrs. Berry.  "It's as easy, if ye're in earnest,
+as buying a plum bun."
+
+Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
+Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and there
+hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its forces:
+which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously engaged to
+do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.
+
+Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry, were
+toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,--the former
+soundly; and one day was as another to them.  Regularly every morning a
+letter arrived from Richard to his father, containing observations on the
+phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on the speeches and acts of
+Parliament; and reasons for not having yet been able to call on the
+Grandisons.  They were certainly rather monotonous and spiritless.  The
+baronet did not complain.  That cold dutiful tone assured him there was
+no internal trouble or distraction.  "The letters of a healthful
+physique!" he said to Lady Blandish, with sure insight.  Complacently he
+sat and smiled, little witting that his son's ordeal was imminent, and
+that his son's ordeal was to be his own.  Hippias wrote that his nephew
+was killing him by making appointments which he never kept, and
+altogether neglecting him in the most shameless way, so that his
+ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse state than when he left
+Raynham.  He wrote very bitterly, but it was hard to feel compassion for
+his offended stomach.
+
+On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
+despatched no tidings whatever.  Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening
+after evening, vastly disturbed.  London was a large place--young Tom
+might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses.  A
+wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels have
+proved.  But what had become of Lucy?  This consideration almost sent
+Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his
+pipe enlightened him.  A young fellow might play truant and get into a
+scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of,
+unless they were acting in complicity.  Why, of course, young Tom had
+behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he
+had the chance.  It was a long guess.  Still it was the only reasonable
+way of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the farmer
+held to it that he had done the deed.  He argued as modern men do who
+think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from us.
+So, after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the outlook
+for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated than
+not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when Master Honeymoon
+did appear.
+
+Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's absence, Tom Bakewell
+came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the
+Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum.  The
+Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in
+return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the
+heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace.  Tom went back, and Raynham
+and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow.  The System, wedded to
+Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged--anticipated by seven
+pregnant seasons.  For Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing
+instrument, and had also registered an oath.  Ah me!  venerable Hebrew
+Time! he is unforgiving.  Half the confusion and fever of the world comes
+of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once
+done him a wrong.  They cannot escape him.  They will never outlive it.
+The father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business
+of men to discover.
+
+The days roll round.  He is their servant now.  Mrs. Berry has a new
+satin gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves,
+presented to her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the altar
+to-morrow; and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much a
+chicken as any of the party, such has been the magic of these articles.
+Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced for them by their children;
+a world content to be carved out as it pleases the hero.
+
+At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor.  The
+final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry
+lights the little bride to her bed.  Lucy stops on the landing where
+there is an old clock eccentrically correct that night.  'Tis the
+palpitating pause before the gates of her transfiguration.  Mrs. Berry
+sees her put her rosy finger on the One about to strike, and touch all
+the hours successively till she comes to the Twelve that shall sound
+"Wife" in her ears on the morrow, moving her lips the while, and looking
+round archly solemn when she has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs.
+Berry's heart that, not guessing Time to be the poor child's enemy, she
+endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in her arms, whimpering;
+"Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb!  You shall be happy!  You
+shall!"
+
+Old Time gazes grimly ahead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of
+that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron.  So long as he gets his
+fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls
+with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour.  Only when they
+stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken.  The
+shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness.  There
+they have dreamed: here they must act.  There lie youth and irresolution:
+here manhood and purpose.  They are veritably in another land: a moral
+Acheron divides their life.  Their memories scarce seem their own!  The
+Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes that each man
+has, one time or other, a little Rubicon--a clear or a foul water to
+cross.  It is asked him: "Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind
+thee?"  And "I will," firmly pronounced, speeds him over.  The above-
+named manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater number of
+caresses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are
+those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim
+back to the bank they have blotted out.  For though every man of us may
+be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march
+even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the
+features of the terrible Universal Fate to him?  Fail before her, either
+in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither
+and sicken to what it is modelled on!  Be your Rubicon big or small,
+clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return.  On--or to Acheron!-
+-I subscribe to that saying of The Pilgrim's Scrip:
+
+"The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware the
+little knowledge of one's self!"
+
+Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal.  Already the
+mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in two,
+and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils.  His father, his
+father's love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy.  His poetic dreams
+had taken a living attainable shape.  He had a distincter impression of
+the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at Raynham.  And
+yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I daresay Caesar
+loved Rome: but whether he did or no, Caesar when he killed the Republic
+was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to
+feel his despotic moustache.  Did he know what he was made of?
+Doubtless, nothing at all.  But honest passion has an instinct that can
+be safer than conscious wisdom.  He was an arrow drawn to the head,
+flying from the bow.  His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not
+strike him as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the
+winning and securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved
+of, and in that case, were not the means justified?  Not that he took
+trouble to argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are
+in the habit of doing; to deduce a clear conscience.  Conscience and Lucy
+went together.
+
+It was a soft fair day.  The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun.  One of
+those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops forth
+all its babies.  The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early alive
+with the cries of young Britain.  Violet and primrose girls, and organ
+boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined in tone
+if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing procession
+of omnibuses, freighted with business men, Cityward, where a column of
+reddish brown smoke,--blown aloft by the South-west, marked the scene of
+conflict to which these persistent warriors repaired.  Richard had seen
+much of early London that morning.  His plans were laid.  He had taken
+care to ensure his personal liberty against accidents, by leaving his
+hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at sunrise.  To-day or to-morrow his
+father was to arrive.  Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell reported to him, was
+raging in town.  Another day and she might be torn from him: but to-day
+this miracle of creation would be his, and then from those glittering
+banks yonder, let them summon him to surrender her who dared!  The
+position of things looked so propitious that he naturally thought the
+powers waiting on love conspired in his behalf.  And she, too--since she
+must cross this river, she had sworn to him to be brave, and do him
+honour, and wear the true gladness of her heart in her face.  Without a
+suspicion of folly in his acts, or fear of results, Richard strolled into
+Kensington Gardens, breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great joy, now
+with a vision of his bride, now of the new life opening to him.  Mountain
+masses of clouds, rounded in sunlight, swung up the blue.  The flowering
+chestnut pavilions overhead rustled and hummed.  A sound in his ears as
+of a banner unfolding in the joyful distance lulled him.
+
+He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven.  His
+watch said a quarter to ten.  He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed
+trees toward the well dedicated to a saint obscure.  Some people were
+drinking at the well.  A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had a
+little silver mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised dislike
+to the liquor of the salutary saint.
+
+"Drink, child!" said the maturer lady.  "That is only your second mug.  I
+insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning we're in town.
+Your constitution positively requires iron!"
+
+"But, mama," the other expostulated, "it's so nasty.  I shall be sick."
+
+"Drink!" was the harsh injunction.  "Nothing to the German waters, my
+dear.  Here, let me taste."  She took the mug and gave it a flying kiss.
+"I declare I think it almost nice--not at all objectionable.  Pray, taste
+it," she said to a gentleman standing below them to act as cup-bearer.
+
+An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: "Certainly, if it's good
+fellowship; though I confess I don't think mutual sickness a very
+engaging ceremony."
+
+Can one never escape from one's relatives?  Richard ejaculated inwardly.
+
+Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian.  He had
+them under his eyes.
+
+Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man was
+near to see the possible consequence of it, was the first to perceive
+him.  Her hand dropped.
+
+"Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!" said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Mama!" Clare gasped.
+
+Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was out of
+the question.  Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: "My own boy!  My dear
+Richard!" profuse of exclamations.  Clare shyly greeted him.  Adrian kept
+in the background.
+
+"Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard," said Mrs. Doria, smiling
+effusion; and rattled on, "We want another cavalier.  This is delightful!
+My dear nephew!  You have grown from a boy to a man.  And there's down on
+his lip!  And what brings you here at such an hour in the morning?
+Poetry, I suppose!  Here, take my, arm, child.--Clare! finish that mug
+and thank your cousin for sparing you the third.  I always bring her,
+when we are by a chalybeate, to take the waters before breakfast.  We
+have to get up at unearthly hours.  Think, my dear boy!  Mothers are
+sacrifices!  And so you've been alone a fortnight with your agreeable
+uncle!  A charming time of it you must have had!  Poor Hippias! what may
+be his last nostrum?"
+
+"Nephew!" Adrian stretched his head round to the couple.  "Doses of
+nephew taken morning and night fourteen days!  And he guarantees that it
+shall destroy an iron constitution in a month."
+
+Richard mechanically shook Adrian's hand as he spoke.
+
+"Quite well, Ricky?"
+
+"Yes: well enough," Richard answered.
+
+"Well?" resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare and
+Adrian followed.  "I really never saw you looking so handsome.  There's
+something about your face--look at me--you needn't blush.  You've grown
+to an Apollo.  That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes you admirably--
+and those gloves, and that easy neck-tie.  Your style is irreproachable,
+quite a style of your own!  And nothing eccentric.  You have the instinct
+of dress.  Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as much as anything else.
+Boy!--you see, I can't forget old habits.  You were a boy when I left,
+and now!--Do you see any change in him, Clare?" she turned half round to
+her daughter.
+
+"Richard is looking very well, mama," said Clare, glancing at him under
+her eyelids.
+
+"I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.--Take my arm, Richard.  Are
+you afraid of your aunt?  I want to get used to you.  Won't it be
+pleasant, our being all in town together in the season?  How fresh the
+Opera will be to you!  Austin, I hear, takes stalls.  You can come to the
+Forey's box when you like.  We are staying with the Foreys close by here.
+I think it's a little too far out, you know; but they like the
+neighbourhood.  This is what I have always said: Give him more liberty!
+Austin has seen it at last.  How do you think Clare looking?"
+
+The question had to be repeated.  Richard surveyed his cousin hastily,
+and praised her looks.
+
+"Pale!" Mrs. Doria sighed.
+
+"Rather pale, aunt."
+
+"Grown very much--don't you think, Richard?"
+
+"Very tall girl indeed, aunt."
+
+"If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard!  I'm sure I give
+her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues.  I
+think she does not prosper away from her old companion.  She was
+accustomed to look up to you, Richard"--
+
+"Did you get Ralph's letter, aunt?" Richard interrupted her.
+
+"Absurd!" Mrs. Doria pressed his arm.  "The nonsense of a boy!  Why did
+you undertake to forward such stuff?"
+
+"I'm certain he loves her," said Richard, in a serious way.
+
+The maternal eyes narrowed on him.  "Life, my dear Richard, is a game of
+cross-purposes," she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather
+angered to hear him laugh.  He excused himself by saying that she spoke
+so like his father.
+
+"You breakfast with us," she freshened off again.  "The Foreys wish to
+see you; the girls are dying to know you.  Do you know, you have a
+reputation on account of that"--she crushed an intruding adjective--
+"System you were brought up on.  You mustn't mind it.  For my part, I
+think you look a credit to it.  Don't be bashful with young women, mind!
+As much as you please with the old ones.  You know how to behave among
+men.  There you have your Drawing-room Guide!  I'm sure I shall be proud
+of you.  Am I not?"
+
+Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.
+
+A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to
+spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along, he
+pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes he could
+dedicate to this charitable office.
+
+"Pardon me," said Mrs. Doria.  "You want manners, my dear boy.  I think
+it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my
+presence."
+
+Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour, up
+to which he was her servant.
+
+"Fiddlededee!" the vivacious lady sang.  "Now I've got you, I mean to
+keep you.  Oh! I've heard all about you.  This ridiculous indifference
+that your father makes so much of!  Why, of course, you wanted to see the
+world!  A strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely
+house--no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics!  Of
+course you were indifferent!  Your intelligence and superior mind alone
+saved you from becoming a dissipated country boor.--Where are the
+others?"
+
+Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.
+
+"My damozel dropped something," Adrian explained.
+
+Her mother asked what it was.
+
+"Nothing, mama," said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.
+
+Overborne by his aunt's fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute
+calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he edged
+in a word for Ralph.  When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.
+
+"I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank idiotcy."
+
+"It's nothing of the kind, aunt."
+
+"The fancy of a boy."
+
+"He's not a boy.  He's half-a-year older than I am!"
+
+"You silly child!  The moment you fall in love, you all think yourselves
+men."
+
+"On my honour, aunt!  I believe he loves her thoroughly."
+
+"Did he tell you so, child?"
+
+"Men don't speak openly of those things," said Richard.
+
+"Boys do," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"But listen to me in earnest, aunt.  I want you to be kind to Ralph.
+Don't drive him to--You maybe sorry for it.  Let him--do let him write to
+her, and see her.  I believe women are as cruel as men in these things."
+
+"I never encourage absurdity, Richard."
+
+"What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?"
+
+"Oh, they're both good families.  It's not that absurdity, Richard.  It
+will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn't a
+dairymaid."  Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly.  It did not touch
+her nephew.
+
+"Don't you want Clare ever to marry?"  He put the last point of reason to
+her.
+
+Mrs. Doria laughed.  "I hope so, child.  We must find some comfortable
+old gentleman for her."
+
+"What infamy!" mutters Richard.
+
+"And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a
+hearty breakfast--We don't dance at weddings now, and very properly.
+It's a horrid sad business, not to be treated with levity.--Is that his
+regiment?" she said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled
+gardens.  "Tush, tush, child!  Master Ralph will recover, as--hem! others
+have done.  A little headache--you call it heartache--and up you rise
+again, looking better than ever.  No doubt, to have a grain of sense
+forced into your brains, you poor dear children! must be painful..  Girls
+suffer as much as boys, I assure you.  More, for their heads are weaker,
+and their appetites less constant.  Do I talk like your father now?
+Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?"
+
+Richard stopped short.  Time spoke urgently.
+
+"I must go," he said.
+
+His face did not seem good for trifling.  Mrs. Doria would trifle in
+spite.
+
+"Listen, Clare!  Richard is going.  He says he has an engagement.  What
+possible engagement can a young man have at eleven o'clock in the
+morning?--unless it's to be married!"  Mrs. Doria laughed at the
+ingenuity of her suggestion.
+
+"Is the church handy, Ricky?" said Adrian.  "You can still give us half-
+an-hour if it is.  The celibate hours strike at Twelve."  And he also
+laughed in his fashion.
+
+"Won't you stay with us, Richard?" Clare asked.  She blushed timidly, and
+her voice shook.
+
+Something indefinite--a sharp-edged thrill in the tones made the burning
+bridegroom speak gently to her.
+
+"Indeed, I would, Clare; I should like to please you, but I have a most
+imperative appointment--that is, I promised--I must go.  I shall see you
+again"--
+
+Mrs. Doria, took forcible possession of him.  "Now, do come, and don't
+waste words.  I insist upon your having some breakfast first, and then,
+if you really must go, you shall.  Look! there's the house.  At least you
+will accompany your aunt to the door."
+
+Richard conceded this.  She little imagined what she required of him.
+Two of his golden minutes melted into nothingness.  They were growing to
+be jewels of price, one by one more and more precious as they ran, and
+now so costly-rare--rich as his blood!  not to kindest relations, dearest
+friends, could he give another.  The die is cast!  Ferryman! push off.
+
+"Good-bye!" he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one, and fled.
+
+They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the grounds of the house.
+He looked like resolution on the march.  Mrs. Doria, as usual with her
+out of her brother's hearing, began rating the System.
+
+"See what becomes of that nonsensical education!  The boy really does not
+know how to behave like a common mortal.  He has some paltry appointment,
+or is mad after some ridiculous idea of his own, and everything must be
+sacrificed to it!  That's what Austin calls concentration of the
+faculties.  I think it's more likely to lead to downright insanity than
+to greatness of any kind.  And so I shall tell Austin.  It's time he
+should be spoken to seriously about him."
+
+"He's an engine, my dear aunt," said Adrian.  "He isn't a boy, or a man,
+but an engine.  And he appears to have been at high pressure since he
+came to town--out all day and half the night."
+
+"He's mad!" Mrs. Doria interjected.
+
+"Not at all.  Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and carries as open an
+eye ahead of him as the ships before Troy.  He's more than a match for
+any of us.  He is for me, I confess."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Doria, "he does astonish me!"
+
+Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right season, which
+would not be long arriving.
+
+Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the Foreys of their
+hopeful relative's ungracious behaviour.  Clare had left them.  When Mrs.
+Doria went to her room her daughter was there, gazing down at something
+in her hand, which she guiltily closed.
+
+In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off her things,
+Clare said she was not hungry.  Mrs. Doria lamented the obstinacy of a
+constitution that no quantity of iron could affect, and eclipsed the
+looking-glass, saying: "Take them off here, child, and learn to assist
+yourself."
+
+She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading hair, talking
+of Richard, and his handsome appearance, and extraordinary conduct.
+Clare kept opening and shutting her hand, in an attitude half-pensive,
+half-listless.  She did not stir to undress.  A joyless dimple hung in
+one pale cheek, and she drew long even breaths.
+
+Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to show, came to her
+daughter.
+
+"Now, really," she said, "you are too helpless, my dear.  You cannot do a
+thing without a dozen women at your elbow.  What will become of you?  You
+will have to marry a millionaire.--What's the matter with you, child?"
+
+Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction of her eyes,
+and displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of a green glove.
+
+"A wedding-ring!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the curiosity most
+daintily.
+
+There on Clare's pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!
+
+Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found, beset Clare, who
+replied: "In the Gardens, mama.  This morning.  When I was walking behind
+Richard."
+
+"Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?"
+
+"Oh no, mama! he did not give it me."
+
+"Of course not! only he does such absurd things!"  Ithought, perhaps--
+these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous!"  Mrs. Doria had an idea that
+it might have been concerted between the two young gentlemen, Richard and
+Ralph, that the former should present this token of hymeneal devotion
+from the latter to the young lady of his love; but a moment's reflection
+exonerated boys even from such preposterous behaviour.
+
+"Now, I wonder," she speculated on Clare's cold face, "I do wonder
+whether it's lucky to find a wedding-ring.  What very quick eyes you
+have, my darling!"  Mrs. Doria kissed her.  She thought it must be lucky,
+and the circumstance made her feel tender to her child.  Her child did
+not move to the kiss.
+
+"Let's see whether it fits," said Mrs. Doria, almost infantine with
+surprise and pleasure.
+
+Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off.  The ring slid down her long
+thin finger, and settled comfortably.
+
+"It does!" Mrs. Doria whispered.  To find a wedding ring is open to any
+woman; but to find a wedding-ring that fits may well cause a
+superstitious emotion.  Moreover, that it should be found while walking
+in the neighbourhood of the identical youth whom a mother has destined
+for her daughter, gives significance to the gentle perturbation of ideas
+consequent on such a hint from Fortune.
+
+"It really fits!" she pursued.  "Now I never pay any attention to the
+nonsense of omens and that kind of thing" (had the ring been a horseshoe
+Mrs. Doria would have pinked it up and dragged it obediently home), "but
+this, I must say, is odd--to find a ring that fits!--singular!  It never
+happened to me.  Sixpence is the most I ever discovered, and I have it
+now.  Mind you keep it, Clare--this ring: And," she laughed, "offer it to
+Richard when he comes; say, you think he must have dropped it."
+
+The dimple in Clare's cheek quivered.
+
+Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of Richard.  Mrs. Doria,
+by exquisite management, had contrived to be sure that on one side there
+would be no obstacle to her project of general happiness, without, as she
+thought, compromising her daughter's feelings unnecessarily.  It could do
+no harm to an obedient young girl to hear that there was no youth in the
+world like a certain youth.  He the prince of his generation, she might
+softly consent, when requested, to be his princess; and if never
+requested (for Mrs. Doria envisaged failure), she might easily transfer
+her softness to squires of lower degree.  Clare had always been blindly
+obedient to her mother (Adrian called them Mrs. Doria Battledoria and the
+fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother accepted in this blind obedience
+the text of her entire character.  It is difficult for those who think
+very earnestly for their children to know when their children are
+thinking on their own account.  The exercise of their volition we
+construe as revolt.  Our love does not like to be invalided and deposed
+from its command, and here I think yonder old thrush on the lawn who has
+just kicked the last of her lank offspring out of the nest to go shift
+for itself, much the kinder of the two, though sentimental people do
+shrug their shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures who
+never wander from nature.  Now, excess of obedience is, to one who
+manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection.  Happily Mrs. Doria saw
+nothing in her daughter's manner save a want of iron.  Her pallor, her
+lassitude, the tremulous nerves in her face, exhibited an imperious
+requirement of the mineral.
+
+"The reason why men and women are mysterious to us, and prove
+disappointing," we learn from The Pilgrim's Scrip, "is, that we will read
+them from our own book; just as we are perplexed by reading ourselves
+from theirs."
+
+Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she was gay; she
+laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table, and mock-seriously joined in
+his jocose assertion that Clare was positively and by all hymeneal
+auspices betrothed to the owner of that ring, be he who he may, and must,
+whenever he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to him
+(for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine, as no woman would drop
+a wedding-ring), and follow him whither he listed all the world over.
+Amiable giggling Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed.  Dark man, or
+fair? was mooted.  Adrian threw off the first strophe of Clare's fortune
+in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating gipsy twang.  Her aunt Forey
+warned her to have her dresses in readiness.  Her grandpapa Forey
+pretended to grumble at bridal presents being expected from grandpapas.
+
+This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an old shoe.  The
+finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated through all the palpitating
+accessories and rosy ceremonies involved by that famous instrument.  In
+the midst of the general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable want of
+iron by bursting into tears.
+
+Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then enacting?
+Perhaps, dimly, as we say: that is, without eyes.
+
+At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with their oaths.  They
+are asked to fix all time to the moment, and they do so.  If there is
+hesitation at the immense undertaking, it is but maidenly.  She conceives
+as little mental doubt of the sanity of the act as he.  Over them hangs a
+cool young curate in his raiment of office.  Behind are two apparently
+lucid people, distinguished from each other by sex and age: the foremost
+a bunch of simmering black satin; under her shadow a cock-robin in the
+dress of a gentleman, big joy swelling out his chest, and pert
+satisfaction cocking his head.  These be they who stand here in place of
+parents to the young couple.  All is well.  The service proceeds.
+
+Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words.  This hour of the complacent
+giant at least is his, and that he means to hold him bound through the
+eternities, men may hear.  Clearly, and with brave modesty, speaks she:
+no less firmly, though her body trembles: her voice just vibrating while
+the tone travels on, like a smitten vase.
+
+Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands bind his huge
+limbs and lock the chains.  He is used to it: he lets them do as they
+will.
+
+Then comes that period when they are to give their troth to each other.
+The Man with his right hand takes the Woman by her right hand: the Woman
+with her right hand takes the Man by his right hand.--Devils dare not
+laugh at whom Angels crowd to contemplate.
+
+Their hands are joined; their blood flows as one stream.  Adam and fair
+Eve front the generations.  Are they not lovely?  Purer fountains of life
+were never in two bosoms.
+
+And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth bid the Man to
+put a ring on the Woman's fourth finger, counting thumb.  And the Man
+thrusts his hand into one pocket, and into another, forward and back many
+times into all his pockets.  He remembers that he felt for it, and felt
+it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the Gardens.  And his hand comes
+forth empty.  And the Man is ghastly to look at!
+
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh!  The curate
+deliberates.  The black satin bunch ceases to simmer.  He in her shadow
+changes from a beaming cock-robin to an inquisitive sparrow.  Eyes
+multiply questions: lips have no reply.  Time ominously shakes his chain,
+and in the pause a sound of mockery stings their ears.
+
+Think ye a hero is one to be defeated in his first battle?  Look at the
+clock! there are but seven minutes to the stroke of the celibate hours:
+the veteran is surely lifting his two hands to deliver fire, and his shot
+will sunder them in twain so nearly united.  All the jewellers of London
+speeding down with sacks full of the nuptial circlet cannot save them!
+
+The battle must be won on the field, and what does the hero now?  It is
+an inspiration!  For who else would dream of such a reserve in the rear?
+None see what he does; only that the black-satin bunch is remonstratingly
+agitated, stormily shaken, and subdued: and as though the menacing cloud
+had opened, and dropped the dear token from the skies at his demand, he
+produces the symbol of their consent, and the service proceeds: "With
+this ring I thee wed."
+
+They are prayed over and blest.  For good, or for ill, this deed is done.
+The names are registered; fees fly right and left: they thank, and
+salute, the curate, whose official coolness melts into a smile of
+monastic gallantry: the beadle on the steps waves off a gaping world as
+they issue forth bridegroom and bridesman recklessly scatter gold on him:
+carriage doors are banged to: the coachmen drive off, and the scene
+closes, everybody happy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would dissolve to one
+of Dian's Virgin Fountains from the clasp of the Sun-God.  She has nobly
+preserved the mask imposed by comedies, till the curtain has fallen, and
+now she weeps, streams with tears.  Have patience, O impetuous young man!
+It is your profession to be a hero.  This poor heart is new to it, and
+her duties involve such wild acts, such brigandage, such terrors and
+tasks, she is quite unnerved.  She did you honour till now.  Bear with
+her now.  She does not cry the cry of ordinary maidens in like cases.
+While the struggle went on her tender face was brave; but, alas!  Omens
+are against her: she holds an ever-present dreadful one on that fatal
+fourth finger of hers, which has coiled itself round her dream of
+delight, and takes her in its clutch like a horrid serpent.  And yet she
+must love it.  She dares not part from it.  She must love and hug it, and
+feed on its strange honey, and all the bliss it gives her casts all the
+deeper shadow on what is to come.
+
+Say: Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension, for a woman to be
+married in another woman's ring?
+
+You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand citadels--wherever
+there is strife, and Time is to be taken by the throat.  Then shall few
+men match your sublime fury.  But what if you see a vulture, visible only
+to yourselves, hovering over the house you are gaily led by the torch to
+inhabit?  Will you not crouch and be cowards?
+
+As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to omens.  He
+does his best to win his darling to confidence by caresses.  Is she not
+his?  Is he not hers?  And why, when the battle is won, does she weep?
+Does she regret what she has done?
+
+Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast love seen
+swimming on clear depths of faith in them, through the shower.
+
+He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed waiting for
+the shower to pass.
+
+Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue to her distress,
+and a second character in the comedy changed her face.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry!  Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what has happened!"
+
+"My darlin' child!"  The bridal Berry gazed at the finger of doleful joy.
+"I'd forgot all about it!  And that's what've made me feel so queer ever
+since, then!  I've been seemin' as if I wasn't myself somehow, without my
+ring.  Dear! dear! what a wilful young gentleman!  We ain't a match for
+men in that state--Lord help us!"
+
+Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge of the bed.
+
+"What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry?  Is it not terrible?"
+
+"I can't say I should 'a liked it myself, my dear," Mrs. Berry candidly
+responded.
+
+"Oh! why, why, why did it happen!" the young bride bent to a flood of
+fresh tears, murmuring that she felt already old--forsaken.
+
+"Haven't you got a comfort in your religion for all accidents?" Mrs.
+Berry inquired.
+
+"None for this.  I know it's wrong to cry when I am so happy.  I hope he
+will forgive me."
+
+Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest, beautifulest thing
+in life.
+
+"I'll cry no more," said Lucy.  "Leave me, Mrs. Berry, and come back when
+I ring."
+
+She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees to the bed.
+Mrs. Berry left the room tiptoe.
+
+When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless, and smiled
+kindly to her.
+
+"It's over now," she said.
+
+Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.
+
+"He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have prepared, Mrs.
+Berry.  I begged to be excused.  I cannot eat."
+
+Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a superior nuptial
+breakfast, but with her mind on her ring she nodded assentingly.
+
+"We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"No, my dear.  It's pretty well all done."
+
+"We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"And a very suitable spot ye've chose, my dear!"
+
+"He loves the sea.  He wishes to be near it."
+
+"Don't ye cross to-night, if it's anyways rough, my dear.  It isn't
+advisable."  Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say, "Don't ye be soft and give
+way to him there, or you'll both be repenting it."
+
+Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had to speak.  She
+saw Mrs. Berry's eyes pursuing her ring, and screwed up her courage at
+last.
+
+"Mrs. Berry."
+
+"Yes, my dear."
+
+"Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring."
+
+"Another, my dear?"  Berry did not comprehend.  "One's quite enough for
+the objeck," she remarked.
+
+"I mean," Lucy touched her fourth finger, "I cannot part with this."  She
+looked straight at Mrs. Berry.
+
+That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring, till she had
+thoroughly exhausted the meaning of the words, and then exclaimed,
+horror-struck: "Deary me, now! you don't say that?  You're to be married
+again in your own religion."
+
+The young wife repeated: "I can never part with it."
+
+"But, my dear!" the wretched Berry wrung her hands, divided between
+compassion and a sense of injury.  "My dear!" she kept expostulating like
+a mute.
+
+"I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry.  I am very grieved to pain
+you.  It is mine now, and must be mine.  I cannot give it back."
+
+There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible little heroine
+in the three Kingdoms.
+
+From her first perception of the meaning of the young bride's words, Mrs.
+Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew that her case was hopeless, unless
+she treated her as she herself had been treated, and seized the ring by
+force of arms; and that she had not heart for.
+
+"What!" she gasped faintly, "one's own lawful wedding-ring you wouldn't
+give back to a body?"
+
+"Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry.  It was yours, but it is mine now.  You
+shall have whatever you ask for but that.  Pray, forgive me!  It must be
+so."
+
+Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands together.  It
+amazed her that this soft little creature could be thus firm.  She tried
+argument.
+
+"Don't ye know, my dear, it's the fatalest thing you're inflictin' upon
+me, reelly!  Don't ye know that bein' bereft of one's own lawful wedding-
+ring's the fatalest thing in life, and there's no prosperity after it!
+For what stands in place o' that, when that's gone, my dear?  And what
+could ye give me to compensate a body for the loss o' that?  Don't ye
+know--Oh, deary me!"  The little bride's face was so set that poor Berry
+wailed off in despair.
+
+"I know it," said Lucy.  "I know it all.  I know what I do to you.  Dear,
+dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me!  If I parted with my ring I know it would be
+fatal."
+
+So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument as well as
+her ring.
+
+Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.
+
+"But, my child," she counter-argued, "you don't understand.  It ain't as
+you think.  It ain't a hurt to you now.  Not a bit, it ain't.  It makes
+no difference now!  Any ring does while the wearer's a maid.  And your
+Mr. Richard will find the very ring he intended for ye.  And, of course,
+that's the one you'll wear as his wife.  It's all the same now, my dear.
+It's no shame to a maid.  Now do--now do--there's a darlin'!"
+
+Wheedling availed as little as argument.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, "you know what my--he spoke: 'With this ring I
+thee wed.'  It was with this ring.  Then how could it be with another?"
+
+Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that was logic.
+
+She hit upon an artful conjecture:
+
+"Won't it be unlucky your wearin' of the ring which served me so?  Think
+o' that!"
+
+"It may! it may! it may!" cried Lucy.
+
+"And arn't you rushin' into it, my dear?"
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy said again, "it was this ring.  It cannot--it never
+can be another.  It was this.  What it brings me I must bear.  I shall
+wear it till I die!"
+
+"Then what am I to do?" the ill-used woman groaned.  "What shall I tell
+my husband when he come back to me, and see I've got a new ring waitin'
+for him?  Won't that be a welcome?"
+
+Quoth Lucy: "How can he know it is not the same; in a plain gold ring?"
+
+"You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my Berry!" returned his
+solitary spouse.  "Not know, my dear?  Why, any one would know that've
+got eyes in his head.  There's as much difference in wedding-rings as
+there's in wedding people!  Now, do pray be reasonable, my own sweet!"
+
+"Pray, do not ask me," pleads Lucy.
+
+"Pray, do think better of it," urges Berry.
+
+"Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!" pleads Lucy.
+
+"--And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when you're so happy!"
+
+"Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!" Lucy faltered.
+
+Mrs. Berry thought she had her.
+
+"Just when you're going to be the happiest wife on earth--all you want
+yours!" she pursued the tender strain.  "A handsome young gentleman!
+Love and Fortune smilin' on ye!"--
+
+Lucy rose up.
+
+"Mrs. Berry," she said, "I think we must not lose time in getting ready,
+or he will be impatient."
+
+Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge of her chair.
+Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form she had hitherto folded
+under her wing.  In an hour the heroine had risen to the measure of the
+hero.  Without being exactly aware what creature she was dealing with,
+Berry acknowledged to herself it was not one of the common run, and
+sighed, and submitted.
+
+"It's like a divorce, that it is!" she sobbed.
+
+After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry bustled humbly
+about the packing.  Then Lucy, whose heart was full to her, came and
+kissed her, and Berry bumped down and regularly cried.  This over, she
+had recourse to fatalism.
+
+"I suppose it was to be, my dear!  It's my punishment for meddlin' wi'
+such matters.  No, I'm not sorry.  Bless ye both.  Who'd 'a thought you
+was so wilful?--you that any one might have taken for one of the silly-
+softs!  You're a pair, my dear! indeed you are!  You was made to meet!
+But we mustn't show him we've been crying.--Men don't like it when
+they're happy.  Let's wash our faces and try to bear our lot."
+
+So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed deluge.  She
+deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be married in another
+person's ring, how much sadder to have one's own old accustomed lawful
+ring violently torn off one's finger and eternally severed from one!  But
+where you have heroes and heroines, these terrible complications ensue.
+
+They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and with equal honour
+and success.
+
+In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his last directions.
+Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry had prepared a sumptuous
+breakfast.  Chickens offered their breasts: pies hinted savoury secrets:
+things mystic, in a mash, with Gallic appellatives, jellies, creams,
+fruits, strewed the table: as a tower in the midst, the cake colossal:
+the priestly vesture of its nuptial white relieved by hymeneal
+splendours.
+
+Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon
+this breakfast, and why?  There is one who comes to all feasts that have
+their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are careful to
+provide against: who will speak, and whose hateful voice must somehow be
+silenced while the feast is going on.  This personage is The Philosopher.
+Mrs. Berry knew him.  She knew that he would come.  She provided against
+him in the manner she thought most efficacious: that is, by cheating her
+eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due and proper glories
+incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers collapse, and marriage
+settlements are flourished on high by the family lawyer: and had there
+been no show of the kind to greet her on her return from the church, she
+would, and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness,
+and repented her work.  The Philosopher would have laid hold of her by
+the ear, and called her bad names.  Entrenched behind a breakfast-table
+so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him.  In the presence of that
+cake he dared not speak above a whisper.  And there were wines to drown
+him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and cool:
+claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the delectation of his
+friend.
+
+For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb.
+Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the
+world as well, till the next morning.  Ripton was excited, overdone with
+delight.  He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly
+flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief.  He had nothing to do
+but to listen, and to drink.  The hero would not allow him to shout
+Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil
+poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom,
+the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed
+emotion.  At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously into
+it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded
+instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short
+behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: "On my soul, I
+don't think you know a word I'm saying."
+
+"Every word, Ricky!" Ripton spirted through the opening.  "I'm going down
+to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin!  Here's your only chance of
+being a happy father--no, no!--Oh! don't you fear me, Ricky!  I shall
+talk the old gentleman over."
+
+His chief said:
+
+"Look here.  You had better not go down to-night.  Go down the first
+thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train.  Give him my letter.  Listen
+to me--give him my letter, and don't speak a word till he speaks.  His
+eyebrows will go up and down, he won't say much.  I know him.  If he asks
+you about her, don't be a fool, but say what you think of her sensibly"--
+
+No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to.  He shouted: "She's
+an angel!"
+
+Richard checked him: "Speak sensibly, I say--quietly.  You can say how
+gentle and good she is--my fleur-de-luce!  And say, this was not her
+doing.  If any one's to blame, it's I.  I made her marry me.  Then go to
+Lady Blandish, if you don't find her at the house.  You may say whatever
+you please to her.  Give her my letter, and tell her I want to hear from
+her immediately.  She has seen Lucy, and I know what she thinks of her.
+You will then go to Farmer Blaize.  I told you Lucy happens to be his
+niece--she has not lived long there.  She lived with her aunt Desborough
+in France while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to
+the farmer--there's not a point of likeness between them.  Poor darling!
+she never knew her mother.  Go to Mr. Blaize, and tell him.  You will
+treat him just as you would treat any other gentleman.  If you are civil,
+he is sure to be.  And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will
+still treat him with respect.  You hear?  And then write me a full
+account of all that has been said and done.  You will have my address the
+day after to-morrow.  By the way, Tom will be here this afternoon.  Write
+out for him where to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case you
+have heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know at once, as
+Tom will join me that night.  Don't mention to anybody about my losing
+the ring, Ripton.  I wouldn't have Adrian get hold of that for a thousand
+pounds.  How on earth I came to lose it!  How well she bore it, Rip!  How
+beautifully she behaved!"
+
+Ripton again shouted: "An angel!"  Throwing up the heels of his second
+bottle, he said:
+
+"You may trust your friend, Richard.  Aha! when you pulled at old Mrs.
+Berry I didn't know what was up.  I do wish you'd let me drink her
+health?"
+
+"Here's to Penelope!" said Richard, just wetting his mouth.  The carriage
+was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the same tune,
+and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the secretest veiled
+wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in the production of
+discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state made him begin to fume
+and send in messages for his bride by the maid.
+
+By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her
+journey, and smiling from stained eyes.
+
+Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out for
+her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
+
+The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom, on
+the plea of her softness.  Lucy gave Ripton her hand, with a musical
+"Good-bye, Mr. Thompson," and her extreme graciousness made him just
+sensible enough to sit down before he murmured his fervent hopes for her
+happiness.
+
+"I shall take good care of him," said Mrs. Berry, focussing her eyes to
+the comprehension of the company.
+
+"Farewell, Penelope!" cried Richard.  "I shall tell the police everywhere
+to look out for your lord."
+
+"Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!"
+
+Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching
+loneliness.  Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up
+the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an old
+shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry's enthusiastic female domestic.
+
+White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they were
+off.  Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that she
+telegraphed, hand in air; awakening Ripton's lungs, for the coachman to
+stop, and ran back to the house.  Richard chafed to be gone, but at his
+bride's intercession he consented to wait.  Presently they beheld the old
+black-satin bunch stream through the street-door, down the bit of garden,
+and up the astonished street; halting, panting, capless at the carriage
+door, a book in her hand,--a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book,
+which; at the same time calling out in breathless jerks, "There! never ye
+mind looks!  I ain't got a new one.  Read it, and don't ye forget it!"
+she discharged into Lucy's lap, and retreated to the railings, a signal
+for the coachman to drive away for good.
+
+How Richard laughed at the Berry's bridal gift!  Lucy, too, lost the omen
+at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume.  It was Dr.
+Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs
+and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry's abode,
+proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh
+regions.  With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton's arm to regulate his
+steps, and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her.  In the
+interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which
+altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty woman.  She smoothed her
+excited apron, sighing.  Let no one imagine that she regretted her
+complicity.  She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute
+castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and
+probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more--such is the born
+Pagan's tenacity!  Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the
+head.  O you wanton, improvident creature! said he.  O you very wise old
+gentleman! said she.  He asked her the thing she had been doing.  She
+enlightened him with the fatalist's reply.  He sounded a bogey's alarm of
+contingent grave results.  She retreated to the entrenched camp of the
+fact she had helped to make.
+
+"It's done!" she exclaimed.  How could she regret what she felt comfort
+to know was done?  Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such
+stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on
+the cake, with one finger downwards at Ripton's incision there, showing a
+crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
+
+The eloquent indication was understood.  "Dear! dear!" cried Mrs. Berry,
+"what a heap o' cake, and no one to send it to!"
+
+Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret.
+Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling geysir
+of indistinguishable transports.  He bubbled, and waggled, and nodded
+amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without effort,
+preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph,
+Gravitation, who was on the look-out for his whole length shortly.
+
+"Ha! ha!" he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken, and
+almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot.  Mrs. Berry's words
+had just reached his wits.
+
+"Why do you laugh, young man?" she inquired, familiar and motherly on
+account of his condition.
+
+Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and
+his nose on a chicken.  "That's goo'!" he said, recovering, and rocking
+under Mrs. Berry's eyes.  "No friend!"
+
+"I did not say, no friend," she remarked.  "I said, no one; meanin', I
+know not where for to send it to."
+
+Ripton's response to this was: You put a Griffin on that cake.
+Wheatsheaves each side."
+
+"His crest?" Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
+
+"Oldest baronetcy 'n England!" waved Ripton.
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
+
+"You think he's Richards.  We're oblige' be very close.  And she's the
+most lovely!--If I hear man say thing 'gainst her."
+
+"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said Mrs. Berry.  "I wanted
+for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then go about
+my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me."
+
+Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
+
+"You do?" he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous
+articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and
+Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an
+expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained
+his bumper at a gulp.  It finished him.  The farthing rushlight of his
+reason leapt and expired.  He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.
+
+Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the
+bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman
+was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found
+her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every
+symptom of unconsoled hysterics.  Her mouth gaped, as if the fell
+creditor had her by the swallow.  She ejaculated with horrible exultation
+that she had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to
+testify, and her evident, but inexplicable, access of misery induced the
+sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry
+wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had
+already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the maid
+called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which
+Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be
+shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was.  She repeated the
+injunction.
+
+The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see
+herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to look
+a very little better.  She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was settled,
+smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.
+
+The gentleman was Adrian Harley.  An interview with Tom Bakewell had put
+him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its white-
+vestured cake, made him whistle.
+
+Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
+
+"A fine morning, ma'am," said Adrian.
+
+"It have been!" Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the
+window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
+
+"A very fine Spring," pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her countenance.
+
+Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to "weather" on a deep sigh.  Her
+wretchedness was palpable.  In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful
+and brisk.  He divined enough of the business to see that there was some
+strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing
+hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his element than when
+he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his
+affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry.
+
+"I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings?" he remarked, with a look
+at the table.
+
+Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were
+not Mr. Thompson's lodgings.
+
+"No?" said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him.
+"Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?"
+
+A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on
+her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply.
+
+"Mr. Feverel's man," continued Adrian, "told me I should be certain to
+find him here.  I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson.  I'm
+too late, I perceive.  Their entertainment is over.  I fancy you have
+been having a party of them here, ma'am?--a bachelors' breakfast!"
+
+In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so
+shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself.  She felt she must
+speak.  Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she
+began:
+
+"Sir, may I beg for to know your name?"
+
+Mr. Harley accorded her request.
+
+Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
+
+"And you are Mr. Harley, that was--oh! and you've come for
+Mr.?"--
+
+Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
+
+"Oh! and it's no mistake, and he's of Raynham Abbey?" Mrs. Berry
+inquired.
+
+Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.
+
+"His father's Sir Austin?" wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her
+handkerchief.
+
+Adrian verified Richard's descent.
+
+"Oh, then, what have I been and done!" she cried, and stared blankly at
+her visitor.  "I been and married my baby!  I been and married the bread
+out of my own mouth.  O Mr. Harley!  Mr. Harley!  I knew you when you was
+a boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you.  And it's my softness
+that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking.  Look at that
+cake, Mr. Harley!"
+
+Adrian followed her directions quite coolly.  "Wedding-cake, ma'am!" he
+said.
+
+"Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!"
+
+"Did you make it yourself, ma'am?"
+
+The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that
+train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him
+guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.
+
+"I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley," she replied.  "It's a bought
+cake, and I'm a lost woman.  Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms a
+baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house!  I
+little dreamed that!  Oh, why did he come to me!  Don't you remember his
+old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no
+fault of hers, Mr. Harley!  The very mornin' after the night you got into
+Mr. Benson's cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary--I remember it as
+clear as yesterday!--and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use
+the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed.  I'm that very woman."
+
+Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful
+life.
+
+"Well, ma'am! well?" he said.  He would bring her to the furnace.
+
+"Won't you see it all, kind sir?" Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic
+dumb show.
+
+Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing at
+Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked
+uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable
+full-bodied posture was the same.  "Well, ma'am?" he spurred her on.
+
+Mrs. Berry burst forth: "It were done this mornin', Mr. Harley, in the
+church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence."
+
+Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony.  "Oh!"  he
+said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved:
+"Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?"
+
+Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl from him, saying:
+"Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?"
+
+Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
+
+"This young gentleman was at church this morning?" he asked.
+
+"Oh! quite reasonable and proper then," Mrs. Berry begged him to
+understand.
+
+"Of course, ma'am."  Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate
+limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly.  "You were all
+reasonable and proper, ma'am.  The principal male performer, then, is my
+cousin, Mr. Feverel?  He was married by you, this morning, by licence at
+your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left
+intoxicated."
+
+Mrs. Berry flew out.  "He never drink a drop, sir.  A more moderate young
+gentleman you never see.  Oh! don't ye think that now, Mr. Harley.  He
+was as upright and master of his mind as you be."
+
+"Ay!" the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, "I mean the
+other form of intoxication."
+
+Mrs. Berry sighed.  She could say nothing on that score.
+
+Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him
+circumstantially what had been done.
+
+She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
+
+Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical
+woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his
+mask, and had ever since lived in exile from the Raynham world on a
+little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity.  She was that
+woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse Providence for the
+betraying excess of softness it had endowed her with.  How was she to
+recognize her baby grown a man?  He came in a feigned name; not a word of
+the family was mentioned.  He came like an ordinary mortal, though she
+felt something more than ordinary to him--she knew she did.  He came
+bringing a beautiful young lady, and on what grounds could she turn her
+back on them?  Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, why should she
+interfere to make them unhappy--so few the chances of happiness in this
+world!  Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring.
+
+"One wrench," said the sobbing culprit, "one, and my ring was off!"
+
+She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the vestry-
+book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other signatures.
+
+"I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done," said
+Adrian.
+
+"Indeed, sir," moaned Berry, "I were, and am."
+
+"And would do your best to rectify the mischief--eh, ma'am?"
+
+"Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would," she protested solemnly.
+
+"--As, of course, you should--knowing the family.  Where may these
+lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?"
+
+Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: "To the Isle--I don't quite know, sir!"
+she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit she had
+fallen into.  Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be
+pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss!  "To-morrow, if you
+please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!"
+
+"A pleasant spot," Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
+
+By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought
+his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this was
+enough to satisfy Adrian's mind that there had been concoction and
+chicanery.  Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance
+certainly had not brought him to the young one.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," he said, in answer to her petitions for his
+favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and
+the bridal pair, "I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the
+affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the
+consummation.  He will be in town
+to-morrow morning; but one of you two must see him to-night.  An emetic
+kindly administered will set our friend here on his legs.  A bath and a
+clean shirt, and he might go.  I don't see why your name should appear at
+all.  Brush him up, and send him to Bellingham by the seven o'clock
+train.  He will find his way to Raynham; he knows the neighbourhood best
+in the dark.  Let him go and state the case.  Remember, one of you must
+go."
+
+With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the
+couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtues
+over, Adrian said, "Good morning."
+
+Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him.  "You won't refuse a piece of his
+cake, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no, ma'am," Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity.  "I shall
+claim a very large piece.  Richard has a great many friends who will
+rejoice to eat his wedding-cake.  Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry.  Put
+it in paper, if you please.  I shall be delighted to carry it to them,
+and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of
+relationship."
+
+Mrs. Berry cut the cake.  Somehow, as she sliced through it, the
+sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and
+she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she
+regretted her conduct.  She vowed that they seemed made for each other;
+that both, were beautiful; both had spirit; both were innocent; and to
+part them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs. Berry wrought herself to
+cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
+
+Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion.  He
+took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and left
+Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.
+
+"So dies the System!" was Adrian's comment in the street.  "And now let
+prophets roar!  He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which is more than
+I should have foretold of the monster.  Meantime," he gave the cake a
+dramatic tap, "I'll go sow nightmares."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
+disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the
+dignity of a philosopher.  When one has attained that felicitous point of
+wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive
+objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them:
+their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more
+comical still.  On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built
+his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period.  Astonishment
+never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to
+relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he saw none.  Jugglers he
+saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the
+empyrean; but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter
+were at the mercy of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid
+unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to
+his morality, his comfort to his conscience.  Not that voluntarily he cut
+himself off from his fellows: on the contrary, his sole amusement was
+their society.  Alone he was rather dull, as a man who beholds but one
+thing must naturally be.  Study of the animated varieties of that one
+thing excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play; and the
+faculties he had forfeited to hold his elevated position he could
+serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others.  Thus:--wonder at
+Master Richard's madness: though he himself did not experience it, he was
+eager to mark the effect on his beloved relatives.  As he carried along
+his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of
+amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the
+prospect.  For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with Paris,
+culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to
+show Richard the highways of History and tear him from the risk of
+further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether bathed
+in freshness and revived.  This had been planned during Richard's absence
+to surprise him.
+
+Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the
+race of young men.  It supplanted that foolishness.  It was his Romance,
+as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs,
+and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to
+the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts
+man at a slower pace to the sexton.  Adrian had never travelled.  He was
+aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded
+by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron.  His Alp would hardly
+be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground: he must
+recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize becomingly on
+the ancient world.  The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort,
+as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the shelter of a but
+and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the bitterness of beggarliness.  Let
+his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and splendour due to his
+superior emotions, or not at all.  Consequently the wise youth had long
+nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that
+at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with
+such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of
+Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial
+mockery.  Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would have turned
+away uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after.
+
+Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
+
+He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading.  He had fought down
+his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to
+his dinner at the Foreys' with less than usual timidity.
+
+"Ah! glad you've come, Adrian," he said, and expanded his chest.  "I was
+afraid I should have to ride down.  This is kind of you.  We'll walk down
+together through the park.  It's absolutely dangerous to walk alone in
+these streets.  My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the
+year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it.  I give you my
+word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in
+Piccadilly, and I thought I was down!  I saved myself by a miracle."
+
+"You have an appetite, I hope?" asked Adrian.
+
+"I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk," chirped Hippias.  "Yes.
+I think I feel hungry now."
+
+"Charmed to hear it," said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on his
+knees.  "How should you define Folly?" he checked the process to inquire.
+
+"Hm!" Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when such
+questions were addressed to him.  "I think I should define it to be a
+slide."
+
+"Very good definition.  In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on
+it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle.
+You must present that to the Pilgrim. And the monument of folly, what
+would that be?"
+
+Hippias meditated anew.  "All the human race on one another's shoulders."
+He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
+
+"Very good," Adrian applauded, "or in default of that, some symbol of the
+thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a chip."
+
+Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
+
+"This is the monument made portable--eh?"
+
+"Cake!" cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense
+disgust.  "You're right of them that eat it.  If I--if I don't mistake,"
+he peered at it, "the noxious composition bedizened in that way is what
+they call wedding-cake.  It's arrant poison!  Who is it you want to kill?
+What are you carrying such stuff about for?"
+
+Adrian rang the bell for a knife.  "To present you with your due and
+proper portion.  You will have friends and relatives, and can't be saved
+from them, not even by miracle.  It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps,
+the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who
+consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to
+distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with the object
+probably" (he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to slice
+the cake) "of enabling those friends (these edifices require very
+delicate incision--each particular currant and subtle condiment hangs to
+its neighbour--a wedding-cake is evidently the most highly civilized of
+cakes, and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of
+civilization!)--I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt
+(we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair
+share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing
+some hours in purgatory.  This, as far as I can apportion it without
+weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!"
+
+He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
+
+"Get away!"  Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair.
+"I'll have none of it, I tell you!  It's death!  It's fifty times worse
+than that beastly compound Christmas pudding!  What fool has been doing
+this, then?  Who dares send me cake?  Me!  It's an insult."
+
+"You are not compelled to eat any before dinner," said Adrian, pointing
+the corner of the table after him, "but your share you must take, and
+appear to consume.  One who has done so much to bring about the marriage
+cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits.  Maidens, I
+hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
+therefrom--said to be of a lighter class, taken that way.  It's a capital
+cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it--you have indeed!
+So here it is."
+
+The table again went at Hippias.  He ran nimbly round it, and flung
+himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: "There!...  My appetite's gone for
+to-day!"
+
+"Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel of his cake?"
+said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking at his
+uncle.
+
+"Richard?"
+
+"Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard!  Your companion since you've been
+in town.  He's married, you know.  Married this morning at Kensington
+parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty
+to.  Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight, a
+very delectable place for a month's residence.  I have to announce to you
+that, thanks to your assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!"
+
+"Richard married!"
+
+There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the wits
+of poor Hippias were softened by the shock.  His hand travelled half-way
+to his forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that seat of reason,
+and then fell.
+
+"Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in town
+under your charge...."
+
+"Married?"  Hippias jumped up--he had it.  "Why, he's under age!  he's an
+infant."
+
+"So he is.  But the infant is not the less married.  Fib like a man and
+pay your fee--what does it matter?  Any one who is breeched can obtain a
+licence in our noble country.  And the interests of morality demand that
+it should not be difficult.  Is it true--can you persuade anybody that
+you have known nothing about it?"
+
+"Ha! infamous joke!  I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on somebody
+else," said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa.  "You've done
+me up for the day, I can assure you."
+
+Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic
+finish to the work.  He had the gratification of passing his uncle
+through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in conviction,
+and exclaimed, "This accounts for his conduct to me.  That boy must have
+a cunning nothing short of infernal!  I feel...I feel it just here, he
+drew a hand along his midriff.
+
+"I'm not equal to this world of fools," he added faintly, and shut his
+eyes.  "No, I can't dine.  Eat? ha!...no.  Go without me!"
+
+Shortly after, Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed,
+"See what comes of our fine schemes!  Poor Austin!" and as the pillow
+swelled over his ears, "I'm not sure that a day's fast won't do me good."
+The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had a right
+to use it.
+
+Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
+
+He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the Row,
+and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged.  The
+Captain did not pass with out querying the ungainly parcel.
+
+"I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?" said Adrian.
+
+"Enclosed is wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the
+maids and wives of Merry England sleep secure.  I had half a mind to fix
+it on a pole, and engage a band to parade it.  This is our dear Richard's
+wedding-cake.  Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at
+the Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed the
+ring of his beautiful bride's lachrymose land-lady, she standing adjacent
+by the altar.  His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers as a maid, you
+can claim on the spot if you think proper, and digest according to your
+powers."
+
+Algernon let off steam in a whistle.  "Thompson, the solicitor's
+daughter!" he said.  "I met them the other day, somewhere about here.  He
+introduced me to her.  A pretty little baggage.
+
+"No."  Adrian set him right.  "'Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman Catholic
+dairymaid.  Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the
+Plantagenets!  He's quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's
+daughter, and himself as Beelzebub's son.  However, the wild animal is in
+Hymen's chains, and the cake is cut.  Will you have your morsel?"
+
+"Oh, by all means!--not now."  Algernon had an unwonted air of
+reflection.--"  Father know it?"
+
+"Not yet.  He will to-night by nine o'clock."
+
+"Then I must see him by seven.  Don't say you met me."  He nodded, and
+pricked his horse.
+
+"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once more
+in motion.
+
+The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind.  He had
+reserved them for his final discharge.  Dear demonstrative creatures!
+Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest
+check their fainting fits.  On the generic woman one could calculate.
+Well might The Pilgrim's Scrip say of her that, "She is always at
+Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment.  Each woman is Eve
+throughout the ages; whereas the Pilgrim would have us believe that the
+Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has
+learnt a lesson from time.  Probably the Pilgrim's meaning may be taken
+to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
+
+At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the
+nursery when a bauble is lost.  He was awake to Mrs. Doria's maternal
+predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form of
+filial obedience.  They were only a poor couple to gratify his
+Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty,
+and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and
+womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and
+other females of the family assembly were expected to develop the finer
+shades and tapering edges of an agitation to which no woman could be
+cold.
+
+All went well.  He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in a
+conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to dinner.
+Much of the conversation adverted to Richard.  Mrs. Doria asked him if he
+had seen the youth, or heard of him.
+
+"Seen him? no!  Heard of him? yes!" said Adrian.  "I have heard of him.
+I heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a breakfast that
+dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake and"--
+
+"Cake at breakfast!" they all interjected.,
+
+"That seems to be his fancy just now."
+
+"What an extraordinary taste!"
+
+"You know, he is educated on a System."
+
+One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable
+pun.  Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent,
+as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young
+gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished by his
+own spark.
+
+Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, "Oh! fish-cake, I suppose!  I wish he
+understood a little better the obligations of relationship."
+
+"Whether he understands them, I can't say," observed Adrian, "but I
+assure you he is very energetic in extending them."
+
+The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that his
+dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by at the
+aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly mysterious
+and deep.
+
+"Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?"  Mrs. Doria
+asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
+
+Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, "Do they keep a beadle
+at the door?"
+
+Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece
+of satirical ingenuousness.  "I daresay they do," she said.
+
+"And a curate on hand?"
+
+"Oh, I should think a dozen!"
+
+Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house a
+wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment's
+notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
+
+The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent
+old fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon as
+they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the
+flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord,
+and the gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled to
+the business of the table, sure that an hour for unbosoming and imbibing
+was their own.  Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of
+standing.
+
+"I want to ask you," he said, "whether an infant in law can legally bind
+himself."
+
+"If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I suppose he
+can," yawned Brandon.
+
+"Is he responsible for his acts?"
+
+"I've no doubt we could hang him."
+
+"Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?"
+
+"Not quite so much; pretty near."
+
+"For instance, he can marry?"
+
+"That's not a criminal case, you know."
+
+"And the marriage is valid?"
+
+"You can dispute it."
+
+"Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight.  It holds then?"
+
+"Both water and fire!"
+
+The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the
+vigorous circulation of the claret.
+
+"Dear me, sir!" said Adrian, "I beg pardon.  The circumstances must
+excuse me.  The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid
+this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law."
+
+It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the  announcement
+was taken.  Nothing was heard more energetic than, "Deuce he has!" and,
+"A dairymaid!"
+
+"I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace," Adrian continued.
+"I wanted to be able to console my aunt"--
+
+"Well, but--well, but," the old gentleman, much the most excited, puffed-
+-"eh, Brandon?  He's a boy, this young ass!  Do you mean to tell me a boy
+can go and marry when he pleases, and any troll he pleases, and the
+marriage is good?  If I thought that I'd turn every woman off my
+premises.  I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid.  I'd have
+no woman near him till--till"--
+
+"Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?" suggested Brandon.
+
+"Till he knew what women are made of, sir!" the old gentleman finished
+his sentence vehemently.  "What, d'ye think, will Feverel say to it, Mr.
+Adrian?"
+
+"He has been trying the very System you have proposed sir--one that does
+not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile
+intelligence.  I'm afraid it's the very worst way of solving the
+problem."
+
+"Of course it is," said Clarence.  "None but a fool!"--
+
+"At your age," Adrian relieved his embarrassment, "it is natural, my dear
+Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or imprisoned
+manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to see what amount
+of wisdom it contains.  You follow one extreme, and we the other.  I
+don't say that a middle course exists.  The history of mankind shows our
+painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves
+into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting.  The moral question is,
+if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself
+from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his
+foolishness, save himself from naughtiness?"
+
+A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at Mr.
+Clarence.  Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian,
+in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with
+him.  Adrian preferred not to go in alone.  "Very well," he said, and
+sipped his coffee.  They talked on, sounding the depths of law in Brandon
+Forey, and receiving nought but hollow echoes from that profound cavity.
+He would not affirm that the marriage was invalid: he would not affirm
+that it could not be annulled.  He thought not: still he thought it would
+be worth trying.  A consummated and a non-consummated union were two
+different things....
+
+"Dear me!" said Adrian, "does the Law recognize that?  Why, that's almost
+human!"
+
+Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Forey very
+particularly wished to speak with him.
+
+"What can be the matter?" he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in
+woman strengthened.  The cake had exploded, no doubt.
+
+So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society.  All the
+younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood displayed,
+gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision, and intrude the
+comments and speculations continually arising from fresh shocks of wonder
+at the unaccountable apparition.  Entering with the half-guilty air of
+men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the gallant males
+also ranged themselves round the common object of curiosity.
+
+"Here! Adrian!" Mrs. Doria cried.  "Where is Adrian?  Pray, come here.
+Tell me!  Where did this cake come from?  Whose is it?  What does it do
+here?  You know all about it, for you brought it.  Clare saw you bring it
+into the room.  What does it mean?  I insist upon a direct answer.  Now
+do not make me impatient, Adrian."
+
+Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty.  By her concentrated rapidity
+and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled.
+
+"I was really bound to bring it," Adrian protested.
+
+"Answer me!"
+
+The wise youth bowed: "Categorically.  This cake came from the house of a
+person, a female, of the name of Berry.  It belongs to you partly, partly
+to me, partly to Clare, and to the rest of our family, on the principle
+of equal division for which purpose it is present...."
+
+"Yes!  Speak!"
+
+"It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean."
+
+"This, then, is the Breakfast!  And the ring!  Adrian! where is Richard?"
+
+Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
+
+But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling hope
+sank.  "The wretched boy has ruined himself!" she said, and sat down
+trembling.
+
+Oh! that System!  The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead of
+oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that System.  She hesitated not to say that
+her brother had got what he deserved.  Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice
+had overtaken him.  Now he would see! but at what a price! at what a
+sacrifice!
+
+Mrs. Doria, commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
+
+Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry's words.  "He was married this
+morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve, by
+licence, at the Kensington parish church."
+
+"Then that was his appointment!" Mrs. Doria murmured.
+
+"That was the cake for breakfast!" breathed a second of her sex.
+
+"And it was his ring!" exclaimed a third.
+
+The men were silent, and made long faces.
+
+Clare stood cold and sedate.  She and her mother avoided each other's
+eyes.
+
+"Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?"
+
+"The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid," said
+Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
+
+Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried,
+"Brandon!"  She was a woman of energy.  Her thoughts resolved to action
+spontaneously.
+
+"Brandon," she drew the barrister a little aside, "can they not be
+followed, and separated?  I want your advice.  Cannot we separate them?
+A boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the
+toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably.  Can we not,
+Brandon?"
+
+The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her
+entreaties: "From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the
+office perilous."
+
+"I'm speaking of law, Brandon.  Can we not obtain an order from one of
+your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?"
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
+
+"You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon."
+
+Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to a man
+slept heavily after dinner.
+
+"Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning?  Will you
+promise me to do so, Brandon?--Or a magistrate!  A magistrate would send
+a policeman after them.  My dear Brandon!  I beg--I beg you to assist us
+in this dreadful extremity.  It will be the death of my poor brother.  I
+believe he would forgive anything but this.  You have no idea what his
+notions are of blood."
+
+Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
+
+"What is it, aunt?" asked the wise youth.  "You want them followed and
+torn asunder by wild policemen?"
+
+"To-morrow!" Brandon queerly interposed.
+
+"Won't that be--just too late?" Adrian suggested.
+
+Mrs. Doria, sighed out her last spark of hope.
+
+"You see," said Adrian....
+
+"Yes! yes!" Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations.  "Pray be
+quiet, Adrian, and let me speak.  Brandon! it cannot be!  it's quite
+impossible!  Can you stand there and tell me that boy is legally married?
+I never will believe it!  The law cannot be so shamefully bad as to
+permit a boy--a mere child--to do such absurd things.  Grandpapa!" she
+beckoned to the old gentleman.  "Grandpapa! pray do make Brandon speak.
+These lawyers never will.  He might stop it, if he would.  If I were a
+man, do you think I would stand here?"
+
+"Well, my dear," the old gentleman toddled to compose her, "I'm quite of
+your opinion.  I believe he knows no more than you or I.  My belief is
+they none of them know anything till they join issue and go into Court.
+I want to see a few female lawyers."
+
+"To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?" said Adrian.  "They would
+have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand."
+
+"And you can jest, Adrian!" his aunt reproached him.  "But I will not be
+beaten.  I know--I am firmly convinced that no law would ever allow a boy
+to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and nothing shall
+persuade me that it is so.  Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak in
+answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealing with a
+woman.  Can my nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly?  Is
+what he has done legitimate?  Is he bound for life by what he has done
+while a boy?
+
+"Well--a," Brandon breathed through his teeth.  "A--hm! the matter's so
+very delicate, you see, Helen."
+
+"You're to forget that," Adrian remarked.
+
+"A--hm! well!" pursued Brandon.  "Perhaps if you could arrest and divide
+them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain facts"...
+
+"Yes?" the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
+
+"Well...hm! a...in that case...a...  Or if a lunatic, you could prove him
+to have been of unsound mind."...
+
+"Oh! there's no doubt of his madness on my mind, Brandon."
+
+"Yes! well! in that case...  Or if of different religious persuasions"...
+
+"She is a Catholic!" Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
+
+"Yes! well! in that case...objections might be taken to the form of the
+marriage...  Might be proved fictitious...  Or if he's under, say,
+eighteen years"...
+
+"He can't be much more," cried Mrs. Doria.   "I think," she appeared to
+reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, "What is Richard's
+age?"
+
+The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the
+phantom straw she caught at.
+
+"Oh! about that, I should fancy," he muttered; and found it necessary at
+the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment.  Mrs. Doria
+surpassed his expectations.
+
+"Yes I well, then..."  Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was meant
+to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare's voice was heard
+from out the buzzing circle of her  cousins: "Richard is nineteen years
+and six months old to-day, mama."
+
+"Nonsense, child."
+
+"He is, mama."  Clare's voice was very steadfast.
+
+"Nonsense, I tell you.  How can you know?"
+
+"Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama."
+
+Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months.  Clare was too
+strong for her.
+
+"Singular child!" she mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully
+rejected straws while drowning.
+
+"But there's the religion still!" she comforted herself, and sat down to
+cogitate.
+
+The men smiled and looked vacuous.
+
+Music was proposed.  There are times when soft music hath not charms;
+when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Caesar's dust and is taken to
+fill horrid pauses.  Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: "I'm a
+laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!"  Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary
+Branksburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people
+to Haste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the
+world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and very
+few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the glowing
+appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the
+emptiness he addressed.  Clare was asked to entertain the company.  The
+singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the
+appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger's repertory.
+
+Clare sang a little Irish air.  Her duty done, she marched from the
+piano.  Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters;
+but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling
+an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity
+herself--a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler like
+that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly.  Remember
+that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered
+fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had almost reduced her to
+the condition of constitutional hypocrite.  She had enough of bitterness
+to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.
+
+Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature prevented
+her from giving up.  Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the
+harder she clutched them.
+
+She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow
+her.
+
+"Adrian," she said, turning upon him in the passage, "you mentioned a
+house where this horrible cake...where he was this morning.  I desire you
+to take me to that woman immediately."
+
+The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude.  He had hoped he
+should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after
+enjoying the comedy of real life.
+
+"My dear aunt"...he was beginning to insinuate.
+
+"Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat," said Mrs. Doria.
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey.  He stamped his assent to the
+Pilgrim's dictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected
+on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation
+and a nuisance.  However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
+
+What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly
+know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other,
+and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in
+wrath.  She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse.  She
+dared not abuse her brother to his face: him she would have to console.
+Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she was aware,
+bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a
+discussion of the case.  So she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire
+whither her nephew had flown.
+
+When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a woman
+of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy.  Bessy
+Berry's creditor came to her in female form that night.  She then beheld
+it in all its terrors.  Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a
+disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes, and the
+peculiar male characteristic of being moved, and ultimately silenced, by
+tears.  As female, her creditor was terrible indeed.  Still, had it not
+been a late hour, Bessy Berry would have died rather than speak openly
+that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of Wight.  They
+had a long start, they were out of the reach of pursuers, they were safe,
+and she told what she had to tell.  She told more than was wise of her to
+tell.  She made mention of her early service in the family, and of her
+little pension.  Alas! her little pension!  Her creditor had come
+expecting no payment--come; as creditors are wont in such moods, just to
+take it out of her--to employ the familiar term.  At once Mrs. Doria
+pounced upon the pension.
+
+"That, of course, you know is at an end," she said in the calmest manner,
+and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her.  She only
+asked a little consideration for her feelings.
+
+True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene.
+Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it.
+Mrs. Doria was not generous.  The Pilgrim may be wrong about the sex not
+growing; but its fashion of conducting warfare we must allow to be
+barbarous, and according to what is deemed the pristine, or wild cat,
+method.  Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor Berry to her bed
+that night, and her character bled till morning on her pillow.
+
+The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home.  Mice had been
+at the cake during her absence apparently.  The ladies and gentlemen
+present put it on the greedy mice, who were accused of having gorged and
+gone to bed.
+
+"I'm sure they're quite welcome," said Mrs. Doria.  "It's a farce, this
+marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking.  I would not
+touch an atom of it.  Why, they were married in a married woman's ring!
+Can that be legal, as you call it?  Oh, I'm convinced!  Don't tell me.
+Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is true to his principles, he
+will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from infamy.  I want no
+legal advice.  I go upon common sense, common decency.  This marriage is
+false."
+
+Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that she
+could not give it up.  She took Clare to her bed, and caressed and wept
+over her, as she would not have done had she known the singular child,
+saying, "Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him, Clare! we must
+save him!"  Of the two the mother showed the greater want of iron on this
+occasion.  Clare lay in her arms rigid and emotionless, with one of her
+hands tight-locked.  All she said was: "I knew it in the morning, mama."
+She slept clasping Richard's nuptial ring.
+
+By this time all specially concerned in the System knew it.  The
+honeymoon was shoring placidly above them.  Is not happiness like another
+circulating medium?  When we have a very great deal of it, some poor
+hearts are aching for what is taken away from them.  When we have gone
+out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to
+be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later.  Who knows
+the honeymoon that did not steal somebody's sweetness?  Richard Turpin
+went forth, singing "Money or life" to the world: Richard Feverel has
+done the same, substituting "Happiness" for "Money," frequently synonyms.
+The coin he wanted he would have, and was just as much a highway robber
+as his fellow Dick, so that those who have failed to recognize him as a
+hero before, may now regard him in that light.  Meanwhile the world he
+has squeezed looks exceedingly patient and beautiful.  His coin chinks
+delicious music to him.  Nature and the order of things on earth have no
+warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the
+Jews.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+And now the author of the System was on trial under the eyes of the lady
+who loved him.  What so kind as they?  Yet are they very rigorous, those
+soft watchful woman's eyes.  If you are below the measure they have made
+of you, you will feel it in the fulness of time.  She cannot but show you
+that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down a bit.  You feel
+yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors, till at last they
+drop on you complacently level.  But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing
+enamoured of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw
+reflected in her adoring upcast orbs!  Beware of assisting to delude her!
+A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man, if you
+are surely that: she will haply learn to acknowledge that no mortal
+tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectably, and
+that practically (though she sighs to think it) her ideal of you was on
+the pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation jacket and
+breech.  For this she first scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor,
+and then smiles at herself.  But shouldst thou, when the hour says
+plainly, Be thyself, and the woman is willing to take thee as thou art,
+shouldst thou still aspire to be that thing of shanks and wrests, wilt
+thou not seem contemptible as well as ridiculous?  And when the fall
+comes, will it not be flat on thy face, instead of to the common height
+of men?  You may fall miles below her measure of you, and be safe:
+nothing is damaged save an overgrown charity-boy; but if you fall below
+the common height of men, you must make up your mind to see her rustle
+her gown, spy at the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance.  The
+moral of which is, that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for
+whose amusement the farce is performed, will find us out and punish us
+for it.  And it is usually the end of a sentimental dalliance.
+
+Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he should
+feel, he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses, and, however much he
+lowered his reputation as a sage, Lady Blandish would have excused him:
+she would not have loved him less for seeing him closer.  But the poor
+gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his muscles to act up to her
+conception of him.  He, a man of science in life, who was bound to be
+surprised by nothing in nature, it was not for him to do more than lift
+his eyebrows and draw in his lips at the news delivered by Ripton
+Thompson, that ill bird at Raynham.
+
+All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his
+penitential headache to bed, was: "You see, Emmeline, it is useless to
+base any system on a human being."
+
+A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work building
+for nearly twenty years.  Too philosophical to seem genuine.  It revealed
+where the blow struck sharpest.  Richard was no longer the Richard of his
+creation--his pride and his joy--but simply a human being with the rest.
+The bright star had sunk among the mass.
+
+And yet, what had the young man done?  And in what had the System failed?
+
+The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled with the
+offended father.
+
+"My friend," she said, tenderly taking his hand before she retired, "I
+know how deeply you must be grieved.  I know what your disappointment
+must be.  I do not beg of you to forgive him now.  You cannot doubt his
+love for this young person, and according to his light, has he not
+behaved honourably, and as you would have wished, rather than bring her
+to shame?  You will think of that.  It has been an accident--a
+misfortune--a terrible misfortune"...
+
+"The God of this world is in the machine--not out of it," Sir Austin
+interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good-night over.
+
+At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the phrase;
+now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to turn the
+meaning that was in it against himself, much as she pitied him.
+
+"You know, Emmeline," he added, "I believe very little in the fortune, or
+misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and reverses.  They
+are useful impersonations to novelists; but my opinion is sufficiently
+high of flesh and blood to believe that we make our own history without
+intervention.  Accidents?--Terrible misfortunes?--What are they?--Good-
+night."
+
+"Good-night," she said, looking sad and troubled.  "When I said,
+'misfortune,' I meant, of course, that he is to blame; but--shall I leave
+you his letter to me?"
+
+"I think I have enough to meditate upon," he replied, coldly bowing.
+
+"God bless you," she whispered.  "And--may I say it? do not shut your
+heart."
+
+He assured her that he hoped not to do so and the moment she was gone he
+set about shutting it as tight as he could.
+
+If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being, he had said,
+Never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of
+his own case.  He had experimented on humanity in the person of the son
+he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to have
+failed, all humanity's failings fell on the shoulders of his son.
+Richard's parting laugh in the train--it was explicable now: it sounded
+in his ears like the mockery of this base nature of ours at every
+endeavour to exalt and chasten it.  The young man had plotted this.  From
+step to step Sir Austin traced the plot.  The curious mask he had worn
+since his illness; the selection of his incapable uncle Hippias for a
+companion in preference to Adrian; it was an evident, well-perfected
+plot.  That hideous laugh would not be silenced: Base, like the rest,
+treacherous, a creature of passions using his abilities solely to gratify
+them--never surely had humanity such chances as in him!  A Manichaean
+tendency, from which the sententious eulogist of nature had been
+struggling for years (and which was partly at the bottom of the System),
+now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind.  As he sat alone in
+the forlorn dead-hush of his library, he saw the devil.
+
+How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates of
+them we love?
+
+There by the springs of Richard's future, his father sat: and the devil
+said to him: "Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely do nothing: your
+object now is to keep a brave face to the world, so that all may know you
+superior to this human nature that has deceived you.  For it is the
+shameless deception, not the marriage, that has wounded you."
+
+"Ay!" answered the baronet, "the shameless deception, not the marriage:
+wicked and ruinous as it must be; a destroyer of my tenderest hopes! my
+dearest schemes!  Not the marriage--the shameless deception!" and he
+crumpled up his son's letter to him, and tossed it into the fire.
+
+How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manichaeans when he talks
+our own thoughts to us?
+
+Further he whispered, "And your System:--if you would be brave to the
+world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you: relinquish an
+impossible project; see it as it is--dead: too good for men!"
+
+"Ay!" muttered the baronet: "all who would save them perish on the
+Cross!"
+
+And so he sat nursing the devil.
+
+By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and went to
+gaze at Ripton.  That exhausted debauchee and youth without a destiny
+slept a dead sleep.  A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and his
+helpless sunken chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him
+look absurdly piteous.  The baronet remembered how often he had compared
+his boy with this one: his own bright boy!  And where was the difference
+between them?
+
+"Mere outward gilding!" said his familiar.
+
+"Yes," he responded, "I daresay this one never positively plotted to
+deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked, and is
+internally the sounder of the two."
+
+Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the light of the
+lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however abject.
+
+"Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!" whispered
+the monitor.
+
+"Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the whole?"
+ejaculated Sir Austin.  "And is no angel of avail till that is drawn off?
+And is that our conflict--to see whether we can escape the contagion of
+its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that?"
+
+"The world is wise in its way," said the voice.
+
+"Though it look on itself through Port wine?" he suggested, remembering
+his lawyer Thompson.
+
+"Wise in not seeking to be too wise," said the voice.
+
+"And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!"
+
+"Human nature is weak."
+
+"And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an institution!"
+
+"It always has been so."
+
+"And always will be?"
+
+"So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts."
+
+"And leads--whither?  And ends--where?"
+
+Richard's laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it were through
+the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.
+
+This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin asking
+again if there were no actual difference between the flower of his hopes
+and yonder drunken weed, and receiving for answer that there was a
+decided dissimilarity in the smell of the couple; becoming cognizant of
+which he retreated.
+
+Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter.  He took him into his bosom
+at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and received his suggestions and
+bowed to his dictates.  Because he suffered, and decreed that he would
+suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was
+great-minded in his calamity.  He had stood against the world.  The world
+had beaten him.  What then?  He must shut his heart and mask his face;
+that was all.  To be far in advance of the mass, is as fruitless to
+mankind, he reflected, as straggling in the rear.  For how do we know
+that they move behind us at all, or move in our track?  What we win for
+them is lost; and where we are overthrown we lie!
+
+It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a nature
+not great, chose to colour his retrogression and countenance his
+shortcoming; and it was thus that he set about ruining the work he had
+done.  He might well say, as he once did, that there are hours when the
+clearest soul becomes a cunning fox.  For a grief that was private and
+peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon humanity; just as he had
+accused it in the period of what he termed his own ordeal.  How had he
+borne that?  By masking his face.  And he prepared the ordeal for his son
+by doing the same.  This was by no means his idea of a man's duty in
+tribulation, about which he could be strenuously eloquent.
+
+But it was his instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures
+alone are not at the mercy of their instincts.  Moreover it would cost
+him pain to mask his face; pain worse than that he endured when there
+still remained an object for him to open his heart to in proportion; and
+he always reposed upon the Spartan comfort of bearing pain and being
+passive.  "Do nothing," said the devil he nursed; which meant in his
+case, "Take me into you and don't cast me out."  Excellent and sane is
+the outburst of wrath to men, when it stops short of slaughter.  For who
+that locks it up to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed?  Sir
+Austin had as weak a digestion for wrath, as poor Hippias for a green
+duckling.  Instead of eating it, it ate him.  The wild beast in him was
+not the less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not the
+less active because he resolved to do nothing.
+
+He sat at the springs of Richard's future, in the forlorn dead-hush of
+his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished fire,
+and that humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears the midnight
+Fates busily stirring their embryos.  The lamp glowed mildly on the bust
+of Chatham.
+
+Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door.  Lady Blandish glided in.
+With hasty step she came straight to him, and took both his hands.
+
+"My friend," she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling, "I feared I
+should find you here.  I could not sleep.  How is it with you?"
+
+"Well! Emmeline, well!" he replied, torturing his brows to fix the mask.
+
+He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him.  He had an
+extraordinary longing for Adrian's society.  He knew that the wise youth
+would divine how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to just enough
+weakness to demand a certain kind of management.  Besides, Adrian, he had
+not a doubt, would accept him entirely as he seemed, and not pester him
+in any way by trying to unlock his heart; whereas a woman, he feared,
+would be waxing too womanly, and swelling from tears and supplications to
+a scene, of all things abhorred by him the most.  So he rapped the floor
+with his foot, and gave the lady no very welcome face when he said it was
+well with him.
+
+She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly
+detaining the other.
+
+"Oh, my friend! may I believe you?  May I speak to you?"  She leaned
+close to him.  "You know my heart.  I have no better ambition than to be
+your friend.  Surely I divide your grief, and may I not claim your
+confidence?  Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows?  I
+would not have come to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared relieves
+the burden, and it is now that you may feel a woman's aid, and something
+of what a woman could be to you...."
+
+"Be assured," he gravely said, "I thank you, Emmeline, for your
+intentions."
+
+"No, no! not for my intentions!  And do not thank me.  Think of
+him...think of your dear boy...  Our Richard, as we have called him.--Oh!
+do not think it a foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a thought
+this night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak to you...
+Tell me first you have forgiven him."
+
+"A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline."
+
+"Your heart has forgiven him?"
+
+My heart has taken what he gave."
+
+"And quite forgiven him?"
+
+"You will hear no complaints of mine."
+
+The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a wistful manner,
+saying with a sigh, "Yes!  I know how noble you are, and different from
+others!"
+
+He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.
+
+"You ought to be in bed, Emmeline."
+
+"I cannot sleep."
+
+"Go, and talk to me another time."
+
+"No, it must be now.  You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a
+clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now.  I have
+had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless
+him...it will end miserably.  My friend, have you done so?"
+
+He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of
+his mask.
+
+"Have you done so, Austin?"
+
+"This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
+their sons, Emmeline!"
+
+"No, not that.  But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before the
+day comes?"
+
+He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:--"And I must do
+this, or it will end in misery?  How else can it end?  Can I save him
+from the seed he has sown?  Consider, Emmeline, what you say.  He has
+repeated his cousin's sin.  You see the end of that."
+
+"Oh, so different!  This young person is not, is not of the class poor
+Austin Wentworth allied himself to.  Indeed it is different.  And he--be
+just and admit his nobleness.  I fancied you did.  This young person has
+great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she--indeed I think,
+had she been in another position, you would not have looked upon her
+unfavourably."
+
+"She may be too good for my son!"  The baronet spoke with sublime
+bitterness.
+
+"No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it."
+
+"Pass her."
+
+"Yes, I will speak only of him.  He met her by a fatal accident.  We
+thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again.  He met her,
+he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her
+for ever, and is the madness of an hour he did this...."
+
+"My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches."
+
+"Ah! do not trifle, my friend.  Say: would you have had him act as young
+men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?"
+
+Sir Austin did not like the question.  It probed him very severely.
+
+"You mean," he said, "that fathers must fold their arms, and either
+submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined."
+
+"I do not mean that," exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did mean,
+and how to express it.  "I mean that he loved her.  Is it not a madness
+at his age?  But what I chiefly mean is--save him from the consequences.
+No, you shall not withdraw your hand.  Think of his pride, his
+sensitiveness, his great wild nature--wild when he is set wrong: think
+how intense it is, set upon love; think, my friend, do not forget his
+love for you."
+
+Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.
+
+"That I should save him, or any one, from consequences, is asking more
+than the order of things will allow to you, Emmeline, and is not in the
+disposition of this world.  I cannot.  Consequences are the natural
+offspring of acts.  My child, you are talking sentiment, which is the
+distraction of our modern age in everything--a phantasmal vapour
+distorting the image of the life we live.  You ask me to give him a
+golden age in spite of himself.  All that could be done, by keeping him
+in the paths of virtue and truth, I did.  He is become a man, and as a
+man he must reap his own sowing."
+
+The baffled lady sighed.  He sat so rigid: he spoke so securely, as if
+wisdom were to him more than the love of his son.  And yet he did love
+his son.  Feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily,
+she reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had
+been quibbled with.
+
+"All I ask of you is to open your heart to him," she said.
+
+He kept silent.
+
+"Call him a man,--he is, and must ever be the child of your education, my
+friend."
+
+"You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins
+himself, he spares the world of young women.  Yes, that is something!"
+
+Closely she scanned the mask.  It was impenetrable.  He could meet her
+eyes, and respond to the pressure of her hand, and smile, and not show
+what he felt.  Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his
+elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over
+offended love.  Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then: a
+blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance.
+
+"Am I pardoned for coming to you?" she said, after a pause.
+
+"Surely I can read my Emmeline's intentions," he gently replied.
+
+"Very poor ones.  I feel my weakness.  I cannot utter half I have been
+thinking.  Oh, if I could!"
+
+"You speak very well, Emmeline."
+
+"At least, I am pardoned!"
+
+"Surely so."
+
+"And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?--may I beg
+it?--will you bless him?"
+
+He was again silent.
+
+"Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is over."
+
+As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her bosom.
+
+The baronet was startled.  In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him,
+he pushed back his chair, and rose, and went to the window.
+
+"It's day already!" he said with assumed vivacity, throwing open the
+shutters, and displaying the young light on the lawn.
+
+Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then joined him, and
+glanced up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane toward the West.
+She hoped it was because of her having been premature in pleading so
+earnestly, that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more
+than the baronet.  But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as
+no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at
+present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed
+his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom.  From that moment
+she grew critical of him, and began to study her idol--a process
+dangerous to idols.  He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the
+painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone
+roughness, murmured: "God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman!
+My Emmeline bears her sleepless night well.  She does not shame the day."
+He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness.
+
+"I could bear many, many!" she replied, meeting his eyes, "and you would
+see me look better and better, if...if only..." but she had no
+encouragement to end the sentence.
+
+Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps the handsome
+placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him: at any rate their
+Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her.  She felt the arm
+and talked of the morning.
+
+Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan
+behind them, and looking round, beheld the Saurian eye.  Lady Blandish
+smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be concealed.  By a
+strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have
+a human beholder.
+
+"Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon," Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a
+melancholy pendulosity.  He was ordered out of the room.
+
+"And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty winks," said Lady
+Blandish.  They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands.
+
+The baronet then called in Benson.
+
+"Get me my breakfast as soon as you can," he said, regardless of the
+aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely presented to him.  "I am
+going to town early.  And, Benson," he added, "you will also go to town
+this afternoon, or to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with
+you to Mr. Thompson.  You will not return here.  A provision will be made
+for you.  You can go."
+
+The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the
+baronet's gesture choked him.  At the door he made another effort which
+shook the rolls of his loose skin pitiably.  An impatient signal sent him
+out dumb,--and Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great Shaddock
+dogma.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war
+The world is wise in its way
+The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable
+Wise in not seeking to be too wise
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v4
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+1905
+
+
+
+BOOK 5.
+
+XXXIV.    CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE
+XXXV.     CLARE'S MARRIAGE
+XXXVI.    A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
+XXXVII.   MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY
+XXXVIII.  AN ENCHANTRESS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+It was the month of July.  The Solent ran up green waves before a full-
+blowing South-wester.  Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and
+flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs.  A crown of deep Summer blue
+topped the flying mountains of cloud.
+
+By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding roses, our
+young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling worthily, both of them.
+Had the Scientific Humanist observed them, he could not have contested
+the fact, that as a couple who had set up to be father and mother of
+Britons, they were doing their duty.  Files of egg-cups with
+disintegrated shells bore witness to it, and they were still at work,
+hardly talking from rapidity of exercise.  Both were dressed for an
+expedition.  She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat.  His sleeves
+were turned over at the wrists, and her gown showed its lining on her
+lap.  At times a chance word might spring a laugh, but eating was the
+business of the hour, as I would have you to know it always will be where
+Cupid is in earnest.  Tribute flowed in to them from the subject land.
+Neglected lies Love's penny-whistle on which they played so prettily and
+charmed the spheres to hear them.  What do they care for the spheres, who
+have one another?  Come, eggs! come, bread and butter! come, tea with
+sugar in it and milk! and welcome, the jolly hours.  That is a fair
+interpretation of the music in them just now.  Yonder instrument was good
+only for the overture.  After all, what finer aspiration can lovers have,
+than to be free man and woman in the heart of plenty?  And is it not a
+glorious level to have attained?  Ah, wretched Scientific Humanist! not
+to be by and mark the admirable sight of these young creatures feeding.
+It would have been a spell to exorcise the Manichee, methinks.
+
+The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a flourish of his
+table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who met him on the confident
+budding of her mouth.  The poetry of mortals is their daily prose.  Is it
+not a glorious level to have attained?  A short, quick-blooded kiss,
+radiant, fresh, and honest as Aurora, and then Richard says without lack
+of cheer, "No letter to-day, my Lucy!" whereat her sweet eyes dwell on
+him a little seriously, but he cries, "Never mind! he'll be coming down
+himself some morning.  He has only to know her, and all's well! eh?" and
+so saying he puts a hand beneath her chin, and seems to frame her fair
+face in fancy, she smiling up to be looked at.
+
+"But one thing I do want to ask my darling," says Lucy, and dropped into
+his bosom with hands of petition.  "Take me on board his yacht with him
+to-day--not leave me with those people!  Will he?  I'm a good sailor, he
+knows!"
+
+"The best afloat!" laughs Richard, hugging her, "but, you know, you
+darling bit of a sailor, they don't allow more than a certain number on
+board for the race, and if they hear you've been with me, there'll be
+cries of foul play!  Besides, there's Lady Judith to talk to you about
+Austin, and Lord Mountfalcon's compliments for you to listen to, and Mr.
+Morton to take care of you."
+
+Lucy's eyes fixed sideways an instant.
+
+"I hope I don't frown and blush as I did?" she said, screwing her pliable
+brows up to him winningly, and he bent his cheek against hers, and
+murmured something delicious.
+
+"And we shall be separated for--how many hours? one, two, three hours!"
+she pouted to his flatteries.
+
+"And then I shall come on board to receive my bride's congratulations."
+
+"And then my husband will talk all the time to Lady Judith."
+
+"And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at Lord Mountfalcon."
+
+"Am I so foolish, Richard?" she forgot her trifling to ask in an earnest
+way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on her lips,
+for answer.
+
+After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy sinners had
+wandered forth one day to look on men and marvel at them, and had chanced
+to meet Mr. Morton of Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth's friend, and Ralph's
+uncle.  Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the baronet, but had given
+him up for many years as impracticable and hopeless, for which reason he
+was the more inclined to regard Richard's misdemeanour charitably, and to
+lay the faults of the son on the father; and thinking society to be the
+one thing requisite to the young man, he had introduced him to the people
+he knew in the island; among others to the Lady Judith Felle, a fair
+young dame, who introduced him to Lord Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman;
+who introduced him to the yachtsmen beginning to congregate; so that in a
+few weeks he found himself in the centre of a brilliant company, and for
+the first time in his life tasted what it was to have free intercourse
+with his fellow-creatures of both sews.  The son of a System was,
+therefore, launched; not only through the surf, but in deep waters.
+
+Now the baronet had so far compromised between the recurrence of his
+softer feelings and the suggestions of his new familiar, that he had
+determined to act toward Richard with justness.  The world called it
+magnanimity, and even Lady Blandish had some thoughts of the same kind
+when she heard that he had decreed to Richard a handsome allowance, and
+had scouted Mrs. Doria's proposal for him to contest the legality of the
+marriage; but Sir Austin knew well he was simply just in not withholding
+money from a youth so situated.  And here again the world deceived him by
+embellishing his conduct.  For what is it to be just to whom we love!  He
+knew it was not magnanimous, but the cry of the world somehow fortified
+him in the conceit that in dealing perfect justice to his son he was
+doing all that was possible, because so much more than common fathers
+would have done.  He had shut his heart.
+
+Consequently Richard did not want money.  What he wanted more, and did
+not get, was a word from his father, and though he said nothing to sadden
+his young bride, she felt how much it preyed upon him to be at variance
+with the man whom, now that he had offended him and gone against him, he
+would have fallen on his knees to; the man who was as no other man to
+him.  She heard him of nights when she lay by his side, and the darkness,
+and the broken mutterings, of those nights clothed the figure of the
+strange stern man in her mind.  Not that it affected the appetites of the
+pretty pair.  We must not expect that of Cupid enthroned and in
+condition; under the influence of sea-air, too.  The files of egg-cups
+laugh at such an idea.  Still the worm did gnaw them.  Judge, then, of
+their delight when, on this pleasant morning, as they were issuing from
+the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they caught sight of
+Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a portmanteau on his shoulders,
+and, some distance behind him, discerned Adrian.
+
+"It's all right!" shouted Richard, and ran off to meet him, and never
+left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing questions at him all the
+way, to where Lucy stood.
+
+"Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin."--"Isn't he an angel?" his eyes seemed
+to add; while Lucy's clearly answered, "That he is!"
+
+The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and acted with reserved
+unction the benefactor he saw in their greetings.  "I think we are not
+strangers," he was good enough to remark, and very quickly let them know
+he had not breakfasted; on hearing which they hurried him into the house,
+and Lucy put herself in motion to have him served.
+
+"Dear old Rady," said Richard, tugging at his hand again, "how glad I am
+you've come!  I don't mind telling you we've been horridly wretched."
+
+"Six, seven, eight, nine eggs," was Adrian's comment on a survey of the
+breakfast-table.
+
+"Why wouldn't he write?  Why didn't he answer one of my letters?  But
+here you are, so I don't mind now.  He wants to see us, does he?  We'll
+go up to-night.  I've a match on at eleven; my little yacht--I've called
+her the 'Blandish'--against Fred Cuirie's 'Begum.'  I shall beat, but
+whether I do or not, we'll go up to-night.  What's the news?  What are
+they all doing?"
+
+"My dear boy!"  Adrian returned, sitting comfortably down, "let me put
+myself a little more on an equal footing with you before I undertake to
+reply.  Half that number of eggs will be sufficient for an unmarried man,
+and then we'll talk.  They're all very well, as well as I can recollect
+after the shaking my total vacuity has had this morning.  I came over by
+the first boat, and the sea, the sea has made me love mother earth, and
+desire of her fruits."
+
+Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.
+
+"Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it?  I want to know exactly
+what words he said."
+
+"Well says the sage, my son!  'Speech is the small change of Silence.'
+He said less than I do."
+
+"That's how he took it!" cried Richard, and plunged in meditation.
+
+Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy preceded the
+maid bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down unbonneted, and like a
+thorough-bred housewife, to pour out the tea for him.
+
+"Now we'll commence," said Adrian, tapping his egg with meditative
+cheerfulness; but his expression soon changed to one of pain, all the
+more alarming for his benevolent efforts to conceal it.  Could it be
+possible the egg was bad? oh, horror!  Lucy watched him, and waited in
+trepidation.
+
+"This egg has boiled three minutes and three-quarters," he observed,
+ceasing to contemplate it.
+
+"Dear, dear!" said Lucy, "I boiled them myself exactly that time.
+Richard likes them so.  And you like them hard, Mr. Harley?"
+
+"On the contrary, I like them soft.  Two minutes and a half, or three-
+quarters at the outside.  An egg should never rashly verge upon hardness-
+-never.  Three minutes is the excess of temerity."
+
+"If Richard had told me!  If I had only known!" the lovely little hostess
+interjected ruefully, biting her lip.
+
+"We mustn't expect him to pay attention to such matters," said Adrian,
+trying to smile.
+
+"Hang it! there are more eggs in the house," cried Richard, and pulled
+savagely at the bell.
+
+Lucy jumped up, saying, "Oh, yes!  I will go and boil some exactly the
+time you like.  Pray let me go, Mr. Harley."
+
+Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his hand.  "No," he
+said, "I will be ruled by Richard's tastes, and heaven grant me his
+digestion!"
+
+Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a sofa, and left the
+burden of the entertainment entirely to her.  The eggs were a melancholy
+beginning, but her ardour to please Adrian would not be damped, and she
+deeply admired his resignation.  If she failed in pleasing this glorious
+herald of peace, no matter by what small misadventure, she apprehended
+calamity; so there sat this fair dove with brows at work above her
+serious smiling blue eyes, covertly studying every aspect of the plump-
+faced epicure, that she might learn to propitiate him.  "He shall not
+think me timid and stupid," thought this brave girl, and indeed Adrian
+was astonished to find that she could both chat and be useful, as well as
+look ornamental.  When he had finished one egg, behold, two fresh ones
+came in, boiled according to his prescription.  She had quietly given her
+orders to the maid, and he had them without fuss.  Possibly his look of
+dismay at the offending eggs had not been altogether involuntary, and her
+woman's instinct, inexperienced as she was, may have told her that he had
+come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything in Love's
+cottage.  There was mental faculty in those pliable brows to see through,
+and combat, an unwitting wise youth.
+
+How much she had achieved already she partly divined when Adrian said: "I
+think now I'm in case to answer your questions, my dear boy--thanks to
+Mrs. Richard," and he bowed to her his first direct acknowledgment of her
+position.  Lucy thrilled with pleasure.
+
+"Ah!" cried Richard, and settled easily on his back.
+
+"To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has been persuaded to
+offer a reward which shall maintain the happy finder thereof in an asylum
+for life.  Benson--superlative Benson--has turned his shoulders upon
+Raynham.  None know whither he has departed.  It is believed that the
+sole surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists is under a
+total eclipse of Woman."
+
+"Benson gone?" Richard exclaimed.  "What a tremendous time it seems since
+I left Raynham!"
+
+"So it is, my dear boy.  The honeymoon is Mahomet's minute; or say, the
+Persian King's water-pail that you read of in the story: You dip your
+head in it, and when you draw it out, you discover that you have lived a
+life.  To resume your uncle Algernon still roams in pursuit of the lost
+one--I should say, hops.  Your uncle Hippias has a new and most
+perplexing symptom; a determination of bride-cake to the nose.  Ever
+since your generous present to him, though he declares he never consumed
+a morsel of it, he has been under the distressing illusion that his nose
+is enormous, and I assure you he exhibits quite a maidenly timidity in
+following it--through a doorway, for instance.  He complains of its
+terrible weight.  I have conceived that Benson invisible might be sitting
+on it.  His hand, and the doctor's, are in hourly consultation with it,
+but I fear it will not grow smaller.  The Pilgrim has begotten upon it a
+new Aphorism: that Size is a matter of opinion."
+
+"Poor uncle Hippy!" said Richard, "I wonder he doesn't believe in magic.
+There's nothing supernatural to rival the wonderful sensations he does
+believe in.  Good God! fancy coming to that!"
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry," Lucy protested, "but I can't help laughing."
+
+Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.
+
+"The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard.  Whom does he not forestall?
+'Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of illusions,' and he accuses the
+Ages that put faith in sorcery, of universal indigestion, which may have
+been the case, owing to their infamous cookery.  He says again, if you
+remember, that our own Age is travelling back to darkness and ignorance
+through dyspepsia.  He lays the seat of wisdom in the centre of our
+system, Mrs. Richard: for which reason you will understand how sensible I
+am of the vast obligation I am under to you at the present moment, for
+your especial care of mine."
+
+Richard looked on at Lucy's little triumph, attributing Adrian's
+subjugation to her beauty and sweetness.  She had latterly received a
+great many compliments on that score, which she did not care to hear, and
+Adrian's homage to a practical quality was far pleasanter to the young
+wife, who shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not help her much in the
+struggle she had now to maintain.  Adrian continuing to lecture on the
+excelling virtues of wise cookery, a thought struck her: Where, where had
+she tossed Mrs. Berry's book?
+
+"So that's all about the home-people?" said Richard.
+
+"All!" replied Adrian.  "Or stay: you know Clare's going to be married?
+Not?  Your Aunt Helen"--
+
+"Oh, bother my Aunt Helen!  What do you think she had the impertinence to
+write--but never mind!  Is it to Ralph?"
+
+"Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary
+woman.  It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call
+the female the practical animal.  He studies us all, you know.  The
+Pilgrim's Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives.
+Well, your Aunt Helen"--
+
+"Mrs. Doria Battledoria!" laughed Richard.
+
+"--being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own--call it a System if
+you like--of some ten or fifteen years' standing, with regard to Miss
+Clare!"--
+
+The fair Shuttlecockiana!"
+
+"--instead of fretting like a man, and questioning
+Providence, and turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing
+the world upside down, what does the practical animal do?  She wanted to
+marry her to somebody she couldn't marry her to, so she resolved
+instantly to marry her to somebody she could marry her to: and as old
+gentlemen enter into these transactions with the practical animal the
+most readily, she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried old
+gentleman, a rich old gentleman, and now a captive old gentleman.  The
+ceremony takes place in about a week from the present time.  No doubt you
+will receive your invitation in a day or two."
+
+"And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old man!"
+groaned Richard.  "I'll put a stop to that when I go to town."
+
+Richard got up and strode about the room.  Then he bethought him it was
+time to go on board and make preparations.
+
+"I'm off," he said.  "Adrian, you'll take her.  She goes in the Empress,
+Mountfalcon's vessel.  He starts us.  A little schooner-yacht--such a
+beauty!  I'll have one like her some day.  Good-bye, darling!" he
+whispered to Lucy, and his hand and eyes lingered on her, and hers on
+him, seeking to make up for the priceless kiss they were debarred from.
+But she quickly looked away from him as he held her:--Adrian stood
+silent: his brows were up, and his mouth dubiously contracted.  He spoke
+at last.
+
+"Go on the water?"
+
+"Yes.  It's only to St. Helen's.  Short and sharp."
+
+"Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has just received, my
+son?"
+
+"Oh, bother your system!  Put on your hat, and come along.  I'll put you
+on board in my boat."
+
+"Richard!  I have already paid the penalty of them who are condemned to
+come to an island.  I will go with you to the edge of the sea, and I will
+meet you there when you return, and take up the Tale of the Tritons: but,
+though I forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard's company, I refuse to quit
+the land."
+
+"Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!" Lucy broke from her husband, "and I will stay with
+you, if you please.  I don't want to go among those people, and we can
+see it all from the shore.
+
+"Dearest! I don't want to go.  You don't mind?  Of course, I will go if
+you wish, but I would so much rather stay;" and she lengthened her plea
+in her attitude and look to melt the discontent she saw gathering.
+
+Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he could amuse himself
+very well till their return, and so forth; but she had schemes in her
+pretty head, and held to it to be allowed to stay in spite of Lord
+Mountfalcon's disappointment, cited by Richard, and at the great risk of
+vexing her darling, as she saw.  Richard pished, and glanced
+contemptuously at Adrian.  He gave way ungraciously.
+
+"There, do as you like.  Get your things ready to leave this evening.
+No, I'm not angry."--Who could be? he seemed as he looked up from her
+modest fondling to ask Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a kiss on her
+forehead, which, however, did not immediately disperse the shade of
+annoyance he felt.
+
+"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.  "Such a day as this, and a fellow refuses
+to come on the water!  Well, come along to the edge of the sea."
+Adrian's angelic quality had quite worn off to him.  He never thought of
+devoting himself to make the most of the material there was: but somebody
+else did, and that fair somebody succeeded wonderfully in a few short
+hours.  She induced Adrian to reflect that the baronet had only to see
+her, and the family muddle would be smoothed at once.  He came to it by
+degrees; still the gradations were rapid.  Her manner he liked; she was
+certainly a nice picture: best of all, she was sensible.  He forgot the
+farmer's niece in her, she was so very sensible.  She appeared really to
+understand that it was a woman's duty to know how to cook.
+
+But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could be brought to
+consent to see her.  He had not yet consented to see his son, and Adrian,
+spurred by Lady Blandish, had ventured something in coming down.  He was
+not inclined to venture more.  The small debate in his mind ended by his
+throwing the burden on time.  Time would bring the matter about.
+Christians as well as Pagans are in the habit of phrasing this excuse for
+folding their arms; "forgetful," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "that the
+devil's imps enter into no such armistice."
+
+As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion, Lucy had many
+things to think of.  There was her darling's match.  The yachts were
+started by pistol-shot by Lord Mountfalcon on board the Empress, and her
+little heart beat after Richard's straining sails.  Then there was the
+strangeness of walking with a relative of Richard's, one who had lived by
+his side so long.  And the thought that perhaps this night she would have
+to appear before the dreaded father of her husband.
+
+"O Mr. Harley!" she said, "is it true--are we to go tonight?  And me,"
+she faltered, "will he see me?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about," said Adrian.  "I made
+some reply to our dear boy which he has slightly misinterpreted.  Our
+second person plural is liable to misconstruction by an ardent mind.  I
+said 'see you,' and he supposed--now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you will
+understand me.  Just at present perhaps it would be advisable--when the
+father and son have settled their accounts, the daughter-in-law can't be
+a debtor."...
+
+Lucy threw up her blue eyes.  A half-cowardly delight at the chance of a
+respite from the awful interview made her quickly apprehensive.
+
+"O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?"
+
+"Well, that is my notion.  But the fact is, he is such an excellent
+husband that I fancy it will require more than a man's power of
+persuasion to get him to go."
+
+"But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley."
+"Perhaps, if you would..."
+
+"There is nothing I would not do for his happiness," murmured Lucy.
+
+The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation.  They walked
+on till the yachts had rounded the point.
+
+"Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?" she asked with some trouble in her voice
+now that her darling was out of sight.
+
+"I don't imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave you to-night,"
+Adrian replied gallantly.  "Besides, I must speak for myself.  To achieve
+the passage to an island is enough for one day.  No necessity exists for
+any hurry, except in the brain of that impetuous boy.  You must correct
+it, Mrs. Richard.  Men are made to be managed, and women are born
+managers.  Now, if you were to let him know that you don't want to go to-
+night, and let him guess, after a day or two, that you would very much
+rather...  you might affect a peculiar repugnance.  By taking it on
+yourself, you see, this wild young man will not require such frightful
+efforts of persuasion.  Both his father and he are exceedingly delicate
+subjects, and his father unfortunately is not in a position to be managed
+directly.  It's a strange office to propose to you, but it appears to
+devolve upon you to manage the father through the son.  Prodigal having
+made his peace, you, who have done all the work from a distance,
+naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile, knowing it due to
+you.  I see no other way.  If Richard suspects that his father objects
+for the present to welcome his daughter-in-law, hostilities will be
+continued, the breach will be widened, bad will grow to worse, and I see
+no end to it."
+
+Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are you capable of this
+piece of heroism?  And it did seem hard to her that she should have to
+tell Richard she shrank from any trial.  But the proposition chimed in
+with her fears and her wishes: she thought the wise youth very wise: the
+poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and the subtler flattery
+of making herself in some measure a sacrifice to the home she had
+disturbed.  She agreed to simulate as Adrian had suggested.
+
+Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when Richard came on
+shore proclaiming that the Blandish had beaten the Begum by seven minutes
+and three-quarters, he was hastily kissed and congratulated by his bride
+with her fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and anxiously
+questioned about wine.
+
+"Dearest!  Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and he thinks we
+ought not to go immediately--that is, before he has had some letters, and
+I feel...  I would so much rather..."
+
+"Ah! that's it, you coward!" said Richard.  "Well, then, to-morrow.  We
+had a splendid race.  Did you see us?"
+
+"Oh, yes!  I saw you and was sure my darling would win."  And again she
+threw on him the cold water of that solicitude about wine.  "Mr. Harley
+must have the best, you know, and we never drink it, and I'm so silly, I
+don't know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can get good
+wine.  I have seen to the dinner."
+
+"So that's why you didn't come to meet me?"
+
+"Pardon me, darling."
+
+Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn't, and Lady Judith thinks you ought to
+have been there."
+
+"Ah, but my heart was with you!"
+
+Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her eyelids softened,
+and she ran away.
+
+It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault with it, and
+was in perfect good-humour at the conclusion of the service.  He did not
+abuse the wine they were able to procure for him, which was also much.
+The coffee, too, had the honour of passing without comment.  These were
+sound first steps toward the conquest of an epicure, and as yet Cupid did
+not grumble.
+
+After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady Judith's
+grounds.  The wind had dropped.  The clouds had rolled from the zenith,
+and ranged in amphitheatre with distant flushed bodies over sea and land:
+Titanic crimson head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion
+falling.  There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined brows,
+stretching all his hands up to unattainable blue summits.  North-west the
+range had a rich white glow, as if shining to the moon, and westward,
+streams of amber, melting into upper rose, shot out from the dipping
+disk.
+
+"What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven," said Richard under his
+breath to Adrian, who was serenely chanting Greek hexameters, and
+answered, in the swing of the caesura, "He might as well have said
+cauliflower."
+
+Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met them in the
+walk.  She was tall and dark; dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet and
+persuasive in her accent and manner.  "A second edition of the Blandish,"
+thinks Adrian.  She welcomed him as one who had claims on her affability.
+She kissed Lucy protectingly, and remarking on the wonders of the
+evening, appropriated her husband.  Adrian and Lucy found themselves
+walking behind them.
+
+The sun was under.  All the spaces of the sky were alight, and Richard's
+fancy flamed.
+
+"So you're not intoxicated with your immense triumph this morning?" said
+Lady Judith
+
+"Don't laugh at me. When it's over I feel ashamed of the trouble I've
+taken.  Look at that glory!--I'm sure you despise me for it."
+
+"Was I not there to applaud you?  I only think such energies should be
+turned into some definitely useful channel.  But you must not go into the
+Army."
+
+"What else can I do?"
+
+"You are fit for so much that is better."
+
+"I never can be anything like Austin."
+
+"But I think you can do more."
+
+"Well, I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith.  Something I will do.
+A man must deserve to live, as you say.
+
+"Sauces," Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the rear, "Sauces
+are the top tree of this science.  A woman who has mastered sauces sits
+on the apex of civilization."
+
+Briareus reddened duskily seaward.  The West was all a burning rose.
+
+"How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?" Richard resumed.
+"I feel ashamed of asking my men to work for me.--Or I feel so now."
+
+"Not when you're racing the Begum, I think.  There's no necessity for you
+to turn democrat like Austin.  Do you write now?"
+
+"No.  What is writing like mine?  It doesn't deceive me.  I know it's
+only the excuse I'm making to myself for remaining idle.  I haven't
+written a line since--lately."
+
+"Because you are so happy."
+
+"No, not because of that.  Of course I'm very happy..."  He did not
+finish.
+
+Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder skies.  No
+Scientific Humanist was by to study the natural development, and guide
+him.  This lady would hardly be deemed a very proper guide to the
+undirected energies of the youth, yet they had established relations of
+that nature.  She was five years older than he, and a woman, which may
+explain her serene presumption.
+
+The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder smouldered over the
+sea.
+
+"We'll work together in town, at all events," said Richard,
+
+"Why can't we go about together at night and find out people who want
+help?"
+
+Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by saying, "I think
+we mustn't be too romantic.  You will become a knight-errant, I suppose.
+You have the characteristics of one."
+
+"Especially at breakfast," Adrian's unnecessarily emphatic gastronomical
+lessons to the young wife here came in.
+
+"You must be our champion," continued Lady Judith: "the rescuer and
+succourer of distressed dames and damsels.  We want one badly."
+
+"You do," said Richard, earnestly: "from what I hear: from what I know!"
+His thoughts flew off with him as knight-errant hailed shrilly at
+exceeding critical moment by distressed dames and damsels.  Images of
+airy towers hung around.  His fancy performed miraculous feats.  The
+towers crumbled.  The stars grew larger, seemed to throb with lustre.
+His fancy crumbled with the towers of the air, his heart gave a leap, he
+turned to Lucy.
+
+"My darling! what have you been doing?"  And as if to compensate her for
+his little knight-errant infidelity, he pressed very tenderly to her.
+
+"We have been engaged in a charming conversation on domestic cookery,"
+interposed Adrian.
+
+"Cookery! such an evening as this?"  His face was a handsome likeness of
+Hippias at the presentation of bridecake.
+
+"Dearest! you know it's very useful," Lucy mirthfully pleaded.
+
+"Indeed I quite agree with you, child," said Lady Judith, and I think you
+have the laugh of us.  I certainly will learn to cook some day."
+
+"Woman's mission, in so many words," ejaculated Adrian.
+
+"And pray, what is man's?"
+
+"To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon."
+
+"Let us give it up to them," said Lady Judith to Richard.  "You and I
+never will make so delightful and beautifully balanced a world of it."
+
+Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give everything up to
+the fair face, his bridal Hesper.
+
+Neat day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and, as she did so, her heart
+sank to see how painfully it affected him that she should hesitate to go
+with him to his father.  He was patient, gentle; he sat down by her side
+to appeal to her reason, and used all the arguments he could think of to
+persuade her.
+
+"If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees he has nothing to
+be ashamed of in you--rather everything to be proud of; if you are only
+near him, you will not have to speak a word, and I'm certain--as certain
+as that I live--that in a week we shall be settled happily at Raynham.  I
+know my father so well, Lucy.  Nobody knows him but I."
+
+Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.
+
+"Adrian?  Not a bit.  Adrian only knows a part of people, Lucy; and not
+the best part."
+
+Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of her conquest.
+
+"Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?"
+
+"No, no, Richard; oh, dear no!" she cried, and looked at him more
+tenderly because she was not quite truthful.
+
+"He doesn't know my father at all," said Richard.  But Lucy had another
+opinion of the wise youth, and secretly maintained it.  She could not be
+won to imagine the baronet a man of human mould, generous, forgiving,
+full of passionate love at heart, as Richard tried to picture him, and
+thought him, now that he beheld him again through Adrian's embassy.  To
+her he was that awful figure, shrouded by the midnight.  "Why are you so
+harsh?" she had heard Richard cry more than once.  She was sure that
+Adrian must be right.
+
+"Well, I tell you I won't go without you," said Richard, and Lucy begged
+for a little more time.
+
+Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause.  Adrian positively refused to
+go on the water unless that element were smooth as a plate.  The South-
+west still joked boisterously at any comparison of the sort; the days
+were magnificent; Richard had yachting engagements; and Lucy always
+petitioned to stay to keep Adrian company, concerning it her duty as
+hostess.  Arguing with Adrian was an absurd idea.  If Richard hinted at
+his retaining Lucy, the wise youth would remark: "It's a wholesome
+interlude to your extremely Cupidinous behaviour, my dear boy."
+
+Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to talk about.
+
+"All manner of things," said Lucy; "not only cookery.  He is so amusing,
+though he does make fun of The Pilgrim's Scrip, and I think he ought not.
+And then, do you know, darling--you won't think me vain?--I think he is
+beginning to like me a little."
+
+Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.
+
+"Doesn't everybody like you, admire you?  Doesn't Lord Mountfalcon, and
+Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?"
+
+"But he is one of your family, Richard."
+
+"And they all will, if she isn't a coward."
+
+"Ah, no!" she sighs, and is chidden.
+
+The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife's conquest beyond her
+husband, however loyally devised for their mutual happiness, may be
+costly to her.  Richard in his hours of excitement was thrown very much
+with Lady Judith.  He consulted her regarding what he termed Lucy's
+cowardice.  Lady Judith said: "I think she's wrong, but you must learn to
+humour little women."
+
+"Then would you advise me to go up alone?" he asked, with a cloudy
+forehead.
+
+"What else can you do?  Be reconciled yourself as quickly as you can.
+You can't drag her like a captive, you know?"
+
+It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride the peerless
+flower of Creation, to learn that he must humour a little woman in her.
+It was revolting to Richard.
+
+"What I fear," he said, "is, that my father will make it smooth with me,
+and not acknowledge her: so that whenever I go to him, I shall have to
+leave her, and tit for tat--an abominable existence, like a ball on a
+billiard-table.  I won't bear that ignominy.  And this I know, I know!
+she might prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it.
+You, you, Lady Judith, you wouldn't be a coward?"
+
+"Where my old lord tells me to go, I go," the lady coldly replied.
+"There's not much merit in that.  Pray, don't cite me.  Women are born
+cowards, you know."
+
+"But I love the women who are not cowards."
+
+"The little thing--your wife has not refused to go?"
+
+"No--but tears!  Who can stand tears?"
+
+Lucy had come to drop them.  Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted, and
+urgent where he saw the thing to do so clearly, the young husband had
+spoken strong words: and she, who knew that she would have given her life
+by inches for him; who knew that she was playing a part for his
+happiness, and hiding for his sake the nature that was worthy his esteem;
+the poor little martyr had been weak a moment.
+
+She had Adrian's support.  The wise youth was very comfortable.  He liked
+the air of the Island, and he liked being petted.  "A nice little woman!
+a very nice little woman!"  Tom Bakewell heard him murmur to himself
+according to a habit he had; and his air of rather succulent patronage as
+he walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty, with his head thrown back
+and a smile that seemed always to be in secret communion with his marked
+abdominal prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played
+for.  Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when
+opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing.
+Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous
+pattings of the same, were not infrequent.  Adrian waxed now and then
+Anacreontic in his compliments.  Lucy would say: "That's worse than Lord
+Mountfalcon."
+
+"Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ--allow that?" quoth
+Adrian.
+
+"He is very kind," said Lucy.
+
+"To all, save to our noble vernacular," added Adrian.  "He seems to scent
+a rival to his dignity there."
+
+It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.
+
+"We are at our ease here in excellent society," he wrote to Lady
+Blandish.  "I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune, or
+a superlative instinct.  Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable mate.
+She can look at a lord, and cook for an epicure.  Besides Dr. Kitchener,
+she reads and comments on The Pilgrim's Scrip.  The `Love' chapter, of
+course, takes her fancy.  That picture of Woman, `Drawn by Reverence and
+coloured by Love,' she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up
+pretty eyes.  Also the lover's petition: 'Give me purity to be worthy the
+good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.'  'Tis quite
+taking to hear her lisp it.  Be sure that I am repeating the petition!  I
+make her read me her choice passages.  She has not a bad voice.
+
+"The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin's Miss Menteith, married to the
+incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him.  Lord
+Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her--what?  She has been trying to find
+out, but they have both got over their perplexity, and act respectively
+the bad man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which our
+young couple found them, and haply diverted its perils.  They had quite
+taken them in hand.  Lady Judith undertakes to cure the fair Papist of a
+pretty, modest trick of frowning and blushing when addressed, and his
+lordship directs the exuberant energies of the original man.  'Tis thus
+we fulfil our destinies, and are content.  Sometimes they change pupils;
+my lord educates the little dame, and my lady the hope of Raynham.  Joy
+and blessings unto all! as the German poet sings.  Lady Judith accepted
+the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent service to her
+fellow-creatures.  Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.
+
+"I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study.  I
+think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a yeoman's
+niece.  The language of the two social extremes is similar.  I find it to
+consist in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and adjectives.  My lord
+and Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my lord's has lost its
+backbone, and is limp, though fluent.  Their pursuits are identical; but
+that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim terms it, vantage, and the other
+has not.  Their ideas seem to have a special relationship in the
+peculiarity of stopping where they have begun.  Young Tom Blaize with
+vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon.  Even in the character of their
+parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound to confess that the Hon.
+Peter Brayder, who is my lord's parasite, is by no means noxious.
+
+"This sounds dreadfully democrat.  Pray, don't be alarmed.  The discovery
+of the affinity between the two extremes of the Royal British Oak has
+made me thrice conservative.  I see now that the national love of a lord
+is less subservience than a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on
+one's image, as it were, to bow to it.  I see, too, the admirable wisdom
+of our system:--could there be a finer balance of power than in a
+community where men intellectually nil, have lawful vantage and a gold-
+lace hat on?  How soothing it is to intellect--that noble rebel, as the
+Pilgrim has it--to stand, and bow, and know itself superior!  This
+exquisite compensation maintains the balance: whereas that period
+anticipated by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an
+intellectual aristocracy, is indeed horrible to contemplate.  For what
+despotism is so black as one the mind cannot challenge?  'Twill be an
+iron Age.  Wherefore, madam, I cry, and shall continue to cry, 'Vive Lord
+Mountfalcon! long may he sip his Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed carry
+him on their shoulders!'
+
+"Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young Mephisto, and
+Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get Master Ralph out of a scrape.
+Our Richard has just been elected member of a Club for the promotion of
+nausea.  Is he happy? you ask.  As much so as one who has had the
+misfortune to obtain what he wanted can be.  Speed is his passion.  He
+races from point to point.  In emulation of Leander and Don Juan, he
+swam, I hear, to the opposite shores the other day, or some world-shaking
+feat of the sort: himself the Hero whom he went to meet: or, as they who
+pun say, his Hero was a Bet.  A pretty little domestic episode occurred
+this morning.  He finds her abstracted in the fire of his caresses: she
+turns shy and seeks solitude: green jealousy takes hold of him: he lies
+in wait, and discovers her with his new rival--a veteran edition of the
+culinary Doctor!  Blind to the Doctor's great national services, deaf to
+her wild music, he grasps the intruder, dismembers him, and performs upon
+him the treatment he has recommended for dressed cucumber.  Tears and
+shrieks accompany the descent of the gastronome.  Down she rushes to
+secure the cherished fragments: he follows: they find him, true to his
+character, alighted and straggling over a bed of blooming flowers.  Yet
+ere a fairer flower can gather him, a heel black as Pluto stamps him into
+earth, flowers and all:--happy burial!  Pathetic tribute to his merit is
+watering his grave, when by saunters my Lord Mountfalcon.  'What's the
+mattah?' says his lordship, soothing his moustache.  They break apart,
+and 'tis left to me to explain from the window.  My lord looks shocked,
+Richard is angry with her for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty
+dries her eyes, and after a pause of general foolishness, the business of
+life is resumed.  I may add that the Doctor has just been dug up, and we
+are busy, in the enemy's absence, renewing old Aeson with enchanted
+threads.  By the way, a Papist priest has blest them."
+
+A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter.  He was very
+comfortable; so of course he thought Time was doing his duty.  Not a word
+did he say of Richard's return, and for some reason or other neither
+Richard nor Lucy spoke of it now.
+
+Lady Blandish wrote back: "His father thinks he has refused to come to
+him.  By your utter silence on the subject, I fear that it must be so.
+Make him come.  Bring him by force.  Insist on his coming.  Is he mad?
+He must come at once."
+
+To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative comfortable lapse of a day
+or two, which might be laid to his efforts to adopt the lady's advice,
+"The point is that the half man declines to come without the whole man.
+The terrible question of sex is our obstruction."
+
+Lady Blandish was in despair.  She had no positive assurance that the
+baronet would see his son; the mask put them all in the dark; but she
+thought she saw in Sir Austin irritation that the offender, at least when
+the opening to come and make his peace seemed to be before him, should
+let days and weeks go by.  She saw through the mask sufficiently not to
+have any hope of his consenting to receive the couple at present; she was
+sure that his equanimity was fictitious; but she pierced no farther, or
+she might have started and asked herself, Is this the heart of a woman?
+
+The lady at last wrote to Richard.  She said: "Come instantly, and come
+alone."  Then Richard, against his judgment, gave way.  "My father is not
+the man I thought him!" he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy felt his eyes saying
+to her: "And you, too, are not the woman I thought you."  Nothing could
+the poor little heart reply but strain to his bosom and sleeplessly pray
+in his arms all the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+
+Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin Clare was married,
+under the blessings of her energetic mother, and with the approbation of
+her kinsfolk, to the husband that had been expeditiously chosen for her.
+The gentleman, though something more than twice the age of his bride, had
+no idea of approaching senility for many long connubial years to come.
+Backed by his tailor and his hairdresser, he presented no such bad figure
+at the altar, and none would have thought that he was an ancient admirer
+of his bride's mama, as certainly none knew he had lately proposed for
+Mrs. Doria before there was any question of her daughter.  These things
+were secrets; and the elastic and happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter
+did not betray them at the altar.  Perhaps he would rather have married
+the mother.  He was a man of property, well born, tolerably well
+educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for the first time, the
+reputation of being a fool--which a wealthy man may have in his youth;
+but as he lived on, and did not squander his money--amassed it, on the
+contrary, and did not seek to go into Parliament, and did other negative
+wise things, the world's opinion, as usual, veered completely round, and
+John Todhunter was esteemed a shrewd, sensible man--only not brilliant;
+that he was brilliant could not be said of him.  In fact, the man could
+hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu
+deliveries were required of him in the marriage-service.
+
+Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry.  She had discovered
+something of the strange impassive nature of her child; not from any
+confession of Clare's, but from signs a mother can read when, her eyes
+are not resolutely shut.  She saw with alarm and anguish that Clare had
+fallen into the pit she had been digging for her so laboriously.  In vain
+she entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she said,
+illegal alliance his son had contracted.  Sir Austin would not even stop
+the little pension to poor Berry.  "At least you will do that, Austin,"
+she begged pathetically.  "You will show your sense of that horrid
+woman's conduct?"  He refused to offer up any victim to console her.
+Then Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,--and when an outraged energetic
+lady is finally brought to exhibit these painfully hoarded treasures, she
+does not use half words as a medium.  His System, and his conduct
+generally were denounced to him, without analysis.  She let him
+understand that the world laughed at him; and he heard this from her at a
+time when his mask was still soft and liable to be acted on by his
+nerves.  "You are weak, Austin! weak, I tell you!" she said, and, like
+all angry and self-interested people, prophecy came easy to her.  In her
+heart she accused him of her own fault, in imputing to him the wreck of
+her project.  The baronet allowed her to revel in the proclamation of a
+dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep apart from him, which his
+sister assured him she would do.
+
+But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman.  Mark the race
+at any hour.  "What revolution and hubbub does not that little
+instrument, the needle, avert from us!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip.  Alas,
+that in calamity women cannot stitch!  Now that she saw Clare wanted
+other than iron, it struck her she must have a husband, and be made
+secure as a woman and a wife.  This seemed the thing to do: and, as she
+had forced the iron down Clare's throat, so she forced the husband, and
+Clare gulped at the latter as she had at the former.  On the very day
+that Mrs. Doria had this new track shaped out before her, John Todhunter
+called at the Foreys'.  "Old John!" sang out Mrs. Doria, "show him up to
+me.  I want to see him particularly."  He sat with her alone.  He was a
+man multitudes of women would have married--whom will they not?--and who
+would have married any presentable woman: but women do want asking, and
+John never had the word.  The rape of such men is left to the practical
+animal.  So John sat alone with his old flame.  He had become resigned to
+her perpetual lamentation and living Suttee for his defunct rival.  But,
+ha! what meant those soft glances now--addressed to him?  His tailor and
+his hairdresser gave youth to John, but they had not the art to bestow
+upon him distinction, and an undistinguished man what woman looks at?
+John was an indistinguishable man.  For that reason he was dry wood to a
+soft glance.
+
+And now she said: "It is time you should marry; and you are the man to be
+the guide and helper of a young woman, John.  You are well preserved--
+younger than most of the young men of our day.  You are eminently
+domestic, a good son, and will be a good husband and good father.  Some
+one you must marry.--What do you think of Clare for a wife for you?"
+
+At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much like his marrying a
+baby.  However, he listened to it, and that was enough for Mrs. Doria.
+
+She went down to John's mother, and consulted with her on the propriety
+of the scheme of wedding her daughter to John in accordance with his
+proposition.  Mrs. Todhunter's jealousy of any disturbing force in the
+influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria knew to be one of the causes
+of John's remaining constant to the impression she had afore-time
+produced on him.  She spoke so kindly of John, and laid so much stress on
+the ingrained obedience and passive disposition of her daughter, that
+Mrs. Todhunter was led to admit she did think it almost time John should
+be seeking a mate, and that he--all things considered--would hardly find
+a fitter one.  And this, John Todhunter--old John no more--heard to his
+amazement when, a day or two subsequently, he instanced the probable
+disapproval of his mother.
+
+The match was arranged.  Mrs. Doria did the wooing.  It consisted in
+telling Clare that she had come to years when marriage was desirable, and
+that she had fallen into habits of moping which might have the worse
+effect on her future life, as it had on her present health and
+appearance, and which a husband would cure.  Richard was told by Mrs.
+Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented to accept Mr. John
+Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than obedience--with
+alacrity.  At all events, when Richard spoke to Clare, the strange
+passive creature did not admit constraint on her inclinations.  Mrs.
+Doria allowed Richard to speak to her.  She laughed at his futile
+endeavours to undo her work, and the boyish sentiments he uttered on the
+subject.  "Let us see, child," she said, "let us see which turns out the
+best; a marriage of passion, or a marriage of common sense."
+
+Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union.  Richard made
+repeated journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph was quartered, and if Ralph
+could have been persuaded to carry off a young lady who did not love him,
+from the bridegroom her mother averred she did love, Mrs. Doria might
+have been defeated.  But Ralph in his cavalry quarters was cooler than
+Ralph in the Bursley meadows.  "Women are oddities, Dick," he remarked,
+running a finger right and left along his upper lip.  "Best leave them to
+their own freaks.  She's a dear girl, though she doesn't talk: I like her
+for that.  If she cared for me I'd go the race.  She never did.  It's no
+use asking a girl twice.  She knows whether she cares a fig for a
+fellow."
+
+The hero quitted him with some contempt, As Ralph Morton was a young man,
+and he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he sought
+another private interview with Clare, and getting her alone, said:
+"Clare, I've come to you for the last time.  Will you marry Ralph
+Morton?"
+
+To which Clare replied, "I cannot marry two husbands, Richard."
+
+"Will you refuse to marry this old man?"
+
+"I must do as mama wishes."
+
+"Then you're going to marry an old man--a man you don't love, and can't
+love!  Oh, good God! do you know what you're doing?"  He flung about in a
+fury.  "Do you know what it is?  Clare!" he caught her two hands
+violently, "have you any idea of the horror you're going to commit?"
+
+She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed nor stammered:
+answering: "I see nothing wrong in doing what mama thinks right,
+Richard."
+
+"Your mother!  I tell you it's an infamy, Clare!  It's a miserable sin!
+I tell you, if I had done such a thing I would not live an hour after it.
+And coldly to prepare for it! to be busy about your dresses!  They told
+me when I came in that you were with the milliner.  To be smiling over
+the horrible outrage!  decorating yourself!"...
+
+"Dear Richard," said Clare, "you will make me very unhappy."
+
+"That one of my blood should be so debased!" he cried, brushing angrily
+at his face.  "Unhappy!  I beg you to feel for yourself, Clare.  But I
+suppose," and he said it scornfully, "girls don't feel this sort of
+shame."
+
+She grew a trifle paler.
+
+"Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear Richard."
+
+"Have you no will of your own?" he exclaimed.
+
+She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the meekness he
+detested in her.
+
+"No, I believe you have none!" he added.  "And what can I do?  I can't
+step forward and stop this accursed marriage.  If you would but say a
+word I would save you; but you tie my hands.  And they expect me to stand
+by and see it done!"
+
+"Will you not be there, Richard?" said Clare, following the question with
+her soft eyes.  It was the same voice that had so thrilled him on his
+marriage morn.
+
+"Oh, my darling Clare!" he cried in the kindest way he had ever used to
+her, "if you knew how I feel this!" and now as he wept she wept, and came
+insensibly into his arms.
+
+"My darling Clare!" he repeated.
+
+She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.
+
+"You will do it, Clare?  You will be sacrificed?  So lovely as you are,
+too!...  Clare! you cannot be quite blind.  If I dared speak to you, and
+tell you all....  Look up.  Can you still consent?"
+
+"I must not disobey mama," Clare murmured, without looking up from the
+nest her cheek had made on his bosom.
+
+"Then kiss me for the last time," said Richard.  "I'll never kiss you
+after it, Clare."
+
+He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her arms wildly round
+him, and kissed him convulsively, and clung to his lips, shutting her
+eyes, her face suffused with a burning red.
+
+Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate kisses.
+
+Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets against a stone
+wall.  To her indeed the young married hero spoke almost indecorously,
+and that which his delicacy withheld him from speaking to Clare.  He
+could provoke nothing more responsive from the practical animal than
+"Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!"
+
+"Really," Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, "that boy's education acts
+like a disease on him.  He cannot regard anything sensibly.  He is for
+ever in some mad excess of his fancy, and what he will come to at last
+heaven only knows!  I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear
+it."
+
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity, are not very
+well worth having.  Mrs. Doria had embarked in a practical controversy,
+as it were, with her brother.  Doubtless she did trust he would be able
+to bear his sorrows to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can barely
+help hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophecied much grief to the
+baronet.
+
+Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the mother, and had
+none of your heroic notions about the sacred necessity for love in
+marriage, moved as one guiltless of offence, and deserving his happiness.
+Mrs. Doria shielded him from the hero.  To see him smile at Clare's
+obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was touching.
+
+Meantime Clare's marriage served one purpose.  It completely occupied
+Richard's mind, and prevented him from chafing at the vexation of not
+finding his father ready to meet him when he came to town.  A letter had
+awaited Adrian at the hotel, which said, "Detain him till you hear
+further from me.  Take him about with you into every form of society."
+No more than that.  Adrian had to extemporize, that the baronet had gone
+down to Wales on pressing business, and would be back in a week or so.
+For ulterior inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young gentleman
+in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria.  "Leave him to me," said Mrs. Doria,
+"I'll manage him."  And she did.
+
+"Who can say," asks The Pilgrim's Scrip, "when he is not walking a puppet
+to some woman?"
+
+Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy.  "I believe," she observed, as
+Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her behalf,--"it is my firm
+opinion, that a scullery-maid would turn any of you men round her little
+finger--only give her time and opportunity."  By dwelling on the arts of
+women, she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to divide the
+young husband from his wife till it pleased his father they should live
+their unhallowed union again.  Without compunction, or a sense of
+incongruity, she abused her brother and assisted the fulfilment of his
+behests.
+
+So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or sad, or
+indifferent.  Quite against his set resolve and the tide of his feelings,
+Richard found himself standing behind Clare in the church--the very
+edifice that had witnessed his own marriage, and heard, "I, Clare Doria,
+take thee John Pemberton," clearly pronounced.  He stood with black brows
+dissecting the arts of the tailor and hairdresser on unconscious John.
+The back, and much of the middle, of Mr. Todhunter's head was bald; the
+back shone like an egg-shell, but across the middle the artist had drawn
+two long dabs of hair from the sides, and plastered them cunningly, so
+that all save wilful eyes would have acknowledged the head to be covered.
+The man's only pretension was to a respectable juvenility.  He had a good
+chest, stout limbs, a face inclined to be jolly.  Mrs. Doria had no cause
+to be put out of countenance at all by the exterior of her son-in-law:
+nor was she.  Her splendid hair and gratified smile made a light in the
+church.  Playing puppets must be an immense pleasure to the practical
+animal.  The Forey bridesmaids, five in number, and one Miss Doria, their
+cousin, stood as girls do stand at these sacrifices, whether happy, sad,
+or indifferent; a smile on their lips and tears in attendance.  Old Mrs.
+Todhunter, an exceedingly small ancient woman, was also there.  "I can't
+have my boy John married without seeing it done," she said, and
+throughout the ceremony she was muttering audible encomiums on her John's
+manly behaviour.
+
+The ring was affixed to Clare's finger; there was no ring lost in this
+common-sense marriage.  The instant the clergyman bade him employ it,
+John drew the ring out, and dropped it on the finger of the cold passive
+hand in a businesslike way, as one who had studied the matter.  Mrs.
+Doria glanced aside at Richard.  Richard observed Clare spread out her
+fingers that the operation might be the more easily effected.
+
+He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to his aunt:
+
+"Now I'll go."
+
+"You'll come to the breakfast, child?  The Foreys"--
+
+He cut her short.  "I've stood for the family, and I'll do no more.  I
+won't pretend to eat and make merry over it."
+
+"Richard!"
+
+"Good-bye."
+
+She had attained her object and she wisely gave way.
+
+"Well.  Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand.  Pray, pray be civil."
+
+She turned to Adrian, and said: "He is going.  You must go with him, and
+find some means of keeping him, or he'll be running off to that woman.
+Now, no words--go!"
+
+Richard bade Clare farewell.  She put up her mouth to him humbly, but he
+kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"Do not cease to love me," she said in a quavering whisper in his ear.
+
+Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of the hairdresser
+with his pocket-handkerchief.  Now he positively was married, he thought
+he would rather have the daughter than the mother, which is a reverse of
+the order of human thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.
+
+"Richard, my boy!" he said heartily, "congratulate me."
+
+"I should be happy to, if I could," sedately replied the hero, to the
+consternation of those around.  Nodding to the bridesmaids and bowing to
+the old lady, he passed out.
+
+Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for a possible
+unpleasantness, just hinted to John: "You know, poor fellow, he has got
+into a mess with his marriage."
+
+"Oh! ah! yes!" kindly said John, "poor fellow!"
+
+All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.
+
+Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented state of mind.
+Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of the fun, disgusted him.
+However, he remembered that he was a philosopher, and the strong disgust
+he felt was only expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly
+matter engendered by the conversation.  They walked side by side into
+Kensington Gardens.  The hero was mouthing away to himself, talking by
+fits.
+
+Presently he faced Adrian, crying: "And I might have stopped it!  I see
+it now!  I might have stopped it by going straight to him, and asking him
+if he dared marry a girl who did not love him.  And I never thought of
+it.  Good heaven!  I feel this miserable affair on my conscience."
+
+"Ah!" groaned Adrian.  "An unpleasant cargo for the conscience, that!  I
+would rather carry anything on mine than a married couple.  Do you
+purpose going to him now?"
+
+The hero soliloquized: "He's not a bad sort of man."...
+
+"Well, he's not a Cavalier," said Adrian, "and that's why you wonder your
+aunt selected him, no doubt?  He's decidedly of the Roundhead type, with
+the Puritan extracted, or inoffensive, if latent."
+
+"There's the double infamy!" cried Richard, "that a man you can't call
+bad, should do this damned thing!"
+
+"Well, it's hard we can't find a villain."
+
+"He would have listened to me, I'm sure."
+
+"Go to him now, Richard, my son.  Go to him now.  It's not yet too late.
+Who knows?  If he really has a noble elevated superior mind--though not a
+Cavalier in person, he may be one at heart--he might, to please you, and
+since you put such stress upon it, abstain...perhaps with some loss of
+dignity, but never mind.  And the request might be singular, or seem so,
+but everything has happened before in this world, you know, my dear boy.
+And what an infinite consolation it is for the eccentric, that
+reflection!"
+
+The hero was impervious to the wise youth.  He stared at him as if he
+were but a speck in the universe he visioned.
+
+It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian's best subject for cynical
+pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies he started, and his worst in
+the way he took it; and the wise youth, against his will, had to feel as
+conscious of the young man's imaginative mental armour, as he was of his
+muscular physical.
+
+"The same sort of day!" mused Richard, looking up.  "I suppose my
+father's right.  We make our own fates, and nature has nothing to do with
+it."
+
+Adrian yawned.
+
+"Some difference in the trees, though," Richard continued abstractedly.
+
+"Growing bald at the top," said Adrian.
+
+"Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the conduct of that
+wretched slave Clare to Lucy's, who, she had the cruel insolence to say,
+entangled me into marriage?" the hero broke out loudly and rapidly.  "You
+know--I told you, Adrian--how I had to threaten and insist, and how she
+pleaded, and implored me to wait."
+
+"Ah! hum!" mumbled Adrian.
+
+"You remember my telling you?"  Richard was earnest to hear her
+exonerated.
+
+"Pleaded and implored, my dear boy?  Oh, no doubt she did. Where's the
+lass that doesn't."
+
+"Call my wife by another name, if you please."
+
+"The generic title can't be cancelled because of your having married one
+of the body, my son."
+
+"She did all she could to persuade me to wait!" emphasized Richard.
+
+Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.
+
+"Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!"
+
+Richard bellowed: "What more could she have done?"
+
+"She could have shaved her head, for instance."
+
+This happy shaft did stick.  With a furious exclamation Richard shot in
+front, Adrian following him; and asking him (merely to have his
+assumption verified), whether he did not think she might have shaved her
+head? and, presuming her to have done so, whether, in candour, he did not
+think he would have waited--at least till she looked less of a rank
+lunatic?
+
+After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing about
+Richard's head.  Three weeks of separation from Lucy, and an excitement
+deceased, caused him to have soft yearnings for the dear lovely home-
+face.  He told Adrian it was his intention to go down that night.  Adrian
+immediately became serious.  He was at a loss what to invent to detain
+him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was coming to-morrow.  He
+rendered homage to the genius of woman in these straits.  "My aunt," he
+thought, "would have the lie ready; and not only that, but she would take
+care it did its work."
+
+At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed them, proving
+to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord Mountfalcon's parasite.  He
+greeted them very cordially; and Richard, remembering some fun they had
+in the Island, asked him to dine with them; postponing his return till
+the next day.  Lucy was his.  It was even sweet to dally with the delight
+of seeing her.
+
+The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he belonged to.  Though
+not so tall as a west of London footman, he was as shapely; and he had a
+power of making his voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the
+exigencies of his profession.  He had not a rap of money in the world;
+yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely.  The world said that
+the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship, and that, in common with
+that of Parasite, he exercised the ancient companion profession.  This
+the world said, and still smiled at the Hon. Peter; for he was an
+engaging fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon would not go.
+
+They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian, and made a
+square at the table, Ripton Thompson being the fourth.  Richard sent down
+to his office to fetch him, and the two friends shook hands for the first
+time since the great deed had been executed.  Deep was the Old Dog's
+delight to hear the praises of his Beauty sounded by such aristocratic
+lips as the Hon. Peter Brayder's.  All through the dinner he was throwing
+out hints and small queries to get a fuller account of her; and when the
+claret had circulated, he spoke a word or two himself, and heard the Hon.
+Peter eulogize his taste, and wish him a bride as beautiful; at which
+Ripton blushed, and said, he had no hope of that, and the Hon. Peter
+assured him marriage did not break the mould.
+
+After the wine this gentleman took his cigar on the balcony, and found
+occasion to get some conversation with Adrian alone.
+
+"Our young friend here--made it all right with the governor?" he asked
+carelessly.
+
+"Oh yes!" said Adrian.  But it struck him that Brayder might be of
+assistance in showing Richard a little of the `society in every form'
+required by his chief's prescript.  "That is," he continued, "we are not
+yet permitted an interview with the august author of our being, and I
+have rather a difficult post.  'Tis mine both to keep him here, and also
+to find him the opportunity to measure himself with his fellow-man.  In
+other words, his father wants him to see something of life before he
+enters upon housekeeping.  Now I am proud to confess that I'm hardly
+equal to the task.  The demi, or damnedmonde--if it's that lie wants him
+to observe--is one that I leave not got the walk to."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed Brayder.  "You do the keeping, I offer to parade the
+demi.  I must say, though, it's a queer notion of the old gentleman."
+
+"It's the continuation of a philosophic plan," said Adrian.
+
+Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar with his eyes,
+and ejaculated, "Infernally philosophic!"
+
+"Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?" Adrian inquired.
+
+"Mount? to tell the truth I don't know where he is.  Chasing some light
+craft, I suppose.  That's poor Mount's weakness.  It's his ruin, poor
+fellow!  He's so confoundedly in earnest at the game."
+
+"He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true," remarked Adrian.
+
+"He's a baby about women, and always will be," said Brayder.  "He's been
+once or twice wanting to marry them.  Now there's a woman--you've heard
+of Mrs. Mount?  All the world knows her.--If that woman hadn't
+scandalized."--The young man joined them, and checked the communication.
+Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully indicated the presence of an
+innocent.
+
+"A married man, you know," said Adrian.
+
+"Yes, yes!--we won't shock him," Brayder observed.  He appeared to study
+the young man while they talked.
+
+Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his aunt.  Mrs. Doria
+took a seat by his side and spoke as follows:
+
+"My dear nephew.  Now you know I have always loved you, and thought of
+your welfare as if you had been my own child.  More than that, I fear.
+Well, now, you are thinking of returning to--to that place--are you not?
+Yes.  It is as I thought.  Very well now, let me speak to you.  You are
+in a much more dangerous position than you imagine.  I don't deny your
+father's affection for you.  It would be absurd to deny it.  But you are
+of an age now to appreciate his character.  Whatever you may do he will
+always give you money.  That you are sure of; that you know.  Very well.
+But you are one to want more than money: you want his love.  Richard, I
+am convinced you will never be happy, whatever base pleasures you may be
+led into, if he should withhold his love from you.  Now, child, you know
+you have grievously offended him.  I wish not to animadvert on your
+conduct.--You fancied yourself in love, and so on, and you were rash.
+The less said of it the better now.  But you must now--it is your duty
+now to do something--to do everything that lies in your power to show him
+you repent.  No interruptions!  Listen to me.  You must consider him.
+Austin is not like other men.  Austin requires the most delicate
+management.  You must--whether you feel it or no--present an appearance
+of contrition.  I counsel it for the good of all.  He is just like a
+woman, and where his feelings are offended he wants utter subservience.
+He has you in town, and he does not see you:--now you know that he and I
+are not in communication: we have likewise our differences:--Well, he has
+you in town, and he holds aloof:--he is trying you, my dear Richard.  No:
+he is not at Raynham: I do not know where he is.  He is trying you,
+child, and you must be patient.  You must convince him that you do not
+care utterly for your own gratification.  If this person--I wish to speak
+of her with respect, for your sake--well, if she loves you at all--if, I
+say, she loves you one atom, she will repeat my solicitations for you to
+stay and patiently wait here till he consents to see you.  I tell you
+candidly, it's your only chance of ever getting him to receive her.  That
+you should know.  And now, Richard, I may add that there is something
+else you should know.  You should know that it depends entirely upon your
+conduct now, whether you are to see your father's heart for ever divided
+from you, and a new family at Raynham.  You do not understand?  I will
+explain.  Brothers and sisters are excellent things for young people, but
+a new brood of them can hardly be acceptable to a young man.  In fact,
+they are, and must be, aliens.  I only tell you what I have heard on good
+authority.  Don't you understand now?  Foolish boy!  if you do not humour
+him, he will marry her.  Oh! I am sure of it.  I know it.  And this you
+will drive him to.  I do not warn you on the score of your prospects, but
+of your feelings.  I should regard such a contingency, Richard, as a
+final division between you.  Think of the scandal! but alas, that is the
+least of the evils."
+
+It was Mrs. Doria's object to produce an impression, and avoid an
+argument.  She therefore left him as soon as she had, as she supposed,
+made her mark on the young man.  Richard was very silent during the
+speech, and save for an exclamation or so, had listened attentively.  He
+pondered on what his aunt said.  He loved Lady Blandish, and yet he did
+not wish to see her Lady Feverel.  Mrs. Doria laid painful stress on the
+scandal, and though he did not give his mind to this, he thought of it.
+He thought of his mother.  Where was she?  But most his thoughts recurred
+to his father, and something akin to jealousy slowly awakened his heart
+to him.  He had given him up, and had not latterly felt extremely filial;
+but he could not bear the idea of a division in the love of which he had
+ever been the idol and sole object.  And such a man, too! so good! so
+generous!  If it was jealousy that roused the young man's heart to his
+father, the better part of love was also revived in it.  He thought of
+old days: of his father's forbearance, his own wilfulness.  He looked on
+himself, and what he had done, with the eyes of such a man.  He
+determined to do all he could to regain his favour.
+
+Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her nephew intended
+waiting in town another week.
+
+"That will do," smiled Mrs. Doria.  "He will be more patient at the end
+of a week."
+
+"Oh! does patience beget patience?" said Adrian.  "I was not aware it was
+a propagating virtue.  I surrender him to you.  I shan't be able to hold
+him in after one week more.  I assure you, my dear aunt, he's already"...
+
+"Thank you, no explanation," Mrs. Doria begged.
+
+When Richard saw her nest, he was informed that she had received a most
+satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter: quite a glowing account of
+John's behaviour: but on Richard's desiring to know the words Clare had
+written, Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and shot into worldly
+gossip.
+
+"Clare seldom glows," said Richard.
+
+"No, I mean for her," his aunt remarked.  "Don't look like your father,
+child."
+
+"I should like to have seen the letter," said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+A Lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides and
+walks.  She passed him rather obviously and often.  She was very
+handsome; a bold beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes not
+afraid of men.  The hair was brushed from her temples, leaving one of
+those fine reckless outlines which the action of driving, and the pace,
+admirably set off.  She took his fancy.  He liked the air of petulant
+gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture, rare to him, of a
+glorious dashing woman.  He thought, too, she looked at him.  He was not
+at the time inclined to be vain, or he might have been sure she did.
+Once it struck him she nodded slightly.
+
+He asked Adrian one day in the park--who she was.
+
+"I don't know her," said Adrian.  "Probably a superior priestess of
+Paphos."
+
+"Now that's my idea of Bellona," Richard exclaimed.  "Not the fury they
+paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking creature like that."
+
+"Bellona?" returned the wise youth.  "I don't think her hair was black.
+Red, wasn't it?  I shouldn't compare her to Bellona; though, no doubt,
+she's as ready to spill blood.  Look at her!  She does seem to scent
+carnage.  I see your idea.  No; I should liken her to Diana emerged from
+the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play among the gods.
+Depend upon it--they tell us nothing of the matter--Olympus shrouds the
+story--but you may be certain that when she left the pretty shepherd she
+had greater vogue than Venus up aloft."
+
+Brayder joined them.
+
+"See Mrs. Mount go by?" he said.
+
+"Oh, that's Mrs. Mount!" cried Adrian.
+
+"Who's Mrs. Mount?" Richard inquired.
+
+"A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy."
+
+"Like to know her?" drawled the Hon. Peter.
+
+Richard replied indifferently, "No," and Mrs. Mount passed out of sight
+and out of the conversation.
+
+The young man wrote submissive letters to his father.  "I have remained
+here waiting to see you now five weeks," he wrote.  "I have written to
+you three letters, and you do not reply to them.  Let me tell you again
+how sincerely I desire and pray that you will come, or permit me to come
+to you and throw myself at your feet, and beg my forgiveness, and hers.
+She as earnestly implores it.  Indeed, I am very wretched, sir.  Believe
+me, there is nothing I would not do to regain your esteem and the love I
+fear I have unhappily forfeited.  I will remain another week in the hope
+of hearing from you, or seeing you.  I beg of you, sir, not to drive me
+mad.  Whatever you ask of me I will consent to."
+
+"Nothing he would not do!" the baronet commented as he read.  "There is
+nothing he would not do!  He will remain another week and give me that
+final chance!  And it is I who drive him mad!  Already he is beginning to
+cast his retribution on my shoulders."
+
+Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way.  A
+Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it, and
+the author of The Pilgrim'S Scrip in trouble found London too hot for
+him.  He quitted London to take refuge among the mountains; living there
+in solitary commune with a virgin Note-book.
+
+Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son.  Had
+he construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a vague
+principle that the young man should be tried and tested.
+
+"Let him learn to deny himself something.  Let him live with his equals
+for a term.  If he loves me he will read my wishes."  Thus he explained
+his principle to Lady Blandish.
+
+The lady wrote: "You speak of a term.  Till when?  May I name one to him?
+It is the dreadful uncertainty that reduces him to despair.  That, and
+nothing else.  Pray be explicit."
+
+In return, he distantly indicated Richard's majority.
+
+How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away from
+his wife?  Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she
+worshipped.
+
+When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in
+deceiving and imposing upon others.  Not only was Lady Blandish
+mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody's mind,
+and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother from infancy,
+and had never known herself to be once wrong about him, she confessed she
+was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin's principle.  "For principle he
+has," said Mrs. Doria; "he never acts without one.  But what it is, I
+cannot at present perceive.  If he would write, and command the boy to
+await his return, all would be clear.  He allows us to go and fetch him,
+and then leaves us all in a quandary.  It must be some woman's influence.
+That is the only way to account for it."
+
+"Singular!" interjected Adrian, "what pride women have in their sex!
+Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow I
+hand my charge over to your keeping.  I can't hold him in an hour longer.
+I've had to leash him with lies till my invention's exhausted.  I
+petition to have them put down to the chief's account, but when the
+stream runs dry I can do no more.  The last was, that I had heard from
+him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready for him on Tuesday
+proximate.  'So!' says my son, 'I'll wait till then,' and from the
+gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I doubt any human power's
+getting him to wait longer."
+
+"We must, we must detain him," said Mrs. Doria.  "If we do not, I am
+convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever repent.  He
+will marry that woman, Adrian.  Mark my words.  Now with any other young
+man!...  But Richard's education! that ridiculous System!...  Has he no
+distraction? nothing to amuse him?"
+
+"Poor boy!  I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow."
+
+The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
+
+"I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman."
+
+"My dear aunt!  Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?"
+
+"Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?--If he had but a
+profession!"
+
+"What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
+profession of moral-scavenger, aunt?  I assure you I have served a
+month's apprenticeship with him.  We sally forth on the tenth hour of the
+night.  A female passes.  I hear him groan.  'Is she one of them,
+Adrian?'  I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the
+portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be.  Another groan; an
+evident internal, 'It cannot be--and yet!'...that we hear on the stage.
+Rollings of eyes: impious questionings of the Creator of the universe;
+savage mutterings against brutal males; and then we meet a second young
+person, and repeat the performance--of which I am rather tired.  It would
+be all very well, but he turns upon me, and lectures me because I don't
+hire a house, and furnish it for all the women one meets to live in in
+purity.  Now that's too much to ask of a quiet man.  Master Thompson has
+latterly relieved me, I'm happy to say."
+
+Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
+
+"Has Austin written to you since you were in town?"
+
+"Not an Aphorism!" returned Adrian.
+
+"I must see Richard to-morrow morning," Mrs. Doria ended the colloquy by
+saying.
+
+The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made no
+allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days afterward he
+appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands: but what it was
+Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of Mrs. Doria's genius for
+management rose to a very high pitch.
+
+On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of the
+Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable manner,
+"I've come to propose to you to join us in a little dinner-party at
+Richmond.  Nobody's in town, you know.  London's as dead as a stock-fish.
+Nothing but the scrapings to offer you.  But the weather's fine: I
+flatter myself you'll find the company agreeable, What says my friend
+Feverel?"
+
+Richard begged to be excused.
+
+"No, no: positively you must come," said the Hon. Peter.  "I've had some
+trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness of your
+incarceration.  Richmond's within the rules of your prison.  You can be
+back by night.  Moonlight on the water--lovely woman.  We've engaged a
+city-barge to pull us back.  Eight oars--I'm not sure it isn't sixteen.
+Come--the word!"
+
+Adrian was for going.  Richard said he had an appointment with Ripton.
+
+"You're in for another rick, you two," said Adrian.  "Arrange that we go.
+You haven't seen the cockney's Paradise.  Abjure Blazes, and taste of
+peace, my son."
+
+After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
+aside the care that was on him, saying, "Very well.  Just as you like.
+We'll take old Rip with us."
+
+Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this.  The Hon. Peter briskly declared
+he should be delighted to have Feverel's friend, and offered to take them
+all down in his drag.
+
+"If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide--eh, Feverel, my
+boy?"
+
+Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which Brayder
+communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the youth.
+
+Richmond was under a still October sun.  The pleasant landscape, bathed
+in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red horizon haze.
+The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered.  It touched no
+link in the chain of his recollection.  It was quiet, and belonged to the
+spirit of the season.
+
+Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
+Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather
+an undervoice, as a thing to get over.  They made their bow to the first
+knot of ladies they encountered.  Propriety was observed strictly, even
+to severity.  The general talk was of the weather.  Here and there a lady
+would seize a button-hole or any little bit of the habiliments, of the
+man she was addressing; and if it came to her to chide him, she did it
+with more than a forefinger.  This, however, was only here and there, and
+a privilege of intimacy.
+
+Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may be
+known by her Court of males.  The Queen of the present gathering leaned
+against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in
+whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton, with a
+sinking of the heart, apprehended lords.  They were fine men, offering
+inanimate homage.  The trim of their whiskerage, the cut of their coats,
+the high-bred indolence in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton's sense of self-
+esteem.  But they kindly looked over him.  Occasionally one committed a
+momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a voice
+of scathing scorn, "Who's this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero to
+justify his humble pretensions to existence and an identity in the shadow
+of him.  Richard gazed about.  Heroes do not always know what to say or
+do; and the cold bath before dinner in strange company is one of the
+instances.  He had recognized his superb Bellona in the lady by the
+garden window.  For Brayder the men had nods and yokes, the ladies a
+pretty playfulness.  He was very busy, passing between the groups,
+chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and sometimes
+returning them in sly whispers.  Adrian sat down and crossed his legs,
+looking amused and benignant.
+
+"Whose dinner is it?" Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a cavalier.
+
+"Mount's, I suppose," was the answer.
+
+"Where is he?  Why don't he come?"
+
+"An affaire, I fancy."
+
+"There he is again!  How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!"
+
+"She don't seem to cry over it."
+
+Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of her
+Court, who appeared to be Fool.
+
+Dinner was announced.  The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites.
+Brayder posted his three friends.  Ripton found himself under the lee of
+a dame with a bosom.  On the other aide of him was the mignonne.  Adrian
+was at the lower end of the table.  Ladies were in profusion, and he had
+his share.  Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat.  A happy man had
+established himself next to Mrs. Mount.  Him Brayder hailed to take the
+head of the table.  The happy man objected, Brayder continued urgent, the
+lady tenderly insisted, the happy man grimaced, dropped into the post of
+honour, strove to look placable.  Richard usurped his chair, and was not
+badly welcomed by his neighbour.
+
+Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company, till
+the flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a hum began
+to spread.  Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and displayeth the
+verity, hath also the quality of colouring it.  The ladies laughed high;
+Richard only thought them gay and natural.  They flung back in their chairs
+and laughed to tears; Ripton thought only of the pleasure he had in their
+society.  The champagne-corks continued a regular file-firing.
+
+"Where have you been lately?  I haven't seen you in the park," said Mrs.
+Mount to Richard.
+
+"No," he replied, "I've not been there."  The question seemed odd: she
+spoke so simply that it did not impress him.  He emptied his glass, and
+had it filled again.
+
+The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to horses,
+yachting, opera, and sport generally: who was ruined; by what horse, or
+by what woman.  He told one or two of Richard's feats.  Fair smiles
+rewarded the hero.
+
+"Do you bet?" said Mrs. Mount.
+
+"Only on myself," returned Richard.
+
+"Bravo!" cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
+sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
+
+"I'm sure you're a safe one to back," she added, and seemed to scan his
+points approvingly.
+
+Richard's cheeks mounted bloom.
+
+"Don't you adore champagne?" quoth the dame with a bosom to Ripton.
+
+"Oh, yes!" answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy, "I always
+drink it."
+
+"Do you indeed?" said the enraptured bosom, ogling him.  "You would be a
+friend, now!  I hope you don't object to a lady joining you now and then.
+Champagne's my folly."
+
+A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre;
+first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till
+those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned behind
+gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of laughter.  Each
+one, as her ear received it, caught up her handkerchief, and laughed, and
+looked shocked afterwards, or looked shocked and then spouted laughter.
+The anecdote might have been communicated to the bewildered cavaliers,
+but coming to a lady of a demurer cast, she looked shocked without
+laughing, and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it was
+consigned to burial: but here and there a man's head was seen bent, and a
+lady's mouth moved, though her face was not turned toward him, and a
+man's broad laugh was presently heard, while the lady gazed unconsciously
+before her, and preserved her gravity if she could escape any other
+lady's eyes; failing in which, handkerchiefs were simultaneously seized,
+and a second chime arose, till the tickling force subsided to a few
+chance bursts.
+
+What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought Richard.
+He says they can't laugh, and don't understand humour.  It comes, he
+reflected, of his shutting himself from the world.  And the idea that he
+was seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him.  He talked
+fluently to his dangerous Bellona.  He gave her some reminiscences of
+Adrian's whimsies.
+
+"Oh!" said she, "that's your tutor, is it!"  She eyed the young man as if
+she thought he must go far and fast.
+
+Ripton felt a push.  "Look at that," said the bosom, fuming utter
+disgust.  He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the
+mignonne.  "Now that's what I don't like in company," the bosom inflated
+to observe with sufficient emphasis.  "She always will allow it with
+everybody.  Give her a nudge."
+
+Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, "Then I will";
+and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing wine in his
+face, and gave the nudge.  The mignonne turned an inquiring eye on
+Ripton; a mischievous spark shot from it.  She laughed, and said; "Aren't
+you satisfied with the old girl?"
+
+"Impudence!" muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
+
+"Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet--she drinks port when there's
+no more champagne," said the mignonne.
+
+The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the
+mignonne, and between them he was enabled to form a correcter estimate of
+the company, and quite recovered from his original awe: so much so as to
+feel a touch of jealousy at seeing his lively little neighbour still held
+in absolute possession.
+
+Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner in
+the bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures accord
+not save to clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk with three
+or four at the head of the table while she still had passages aside with
+Richard.
+
+The port and claret went very well after the champagne.  The ladies here
+did not ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen; they
+maintained their position with honour.  Silver was seen far out on
+Thames.  The wine ebbed, and the laughter.  Sentiment and cigars took up
+the wondrous tale.
+
+"Oh, what a lovely night!" said the ladies, looking above.
+
+"Charming," said the gentlemen, looking below.
+
+The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast.
+Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.
+
+"We are split into couples," said Adrian to Richard, who was standing
+alone, eying the landscape.  "Tis the influence of the moon!  Apparently
+we are in Cyprus.  How has my son enjoyed himself?  How likes he the
+society of Aspasia?  I feel like a wise Greek to-night."
+
+Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked.  Ripton had been
+carried off by the sentimental bosom.  He came up to them and whispered:
+"By Jove, Ricky! do you know what sort of women these are?"
+
+Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
+
+"Puritan!" exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back.  "Why didn't
+you get tipsy, sir?  Don't you ever intoxicate yourself except at lawful
+marriages?  Reveal to us what you have done with the portly dame?"
+
+Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and watch
+over him.  He was jealous of his innocent Beauty's husband being in
+proximity with such women.  Murmuring couples passed them to and fro.
+
+"By Jove, Ricky!" Ripton favoured his friend with another hard whisper,
+"there's a woman smoking!"
+
+"And why not, O Riptonus?" said Adrian.  "Art unaware that woman
+cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small price
+for the splendid gem?"
+
+"Well, I don't like women to smoke," said plain Ripton.
+
+"Why mayn't they do what men do?" the hero cried impetuously.  "I hate
+that contemptible narrow-mindedness.  It's that makes the ruin and
+horrors I see.  Why mayn't they do what men do?  I like the women who are
+brave enough not to be hypocrites.  By heaven! if these women are bad, I
+like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show,
+and deceive you in the end."
+
+"Bravo!" shouted Adrian.  "There speaks the regenerator."
+
+Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader.  He had no argument.  He
+still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far away,
+lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
+
+The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: "Young men take joy in nothing so much
+as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of experience more
+than knowing that all are not quite so."
+
+The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random
+extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of
+feminine goodness Richard's young bride had inspired in the breast of the
+youth.  It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in our
+nature.
+
+Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness.  He wandered about
+the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and threw himself
+down among some bushes on the slope of the hill.  Lying there, and
+meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.
+
+"What does he want?" said a woman's voice.  "It's another of his
+villanies, I know.  Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I have
+to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him."
+
+"Tragic!" said the Hon. Peter.  "Haven't you revenged yourself, Bella,
+pretty often?  Best deal openly.  This is a commercial transaction.  You
+ask for money, and you are to have it--on the conditions: double the sum,
+and debts paid."
+
+"He applies to me!"
+
+"You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you.  I think
+Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows.  He's not easily
+hoodwinked, you know.  He resigns himself to his fate and follows other
+game."
+
+"Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?"
+
+"My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk.  I didn't say seduce.
+Hold him in--play with him.  Amuse him."
+
+"I don't understand half-measures."
+
+"Women seldom do."
+
+"How I hate you, Brayder!"
+
+"I thank your ladyship."
+
+The two walked farther.  Ripton had heard some little of the colloquy.
+He left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of something dark to the
+people he loved, though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter's
+stipulation involved.
+
+On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs.
+Mount.  Brayder and Adrian started the jokes.  The pair of parasites got
+on extremely well together.  Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the
+moonlight curled around them; softly the banks glided by.  The ladies
+were in a state of high sentiment.  They sang without request.  All
+deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate interpreter of their
+emotions.  After good wine, and plenty thereof, fair throats will make
+men of taste swallow that remarkable composer.  Eyes, lips, hearts; darts
+and smarts and sighs; beauty, duty; bosom, blossom; false one, farewell!
+To this pathetic strain they melted.  Mrs. Mount, though strongly
+requested, declined to sing.  She preserved her state.  Under the tall
+aspens of Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in their wake.
+Richard's hand lay open by his side.  Mrs. Mount's little white hand by
+misadventure fell into it.  It was not pressed, or soothed for its fall,
+or made intimate with eloquent fingers.  It lay there like a bit of snow
+on the cold ground.  A yellow leaf wavering down from the aspens struck
+Richard's cheek, and he drew away the very hand to throw back his hair
+and smooth his face, and then folded his arms, unconscious of offence.
+He was thinking ambitiously of his life: his blood was untroubled, his
+brain calmly working.
+
+"Which is the more perilous?" is a problem put by the Pilgrim: "To meet
+the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?"
+
+Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to flirt
+with one of her Court.  The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental.  One or
+two rattled, and one was such a good-humoured fellow that Adrian could
+not make him ridiculous.  The others seemed to give themselves up to a
+silent waxing in length of limb.  However far they sat removed, everybody
+was entangled in their legs.  Pursuing his studies, Adrian came to the
+conclusion, that the same close intellectual and moral affinity which he
+had discovered to exist between our nobility and our yeomanry, is to be
+observed between the Guardsman class, and that of the corps de ballet:
+they both live by the strength of their legs, where also their wits, if
+they do not altogether reside there, are principally developed: both are
+volage; wine, tobacco, and the moon, influence both alike; and admitting
+the one marked difference that does exist, it is, after all, pretty
+nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two legs as on the
+point of a toe.
+
+A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about the
+twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required urgent
+persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the end: before
+he had accomplished it, Adrian had contrived to raise a laugh in his
+neighbourhood, so that the company was divided, and the camp split:
+jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment held the other.  Ripton,
+blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing a higher degree of
+heat than was possible for the rest.  "Are you cold?" she would ask,
+smiling charitably.
+
+"I am," said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
+
+"You always appear to be," the fat one sniffed and snapped.
+
+"Won't you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?" said the naughty little woman.
+
+Disdain prevented any further notice of her.  Those familiar with the
+ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent.  The mignonne was
+heard to whisper: "That poor fellow will certainly be stewed."
+
+Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the water
+was chill and misty.  Adrian had beside him the demure one who had
+stopped the circulation of his anecdote.  She in nowise objected to the
+fair exchange, but said "Hush!" betweenwhiles.
+
+Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney reach;
+through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and the shadows
+of great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
+
+All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted on
+land.  Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs. Mount
+to her home.
+
+"My brougham's here; I shall go alone," said Mrs. Mount.  "Some one
+arrange my shawl."
+
+She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as he
+manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
+
+"Which way are you going?" she asked carelessly, and, to his reply as to
+the direction, said: "Then I can give you a lift," and she took his arm
+with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs with him.
+
+Ripton saw what had happened.  He was going to follow: the portly dame
+retained him, and desired him to get her a cab.
+
+"Oh, you happy fellow!" said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
+
+Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get into
+it himself.
+
+"Try and let him come in too?" said the persecuting creature, again
+passing.
+
+"Take liberties with pour men--you shan't with me," retorted the angry
+bosom, and drove off.
+
+"So she's been and gone and run away and left him after all his trouble!"
+cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton's eyes.  "Now you'll
+never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women again.  There! he
+shall be made happy another time."  She gave his nose a comical tap, and
+tripped away with her possessor.
+
+Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts laid
+hold of him.  Cabs and carriages rattled past.  He was sure he had been
+among members of the nobility that day, though when they went by him now
+they only recognized him with an effort of the eyelids.  He began to
+think of the day with exultation, as an event.  Recollections of the
+mignonne were captivating.  "Blue eyes--just what I like!  And such a
+little impudent nose, and red lips, pouting--the very thing I like!  And
+her hair? darkish, I think--say brown.  And so saucy, and light on her
+feet.  And kind she is, or she wouldn't have talked to me like that."
+Thus, with a groaning soul, he pictured her.  His reason voluntarily
+consigned her to the aristocracy as a natural appanage: but he did
+amorously wish that Fortune had made a lord of him.
+
+Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the
+conversation he had heard on the hill.  He was not one to suspect anybody
+positively.  He was timid of fixing a suspicion.  It hovered
+indefinitely, and clouded people, without stirring him to any resolve.
+Still the attentions of the lady toward Richard were queer.  He
+endeavoured to imagine they were in the nature of things, because Richard
+was so handsome that any woman must take to him.  "But he's married,"
+said Ripton, "and he mustn't go near these people if he's married."  Not
+a high morality, perhaps better than none at all: better for the world
+were it practised more.  He thought of Richard along with that sparkling
+dame, alone with her.  The adorable beauty of his dear bride, her pure
+heavenly face, swam before him.  Thinking of her, he lost sight of the
+mignonne who had made him giddy.
+
+He walked to Richard's hotel, and up and down the street there, hoping
+every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might have returned
+and gone to bed.  Two o'clock struck.  Ripton could not go away.  He was
+sure he should not sleep if he did.  At last the cold sent him homeward,
+and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of Piccadilly he met his
+friend patrolling with his head up and that swing of the feet proper to
+men who are chanting verses.
+
+"Old Rip!" cried Richard, cheerily.  "What on earth are you doing here at
+this hour of the morning?"
+
+Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him.  "I wanted to shake your
+hand before I went home."
+
+Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way.  "That all?  You may shake
+my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip!  I've been speaking
+about you.  Do you know, that--Mrs. Mount--never saw you all the time at
+Richmond, or in the boat!"
+
+"Oh!" Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf "you saw her safe
+home?"
+
+"Yes.  I've been there for the last couple of hours--talking.  She talks
+capitally: she's wonderfully clever.  She's very like a man, only much
+nicer.  I like her."
+
+"But, Richard, excuse me--I'm sure I don't mean to offend you--but now
+you're married...perhaps you couldn't help seeing her home, but I think
+you really indeed oughtn't to have gone upstairs."
+
+Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Richard.  "You don't suppose I care for any
+woman but my little darling down there."  He laughed.
+
+"No; of course not.  That's absurd.  What I mean is, that people perhaps
+will--you know, they do--they say all manner of things, and that makes
+unhappiness; and I do wish you were going home to-morrow, Ricky.  I mean,
+to your dear wife."  Ripton blushed and looked away as he spoke.
+
+The hero gave one of his scornful glances.  "So you're anxious about my
+reputation.  I hate that way of looking on women.  Because they have been
+once misled--look how much weaker they are!--because the world has given
+them an ill fame, you would treat them as contagious and keep away from
+them for the sake of your character!
+
+"It would be different with me," quoth Ripton.
+
+"How?" asked the hero.
+
+"Because I'm worse than you," was all the logical explanation Ripton was
+capable of.
+
+"I do hope you will go home soon," he added.
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "and I, so do I hope so.  But I've work to do now.
+I dare not, I cannot, leave it.  Lucy would be the last to ask me;--you
+saw her letter yesterday.  Now listen to me, Rip.  I want to make you be
+just to women."
+
+Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as if he
+had known them and studied them for years.  Clever, beautiful, but
+betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to cherish and
+redeem them.  "We turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures."
+And the world suffered for it.  That--that was the root of all the evil
+in the world!
+
+"I don't feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip!  It's strange.  I
+knew what they were when we came home in the boat.  But I do--it tears my
+heart to see a young girl given over to an old man--a man she doesn't
+love.  That's shame!--Don't speak of it."
+
+Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women are betrayed
+by love, Ripton was quite silenced.  He, like most young men, had
+pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be sentimental when
+be was not hungry.  They walked in the moonlight by the railings of the
+park.  Richard harangued at leisure, while Ripton's teeth chattered.
+Chivalry might be dead, but still there was something to do, went the
+strain.  The lady of the day had not been thrown in the hero's path
+without an object, he said; and he was sadly right there.  He did not
+express the thing clearly; nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean, he
+intended to rescue that lady from further transgressions, and show a
+certain scorn of the world.  That lady, and then other ladies unknown,
+were to be rescued.  Ripton was to help.  He and Ripton were to be the
+knights of this enterprise.  When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and
+shivered.  Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be
+Titans, for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods,
+would have to be defied and overthrown.  And Titan number one flung up
+his handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and
+Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet across his
+pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers under his coat-
+tails.  The moon had fallen from her high seat and was in the mists of
+the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets, and the cold acting
+on his friend's eloquence made Ripton's flesh very contrite.  The poor
+fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was good.  By the
+time he had got a little warmth about him, his heart gratefully strove to
+encourage him in the conception of becoming a knight and a Titan; and so
+striving Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman.
+
+"Alas!" writes the Pilgrim at this very time to Lady Blandish, "I cannot
+get that legend of the Serpent from me, the more I think.  Has he not
+caught you, and ranked you foremost in his legions?  For see: till you
+were fashioned, the fruits hung immobile on the boughs.  They swayed
+before us, glistening and cold.  The hand must be eager that plucked
+them.  They did not come down to us, and smile, and speak our language,
+and read our thoughts, and know when to fly, when to follow! how surely
+to have us!
+
+"Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of the Serpent.
+What shall be done with her?  I fear the world is wiser than its judges!
+Turn from her, says the world.  By day the sons of the world do.  It
+darkens, and they dance together downward.  Then comes there one of the
+world's elect who deems old counsel devilish; indifference to the end of
+evil worse than its pursuit.  He comes to reclaim her.  From deepest bane
+will he bring her back to highest blessing.  Is not that a bait already?
+Poor fish! 'tis wondrous flattering.  The Serpent has slimed her so to
+secure him!  With slow weary steps he draws her into light: she clings to
+him; she is human; part of his work, and he loves it. As they mount
+upward, he looks on her more, while she, it may be, looks above.  What
+has touched him?  What has passed out of her, and into him?  The Serpent
+laughs below.  At the gateways of the Sun they fall together!"
+
+This alliterative production was written without any sense of the peril
+that makes prophecy.
+
+It suited Sir Austin to write thus.  It was a channel to his acrimony
+moderated through his philosophy.  The letter was a reply to a vehement
+entreaty from Lady Blandish for him to come up to Richard and forgive him
+thoroughly: Richard's name was not mentioned in it.
+
+"He tries to be more than he is," thought the lady: and she began
+insensibly to conceive him less than he was.
+
+The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification in his son's
+apparent obedience to his wishes and complete submission; a gratification
+he chose to accept as his due, without dissecting or accounting for it.
+The intelligence reiterating that Richard waited, and still waited;
+Richard's letters, and more his dumb abiding and practical penitence;
+vindicated humanity sufficiently to stop the course of virulent
+aphorisms.  He could speak, we have seen, in sorrow for this frail nature
+of ours, that he had once stood forth to champion.  "But how long will
+this last?" he demanded, with the air of Hippias.  He did not reflect how
+long it had lasted.  Indeed, his indigestion of wrath had made of him a
+moral Dyspepsy.
+
+It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his young
+wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to
+undertake.  Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of hot
+blood, he was not a fool.  There had been talk between him and Mrs. Doria
+of his mother.  Now that he had broken from his father, his heart spoke
+for her.  She lived, he knew: he knew no more.  Words painfully hovering
+along the borders of plain speech had been communicated to him, filling
+him with moody imaginings.  If he thought of her, the red was on his
+face, though he could not have said why.  But now, after canvassing the
+conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a terrible riddle, he
+asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent.  As softly as she could
+she told the story.  To her the shame was past: she could weep for the
+poor lady.  Richard dropped no tears.  Disgrace of this kind is always
+present to a son, and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a
+vivid fire in his brain.  He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from
+the man.  Here was work set to his hand.  All her dear husband did was
+right to Lucy.  She encouraged him to stay for that purpose, thinking it
+also served another.  There was Tom Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there
+was work for him to do.  Whether it would please his father he did not
+stop to consider.  As to the justice of the act, let us say nothing.
+
+On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe's place of
+residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet now
+went in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful.  The
+friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish's town-house, or at the
+Foreys', where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr, and
+staunch conservative, a favourable reception.  Pity, deep pity for
+Richard's conduct Ripton saw breathing out of Mrs. Doria.  Algernon
+Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of rough commiseration, as a young
+fellow who had run off the road.
+
+Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though for a different cause.  She
+doubted if she did well in seconding his father's unwise scheme--
+supposing him to have a scheme.  She saw the young husband encompassed by
+dangers at a critical time.  Not a word of Mrs. Mount had been breathed
+to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life.  She touched on delicate
+verges to the baronet in her letters, and he understood her well enough.
+"If he loves this person to whom he has bound himself, what fear for him?
+Or are you coming to think it something that bears the name of love
+because we have to veil the rightful appellation?"  So he responded,
+remote among the mountains.  She tried very hard to speak plainly.
+Finally he came to say that he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his
+son specially, that he for a time might be put to the test the lady
+seemed to dread.  This was almost too much for Lady Blandish.  Love's
+charity boy so loftily serene now that she saw him half denuded--a thing
+of shanks and wrists--was a trial for her true heart.
+
+Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his
+marriage.  "We'll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I'll do it alone-
+-what there is to do."  He slightly adverted to a natural want of courage
+in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was deficient in
+that quality.  Up leapt the Old Dog; "I'm sure there never was a braver
+creature upon earth, Richard!  She's as brave as she's lovely, I'll swear
+she is!  Look how she behaved that day!  How her voice sounded!  She was
+trembling...  Brave?  She'd follow you into battle, Richard!"
+
+And Richard rejoined: "Talk on, dear old Rip!  She's my darling love,
+whatever she is!  And she is gloriously lovely.  No eyes are like hers.
+I'll go down to-morrow morning the first thing."
+
+Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain apart
+from it.  So thought Richard for a space.
+
+"But if I go, Rip," he said despondently, "if I go for a day even I shall
+have undone all my work with my father.  She says it herself--you saw it
+in her last letter."
+
+"Yes," Ripton assented, and the words "Please remember me to dear Mr.
+Thompson," fluttered about the Old Dog's heart.
+
+It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led her
+through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once dandled in
+long clothes, and helped make a man of, if ever woman did.  He was
+walking under the trees beside a lady, talking to her, not indifferently.
+The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe.  "I know his back," said
+Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it in infancy.  But the lady
+was not her bride.  Mrs. Berry diverged from the path, and got before
+them on the left flank; she stared, retreated, and came round upon the
+right.  There was that in the lady's face which Mrs. Berry did not like.
+Her innermost question was, why he was not walking with his own wife?
+She stopped in front of them.  They broke, and passed about her.  The
+lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he turned to look, and Mrs.
+Berry bobbed.  She had to bob a second time, and then he remembered the
+worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand so that he put
+her in countenance again.  Mrs. Berry was extremely agitated.  He
+dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening.  She heard the
+lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they both laughed as
+she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of each eye.  "I
+don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and repeated it
+resolutely.
+
+"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her neat inquiry.
+"Where's his wife?" succeeded it.  After many interrogations of the sort,
+she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding subsequently,
+brazen.  The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she wished to get
+rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her emotions on the breast
+of her babe.  "I know a lady when I see one," said Mrs. Berry.  "I
+haven't lived with 'em for nothing; and if she's a lady bred and born, I
+wasn't married in the church alive."
+
+Then, if not a lady, what was she?  Mrs. Berry desired to know: "She's
+imitation lady, I'm sure she is!" Berry vowed.  "I say she don't look
+proper."
+
+Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was one to
+think of a married man in company with such?  "Oh no! it ain't that!"
+Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack.  "Belike it's
+some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her looks, and he've
+just met her....  Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!" the relinquished
+spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea of a second man being
+so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled, too!"  Mrs. Berry groaned on
+the suspicious side of the debate.  "And such a sweet young thing for his
+wife!  But no, I'll never believe it.  Not if he tell me so himself!  And
+men don't do that," she whimpered.
+
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters; soft women
+exceedingly swift: and soft women who have been betrayed are rapid beyond
+measure.  Mrs. Berry had not cogitated long ere she pronounced distinctly
+and without a shadow of dubiosity: "My opinion is--married or not
+married, and wheresomever he pick her up--she's nothin' more nor less
+than a Bella Donna!" as which poisonous plant she forthwith registered
+the lady in the botanical note-book of her brain.  It would have
+astonished Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately hit off at a
+glance.
+
+In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied by Ripton.
+Mrs. Berry opened the door to them.  She could not wait to get him into
+the parlour.  "You're my own blessed babe; and I'm as good as your
+mother, though I didn't suck ye, bein' a maid!" she cried, falling into
+his arms, while Richard did his best to support the unexpected burden.
+Then reproaching him tenderly for his guile--at mention of which Ripton
+chuckled, deeming it his own most honourable portion of the plot--Mrs.
+Berry led them into the parlour, and revealed to Richard who she was, and
+how she had tossed him, and hugged him, and kissed him all over, when he
+was only that big--showing him her stumpy fat arm.  "I kissed ye from
+head to tail, I did," said Mrs. Berry, "and you needn't be ashamed of it.
+It's be hoped you'll never have nothin' worse come t'ye, my dear!"
+
+Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned her that she
+must not do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it was out of the question now,
+and now that he had a wife, moreover.  The young men laughed, and Ripton
+laughing over-loudly drew on himself Mrs. Berry's attention: "But that
+Mr. Thompson there--however he can look me in the face after his
+inn'cence! helping blindfold an old woman! though I ain't sorry for what
+I did--that I'm free for to say, and its' over, and blessed be all!
+Amen!  So now where is she and how is she, Mr. Richard, my dear--it's
+only cuttin' off the 's' and you are as you was.--Why didn't ye bring her
+with ye to see her old Berry?"
+
+Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of Wight.
+
+"Oh! and you've left her for a day or two?" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Good God!  I wish it had been a day or two," cried Richard.
+
+"Ah! and how long have it been?" asked Mrs. Berry, her heart beginning to
+beat at his manner of speaking.
+
+"Don't talk about it," said Richard.
+
+"Oh! you never been dudgeonin' already?  Oh! you haven't been peckin' at
+one another yet?" Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
+
+Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.
+
+"Then how long ha' you been divided?"
+
+In a guilty voice Ripton stammered "since September."
+
+"September!" breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her fingers, "September,
+October, Nov--two months and more! nigh three!  A young married husband
+away from the wife of his bosom nigh three months!  Oh my!  Oh my! what
+do that mean?"
+
+"My father sent for me--I'm waiting to see him," said Richard.  A few
+more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend the condition of affairs.
+Then Mrs. Berry spread her lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her eyes,
+and spoke.
+
+"My dear young gentleman!--I'd like to call ye my darlin' babe!  I'm
+going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye likes it or no; and what old
+Berry says, you won't mind, for she's had ye when there was no
+conventionals about ye, and she has the feelin's of a mother to you,
+though humble her state.  If there's one that know matrimony it's me, my
+dear, though Berry did give me no more but nine months of it and I've
+known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants to be woeful wise,
+there it is for ye.  For what have been my gain?  That man gave me
+nothin' but his name; and Bessy Andrews was as good as Bessy Berry,
+though both is 'Bs,' and says he, you was 'A,' and now you's 'B,' so
+you're my A B, he says, write yourself down that, he says, the bad man,
+with his jokes!--Berry went to service."  Mrs. Berry's softness came upon
+her.  "So I tell ye, Berry went to service.  He left the wife of his
+bosom forlorn and he went to service; because he were allays an ambitious
+man, and wasn't, so to speak, happy out of his uniform--which was his
+livery--not even in my arms: and he let me know it.  He got among them
+kitchen sluts, which was my mournin' ready made, and worse than a widow's
+cap to me, which is no shame to wear, and some say becoming.  There's no
+man as ever lived known better than my Berry how to show his legs to
+advantage, and gals look at 'em.  I don't wonder now that Berry was
+prostrated.  His temptations was strong, and his flesh was weak.  Then
+what I say is, that for a young married man--be he whomsoever he may be--
+to be separated from the wife of his bosom--a young sweet thing, and he
+an innocent young gentleman!--so to sunder, in their state, and be kep'
+from each other, I say it's as bad as bad can be!  For what is matrimony,
+my dears?  We're told it's a holy Ordnance.  And why are ye so
+comfortable in matrimony?  For that ye are not a sinnin'!  And they that
+severs ye they tempts ye to stray: and you learn too late the meanin' o'
+them blessin's of the priest--as it was ordained.  Separate--what comes?
+Fust it's like the circulation of your blood a-stoppin'--all goes wrong.
+Then there's misunderstandings--ye've both lost the key.  Then, behold
+ye, there's birds o' prey hoverin' over each on ye, and it's which'll be
+snapped up fust.  Then--Oh, dear! Oh, dear! it be like the devil come
+into the world again."  Mrs. Berry struck her hands and moaned.  "A day
+I'll give ye: I'll go so far as a week: but there's the outside.  Three
+months dwellin' apart!  That's not matrimony, it's divorcin'! what can it
+be to her but widowhood? widowhood with no cap to show for it!  And what
+can it be to you, my dear?  Think! you been a bachelor three months! and
+a bachelor man," Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, "he ain't
+widow woman.  I don't go to compare you to Berry, my dear young
+gentleman.  Some men's hearts is vagabonds born--they must go astray--
+it's their natur' to.  But all men are men, and I know the foundation of
+'em, by reason of my woe."
+
+Mrs. Berry paused.  Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon.  The
+truth in the good creature's address was not to be disputed, or despised,
+notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her quaint way of
+putting it.  Ripton nodded encouragingly at every sentence, for he saw
+her drift, and wished to second it.
+
+Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry solemnly
+continued: "We all know what checked prespiration is."  But neither of
+the young gentlemen could resist this.  Out they burst in a roar of
+laughter.
+
+"Laugh away," said Mrs. Berry.  "I don't mind ye.  I say again, we all do
+know what checked prespiration is.  It fly to the lungs, it gives ye
+mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off.  Then I say checked matrimony
+is as bad.  It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue that's in
+ye, and you might as well be dead!  Them that is joined it's their
+salvation not to separate!  It don't so much matter before it.  That Mr.
+Thompson there--if he go astray, it ain't from the blessed fold.  He hurt
+himself alone--not double, and belike treble, for who can say now what
+may be?  There's time for it.  I'm for holding back young people so that
+they knows their minds, howsomever they rattles about their hearts.  I
+ain't a speeder of matrimony, and good's my reason! but where it's been
+done--where they're lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do say
+this, that to put division between 'em then, it's to make wanderin'
+comets of 'em--creatures without a objeck, and no soul can say what
+they's good for but to rush about!"
+
+Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost for
+the time being.
+
+"My dear old girl," Richard went up to her and, applauding her on the
+shoulder, "you're a very wise old woman.  But you mustn't speak to me as
+if I wanted to stop here.  I'm compelled to.  I do it for her good
+chiefly."
+
+"It's your father that's doin' it, my dear?"
+
+"Well, I'm waiting his pleasure."
+
+"A pretty pleasure! puttin' a snake in the nest of young turtle-doves!
+And why don't she come up to you?"
+
+"Well, that you must ask her.  The fact is, she's a little timid girl--
+she wants me to see him first, and when I've made all right, then she'll
+come."
+
+"A little timid girl!" cried Mrs. Berry.  "Oh, lor', how she must ha'
+deceived ye to make ye think that!  Look at that ring," she held out her
+finger, "he's a stranger: he's not my lawful!  You know what ye did to
+me, my dear.  Could I get my own wedding-ring back from her?  "No!" says
+she, firm as a rock, 'he said, with this ring I thee wed'--I think I
+see her now, with her pretty eyes and lovesome locks--a darlin'!--And
+that ring she'd keep to, come life, came death.  And she must ha' been a
+rock for me to give in to her in that.  For what's the consequence?  Here
+am I," Mrs. Berry smoothed down the back of her hand mournfully, "here am
+I in a strange ring, that's like a strange man holdin' of me, and me a-
+wearin' of it just to seem decent, and feelin' all over no better than a
+b--a big--that nasty came I can't abide!--I tell you, my dear, she ain't
+soft, no!--except to the man of her heart; and the best of women's too
+soft there--mores our sorrow!"
+
+"Well, well!" said Richard, who thought he knew.
+
+"I agree with you, Mrs. Berry," Ripton struck in, "Mrs. Richard would do
+anything in the world her husband asked her, I'm quite sure."
+
+"Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson!  Why, see her!  she ain't
+frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in the eyes; she ain't one of
+your hang-down misses.  Look how she behaved at the ceremony!"
+
+"Ah!" sighed Ripton.
+
+"And if you'd ha' seen her when she spoke to me about my ring!  Depend
+upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she blinded you about the nerve she've
+got, it was somethin' she thought she ought to do for your sake, and I
+wish I'd been by to counsel her, poor blessed babe!--And how much longer,
+now, can ye stay divided from that darlin'?"
+
+Richard paced up and down.
+
+"A father's will," urged Mrs. Berry, "that's a son's law; but he mustn't
+go again' the laws of his nature to do it."
+
+"Just be quiet at present--talk of other things, there's a good woman,"
+said Richard.
+
+Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.
+
+"How strange, now, our meetin' like this! meetin' at all, too!" she
+remarked contemplatively.  "It's them advertisements!  They brings people
+together from the ends of the earth, for good or for bad.  I often say,
+there's more lucky accidents, or unlucky ones, since advertisements was
+the rule, than ever there was before.  They make a number of romances,
+depend upon it!  Do you walk much in the Gardens, my dear?"
+
+"Now and then," said Richard.
+
+"Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers and titled
+people," continued Mrs. Berry.  "That was a handsome woman you was a-
+walkin' beside, this mornin'."
+
+Very," said Richard.
+
+"She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her day ain't past,
+and she know it.  I thought at first--by her back--it might ha' been your
+aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do step out well and hold up her shoulders:
+straight as a dart she be!  But when I come to see her face--Oh, dear me!
+says I, this ain't one of the family.  They none of 'em got such bold
+faces--nor no lady as I know have.  But she's a fine woman--that nobody
+can gainsay."
+
+Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman.  It was a liberty she took
+to speak in this disrespectful tone of her, and Mrs. Berry was quite
+aware that she was laying herself open to rebuke.  She had her end in
+view.  No rebuke was uttered, and during her talk she observed
+intercourse passing between the eyes of the young men.
+
+"Look here, Penelope," Richard stopped her at last.  "Will it make you
+comfortable if I tell you I'll obey the laws of my nature and go down at
+the end of the week?"
+
+"I'll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Very well, then--be happy--I will.  Now listen.  I want you to keep your
+rooms for me--those she had.  I expect, in a day or two, to bring a lady
+here"--
+
+"A lady?" faltered Mrs. Berry.
+
+"Yes.  A lady."
+
+"May I make so bold as to ask what lady?"
+
+"You may not.  Not now.  Of course you will know."
+
+Mrs. Berry's short neck made the best imitation it could of an offended
+swan's action.  She was very angry.  She said she did not like so many
+ladies, which natural objection Richard met by saying that there was only
+one lady.
+
+"And Mrs. Berry," he added, dropping his voice.  "You will treat her as
+you did my dear girl, for she will require not only shelter but kindness.
+I would rather leave her with you than with any one.  She has been very
+unfortunate."
+
+His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated the softness of
+Berry, and it was not until he had gone that she spoke out.
+"Unfort'nate!  He's going to bring me an unfort'nate female!  Oh! not
+from my babe can I bear that!  Never will I have her here!  I see it.
+It's that bold-faced woman he's got mixed up in, and she've been and made
+the young man think he'll go for to reform her.  It's one o' their arts--
+that is; and he's too innocent a young man to mean anythin' else.  But I
+ain't a house of Magdalens no! and sooner than have her here I'd have the
+roof fall over me, I would."
+
+She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.
+
+In love, Mrs. Berry's charity was all on the side of the law, and this is
+the case with many of her sisters.  The Pilgrim sneers at them for it,
+and would have us credit that it is their admirable instinct which, at
+the expense of every virtue save one, preserves the artificial barrier
+simply to impose upon us.  Men, I presume, are hardly fair judges, and
+should stand aside and mark.
+
+Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard's hotel to let him know
+her determination.  She did not find him there.  Returning homeward
+through the park, she beheld him on horseback riding by the side of the
+identical lady.
+
+The sight of this public exposure shocked her more than the secret walk
+under the trees...  "You don't look near your reform yet," Mrs. Berry
+apostrophized her.  "You don't look to me one that'd come the Fair
+Penitent till you've left off bein' fair--if then you do, which some of
+ye don't.  Laugh away and show yet airs!  Spite o' your hat and feather,
+and your ridin' habit, you're a Belle Donna."  Setting her down again
+absolutely for such, whatever it might signify, Mrs. Berry had a virtuous
+glow.
+
+In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at the door.
+"Never!" she rose from her chair to exclaim.  "He ain't rided her out in
+the mornin', and been and made a Magdalen of her afore dark?"
+
+A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard.  Mrs. Berry feebly
+tried to bar his progress in the passage.  He pushed past her, and
+conducted the lady into the parlour without speaking.  Mrs. Berry did not
+follow.  She heard him murmur a few sentences within.  Then he came out.
+All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, "Mr. Richard! if
+that woman stay here, I go forth.  My house ain't a penitentiary for
+unfort'nate females, sir"--
+
+He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point of renewing her
+indignant protest, he clapped his hand across her mouth, and spoke words
+in her ear that had awful import to her.  She trembled, breathing low:
+"My God, forgive, me!
+
+"Richard?"  And her virtue was humbled.  "Lady Feverel is it?  Your
+mother, Mr. Richard?"  And her virtue was humbled.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little man; a poet in bad
+circumstances; a decrepit butterfly chained to a disappointed inkstand,
+will not put out strenuous energies to retain his ancient paramour when a
+robust young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him in her
+person.  The colloquy was short between Diaper Sandoe and Richard.  The
+question was referred to the poor spiritless lady, who, seeing that her
+son made no question of it, cast herself on his hands.  Small loss to her
+was Diaper; but he was the loss of habit, and that is something to a
+woman who has lived.  The blood of her son had been running so long alien
+from her that the sense of her motherhood smote he now with strangeness,
+and Richard's stern gentleness seemed like dreadful justice come upon
+her.  Her heart had almost forgotten its maternal functions.  She called
+him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her son.  Her voice sounded to
+him like that of a broken-throated lamb, so painful and weak it was, with
+the plaintive stop in the utterance.  When he kissed her, her skin was
+cold.  Her thin hand fell out of his when his grasp related.  "Can sin
+hunt one like this?" he asked, bitterly reproaching himself for the shame
+she had caused him to endure, and a deep compassion filled his breast.
+
+Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet.  He thought of all he
+had sacrificed for this woman--the comfortable quarters, the friend, the
+happy flights.  He could not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving
+him in his old age.  Habit had legalized his union with her.  He wrote as
+pathetically of the break of habit as men feel at the death of love, and
+when we are old and have no fair hope tossing golden locks before us, a
+wound to this our second nature is quite as sad.  I know not even if it
+be not actually sadder.
+
+Day by day Richard visited his mother.  Lady Blandish and Ripton alone
+were in the secret.  Adrian let him do as he pleased.  He thought proper
+to tell him that the public recognition he accorded to a particular lady
+was, in the present state of the world, scarcely prudent.
+
+"'Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but the world will
+not think so.  No one character is sufficient to cover two--in a
+Protestant country especially.  The divinity that doth hedge a Bishop
+would have no chance, in contact with your Madam Danae.  Drop the woman,
+my son.  Or permit me to speak what you would have her hear."
+
+Richard listened to him with disgust.  "Well, you've had my doctorial
+warning," said Adrian; and plunged back into his book.
+
+When Lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations Mrs.
+Berry perpetually opened on the subject of Richard's matrimonial duty,
+another chain was cast about him.  "Do not, oh, do not offend your
+father!" was her one repeated supplication.  Sir Austin had grown to be a
+vindictive phantom in her mind.  She never wept but when she said this.
+
+So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention of Lady Blandish as
+the only friend he had among women, bundled off in her black-satin dress
+to obtain an interview with her, and an ally.  After coming to an
+understanding on the matter of the visit, and reiterating many of her
+views concerning young married people, Mrs. Berry said: "My lady, if I
+may speak so bold, I'd say the sin that's bein' done is the sin o' the
+lookers-on.  And when everybody appear frightened by that young
+gentleman's father, I'll say--hopin' your pardon--they no cause be
+frighted at all.  For though it's nigh twenty year since I knew him, and
+I knew him then just sixteen months--no more--I'll say his heart's as
+soft as a woman's, which I've cause for to know.  And that's it.  That's
+where everybody's deceived by him, and I was.  It's because he keeps his
+face, and makes ye think you're dealin' with a man of iron, and all the
+while there's a woman underneath.  And a man that's like a woman he's the
+puzzle o' life!  We can see through ourselves, my lady, and we can see
+through men, but one o' that sort--he's like somethin' out of nature.
+Then I say--hopin' be excused--what's to do is for to treat him like a
+woman, and not for to let him have his own way--which he don't know
+himself, and is why nobody else do.  Let that sweet young couple come
+together, and be wholesome in spite of him, I say; and then give him time
+to come round, just like a woman; and round he'll come, and give 'em his
+blessin', and we shall know we've made him comfortable.  He's angry
+because matrimony have come between him and his son, and he, woman-like,
+he's wantin' to treat what is as if it isn't.  But matrimony's a holier
+than him.  It began long long before him, and it's be hoped will endoor
+longs the time after, if the world's not coming to rack--wishin' him no
+harm."
+
+Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish's thoughts in bad English.  The
+lady took upon herself seriously to advise Richard to send for his wife.
+He wrote, bidding her come.  Lucy, however, had wits, and inexperienced
+wits are as a little knowledge.  In pursuance of her sage plan to make
+the family feel her worth, and to conquer the members of it one by one,
+she had got up a correspondence with Adrian, whom it tickled.  Adrian
+constantly assured her all was going well: time would heal the wound if
+both the offenders had the fortitude to be patient: he fancied he saw
+signs of the baronet's relenting: they must do nothing to arrest those
+favourable symptoms.  Indeed the wise youth was languidly seeking to
+produce them.  He wrote, and felt, as Lucy's benefactor.  So Lucy replied
+to her husband a cheerful rigmarole he could make nothing of, save that
+she was happy in hope, and still had fears.  Then Mrs. Berry trained her
+fist to indite a letter to her bride.  Her bride answered it by saying
+she trusted to time.  "You poor marter" Mrs. Berry wrote back, "I know
+what your sufferin's be.  They is the only kind a wife should never hide
+from her husband.  He thinks all sorts of things if she can abide being
+away.  And you trusting to time, why it's like trusting not to catch cold
+out of your natural clothes."  There was no shaking Lucy's firmness.
+
+Richard gave it up.  He began to think that the life lying behind him was
+the life of a fool.  What had he done in it?  He had burnt a rick and got
+married!  He associated the two acts of his existence.  Where was the
+hero he was to have carved out of Tom Bakewell!--a wretch he had taught
+to lie and chicane: and for what?  Great heavens! how ignoble did a flash
+from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear!  The young
+man sought amusement.  He allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and
+sick of that he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the
+purpose he had in visiting her at all.  Her man-like conversation, which
+he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on fair lips.
+
+"Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick," said she.  And it came to be Bella
+and Dick between them.  No mention of Bella occurred in Richard's letters
+to Lucy.
+
+Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself.  "I pretend to be no better
+than I am," she said, "and I know I'm no worse than many a woman who
+holds her head high."  To back this she told him stories of blooming
+dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.
+
+Also she understood him.  "What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
+do.  You went and got married like a--hum!--friends must be respectful.
+Go into the Army.  Try the turf.  I can put you up to a trick or two--
+friends should make themselves useful."
+
+She told him what she liked in him.  "You're the only man I was ever
+alone with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick.  I hate
+men who can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute."  She left
+him and presently returned with, "Ah, Dick!  old fellow! how are you?"--
+arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat jauntily
+cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the costume.
+"What do you think of me?  Wasn't it a shame to make a woman of me when I
+was born to be a man?"
+
+"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
+those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.
+
+"What! you think I don't do it well?"
+
+"Charming! but I can't forget..."
+
+"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.
+
+Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets arm-
+in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
+impertinent manner of using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of
+the supreme dandy.
+
+"They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's clothes, and vice
+versaw, I suppose.  You'll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my bow
+to the beak, won't you?  Say it's becas I'm an honest woman and don't
+care to hide the--a--unmentionables when I wear them--as the t'others
+do," sprinkled with the dandy's famous invocations.
+
+He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.
+
+"You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler take me? by Jove!"
+
+And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent
+her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed upon it more.
+There was delicacy in her dandyism.  She was a graceful cavalier.
+
+"Sir Julius," as they named the dandy's attire, was frequently called for
+on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount.  When he beheld Sir Julius he
+thought of the lady, and "vice versaw," as Sir Julius was fond of
+exclaiming.
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?
+
+The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius.  Or she would sit,
+and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that worthy fop.
+
+She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her the
+cleverest woman he had ever met.
+
+All kinds of problematic notions beset him.  She was cold as ice, she
+hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.
+
+A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria's ears.  She rushed to Adrian
+first.  The wise youth believed there was nothing in it.  She sailed down
+upon Richard.  "Is this true? that you have been seen going publicly
+about with an infamous woman, Richard?  Tell me! pray, relieve me!"
+
+Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt's description in whose
+company he could have been seen.
+
+"Tell me, I say!  Don't quibble.  Do you know any woman of bad
+character?"
+
+The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill-used by the world,
+Richard admitted to.
+
+Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew, both from the moral
+and the worldly point of view, mentally ejaculating all the while: "That
+ridiculous System!  That disgraceful marriage!"  Sir Austin in his
+mountain solitude was furnished with serious stuff to brood over.
+
+The rumour came to Lady Blandish.  She likewise lectured Richard, and
+with her he condescended to argue.  But he found himself obliged to
+instance something he had quite neglected.  "Instead of her doing me
+harm, it's I that will do her good."
+
+Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger.  "This person must
+be very clever to have given you that delusion, dear."
+
+"She is clever.  And the world treats her shamefully."
+
+"She complains of her position to you?"
+
+"Not a word.  But I will stand by her.  She has no friend but me."
+
+"My poor boy! has she made you think that?"
+
+"How unjust you all are!" cried Richard.
+
+"How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be tempted so!" thought
+Lady Blandish.
+
+He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to address her
+publicly.  The world that condemned her and cast her out was no better--
+worse for its miserable hypocrisy.  He knew the world now, the young man
+said.
+
+"My child! the world may be very bad.  I am not going to defend it.  But
+you have some one else to think of.  Have you forgotten you have a wife,
+Richard?"
+
+"Ay! you all speak of her now.  There's my aunt: 'Remember you have a
+wife!'  "Do you think I love any one but Lucy? poor little thing!
+Because I am married am I to give up the society of women?"
+
+"Of women!"
+
+"Isn't she a woman?"
+
+"Too much so!" sighed the defender of her sex.
+
+Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings.  Richard laughed at him.
+The wise youth sneered at Mrs. Mount.  The hero then favoured him with a
+warning equal to his own in emphasis, and surpassing it in sincerity.
+
+"We won't quarrel, my dear boy," said Adrian.  "I'm a man of peace.
+Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a combat.  Ride your steed to
+virtue's goal!  All I say is, that I think he'll upset you, and it's
+better to go at a slow pace and in companionship with the children of the
+sun.  You have a very nice little woman for a wife--well, good-bye!"
+
+To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was unendurable to
+Richard; he associated them somewhat after the manner of the rick and the
+marriage.  Charming Sir Julius, always gay, always honest, dispersed his
+black moods.
+
+"Why, you're taller," Richard made the discovery.
+
+"Of course I am.  Don't you remember you said I was such a little thing
+when I came out of my woman's shell?"
+
+"And how have you done it?"
+
+"Grown to please you."
+
+"Now, if you can do that, you can do anything."
+
+"And so I would do anything."
+
+"You would?"
+
+"Honour!"
+
+"Then"...his project recurred to him.  But the incongruity of speaking
+seriously to Sir Julius struck him dumb.
+
+"Then what?" asked she.
+
+"Then you're a gallant fellow."
+
+"That all?"
+
+"Isn't it enough?"
+
+"Not quite.  You were going to say something.  I saw it in your eyes."
+
+"You saw that I admired you."
+
+"Yes, but a man mustn't admire a man."
+
+"I suppose I had an idea you were a woman."
+
+"What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an inch," Sir Julius
+turned one heel, and volleyed out silver laughter.
+
+"I don't come much above your shoulder even now," she said, and proceeded
+to measure her height beside him with arch up-glances.
+
+"You must grow more."
+
+"'Fraid I can't, Dick!  Bootmakers can't do it."
+
+"I'll show you how," and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and bore the fair
+gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him there exactly on a level with
+his head.  "Will that do?"
+
+"Yes!  Oh but I can't stay here."
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Why can't I?"
+
+He should have known then--it was thundered at a closed door in him, that
+he played with fire.  But the door being closed, he thought himself
+internally secure.
+
+Their eyes met.  He put her down instantly.
+
+Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue.  Seeing that, the wily
+woman resumed her shell.  The memory, of Sir Julius breathing about her
+still, doubled the feminine attraction.
+
+"I ought to have been an actress," she said.
+
+Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar wish.
+
+"Yes!  Ah! then! if I had been!" sighed Mrs. Mount, gazing on the pattern
+of the carpet.
+
+He took her hand, and pressed it.
+
+"You are not happy as you are?"
+
+"No."
+
+"May I speak to you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion, slid to the
+corner toward her ear, as she sat with her head sideways to him,
+listening.  When he had gone, she said to herself: "Old hypocrites talk
+in that way; but I never heard of a young man doing it, and not making
+love at the same time."
+
+Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one who had been set
+thinking.  He lauded her fair looks.
+
+"Don't make me thrice ashamed," she petitioned.
+
+But it was not only that mood with her.  Dauntless defiance, that
+splendidly befitted her gallant outline and gave a wildness to her bright
+bold eyes, when she would call out: "Happy? who dares say I'm not happy?
+D'you think if the world whips me I'll wince?  D'you think I care for
+what they say or do?  Let them kill me!  they shall never get one cry out
+of me!" and flashing on the young man as if he were the congregated
+enemy, add: "There! now you know me!"--that was a mood that well became
+her, and helped the work.  She ought to have been an actress.
+
+"This must not go on," said Lady Blandish and Mrs. Doria in unison.  A
+common object brought them together.  They confined their talk to it, and
+did not disagree.  Mrs. Doria engaged to go down to the baronet.  Both
+ladies knew it was a dangerous, likely to turn out a disastrous,
+expedition.  They agreed to it because it was something to do, and doing
+anything is better than doing nothing.  "Do it," said the wise youth,
+when they made him a third, "do it, if you want him to be a hermit for
+life.  You will bring back nothing but his dead body, ladies--a Hellenic,
+rather than a Roman, triumph.  He will listen to you--he will accompany
+you to the station--he will hand you into the carriage--and when you
+point to his seat he will bow profoundly, and retire into his congenial
+mists."
+
+Adrian spoke their thoughts.  They fretted; they relapsed.
+
+"Speak to him, you, Adrian," said Mrs. Doria.  "Speak to the boy
+solemnly.  It would be almost better he should go back to that little
+thing he has married."
+
+"Almost?" Lady Blandish opened her eyes.  "I have been advising it for
+the last month and more."
+
+"A choice of evils," said Mrs. Doria's sour-sweet face and shake of the
+head.
+
+Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed, with heroic
+effort, to avoid it by shutting their mouths.  What was more, they
+preserved the peace in spite of Adrian's artifices.
+
+"Well, I'll talk to him again," he said.  "I'll try to get the Engine on
+the conventional line."
+
+"Command him!" exclaimed Mrs. Doria.
+
+"Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard," said Lady
+Blandish.
+
+Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke to Richard.
+"You want to reform this woman.  Her manner is open--fair and free--the
+traditional characteristic.  We won't stop to canvass how that particular
+honesty of deportment that wins your approbation has been gained.  In her
+college it is not uncommon.  Girls, you know, are not like boys.  At a
+certain age they can't be quite natural.  It's a bad sign if they don't
+blush, and fib, and affect this and that.  It wears off when they're
+women.  But a woman who speaks like a man, and has all those excellent
+virtues you admire--where has she learned the trick?  She tells you.  You
+don't surely approve of the school?  Well, what is there in it, then?
+Reform her, of course.  The task is worthy of your energies.  But, if you
+are appointed to do it, don't do it publicly, and don't attempt it just
+now.  May I ask you whether your wife participates in this undertaking?"
+
+Richard walked away from the interrogation.  The wise youth, who hated
+long unrelieved speeches and had healed his conscience, said no more.
+
+Dear tender Lucy!  Poor darling!  Richard's eyes moistened.  Her letters
+seemed sadder latterly.  Yet she never called to him to come, or he would
+have gone.  His heart leapt up to her.  He announced to Adrian that he
+should wait no longer for his father.  Adrian placidly nodded.
+
+The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded brow and an absent
+voice.
+
+"Richard--I can't call you Dick now, I really don't know why"--she said,
+"I want to beg a favour of you."
+
+"Name it.  I can still call you Bella, I suppose?"
+
+"If you care to.  What I want to say is this: when you meet me out--to
+cut it short--please not to recognize me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Do you ask to be told that?"
+
+"Certainly I do."
+
+"Then look: I won't compromise you."
+
+"I see no harm, Bella."
+
+"No," she caressed his hand, "and there is none.  I know that.  But,"
+modest eyelids were drooped, "other people do," struggling eyes were
+raised.
+
+"What do we care for other people?"
+
+"Nothing.  I don't.  Not that!" snapping her finger, "I care for you,
+though."  A prolonged look followed the declaration.
+
+"You're foolish, Bella."
+
+"Not quite so giddy--that's all."
+
+He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity.  Adrian's abrupt inquiry
+had sunk in his mind, as the wise youth intended it should.  He had
+instinctively refrained from speaking to Lucy of this lady.  But what a
+noble creature the woman was!
+
+So they met in the park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him; and secresy added a
+new sense to their intimacy.
+
+Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his eloquence.
+
+Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was not mistaken in her
+cleverness.  She could make evenings pass gaily, and one was not the
+fellow to the other.  She could make you forget she was a woman, and then
+bring the fact startlingly home to you.  She could read men with one
+quiver of her half-closed eye-lashes.  She could catch the coming mood in
+a man, and fit herself to it.  What does a woman want with ideas, who can
+do thus much?  Keenness of perception, conformity, delicacy of handling,
+these be all the qualities necessary to parasites.
+
+Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from her tongue.  It
+may also have been true that it sickened her.  She played on his higher
+nature.  She understood spontaneously what would be most strange and
+taking to him in a woman.  Various as the Serpent of old Nile, she acted
+fallen beauty, humorous indifference, reckless daring, arrogance in ruin.
+And acting thus, what think you?--She did it so well because she was
+growing half in earnest.
+
+"Richard!  I am not what I was since I knew you.  You will not give me up
+quite?"
+
+"Never, Bella."
+
+"I am not so bad as I'm painted!"
+
+"You are only unfortunate."
+
+"Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier."
+
+She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance seemed to
+throw heaven's twilight across it.  A woman's history, you know: certain
+chapters expunged.  It was dark enough to Richard.
+
+"Did you love the man?" he asked.  "You say you love no one now."
+
+"Did I love him?  He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's daughter.  No.  I
+did not love him.  I have lived to learn it.  And now I should hate him,
+if I did not despise him."
+
+"Can you be deceived in love?" said Richard, more to himself than to her.
+
+"Yes.  When we're young we can be very easily deceived.  If there is such
+a thing as love, we discover it after we have tossed about and roughed
+it.  Then we find the man, or the woman, that suits us:--and then it's
+too late! we can't have him."
+
+"Singular!" murmured Richard, "she says just what my father said."
+
+He spoke aloud: "I could forgive you if you had loved him."
+
+"Don't be harsh, grave judge!  How is a girl to distinguish?"
+
+"You had some affection for him?  He was the first?"
+
+She chose to admit that.  "Yes.  And the first who talks of love to a
+girl must be a fool if he doesn't blind her."
+
+"That makes what is called first love nonsense."
+
+"Isn't it?"
+
+He repelled the insinuation.  "Because I know it is not, Bella."
+
+Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to him, and a
+colder.  He thought poorly of girls.  A woman a sensible, brave,
+beautiful woman seemed, on comparison, infinitely nobler than those weak
+creatures.
+
+She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul injustice.
+"What am I to do?  You tell me to be different.  How can I?  What am I to
+do?  Will virtuous people let me earn my bread?  I could not get a
+housemaid's place!  They wouldn't have me--I see their noses smelling!
+Yes I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen!  Do you expect me
+to bury myself alive?  Why, man, I have blood: I can't become a stone.
+You say I am honest, and I will be.  Then let me till you that I have
+been used to luxuries, and I can't do without them.  I might have married
+men--lots would have had me.  But who marries one like me but a fool? and
+I could not marry a fool.  The man I marry I must respect.  He could not
+respect me--I should know him to be a fools and I should be worse off
+than I am now.  As I am now, they may look as pious as they like--I laugh
+at them!"
+
+And so forth: direr things.  Imputations upon wives: horrible exultation
+at the universal peccancy of husbands.  This lovely outcast almost made
+him think she had the right on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows
+pierced the holy centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.
+
+Mrs. Mount's house was discreetly conducted: nothing ever occurred to
+shock him there.  The young man would ask himself where the difference
+was between her and the Women of society?  How base, too, was the army of
+banded hypocrites!  He was ready to declare war against them on her
+behalf.  His casus beli, accurately worded, would have read curiously.
+Because the world refused to lure the lady to virtue with the offer of a
+housemaid's place, our knight threw down his challenge.  But the lady had
+scornfully rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity.  Then the form
+of the challenge must be: Because the world declined to support the lady
+in luxury for nothing!  But what did that mean?  In other words: she was
+to receive the devil's wages without rendering him her services.  Such an
+arrangement appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil.  Heroes
+will have to conquer both before they will get them to subscribe to it.
+
+Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their declarations of
+war at all.  Lance in rest they challenge and they charge.  Like women
+they trust to instinct, and graft on it the muscle of men.  Wide fly the
+leisurely-remonstrating hosts: institutions are scattered, they know not
+wherefore, heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason why.  'Tis
+instinct strikes!  Surely there is something divine in instinct.
+
+Still, war declared, where were these hosts?  The hero could not charge
+down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ballroom, and spoil the quadrille.
+He had sufficient reticence to avoid sounding his challenge in the Law
+Courts; nor could he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a
+trumpet, though to come to a tussle with the nation's direct
+representatives did seem the likelier method.  It was likewise out of the
+question that he should enter every house and shop, and battle with its
+master in the cause of Mrs. Mount.  Where, then, was his enemy?
+Everybody was his enemy, and everybody was nowhere!  Shall he convoke
+multitudes on Wimbledon Common?  Blue Policemen, and a distant dread of
+ridicule, bar all his projects.  Alas for the hero in our day!
+
+Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as knocking at empty
+air.
+
+"What can I do for this poor woman?" cried Richard, after fighting his
+phantom enemy till he was worn out.
+
+"O Rip! old Rip!" he addressed his friend, "I'm distracted.  I wish I was
+dead!  What good am I for?  Miserable! selfish!  What have I done but
+make every soul I know wretched about me?  I follow my own inclinations--
+I make people help me by lying as hard as they can--and I'm a liar.  And
+when I've got it I'm ashamed of myself.  And now when I do see something
+unselfish for me to do, I come upon grins--I don't know where to turn--
+how to act--and I laugh at myself like a devil!"
+
+It was only friend Ripton's ear that was required, so his words went for
+little: but Ripton did say he thought there was small matter to be
+ashamed of in winning and wearing the Beauty of Earth.  Richard added his
+customary comment of "Poor little thing!"
+
+He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted.  A last letter
+written to his father procured him no reply.  Then, said he, I have tried
+my utmost.  I have tried to be dutiful--my father won't listen to me.
+One thing I can do--I can go down to my dear girl, and make her happy,
+and save her at least from some of the consequences of my rashness.
+
+"There's nothing better for me!" he groaned.  His great ambition must be
+covered by a house-top: he and the cat must warm themselves on the
+domestic hearth!  The hero was not aware that his heart moved him to
+this.  His heart was not now in open communion with his mind.
+
+Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going--would go.  She knew he was
+going to his wife.  Far from discouraging him, she said nobly: "Go--I
+believe I have kept you.  Let us have an evening together, and then go:
+for good, if you like.  If not, then to meet again another time.  Forget
+me.  I shan't forget you.  You're the best fellow I ever knew, Richard.
+You are, on my honour!  I swear I would not step in between you and your
+wife to cause either of you a moment's unhappiness.  When I can be
+another woman I will, and I shall think of you then."
+
+Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively going to his
+wife.  The wise youth modestly veiled his own merit in bringing it about
+by saying: "I couldn't see that poor little woman left alone down there
+any longer."
+
+"Well!  Yes!" said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest speech was repeated, "I
+suppose, poor boy, it's the best he can do now."
+
+Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last evening with Mrs.
+Mount.
+
+The enchantress received him in state.
+
+"Do you know this dress?  No?  It's the dress I wore when I first met
+you--not when I first saw you.  I think I remarked you, sir, before you
+deigned to cast an eye upon humble me.  When we first met we drank
+champagne together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in the same
+liquor.  Will you liquor with me, old boy?"
+
+She was gay.  She revived Sir Julius occasionally.  He, dispirited, left
+the talking all to her.
+
+Mrs. Mount kept a footman.  At a late hour the man of calves dressed the
+table for supper.  It was a point of honour for Richard to sit down to it
+and try to eat.  Drinking, thanks to the kindly mother nature, who loves
+to see her children made fools of, is always an easier matter.  The
+footman was diligent; the champagne corks feebly recalled the file-firing
+at Richmond.
+
+"We'll drink to what we might have been, Dick," said the enchantress.
+
+Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.
+
+His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.
+
+"What! down, my boy?" she cried.  "They shall never see me hoist signals
+of distress.  We must all die, and the secret of the thing is to die
+game, by Jove!  Did you ever hear of Laura Fern?  a superb girl!
+handsomer than your humble servant--if you'll believe it--a 'Miss' in the
+bargain, and as a consequence, I suppose, a much greater rake.  She was
+in the hunting-field.  Her horse threw her, and she fell plump on a
+stake.  It went into her left breast.  All the fellows crowded round her,
+and one young man, who was in love with her--he sits in the House of
+Peers now--we used to call him `Duck' because he was such a dear--he
+dropped from his horse to his knees: 'Laura! Laura! my darling! speak a
+word to me!--the last!'  She turned over all white and bloody!  'I--I
+shan't be in at the death!' and gave up the ghost!  Wasn't that dying
+game?  Here's to the example of Laura Fenn!  Why, what's the matter?
+See! it makes a man turn pale to hear how a woman can die.  Fill the
+glasses, John.  Why, you're as bad!"
+
+"It's give me a turn, my lady," pleaded John, and the man's hand was
+unsteady as he poured out the wine.
+
+"You ought not to listen.  Go, and, drink some brandy."
+
+John footman went from the room.
+
+"My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you've got!"
+
+He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.
+
+"Can't you bear to hear of blood?  You know, it was only one naughty
+woman out of the world.  The clergyman of the parish didn't refuse to
+give her decent burial.  We Christians!  Hurrah!"
+
+She cheered, and laughed.  A lurid splendour glanced about her like
+lights from the pit.
+
+"Pledge me, Dick!  Drink, and recover yourself.  Who minds?  We must all
+die--the good and the bad.  Ashes to ashes--dust to dust--and wine for
+living lips!  That's poetry--almost.  Sentiment: `May we never say die
+till we've drunk our fill!  Not bad--eh?  A little vulgar, perhaps, by
+Jove!  Do you think me horrid?"
+
+"Where's the wine?" Richard shouted.  He drank a couple of glasses in
+succession, and stared about.  Was he in hell, with a lost soul raving to
+him?
+
+"Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick!  Now we'll be
+companions."  She wished that heaven had made her such a man.  "Ah! Dick!
+Dick! too late! too late!"
+
+Softly fell her voice.  Her eyes threw slanting beams.
+
+"Do you see this?"
+
+She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with gems and coiled with
+a rope of hair in her bosom.  It was a gift of his.
+
+"Do you know when I stole the lock?  Foolish Dick! you gave me an anchor
+without a rope.  Come and see."
+
+She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.
+
+"Don't you recognize your own hair!  I should know a thread of mine among
+a million."
+
+Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as he inspected his
+hair on the bosom of Delilah.
+
+"And you knew nothing of it!  You hardly know it now you see it!  What
+couldn't a woman steal from you?  But you're not vain, and that's a
+protection.  You're a miracle, Dick: a man that's not vain!  Sit here."
+She curled up her feet to give him place on the sofa.  "Now let us talk
+like friends that part to meet no more.  You found a ship with fever on
+board, and you weren't afraid to come alongside and keep her company.
+The fever isn't catching, you see.  Let us mingle our tears together.
+Ha! ha! a man said that once to me.  The hypocrite wanted to catch the
+fever, but he was too old.  How old are you, Dick?"
+
+Richard pushed a few months forward.
+
+"Twenty-one?  You just look it, you blooming boy.  Now tell me my age,
+Adonis!--Twenty--what?"
+
+Richard had given the lady twenty-five years.
+
+She laughed violently.  "You don't pay compliments, Dick.  Best to be
+honest; guess again.  You don't like to?  Not twenty-five, or twenty-
+four, or twenty-three, or see how he begins to stare!---twenty-two.  Just
+twenty-one, my dear.  I think my birthday's somewhere in next month.
+Why, look at me, close--closer.  Have I a wrinkle?"
+
+"And when, in heaven's name!"...he stopped short.
+
+"I understand you.  When did I commence for to live?  At the ripe age of
+sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair because of my beauty.  He vowed he'd
+die.  I didn't want him to do that.  So to save the poor man for his
+family, I ran away with him, and I dare say they didn't appreciate the
+sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did.  It's the way of the
+world!"
+
+Richard seized some dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a tumbler,
+and drank it off.
+
+John footman entered to clear the table, and they were left without
+further interruption.
+
+"Bella! Bella!" Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as he walked the
+room.
+
+She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened cheek, her
+eyes half-shut and dreamy.
+
+"Bella!" he dropped beside her.  "You are unhappy."
+
+She blinked and yawned, as one who is awakened suddenly.  "I think you
+spoke," said she.
+
+"You are unhappy, Bella.  You can't conceal it.  Your laugh sounds like
+madness.  You must be unhappy.  So young, too!  Only twenty-one!"
+
+"What does it matter?  Who cares for me?"
+
+The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole shape.  She did
+not mistake it for tenderness, as another would have done.
+
+"Who cares for you, Bella?  I do.  What makes my misery now, but to see
+you there, and know of no way of helping you?  Father of mercy! it seems
+too much to have to stand by powerless while such ruin is going on!"
+
+Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment with which his frame
+quaked.
+
+Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids.  She glanced up at him
+quickly, then looked down, drew her hand from his, and smoothed it, eying
+it.
+
+"Bella! you have a father alive!"
+
+"A linendraper, dear.  He wears a white neck-cloth."
+
+This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone of the
+conversation, for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed the lady's lap-
+dog, whose squeaks and howls were piteous, and demanded the most fervent
+caresses of its mistress.  It was: "Oh, my poor pet Mumpsy, and he didn't
+like a nasty great big ugly heavy foot an his poor soft silky--mum--mum--
+back, he didn't, and he soodn't that he--mum--mum--soodn't; and he cried
+out and knew the place to come to, and was oh so sorry for what had
+happened to him--mum--mum--mum--and now he was going to be made happy,
+his mistress make him happy--mum--mum--mum--moo-o-o-o."
+
+"Yes!" said Richard, savagely, from the other end of the room, "you care
+for the happiness of your dog."
+
+"A course se does," Mumpsy was simperingly assured in the thick of his
+silky flanks.
+
+Richard looked for his hat.  Mumpsy was deposited on the sofa in a
+twinkling.
+
+"Now," said the lady, "you must come and beg Mumpsy's pardon, whether you
+meant to do it or no, because little doggies can't tell that--how should
+they?  And there's poor Mumpsy thinking you're a great terrible rival
+that tries to squash him all flat to nothing, on purpose, pretending you
+didn't see; and he's trembling, poor dear wee pet!  And I may love my
+dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I won't have him ill-treated, for he's
+never been jealous of you, and he is a darling, ten times truer than men,
+and I love him fifty times better.  So come to him with me."
+
+First a smile changed Richard's face; then laughing a melancholy laugh,
+he surrendered to her humour, and went through the form of begging
+Mumpsy's pardon.
+
+"The dear dog!  I do believe he saw we were getting dull," said she.
+
+"And immolated himself intentionally?  Noble animal!"
+
+"Well, we'll act as if we thought so.  Let us be gay, Richard, and not
+part like ancient fogies.  Where's your fun?  You can rattle; why don't
+you?  You haven't seen me in one of my characters--not Sir Julius: wait a
+couple of minutes."  She ran out.
+
+A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame.  Her black hair was
+scattered over her shoulders and fell half across her brows.  She moved
+slowly, and came up to him, fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a
+finger at the region of witches.  Sepulchral cadences accompanied the
+representation.  He did not listen, for he was thinking what a deadly
+charming and exquisitely horrid witch she was.  Something in the way her
+underlids worked seemed to remind him of a forgotten picture; but a veil
+hung on the picture.  There could be no analogy, for this was beautiful
+and devilish, and that, if he remembered rightly, had the beauty of
+seraphs.
+
+His reflections and her performance were stayed by a shriek.  The spirits
+of wine had run over the plate she held to the floor.  She had the
+coolness to put the plate down on the table, while he stamped out the
+flame on the carpet.  Again she shrieked: she thought she was on fire.
+He fell on his knees and clasped her skirts all round, drawing his arms
+down them several times.
+
+Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, "Do you feel safe now?"
+
+She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair touched his
+cheek.
+
+Said she, "Do you?"
+
+Was she a witch verily?  There was sorcery in her breath; sorcery in her
+hair: the ends of it stung him like little snakes.
+
+"How do I do it, Dick?" she flung back, laughing.
+
+"Like you do everything, Bella," he said, and took breath.
+
+"There! I won't be a witch; I won't be a witch: they may burn me to a
+cinder, but I won't be a witch!"
+
+She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.
+
+"I suppose I look a figure.  I must go and tidy myself."
+
+"No, don't change.  I like to see you so."  He gazed at her with a
+mixture of wonder and admiration.  "I can't think you the same person--
+not even when you laugh."
+
+"Richard," her tone was serious, "you were going to speak to me of my
+parents."
+
+"How wild and awful you looked, Bella!"
+
+"My father, Richard, was a very respectable man."
+
+"Bella, you'll haunt me like a ghost."
+
+"My mother died in my infancy, Richard."
+
+"Don't put up your hair, Bella."
+
+"I was an only child!"
+
+Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons.  He followed the
+abstracted intentness of her look, and came upon her words.
+
+"Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella.  Speak of him."
+
+"Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry, '`Tis time'?"
+
+"Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go to him.  He
+shall receive you.  He shall not refuse--he shall forgive you."
+
+"If I haunt you, you can't forget me, Richard."
+
+"Let me go to your father, Bella let me go to him to-morrow.  I'll give
+you my time.  It's all I can give.  O Bella! let me save you."
+
+"So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty boy!  Ha!  ha!" and
+away she burst from him, and up flew her hair, as she danced across the
+room, and fell at full length on the sofa.
+
+He felt giddy: bewitched.
+
+"We'll talk of everyday things, Dick," she called to him from the sofa.
+"It's our last evening.  Our last?  Heigho!  It makes me sentimental.
+How's that Mr. Ripson, Pipson, Nipson?--it's not complimentary, but I
+can't remember names of that sort.  Why do you have friends of that sort?
+He's not a gentleman.  Better is he?  Well, he's rather too insignificant
+for me.  Why do you sit off there?  Come to me instantly.  There--I'll
+sit up, and be proper, and you'll have plenty of room.  Talk, Dick!"
+
+He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown.  They had a
+haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when she pleased a soft languor
+circled them.  Excitement had dyed her cheeks deep red.  He was a youth,
+and she an enchantress.  He a hero; she a female will-o'-the-wisp.
+
+The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.
+
+"You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?"
+
+He had no thought of departing:
+
+"It's our last night--I suppose it's our last hour together in this
+world--and I don't want to meet you in the next, for poor Dick will have
+to come to such a very, very disagreeable place to make the visit."
+
+He grasped her hand at this.
+
+"Yes, he will! too true! can't be helped: they say I'm handsome."
+
+"You're lovely, Bella."
+
+She drank in his homage.
+
+"Well, we'll admit it.  His Highness below likes lovely women, I hear
+say.  A gentleman of taste!  You don't know all my accomplishments yet,
+Richard."
+
+"I shan't be astonished at anything new, Bella."
+
+"Then hear, and wonder."  Her voice trolled out some lively roulades.
+"Don't you think he'll make me his prima donna below?  It's nonsense to
+tell me there's no singing there.  And the atmosphere will be favourable
+to the voice.  No damp, you know.  You saw the piano--why didn't you ask
+me to sing before?  I can sing Italian.  I had a master--who made love to
+me.  I forgave him because of the music-stool--men can't help it on a
+music-stool, poor dears!"
+
+She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang--
+
+          "'My heart, my heart--I think 'twill break.'
+
+"Because I'm such a rake.  I don't know any other reason.  No; I hate
+sentimental songs.  Won't sing that.  Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy--a...e!  How
+ridiculous those women were, coming home from Richmond!
+
+              'Once the sweet romance of story
+                 Clad thy moving form with grace;
+               Once the world and all its glory
+                 Was but framework to thy face.
+               Ah, too fair!--what I remember
+                 Might my soul recall--but no!
+               To the winds this wretched ember
+                 Of a fire that falls so low!'
+
+"Hum! don't much like that.  Tum-te-tum-tum--accanto al fuoco--heigho!  I
+don't want to show off, Dick--or to break down--so I won't try that.
+
+              'Oh! but for thee, oh! but for thee,
+                 I might have been a happy wife,
+               And nursed a baby on my knee,
+                 And never blushed to give it life.'
+
+"I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard, and didn't know at
+all, at all, what it meant.  Mustn't sing that sort of song in company.
+We're oh! so proper--even we!
+
+         'If I had a husband, what think you I'd do?
+            I'd make it my business to keep him a lover;
+          For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
+            Some other amusement he'll quickly discover.'
+
+"For such are young gentlemen made of--made of: such are young gentlemen
+made of!"
+
+After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly.  He was in the
+mood when imagination intensely vivifies everything.  Mere suggestions of
+music sufficed.  The lady in the ballad had been wronged.  Lo! it was the
+lady before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid night-flowers;
+he saw the stars crowd large and close above the arid plain this lady
+leaning at her window desolate, pouring out her abandoned heart.
+
+Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.
+
+The lady wandered to Venice.  Thither he followed her at a leap.  In
+Venice she was not happy.  He was prepared for the misery of any woman
+anywhere.  But, oh! to be with her!  To glide with phantom-motion through
+throbbing street; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends; under
+storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in dead quietness;
+past grand old towers, colossal squares, gleaming quays, and out, and on
+with her, on into the silver infinity shaking over seas!
+
+Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry?  Something of the two
+former, perhaps: but most the enchantress playing upon him.  How many
+instruments cannot clever women play upon at the same moment!  And this
+enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt her touch.  She was
+no longer absolutely bent on winning him, or he might have seen a
+manoeuvre.  She liked him--liked none better.  She wished him well.  Her
+pique was satisfied.  Still he was handsome, and he was going.  What she
+liked him for, she rather--very slightly--wished to do away with, or see
+if it could be done away with: just as one wishes to catch a pretty
+butterfly, without hurting its patterned wings.  No harm intended to the
+innocent insect, only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the
+marvel of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of
+thinking one could crush it, if one would.
+
+He knew her what she was, this lady.  In Seville, or in Venice, the spot
+was on her.  Sailing the pathways of the moon it was not celestial light
+that illumined her beauty.  Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save,
+he was soft to her sin--drowned it in deep mournfulness.
+
+Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his musing.  She
+swam wave-like to the sofa.  She was at his feet.
+
+"I have been light and careless to-night, Richard.  Of course I meant it.
+I must be happy with my best friend going to leave me."
+
+Those witch underlids were working brightly.
+
+"You will not forget me? and I shall try...try..."
+
+Her lips twitched.  She thought him such a very handsome fellow.
+
+"If I change--if I can change...  Oh! if you could know what a net I'm
+in, Richard!"
+
+Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not
+divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast,
+and set him rocking with horrid pain.  He bent closer to her pale
+beseeching face.  Her eyes still drew him down.
+
+"Bella!  No! no! promise me! swear it!"
+
+"Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!"
+
+He cried: "I never will!" and strained her in his arms, and kissed her
+passionately on the lips.
+
+She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head with
+a kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping, clinging
+to him.  It was wicked truth.
+
+Not a word of love between them!
+
+Was ever hero in this fashion won?
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beauty
+Come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything
+Habit had legalized his union with her
+Hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman
+His equanimity was fictitious
+His fancy performed miraculous feats
+How many instruments cannot clever women play upon
+I ain't a speeder of matrimony
+Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder
+Serene presumption
+The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity
+To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman
+Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v5
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL
+
+By GEORGE MEREDITH
+
+1905
+
+
+
+BOOK 6.
+
+XXXIX.    THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY
+          TO THE RESCUE!
+XL.       CLARE'S DIARY
+XLI.      AUSTIN RETURNS
+XLII.     NATURE SPEAKS
+XLIII.    AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
+XLIV.     THE LAST SCENE
+XLV.      LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions to
+other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the potent
+nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust of his
+friends and special parasite.  "Mount's in for it again," they said among
+themselves.  "Hang the women!" was a natural sequence.  For, don't you
+see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling such a very
+inflammable subject!  All understood that Cupid had twanged his bow, and
+transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but none would
+perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent oaths, that
+this was a totally different case from the antecedent ones.  So it had
+been sworn to them too frequently before.  He was as a man with mighty
+tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but inarticulate.
+Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded his noble emotions.
+They were now quite beyond the comprehension of blasphemy, even when
+emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt the case was
+different.  There is something impressive in a great human hulk writhing
+under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot contend with, or
+account for, or explain by means of intelligible words.  At first he took
+refuge in the depths of his contempt for women.  Cupid gave him line.
+When he had come to vent his worst of them, the fair face now stamped on
+his brain beamed the more triumphantly: so the harpooned whale rose to
+the surface, and after a few convulsions, surrendered his huge length.
+My lord was in love with Richard's young wife.  He gave proofs of it by
+burying himself beside her.  To her, could she have seen it, he gave
+further proofs of a real devotion, in affecting, and in her presence
+feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being.  This
+wonder, that when near her he should be cool and composed, and when away
+from her wrapped in a tempest of desires, was matter for what powers of
+cogitation the heavy nobleman possessed.
+
+The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged him to press the
+business.  Lord Mountfalcon was wiser, or more scrupulous, than his
+parasite.  Almost every evening he saw Lucy.  The inexperienced little
+wife apprehended no harm in his visits.  Moreover, Richard had commended
+her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith.  Lady Judith had
+left the Island for London: Lord Mountfalcon remained.  There could be no
+harm.  If she had ever thought so, she no longer did.  Secretly, perhaps,
+she was flattered.  Lord Mountfalcon was as well educated as it is the
+fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he could talk and
+instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand that he was wicked,
+very wicked, and that she improved him.  The heroine, in common with the
+hero, has her ambition to be of use in the world--to do some good: and
+the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women.
+Dear to their tender bosoms as old china is a bad man they are mending!
+Lord Mountfalcon had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his
+title, and his person had hitherto preserved him from having long to sigh
+in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon. Peter did his villanies for
+him.  No alarm was given to Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the
+case had my lord been over-adept.  It was nice in her martyrdom to have a
+true friend to support her, and really to be able to do something for
+that friend.  Too simple-minded to think much of his lordship's position,
+she was yet a woman.  "He, a great nobleman, does not scorn to
+acknowledge me, and think something of me," may have been one of the
+half-thoughts passing through her now and then, as she reflected in self-
+defence on the proud family she had married into.
+
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns, when the Hon. Peter
+travelled down to the sun of his purse with great news.  He had no sooner
+broached his lordship's immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon began to
+plunge like a heavy dragoon in difficulties.  He swore by this and that
+he had come across an angel for his sins, and would do her no hurt.  The
+next moment he swore she must be his, though she cursed like a cat.  His
+lordship's illustrations were not choice.  "I haven't advanced an inch,"
+he groaned.  "Brayder! upon my soul, that little woman could do anything
+with me.  By heaven!  I'd marry her to-morrow.  Here I am, seeing her
+every day in the week out or in, and what do you think she gets me to
+talk about?--history!  Isn't it enough to make a fellow mad? and there am
+I lecturing like a prig, and by heaven! while I'm at it I feel a pleasure
+in it; and when I leave the house I should feel an immense gratification
+in shooting somebody.  What do they say in town?"
+
+"Not much," said Brayder, significantly.
+
+"When's that fellow--her husband--coming down?"
+
+"I rather hope we've settled him for life, Mount."
+
+Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.
+
+"How d'ye mean?"
+
+Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, "He's in for Don Juan at a
+gallop, that's all."
+
+"The deuce!  Has Bella got him?" Mountfalcon asked with eagerness.
+
+Brayder handed my lord a letter.  It was dated from the Sussex coast,
+signed "Richard," and was worded thus:
+
+"My beautiful Devil!--
+
+"Since we're both devils together, and have found each other out, come to
+me at once, or I shall be going somewhere in a hurry.  Come, my bright
+hell-star!  I ran away from you, and now I ask you to come to me!  You
+have taught me how devils love, and I can't do without you.  Come an hour
+after you receive this."
+
+Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any more.
+"Complimentary love-epistle!" he remarked, and rising from his chair and
+striding about, muttered, "The dog! how infamously he treats his wife!"
+
+"Very bad," said Brayder.
+
+"How did you get hold of this?"
+
+"Strolled into Belle's dressing-room, waiting for her turned over her
+pincushion hap-hazard.  You know her trick."
+
+"By Jove!  I think that girl does it on purpose.  Thank heaven, I haven't
+written her any letters for an age.  Is she going to him?"
+
+"Not she!  But it's odd, Mount!--did you ever know her refuse money
+before?  She tore up the cheque in style, and presented me the fragments
+with two or three of the delicacies of language she learnt at your
+Academy.  I rather like to hear a woman swear.  It embellishes her!"
+
+Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the letter could
+be made to serve.  Both conscientiously agreed that Richard's behaviour
+to his wife was infamous, and that he at least deserved no mercy.  "But,"
+said his lordship, "it won't do to show the letter.  At first she'll be
+swearing it's false, and then she'll stick to him closer.  I know the
+sluts."
+
+"The rule of contrary," said Brayder, carelessly.  "She must see the
+trahison with her eyes.  "They believe their eyes.  There's your chance,
+Mount.  You step in: you give her revenge and consolation--two birds at
+one shot.  That's what they like."
+
+"You're an ass, Brayder," the nobleman exclaimed.  "You're an infernal
+blackguard.  You talk of this little woman as if she and other women were
+all of a piece.  I don't see anything I gain by this confounded letter.
+Her husband's a brute--that's clear."
+
+"Will you leave it to me, Mount?"
+
+"Be damned before I do!" muttered my lord.
+
+"Thank you.  Now see how this will end: You're too soft, Mount.  You'll
+be made a fool of."
+
+"I tell you, Brayder, there's nothing to be done.  If I carry her off--
+I've been on the point of doing it every day--what'll come of that?
+She'll look--I can't stand her eyes--I shall be a fool--worse off with
+her than I am now."
+
+Mountfalcon yawned despondently.  "And what do you think?" he pursued.
+"Isn't it enough to make a fellow gnash his teeth?  She's"...he mentioned
+something in an underbreath, and turned red as he said it.
+
+"Hm!" Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle of his cane on his
+chin.  "That's disagreeable, Mount.  You don't exactly want to act in
+that character.  You haven't got a diploma.  Bother!"
+
+"Do you think I love her a bit less?" broke out my lord in a frenzy.  "By
+heaven!  I'd read to her by her bedside, and talk that infernal history
+to her, if it pleased her, all day and all night."
+
+"You're evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount."
+
+The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.
+
+"What do they say in town?" he asked again.
+
+Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid, wife, or widow.
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon resumed, after--to judge by
+the cast of his face--reflecting deeply.  "I'll go to her this evening.
+She shall know what infernal torment she makes me suffer."
+
+"Do you mean to say she don't know it?"
+
+"Hasn't an idea--thinks me a friend.  And so, by heaven!  I'll be to
+her."
+
+"A--hm!" went the Honourable Peter.  "This way to the sign of the Green
+Man, ladies!"
+
+"Do you want to be pitched out of the window, Brayder?"
+
+"Once was enough, Mount.  The Salvage Man is strong.  I may have
+forgotten the trick of alighting on my feet.  There--there!  I'll be
+sworn she's excessively innocent, and thinks you a disinterested friend."
+
+"I'll go to her this evening," Mountfalcon repeated.  "She shall know
+what damned misery it is to see her in such a position.  I can't hold out
+any longer.  Deceit's horrible to such a girl as that.  I'd rather have
+her cursing me than speaking and looking as she does.  Dear little girl!-
+-she's only a child.  You haven't an idea how sensible that little woman
+is."
+
+"Have you?" inquired the cunning one.
+
+"My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among women," said
+Mountfalcon, evading his parasite's eye as he spoke.
+
+To the world, Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly wicked man; his
+parasite simply ingeniously dissipated.  Full many a man of God had
+thought it the easier task to reclaim the Hon. Peter.
+
+Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening, and sat much in
+the shade.  She offered to have the candles brought in.  He begged her to
+allow the room to remain as it was.  "I have something to say to you," he
+observed with a certain solemnity.
+
+"Yes--to me?" said Lucy, quickly.
+
+Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but how to say it, and
+what it exactly was, he did not know.'
+
+"You conceal it admirably," he began, "but you must be very lonely here--
+I fear, unhappy."
+
+"I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my lord," said Lucy.
+"I am not unhappy."  Her face was in shade and could not belie her.
+
+"Is there any help that one who would really be your friend might give
+you, Mrs. Feverel?"
+
+"None indeed that I know of," Lucy replied.  "Who can help us to pay for
+our sins?"
+
+"At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my debts, since you have
+helped me to wash out some of any sins."
+
+"Ah, my lord!" said Lucy, not displeased.  It is sweet for a woman to
+believe she has drawn the serpent's teeth.
+
+"I tell you the truth," Lord Mountfalcon went on.  "What object could I
+have in deceiving you?  I know you quite above flattery--so different
+from other women!"
+
+"Oh, pray, do not say that," interposed Lucy.
+
+"According to my experience, then."
+
+"But you say you have met such--such very bad women."
+
+"I have.  And now that I meet a good one, it is my misfortune."
+
+"Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes, and I might say more."
+
+His lordship held impressively mute.
+
+"How strange men are!" thought Lucy.  "He had some unhappy secret."
+
+Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various
+pretences during the nobleman's visits, put a stop to the revelation, if
+his lordship intended to make any.
+
+When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: "Do you know, I am always
+ashamed to ask you to begin to read."
+
+Mountfalcon stared.  "To read?--oh! ha! yes!" he remembered his evening
+duties.  "Very happy, I'm sure.  Let me see.  Where were we?"
+
+"The life of the Emperor Julian.  But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask
+you to read, my lord.  It's new to me; like a new world--hearing about
+Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we
+walk upon.  It fills my mind.  But it must have ceased to interest you,
+and I was thinking that I would not tease you any more."
+
+"Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel.  'Pon my honour, I'd read till I
+was hoarse, to hear your remarks."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?"
+
+"Do I look so?"
+
+Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he
+could appear to endow them with mental expression.
+
+"No, you are not," said Lucy.  "I must thank you for your forbearance."
+
+The nobleman went on his honour loudly.
+
+Now it was an object of Lucy's to have him reading; for his sake, for her
+sake, and for somebody else's sake; which somebody else was probably
+considered first in the matter.  When he was reading to her, he seemed to
+be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no doubts or
+suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while she had him
+employed in that office.  So she rose to fetch the book, laid it open on
+the table at his lordship's elbow, and quietly waited to ring for candles
+when he should be willing to commence.
+
+That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce, and
+he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with anguish
+hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak, or
+insinuate.  He sat silent and did nothing.
+
+"What I do not like him for," said Lucy, meditatively, "is his changing
+his religion.  He would have been such a hero, but for that.  I could
+have loved him."
+
+"Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon asked.
+
+"The Emperor Julian."
+
+"Oh! the Emperor Julian!  Well, he was an apostate but then, you know, he
+meant what he was about.  He didn't even do it for a woman."
+
+"For a woman!" cried Lucy.  "What man would for a woman?"
+
+"I would."
+
+"You, Lord Mountfalcon?"
+
+"Yes.  I'd turn Catholic to-morrow."
+
+"You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord."
+
+"Then I'll unsay it."
+
+Lucy slightly shuddered.  She put her hand upon the bell to ring for
+lights.
+
+"Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?" said the nobleman.
+
+"Oh yes! yes! I do.  One who does not give his conscience I would not
+have."
+
+"If he gives his heart and body, can he give more?"
+
+Lucy's hand pressed the bell.  She did not like the doubtful light with
+one who was so unscrupulous.  Lord Mountfalcon had never spoken in this
+way before.  He spoke better, too.  She missed the aristocratic twang in
+his voice, and the hesitation for words, and the fluid lordliness with
+which he rolled over difficulties in speech.
+
+Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door opened, and
+presented Tom Bakewell.  There was a double knock at the same instant at
+the street door.  Lucy delayed to give orders.
+
+"Can it be a letter, Tom!--so late?" she said, changing colour.  "Pray
+run and see."
+
+"That an't powst" Tom remarked, as he obeyed his mistress.
+
+"Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?" Lord Mountfalcon
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, no!--yes, I am, very." said Lucy.  Her quick ear caught the tones of
+a voice she remembered.  "That dear old thing has come to see me," she
+cried, starting up.
+
+Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.
+
+"Mrs. Berry!" said Lucy, running up to her and kissing her.
+
+"Me, my darlin'!" Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with her journey,
+returned the salute.  "Me truly it is, in fault of a better, for I ain't
+one to stand by and give the devil his licence--roamin'! and the salt
+sure enough have spilte my bride-gown at the beginnin', which ain't the
+best sign.  Bless ye!--Oh, here he is."  She beheld a male figure in a
+chair by the half light, and swung around to address him.  "You bad man!"
+she held aloft one of her fat fingers, "I've come on ye like a bolt, I
+have, and goin' to make ye do your duty, naughty boy!  But your my
+darlin' babe," she melted, as was her custom, "and I'll never meet you
+and not give to ye the kiss of a mother."
+
+Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate the soft woman had
+him by the neck, and was down among his luxurious whiskers.
+
+"Ha!" She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back.  "What hair's that?"
+
+Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.
+
+"Oh, my gracious!"  Mrs. Berry breathed with horror, "I been and kiss a
+strange man!"
+
+Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the noble lord to
+excuse the woful mistake.
+
+"Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I'm sure;" said his lordship, re-
+arranging his disconcerted moustache; "may I beg the pleasure of an
+introduction?"
+
+"My husband's dear old nurse--Mrs. Berry," said Lucy, taking her hand to
+lend her countenance.  "Lord Mountfalcon, Mrs. Berry."
+
+Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of apologetic bobs,
+and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
+
+Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an account of her
+passage over to the Island; receiving distressingly full particulars, by
+which it was revealed that the softness of her heart was only equalled by
+the weakness of her stomach.  The recital calmed Mrs. Berry down.
+
+"Well, and where's my--where's Mr. Richard? yer husband, my dear?"  Mrs.
+Berry turned from her tale to question.
+
+"Did you expect to see him here?" said Lucy, in a broken voice.
+
+"And where else, my love? since he haven't been seen in London a whole
+fortnight."
+
+Lucy did not speak.
+
+"We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I think," said Lord
+Mountfalcon, rising and bowing.
+
+Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks.  He touched it distantly,
+embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow, and was shown out of the house by
+Tom Bakewell.
+
+The moment he was gone, Mrs. Berry threw up her arms.  "Did ye ever know
+sich a horrid thing to go and happen to a virtuous woman!" she exclaimed.
+"I could cry at it, I could!  To be goin' and kissin' a strange hairy
+man!  Oh dear me! what's cornin' next, I wonder?  Whiskers! thinks I--for
+I know the touch o' whiskers--'t ain't like other hair--what! have he
+growed a crop that sudden, I says to myself; and it flashed on me I been
+and made a awful mistake! and the lights come in, and I see that great
+hairy man--beggin' his pardon--nobleman, and if I could 'a dropped
+through the floor out o' sight o' men, drat 'em! they're al'ays in the
+way, that they are!"--
+
+"Mrs. Berry," Lucy checked her, "did you expect to find him here?"
+
+"Askin' that solemn?" retorted Berry.  "What him? your husband?  O'
+course I did! and you got him--somewheres hid."
+
+"I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days," said Lucy, and her
+tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.
+
+"Not heer from him!--fifteen days!" Berry echoed.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no news? nothing to tell
+me!  I've borne it so long.  They're cruel to me, Mrs. Berry.  Oh, do you
+know if I have offended him--my husband?  While he wrote I did not
+complain.  I could live on his letters for years.  But not to hear from
+him!  To think I have ruined him, and that he repents!  Do they want to
+take him from me?  Do they want me dead?  O Mrs. Berry!  I've had no one
+to speak out my heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying,
+Mrs. Berry!"
+
+Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she heard from Lucy's
+lips, and she was herself full of dire apprehension; but it was never
+this excellent creature's system to be miserable in company.  The sight
+of a sorrow that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her
+resolutely the other way.
+
+"Fiddle-faddle," she said.  "I'd like to see him repent!  He won't find
+anywheres a beauty like his own dear little wife, and he know it.  Now,
+look you here, my dear--you blessed weepin' pet--the man that could see
+ye with that hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law, and
+not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he ain't got much
+man in him, I say; and no one can say that of my babe!  I was sayin',
+look here, to comfort ye--oh, why, to be sure he've got some surprise for
+ye.  And so've I, my lamb!  Hark, now!  His father've come to town, like
+a good reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring your bodies
+together, as your hearts is, for everlastin'.  Now ain't that news?"
+
+"Oh!" cried Lucy, "that takes my last hope away.  I thought he had gone
+to his father."  She burst into fresh tears.
+
+Mrs. Berry paused, disturbed.
+
+"Belike he's travellin' after him," she suggested.
+
+"Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!"
+
+"Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sieh a man as that.  He's a regular
+meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey.  Well, so hark you here.  I
+says to myself, that knows him--for I did think my babe was in his
+natural nest--I says, the bar'net'll never write for you both to come up
+and beg forgiveness, so down I'll go and fetch you up.  For there was
+your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband to go away from ye one
+hour in a young marriage.  It's dangerous, it's mad, it's wrong, and it's
+only to be righted by your obeyin' of me, as I commands it: for I has my
+fits, though I am a soft 'un.  Obey me, and ye'll be happy tomorrow--or
+the next to it."
+
+Lucy was willing to see comfort.  She was weary of her self-inflicted
+martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to somebody else's guidance
+utterly.
+
+"But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"'Cause, 'cause--who can tell the why of men, my dear?  But that he love
+ye faithful, I'll swear.  Haven't he groaned in my arms that he couldn't
+come to ye?--weak wretch!  Hasn't he swore how he loved ye to me, poor
+young man!  But this is your fault, my sweet.  Yes, it be.  You should 'a
+followed my 'dvice at the fust--'stead o' going into your 'eroics about
+this and t'other."  Here Mrs. Berry poured forth fresh sentences on
+matrimony, pointed especially at young couples.  "I should 'a been a fool
+if I hadn't suffered myself," she confessed, "so I'll thank my Berry if I
+makes you wise in season."
+
+Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up affectionately into
+the soft woman's kind brown eyes.  Endearing phrases passed from mouth to
+mouth.  And as she gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very
+secret to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring herself
+to speak it.
+
+"Well! these's three men in my life I kissed," said Mrs. Berry, too much
+absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to notice the young wife's
+struggling bosom, "three men, and one a nobleman!  He've got more whisker
+than my Berry, I wonder what the man thought.  Ten to one he'll think,
+now, I was glad o' my chance--they're that vain, whether they's lords or
+commons.  How was I to know?  I nat'ral thinks none but her husband'd sit
+in that chair.  Ha! and in the dark? and alone with ye?"  Mrs. Berry
+hardened her eyes, "and your husband away?  What do this mean?  Tell to
+me, child, what it mean his bein' here alone without ere a candle?"
+
+"Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here," said Lucy.  "He is
+very kind.  He comes almost every evening."
+
+"Lord Montfalcon--that his name!"  Mrs. Berry exclaimed.  "I been that
+flurried by the man, I didn't mind it at first.  He come every evenin',
+and your husband out o' sight!  My goodness me! it's gettin' worse and
+worse.  And what do he come for, now, ma'am?  Now tell me candid what ye
+do together here in the dark of an evenin'."
+
+Mrs. Berry glanced severely.
+
+"O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way--I don't like it," said
+Lucy, pouting.
+
+"What do he come for, I ask?"
+
+"Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry.  He sees me very lonely, and wishes to
+amuse me.  And he tells me of things I know nothing about and"--
+
+"And wants to be a-teachin' some of his things, mayhap," Mrs. Berry
+interrupted with a ruffled breast.
+
+"You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old woman," said Lucy,
+chiding her.
+
+"And you're a silly, unsuspectin' little bird," Mrs. Berry retorted, as
+she returned her taps on the cheek.  "You haven't told me what ye do
+together, and what's his excuse for comin'."
+
+"Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he comes we read
+History, and he explains the battles, and talks to me about the great
+men.  And he says I'm not silly, Mrs. Berry."
+
+"That's one bit o' lime on your wings, my bird.  History, indeed!
+History to a young married lovely woman alone in the dark! a pretty
+History!  Why, I know that man's name, my dear.  He's a notorious living
+rake, that Lord Montfalcon.  No woman's safe with him."
+
+"Ah, but he hasn't deceived me, Mrs. Berry.  He has not pretended he was
+good."
+
+"More's his art," quoth the experienced dame.  "So you read History
+together in the dark; my dear!"
+
+"I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry.  I wanted him not to see my face.
+Look! there's the book open ready for him when the candles come in.  And
+now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.
+I do love you.  Talk of other things."
+
+"So we will," said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy's caresses.  "So let us.
+A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich a
+beauty!  I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
+spot it shall!  He won't meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts.  There!  I
+drop him.  I'm dyin' for a cup o' tea, my dear."
+
+Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
+dropping him, was continuing to say: "Let him go and boast I kiss him; he
+ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of in a chaste woman's kiss--unawares--which
+men don't get too often in their lives, I can assure 'em;"--her eye
+surveyed Lucy's figure.
+
+Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms,
+and drew her into feminine depths.  "Oh, you blessed!" she cried in most
+meaning tone, "you good, lovin', proper little wife, you!"
+
+"What is it, Mrs. Berry!" lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
+eyes.
+
+"As if I couldn't see, you pet!  It was my flurry blinded me, or I'd 'a
+marked ye the fast shock.  Thinkin' to deceive me!"
+
+Mrs. Berry's eyes spoke generations.  Lucy's wavered; she coloured all
+over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.
+
+"You're a sweet one," murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
+rocking her.  "You're a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk.  Haven't
+told a word to your husband, my dear?" she asked quickly.
+
+Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.
+
+"That's right.  We'll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
+him, and thinks he--losin' breath 'I'm a father!'  Nor a hint even you
+haven't give him?"
+
+Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.
+
+"Oh! you are a sweet one," said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more closely
+and lovingly.
+
+Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
+persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.
+
+Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
+fingers' ends.  Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: "Now this
+right everything--a baby in the balance!  Now I say this angel-infant
+come from on high.  It's God's messenger, my love! and it's not wrong to
+say so.  He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn't 'a had one--not for all
+the tryin' in the world, you wouldn't, and some tries hard enough, poor
+creatures!  Now let us rejice and make merry!  I'm for cryin' and
+laughin', one and the same.  This is the blessed seal of matrimony, which
+Berry never stamp on me.  It's be hoped it's a boy.  Make that man a
+grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe.  Oh!  this
+is what I call happiness, and I'll have my tea a little stronger in
+consequence.  I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news."
+
+So Mrs. Berry carolled.  She had her tea a little stronger.  She ate and
+she drank; she rejoiced and made merry.  The bliss of the chaste was
+hers.
+
+Says Lucy demurely: "Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
+books."
+
+"Do I?" replies Berry.  "Belike I do.  Since what you done's so good, my
+darlin', I'm agreeable to anything.  A fig for all the lords!  They can't
+come anigh a baby.  You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and
+Romances, and Tales of Love and War.  You cut the riddle in your own dear
+way, and that's all I cares for."
+
+"No, but you don't understand," persists Lucy.  "I only read sensible
+books, and talk of serious things, because I'm sure...  because I have
+heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?"
+
+Mrs. Berry smacked her knees.  "Only to think of her bein' that
+thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too!  Never tell me that people of one
+religion ain't as good as another, after that.  Why, you want to make him
+a historian, to be sure!  And that rake of a lord who've been comin' here
+playin' at wolf, you been and made him--unbeknown to himself--sort o'
+tutor to the unborn blessed!  Ha! ha! say that little women ain't got art
+ekal to the cunningest of 'em.  Oh! I understand.  Why, to be sure,
+didn't I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman: he was a postermost child,
+and afore his birth that women read nothin' but Blair's 'Grave' over and
+over again, from the end to the beginnin';--that's a serious book!--very
+hard readin'!--and at four years of age that child that come of it reelly
+was the piousest infant!--he was like a little curate.  His eyes was up;
+he talked so solemn."  Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate's appearance
+and manner of speaking.  "So she got her wish, for one!"
+
+But at this lady Lucy laughed.
+
+They chattered on happily till bedtime.  Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to
+sleep with her.  "If it's not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin' beside a
+woman," said Mrs. Berry.  "I know it were to me shortly after my Berry,
+and I felt it.  It don't somehow seem nat'ral after matrimony--a woman in
+your bed!  I was obliged to have somebody, for the cold sheets do give ye
+the creeps when you've been used to that that's different."
+
+Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections.  Then
+Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced linen,
+all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own hands: and
+Mrs. Berry praised them and her.  "You been guessing a boy--woman-like,"
+she said.  Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed by the fire, and
+knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each other, praying; both
+praying for the unborn child; and Mrs. Berry pressed Lucy's waist the
+moment she was about to breathe the petition to heaven to shield and
+bless that coming life; and thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a strong
+love for her.  Then Lucy got into bed first, leaving Berry to put out the
+light, and before she did so, Berry leaned over her, and eyed her
+roguishly, saying, "I never see ye like this, but I'm half in love with
+ye myself, you blushin' beauty!  Sweet's your eyes, and your hair do take
+one so--lyin' back.  I'd never forgive my father if he kep me away from
+ye four-and-twenty hours just.  Husband o' that!" Berry pointed at the
+young wife's loveliness.  "Ye look so ripe with kisses, and there they
+are a-languishin'!--...  You never look so but in your bed, ye beauty!--
+just as it ought to be."  Lucy had to pretend to rise to put out the
+light before Berry would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy.  Then they
+lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their departure
+to-morrow, and reviewed Richard's emotions when he came to hear he was
+going to be made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy's delicious shivers
+when Richard was again in his rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now
+usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things; enough to make one fancy
+the adage subverted, that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew such
+glowing pictures of bliss within the law and the limits of the
+conscience, till at last, worn out, Lucy murmured "Peepy, dear Berry,"
+and the soft woman gradually ceased her chirp.
+
+Bessy Berry did not sleep.  She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
+beside her, and listening to Lucy's breath as it came and went; squeezing
+the fair sleeper's hand now and then, to ease her love as her reflections
+warmed.  A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire hills, and
+sprang white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees.  It passed,
+leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land.  The moon shone
+brilliantly.  Berry heard the house-dog bark.  His bark was savage and
+persistent.  She was roused by the noise.  By and by she fancied she
+heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that the house-door
+opened.  She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in the
+midnight stillness.  She slipped from the bed, locked and bolted the door
+of the room, assured herself of Lucy's unconsciousness, and went on
+tiptoe to the window.  The trees all stood white to the north; the ground
+glittered; the cold was keen.  Berry wrapped her fat arms across her
+bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the situation of the
+window permitted.  Berry was a soft, not a timid, woman: and it happened
+this night that her thoughts were above the fears of the dark.  She was
+sure of the voices; curiosity without a shade of alarm held her on the
+watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel round her neck and
+shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth as well as she could,
+and remained stationary.  The low hum of the voices came to a break;
+something was said in a louder tone; the house-door quietly shut; a man
+walked out of the garden into the road.  He paused opposite her window,
+and Berry let the blind go back to its place, and peeped from behind an
+edge of it.  He was in the shadow of the house, so that it was impossible
+to discern much of his figure.  After some minutes he walked rapidly
+away, and Berry returned to the bed an icicle, from which Lucy's limbs
+sensitively shrank.
+
+Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in
+the night.  Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top.  Mrs.
+Berry went into the garden.  The snow was partially melted; all save one
+spot, just under the portal, and there she saw the print of a man's foot.
+By some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of
+Richard's boots.  She did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of
+the boot in that solitary footmark.  There could be no doubt that it
+fitted.  She tried it from heel to toe a dozen times.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+
+Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher
+who says, 'Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not
+arrived thereat without a struggle.  He had almost forgiven his son.  His
+deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and more
+tenacious vanity.  Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature who
+had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his heart of
+hearts.  This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for his
+softness.  But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must think
+he was still acting on his System.  Otherwise what would his long absence
+signify?--Something highly unphilosophical.  So, though love was strong,
+and was moving him to a straightforward course, the last tug of vanity
+drew him still aslant.
+
+The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
+necessity.  As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one who
+entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental duty,
+based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific Humanist, in
+short.
+
+He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish's
+manner when he did appear.  "At last!" said the lady, in a sad way that
+sounded reproachfully.  Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course,
+nothing to reproach himself with.
+
+But where was Richard?
+
+Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.
+
+"If he had gone," said the baronet, "he would have anticipated me by a
+few hours."
+
+This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and
+shown his great forgiveness.  She, however, sighed, and looked at him
+wistfully.
+
+Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate.  Philosophy did not
+seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent,
+more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.
+
+Days went by.  Richard did not present himself.  Sir Austin's pitch of
+self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.
+
+Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the
+rumour of him that was about.
+
+"If," said the baronet, "this person, his wife, is what you paint her, I
+do not share your fears for him.  I think too well of him.  If she is one
+to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him.  It is
+impossible."
+
+The lady saw one thing to be done.
+
+"Call her to you," she said.  "Have her with you at Raynham.  Recognize
+her.  It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
+wild.  I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her.  It seems not.  If
+she is with you his way will be clear.  Will you do that?"
+
+Science is notoriously of slow movement.  Lady Blandish's proposition was
+far too hasty for Sir Austin.  Women, rapid by nature, have no idea of
+science.
+
+"We shall see her there in time, Emmeline.  At present let it be between
+me and my son."
+
+He spoke loftily.  In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything,
+when he had just brought himself to do so much.
+
+A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.
+
+The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
+expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains.  Richard shook his
+hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common social
+solicitude.  He then said: "During your absence, sir, I have taken the
+liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which you are more
+deeply concerned than myself.  I have taken upon myself to find out my
+mother and place her under my care.  I trust you will not think I have
+done wrong.  I acted as I thought best."
+
+Sir Austin replied: "You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself in
+such a case.  I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself in
+imagining that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you did."
+
+"I have not deceived myself, sir," said Richard, and the interview was
+over.  Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
+satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for tones
+indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard gave him
+none of those.  The young man did not even face him as he spoke: if their
+eyes met by chance, Richard's were defiantly cold.  His whole bearing was
+changed.
+
+"This rash marriage has altered him," said the very just man of science
+in life: and that meant: "it has debased him."
+
+He pursued his reflections.  "I see in him the desperate maturity of a
+suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never
+lost, what should I think of the toil of my years?  Lost, perhaps to me!
+lost to him!  It may show itself in his children."
+
+The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting embryos:
+but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin.  Bitterly he felt
+the injury to himself.
+
+One little incident spoke well of Richard.  A poor woman called at the
+hotel while he was missing.  The baronet saw her, and she told him a tale
+that threw Christian light on one part of Richard's nature.  But this
+might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man of
+science.  A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought.  He sat down
+deliberately to study his son.
+
+No definite observations enlightened him.  Richard ate and drank; joked
+and laughed.  He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh
+bottle.  He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound
+forced.  In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth
+who sees a future before him.  Sir Austin put that down.  It might be
+carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much on his
+mind.  The man of science was not reckoning that Richard also might have
+learned to act and wear a mask.  Dead subjects--this is to say, people
+not on their guard--he could penetrate and dissect.  It is by a rare
+chance, as scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
+examining the structure of the living.
+
+However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin.  They were engaged
+to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys', and walked down to her in the
+afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them.  Previously the
+offended father had condescended to inform his son that it would shortly
+be time for him to return to his wife, indicating that arrangements would
+ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham.  Richard had replied
+nothing; which might mean excess of gratitude, or hypocrisy in concealing
+his pleasure, or any one of the thousand shifts by which gratified human
+nature expresses itself when all is made to run smooth with it.  Now Mrs.
+Berry had her surprise ready charged for the young husband.  She had Lucy
+in her own house waiting for him.  Every day she expected him to call and
+be overcome by the rapturous surprise, and every day, knowing his habit
+of frequenting the park, she marched Lucy thither, under the plea that
+Master Richard, whom she had already christened, should have an airing.
+
+The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington chestnuts,
+when these two parties met.  Happily for Lucy and the hope she bore in
+her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman galloping by at
+the moment.  Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or twice, to prepare her
+eyes for the shock, but Lucy's head was still half averted, and thinks
+Mrs. Berry, "Twon't hurt her if she go into his arms head foremost."
+They were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob preliminary.  Richard held
+her silent with a terrible face; he grasped her arm, and put her behind
+him.  Other people intervened.  Lucy saw nothing to account for Berry's
+excessive flutter.  Berry threw it on the air and some breakfast bacon,
+which, she said, she knew in the morning while she ate it, was bad for
+the bile, and which probably was the cause of her bursting into tears,
+much to Lucy's astonishment.
+
+"What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"It's all--" Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways, "it's
+all stomach, my dear.  Don't ye mind," and becoming aware of her
+unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the elms.
+
+"You have a singular manner with old ladies," said Sir Austin to his son,
+after Berry had been swept aside.
+
+Scarcely courteous.  She behaved like a mad woman, certainly."--Are you
+ill, my son?"
+
+Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness.
+The baronet sought Adrian's eye.  Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed,
+and he had a glimpse of Richard's countenance while disposing of Berry.
+Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly.  As
+she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave
+matters as they were.  He answered the baronet's look with a shrug.
+
+"Are you ill, Richard?" Sir Austin again asked his son.
+
+"Come on, sir! come on!" cried Richard.
+
+His father's further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the Foreys',
+gave poor ferry a character which one who lectures on matrimony, and has
+kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear the very title of.
+
+"Richard will go to his wife to-morrow," Sir Austin said to Adrian some
+time before they went in to dinner.
+
+Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by the
+side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the
+baronet's acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a
+person, Adrian said: "That was his wife, sir."
+
+Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject.  As if a bullet had torn
+open the young man's skull, and some blast of battle laid his palpitating
+organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and his heart;
+and with the grief and terror of one whose mental habit was ever to
+pierce to extremes.  Not altogether conscious that he had hitherto played
+with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into the stormful reality
+of it.  He projected to speak plainly to his son on all points that
+night.
+
+"Richard is very gay," Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.
+
+"All will be right with him to-morrow," he replied; for the game had been
+in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine, that
+having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a certain
+extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.
+
+"I notice he has rather a wild laugh--I don't exactly like his eyes,"
+said Mrs. Doria.
+
+"You will see a change in him to-morrow," the man of science remarked.
+
+It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change.  In the
+middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law, worthy
+John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was alarmingly ill,
+bidding her come instantly.  She cast about for some one to accompany
+her, and fixed on Richard.  Before he would give his consent for Richard
+to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him apart, and in that interview
+he said to his son: "My dear Richard! it was my intention that we should
+come to an understanding together this night.  But the time is short--
+poor Helen cannot spare many minutes.  Let me then say that you deceived
+me, and that I forgive you.  We fix our seal on the past.  You will bring
+your wife to me when you return."  And very cheerfully the baronet looked
+down on the generous future he thus founded.
+
+"Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?" said Richard.
+
+"Yes, my son, when you bring her."
+
+"Are you mocking me, sir?"
+
+"Pray, what do you mean?"
+
+"I ask you to receive her at once."
+
+"Well! the delay cannot be long.  I do not apprehend that you will be
+kept from your happiness many days."
+
+"I think it will be some time, sir!" said Richard, sighing deeply.
+
+"And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
+play with your first duty?"
+
+"What is my first duty, sir?"
+
+"Since you are married, to be with your wife."
+
+"I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!" said Richard to
+himself, not intending irony.
+
+"Will you receive her at once?" he asked resolutely.
+
+The baronet was clouded by his son's reception of his graciousness.  His
+grateful prospect had formerly been Richard's marriage--the culmination
+of his System.  Richard had destroyed his participation in that.  He now
+looked for a pretty scene in recompense:--Richard leading up his wife to
+him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one
+ostentatious minute in his embrace.
+
+He said: "Before you return, I demur to receiving her."
+
+"Very well, sir," replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken all.
+
+"Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash proceeding!"
+the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he had uttered
+the words, Richard's eyes were so sorrowfully fierce.  It pained him, but
+he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from glancing
+acutely and asking: "Do you?"
+
+"Regret it, sir?"  The question aroused one of those struggles in the
+young man's breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and which
+sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not.  Richard's eyes
+had the light of the desert.
+
+"Do you?" his father repeated.  "You tempt me--I almost fear you do."  At
+the thought--for he expressed his mind--the pity that he had for Richard
+was not pure gold.
+
+"Ask me what I think of her, sir!  Ask me what she is!  Ask me what it is
+to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to misery!
+Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
+over her and see such a creature bleeding!  Do I regret that?  Why, yes,
+I do!  Would you?"
+
+His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.
+
+Sir Austin winced and reddened.  Did he understand?  There is ever in the
+mind's eye a certain wilfulness.  We see and understand; we see and won't
+understand.
+
+"Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said
+gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her because I
+could not do otherwise."
+
+"Your wife, Richard?"
+
+"Yes! my wife!"
+
+"If she had seen you, Richard?"
+
+"God spared her that!"
+
+Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat and
+greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
+Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
+brother's perplexed forehead.  She forgot her trouble about Clare,
+deploring his fatuity.
+
+Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart.  As of old, he took counsel
+with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing.  "Somebody has kissed him,
+sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it."  This absurd suggestion did
+more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
+reasonable key to Richard's conduct.  It set him thinking that it might
+be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System in
+difficulties.
+
+"I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the utmost
+doubt of it.  "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much liberty
+during his probation."
+
+Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.
+
+"Yes, yes; that is on me."
+
+His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
+and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.
+
+Clare was little talked of.  Adrian attributed the employment of the
+telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or
+possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.
+
+"That child's mind has disease in it...  She is not sound," said the
+baronet.
+
+On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry.  Her
+wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated,
+she was ushered upstairs into his room.
+
+Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to occupy.
+
+"Well' ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for she
+seemed loth to commence.
+
+"Wishin' I hadn't--"  Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good rule
+to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin, you don't
+remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting 'd be
+like this.  Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no more
+than twenty ox.  It's a might o' time,--twenty year!  Leastways not quite
+twenty, it ain't."
+
+"Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.
+
+"In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself
+married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.
+
+Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had
+assisted his son in that venture.  It was a stretch of his patience to
+hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally
+courteous.
+
+"He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger!  If twenty year alters us
+as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that we
+parted with just come from heaven!  And a heavenly babe he were! so
+sweet! so strong! so fat!"
+
+Adrian laughed aloud.
+
+Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: "I wished
+afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not cut
+short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham
+Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished.
+And a pension to me now, it's something more than it were.  For a pension
+and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was--that's a bait many a
+man'll bite, that won't so a forsaken wife!"
+
+"If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the
+baronet interrupted her.
+
+"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord!
+So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:--Lord speed me!  Believin' our
+idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married--married
+for life!  Yes!  I don't even like widows.  For I can't stop at the
+grave.  Not at the tomb I can't stop.  My husband's my husband, and if
+I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the
+husband o' my body; and to think of two claimin' of me then--it makes me
+hot all over.  Such is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman.  No
+givin' in marriage, o' course I know; and if so I'm single."
+
+The baronet suppressed a smile.  "Really, my good woman, you wander very
+much."
+
+"Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same,
+and I'm comin' to it.  Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein'
+done, it's writ aloft.  Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature
+she be!  Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin.
+And she got her idees, too: She reads History!  She talk that sensible as
+would surprise ye.  But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men--
+unpertected.  And it's a young marriage--but there's no fear for her, as
+far as she go.  The fear's t'other way.  There's that in a man--at the
+commencement--which make of him Lord knows what if you any way
+interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet!  It's consolation catch her,
+which is what we mean by seduein'.  Whereas a man--he's a savage!"
+
+Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge
+delight.
+
+"Well, ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only
+come to it quickly."
+
+"Then here's my point, Sir Austin.  I say you bred him so as there ain't
+another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me.  And
+as for her, I'll risk sayin'--it's done, and no harm--you might search
+England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's his match like
+his own wife.  Then there they be.  Are they together as should be?  O
+Lord no!  Months they been divided.  Then she all lonely and exposed, I
+went, and fetched her out of seducers' ways--which they may say what they
+like, but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and
+confidin'--I fetch her, and--the liberty--boxed her safe in my own house.
+So much for that sweet!  That you may do with women.  But it's him--Mr.
+Richard--I am bold, I know, but there--I'm in for it, and the Lord'll
+help me!  It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a
+young marriage.  It's him, and--I say nothin' of her, and how sweet she
+bears it, and it's eating her at a time when Natur' should have no other
+trouble but the one that's goin' on it's him, and I ask--so bold--shall
+there--and a Christian gentlemen his father--shall there be a tug 'tween
+him as a son and him as a husband--soon to be somethin' else?  I speak
+bold out--I'd have sons obey their fathers, but a priest's words spoke
+over them, which they're now in my ears, I say I ain't a doubt on earth--
+I'm sure there ain't one in heaven--which dooty's the holier of the two."
+
+Sir Austin heard her to an end.  Their views on the junction of the sexes
+were undoubtedly akin.  To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was
+slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old
+lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred that
+he had latterly followed it out.  He sat cross-legged and silent, a
+finger to his temple.
+
+"One gets so addle-gated thinkin' many things," said Mrs. Berry, simply.
+"That's why we see wonder clever people goin' wrong--to my mind.  I think
+it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward."
+
+The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she
+had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth, by
+which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that  he had acted from a
+principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to
+comprehend.
+
+Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time to
+direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.
+
+He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see his
+cousin, who is ill.  He will return in two or three days, and then they
+will both come to me at Raynham."
+
+Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor
+perpendicularly.  "He pass her like a stranger in the park this evenin',"
+she faltered.
+
+"Ah?" said the baronet.  "Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the
+week is over."
+
+Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied.  "Not of his own accord he pass that
+sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!"
+
+"I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am."
+
+Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.
+
+"All's well that ends well," she said to herself.  "It's just bad
+inquirin' too close among men.  We must take 'em somethin' like
+Providence--as they come.  Thank heaven!  I kep' back the baby."
+
+In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
+
+Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.
+
+"I think I have not met a better in my life," said the baronet, mingling
+praise and sarcasm.
+
+Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her
+white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head
+to feet.  She needs iron no more.  Richard is face to face with death for
+the first time.  He sees the sculpture of clay--the spark gone.
+
+Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead.  This child would have
+spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive.  She was dead,
+and none knew her malady.  On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.
+
+When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish, she, for some
+comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard,
+speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was
+his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds.  He learnt from her
+husband that Clare's last request had been that neither of the rings
+should be removed.  She had written it; she would not speak it.
+
+"I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me
+between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched."
+
+The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering, as
+she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.
+
+In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare's dead hand,
+Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to enter
+it, reluctant to quit it.  The secret Clare had buried while she lived,
+arose with her death.  He saw it play like flame across her marble
+features.  The memory of her voice was like a knife at his nerves.  His
+coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was bitter blame.
+
+On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his bedroom,
+with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse could happen to
+a mother than the loss of her child.  Choking she said to him, "Read
+this," and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling in his hand.  She
+would not breathe to him what it was.  She entreated him not to open it
+before her.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "tell me what you think.  John must not hear of it.
+I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!"
+
+"My Diary" was written in the round hand of Clare's childhood on the
+first page.  The first name his eye encountered was his own.
+
+"Richard's fourteenth birthday.  I have worked him a purse and put it
+under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money.  He does
+not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but
+Richard is not, and never will be."
+
+The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish
+prayer to God for him set down.  Step by step he saw her growing mind in
+his history.  As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made
+much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.
+
+"We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted each
+other, and I told him he used to call them 'coals-sleeps' when he was a
+baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to be told
+he was ever a baby."
+
+He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek
+affection.  Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress and
+pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes!  Upstairs she was lying dead.  He read
+on:
+
+"Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure there
+is not, not in the whole world.  He says he is going to be a great
+General and going to the wars.  If he does I shall dress myself as a boy
+and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded.  Oh I pray
+he will never, never be wounded.  I wonder what I should feel if Richard
+was ever to die."
+
+Upstairs Clare was lying dead.
+
+"Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me. Richard
+said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does.  He is angry with me
+because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I know I am
+not looking after earthworms."
+
+Yes.  He had told her that.  A shiver seized him at the recollection.
+
+Then it came to a period when the words: "Richard kissed me," stood by
+themselves, and marked a day in her life.
+
+Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry.  He read
+one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that ambition.
+
+              "Thy truth to me is truer
+               Than horse, or dog, or blade;
+               Thy vows to me are fewer
+               Than ever maiden made.
+
+               Thou steppest from thy splendour
+               To make my life a song:
+               My bosom shall be tender
+               As thine has risen strong."
+
+All the verses were transcribed.  "It is he who is the humble knight,"
+Clare explained at the close, "and his lady, is a Queen.  Any Queen would
+throw her crown away for him."
+
+It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.
+
+"Richard was not sorry to lose me.  He only loves boys and men.
+Something tells me I shall never see Raynham again.  He was dressed in
+blue.  He said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek.  Richard
+never kisses me on the mouth.  He did not know I went to his bed and
+kissed him while he was asleep.  He sleeps with one arm under his head,
+and the other out on the bed.  I moved away a bit of his hair that was
+over his eyes.  I wanted to cut it.  I have one piece.  I do not let
+anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama.  She says I want iron.  I am
+sure I do not.  I like to write my name.  Clare Doria Forey.  Richard's
+is Richard Doria Feverel."
+
+His breast rose convulsively.  Clare Doria Forey!  He knew the music of
+that name.  He had heard it somewhere.  It sounded faint and mellow now
+behind the hills of death.
+
+He could not read for tears.  It was midnight.  The hour seemed to belong
+to her.  The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare's.  Clare's
+voice clear and cold from the grave possessed it.
+
+Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages.  She
+spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.
+
+"I knew it was his.  I knew he was going to be married that morning.  I
+saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast.  His wife must
+be so beautiful!  Richard's wife!  Perhaps he will love me better now he
+is married.  Mama says they must be separated.  That is shameful.  If I
+can help him I will.  I pray so that he may be happy.  I hope God hears
+poor sinners' prayers.  I am very sinful.  Nobody knows it as I do.  They
+say I am good, but I know.  When I look on the ground I am not looking
+after earthworms, as he said.  Oh, do forgive me, God!"
+
+Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey her
+mother.  A blank in the Diary ensued.
+
+"I have seen Richard.  Richard despises me," was the next entry.
+
+But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine
+handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible
+conclusion.
+
+"I cannot live.  Richard despises me.  I cannot bear the touch of my
+fingers or the sight of my face.  Oh! I understand him now.  He should
+not have kissed me so that last time.  I wished to die while his mouth
+was on mine."
+
+Further: "I have no escape.  Richard said he would die rather than endure
+it.  I know he would.  Why should I be afraid to do what he would do?  I
+think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better.  He is so kind,
+and tries to make me cheerful.  He will soon be very unhappy.  I pray to
+God half the night.  I seem to be losing sight of my God the more I
+pray."
+
+Richard laid the book open on the table.  Phantom surges seemed to be
+mounting and travelling for his brain.  Had Clare taken his wild words in
+earnest?  Did she lie there dead--he shrouded the thought.
+
+He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.
+
+"A quarter to one o'clock.  I shall not be alive this time to-morrow.  I
+shall never see Richard now.  I dreamed last night we were in the fields
+together, and he walked with his arm round my waist.  We were children,
+but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he
+said--if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife.  Then I
+made a vow to wear it for ever and ever...  "It is not mama's fault.  She
+does not think as Richard and I do of these things.  He is not a coward,
+nor am I.  He hates cowards.
+
+"I have written to his father to make him happy.  Perhaps when I am dead
+he will hear what I say.
+
+"I heard just now Richard call distinctly--Clare, come out to me.  Surely
+he has not gone.  I am going I know not where.  I cannot think.  I am
+very cold."
+
+The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if her
+hand had lost mastery over the pen.
+
+"I can only remember Richard now a boy.  A little boy and a big boy.  I
+am not sure now of his voice.  I can only remember certain words.
+'Clari,' and 'Don Ricardo,' and his laugh.  He used to be full of fun.
+Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay.  Then he had a
+friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud.  If I had married a
+young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been happier.
+I must have died.  God never looks on me.
+
+"It is past two o'clock.  The sheep are bleating outside.  It must be
+very cold in the ground.  Good-bye, Richard."
+
+With his name it began and ended.  Even to herself Clare was not over-
+communicative.  The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of existence
+left half the number of pages white.
+
+Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her.  There she lay,
+the same impassive Clare.  For a moment he wondered she had not moved--to
+him she had become so different.  She who had just filled his ears with
+strange tidings--it was not possible to think her dead!  She seemed to
+have been speaking to him all through his life.  His image was on that
+still heart.
+
+He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her
+alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent him
+to the window to look for sky and stars.  Behind a low broad pine, hung
+with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent fold.
+Death in life it sounded.
+
+The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed.  She knelt by
+his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but
+neither of them shed many tears.  They held a dark unspoken secret in
+common.  They prayed God to forgive her.
+
+Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters.  Her mother
+breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.
+
+After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them together.
+
+"Richard," she said, "the worst is over for me.  I have no one to love
+but you, dear.  We have all been fighting against God, and this...
+Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare my
+brother what I suffer."
+
+He answered the broken spirit: "I have killed one.  She sees me as I am.
+I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her
+hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt.  Go
+you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head
+that--No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse
+me.  If I find it I shall come to claim her.  If not, God help us all!"
+
+She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he went
+forth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+
+A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of
+Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder.  Adrian glanced leisurely behind.
+
+"Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow?  I'm not a man of fashion,
+happily, or you would have struck the seat of them.  How are you?"
+
+That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.
+
+Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had
+been in the wilderness five years.
+
+"The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin.  The free Briton is
+to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot.  The Aristocracy has had a
+cycle's notice to quit.  The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out;
+Demos and Cape wines are coming in.  They call it Reform.  So, you see,
+your absence has worked wonders.  Depart for another five years, and you
+will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an
+equality made perfect by universal prostration."
+
+Austin indulged him in a laugh.  "I want to hear about ourselves.  How is
+old Ricky?"
+
+"You know of his--what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed to
+jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?--a very charming little woman she
+makes, by the way--presentable! quite old Anacreon's rose in milk.  Well!
+everybody thought the System must die of it.  Not a bit.  It continued to
+flourish in spite.  It's in a consumption now, though--emaciated, lean,
+raw, spectral!  I've this morning escaped from Raynham to avoid the sight
+of it.  I have brought our genial uncle Hippias to town--a delightful
+companion!  I said to him: 'We've had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers,
+'there's a time when you come to think the Spring old.'  You should have
+heard how he trained out the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my sap
+just to hear him.  In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle
+Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt.  Let's guard ourselves
+there, and go and order dinner."
+
+"But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?" said Austin.
+
+"Ask what he has done.  The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!"
+
+"A child?  Richard has one?"  Austin's clear eyes shone with pleasure.
+
+"I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages.  He has one: one
+as big as two.  That has been the death-blow to the System.  It bore the
+marriage--the baby was too much for it.  Could it swallow the baby,
+'twould live.  She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy.  I
+assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every
+hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a
+consummate cure, or a happy release."
+
+By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and smiled sadly.
+
+"How has Ricky turned out?" he asked.  "What sort of a character has he?"
+
+"The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it.  Character? he
+has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it.
+Enthusiasm is the powder.  That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the
+maiden days of Ops!  He was going to reform the world, after your
+fashion, Austin,--you have something to answer for.  Unfortunately he
+began with the feminine side of it.  Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain,
+or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft
+head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good
+work.  Oh, horror! he never expected that.  Conceive the System in the
+flesh, and you have our Richard.  The consequence is, that this male Peri
+refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for him, the
+trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful within.  We
+heard of him last that he was trying the German waters--preparatory to
+his undertaking the release of Italy from the subjugation of the Teuton.
+Let's hope they'll wash him.  He is in the company of Lady Judith Felle--
+your old friend, the ardent female Radical who married the decrepit to
+carry out her principles.  They always marry English lords, or foreign
+princes: I admire their tactics."
+
+"Judith is bad for him in such a state.  I like her, but she was always
+too sentimental," said Austin.
+
+"Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose?  I like her for her
+sentiment, Austin.  Sentimental people are sure to live long and die fat.
+Feeling, that's the slayer, coz.  Sentiment!  'tis the cajolery of
+existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable.
+Would that I had more!"
+
+"You're not much changed, Adrian."
+
+"I'm not a Radical, Austin."
+
+Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian's figurative speech, instructed
+Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of
+statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-in-
+law and grandson.  That was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the
+System to swallow the baby.
+
+"We're in a tangle," said the wise youth.  "Time will extricate us, I
+presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?"
+
+Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy's place of residence.
+
+"We'll go to her by and by," said Adrian.
+
+"I shall go and see her now," said Austin.
+
+"Well, we'll go and order the dinner first, coz."
+
+"Give me her address."
+
+"Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard," Adrian
+objected.  "Don't you care what you eat?" he roared hoarsely, looking
+humorously hurt.  "I daresay not.  A slice out of him that's handy--sauce
+du ciel!  Go, batten on the baby, cannibal.  Dinner at seven."
+
+Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy's, and strolled off to do the
+better thing.
+
+Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup.
+Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had vaulted
+lightly and thereby indicated that he was positively coming the next day.
+She forgot him in the bustle of her duties and the absorption of her
+faculties in thoughts of the incomparable stranger Lucy had presented to
+the world, till a knock at the street-door reminded her.  "There he is!"
+she cried, as she ran to open to him.  "There's my stranger come!"  Never
+was a woman's faith in omens so justified.  The stranger desired to see
+Mrs. Richard Feverel.  He said his name was Mr. Austin Wentworth.  Mrs.
+Berry clasped her hands, exclaiming, "Come at last!" and ran bolt out of
+the house to look up and down the street.  Presently she returned with
+many excuses for her rudeness, saying: "I expected to see her comin'
+home, Mr. Wentworth.  Every day twice a day she go out to give her
+blessed angel an airing.  No leavin' the child with nursemaids for her!
+She is a mother! and good milk, too, thank the Lord! though her heart's
+so low."
+
+Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the history of the young
+couple and her participation in it, and admired the beard.  "Although I'd
+swear you don't wear it for ornament, now!" she said, having in the first
+impulse designed a stroke at man's vanity.
+
+Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication, and with dejected
+head and joined hands threw out dark hints about Richard.
+
+While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case, Lucy came in
+preceding the baby.
+
+"I am Austin Wentworth," he said, taking her hand.  They read each
+other's faces, these two, and smiled kinship.
+
+"Your name is Lucy?"
+
+She affirmed it softly.
+
+"And mine is Austin, as you know."
+
+Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy's charms to subdue him, and presented
+Richard's representative, who, seeing a new face, suffered himself to be
+contemplated before he commenced crying aloud and knocking at the doors
+of Nature for something that was due to him.
+
+"Ain't he a lusty darlin'?" says Mrs. Berry.  "Ain't he like his own
+father?  There can't be no doubt about zoo, zoo pitty pet.  Look at his
+fists.  Ain't he got passion?  Ain't he a splendid roarer?  Oh!" and she
+went off rapturously into baby-language.
+
+A fine boy, certainly.  Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for further proof,
+desiring Austin's confirmation as to their being dumplings.
+
+Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid roarer out of the
+room.
+
+"She might a done it here," said Mrs. Berry.  "There's no prettier sight,
+I say.  If her dear husband could but see that!  He's off in his heroics-
+-he want to be doin' all sorts o' things: I say he'll never do anything
+grander than that baby.  You should 'a seen her uncle over that baby--he
+came here, for I said, you shall see your own family, my dear, and so she
+thinks.  He come, and he laughed over that baby in the joy of his heart,
+poor man!  he cried, he did.  You should see that Mr. Thompson, Mr.
+Wentworth--a friend o' Mr. Richard's, and a very modest-minded young
+gentleman--he worships her in his innocence.  It's a sight to see him
+with that baby.  My belief is he's unhappy 'cause he can't anyways be
+nurse-maid to him.  O Mr. Wentworth! what do you think of her, sir?"
+
+Austin's reply was as satisfactory as a man's poor speech could make it.
+He heard that Lady Feverel was in the house, and Mrs. Berry prepared the
+way for him to pay his respects to her.  Then Mrs. Berry ran to Lucy, and
+the house buzzed with new life.  The simple creatures felt in Austin's
+presence something good among them.  "He don't speak much," said Mrs.
+Berry, "but I see by his eye he mean a deal.  He ain't one o' yer long-
+word gentry, who's all gay deceivers, every one of 'em."
+
+Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast.  "I wonder what he
+thinks of me, Mrs. Berry?  I could not speak to him.  I loved him before
+I saw him.  I knew what his face was like."
+
+"He looks proper even with a beard, and that's a trial for a virtuous
+man," said Mrs. Berry.  "One sees straight through the hair with him.
+Think! he'll think what any man'd think--you a-suckin spite o' all your
+sorrow, my sweet,--and my Berry talkin' of his Roman matrons!--here's a
+English wife'll match 'em all!  that's what he thinks.  And now that
+leetle dark under yer eye'll clear, my darlin', now he've come."
+
+Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more than the peace
+she had in being near Richard's best friend.  When she sat down to tea it
+was with a sense that the little room that held her was her home perhaps
+for many a day.
+
+A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin's dinner.  During
+the meal he entertained them with anecdotes of his travels.  Poor Lucy
+had no temptation to try to conquer Austin.  That heroic weakness of hers
+was gone.
+
+Mrs. Berry had said: "Three cups--I goes no further," and Lucy had
+rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin, who was in the thick of a
+Brazilian forest, asked her if she was a good traveller.
+
+"I mean, can you start at a minute's notice?"
+
+Lucy hesitated, and then said; "Yes," decisively, to which Mrs. Berry
+added, that she was not a "luggage-woman"
+
+"There used to be a train at seven o'clock," Austin remarked, consulting
+his watch.
+
+The two women were silent.
+
+"Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?"
+
+Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.
+
+Lucy's lips parted to speak.  She could not answer.
+
+Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry's dropping hands.
+
+"Joy and deliverance!" she exclaimed with a foundering voice.
+
+"Will you come?" Austin kindly asked again.
+
+Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, "Yes."  Mrs. Berry
+cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones with a
+mighty whisper: "She's thinking what's to be done with baby."
+
+"He must learn to travel," said Austin.
+
+"Oh!" cried Mrs. Berry, "and I'll be his nuss, and bear him, a sweet!
+Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham Abbey! but it's
+nurse-woman now, you must say.  Let us be goin' on the spot."
+
+She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool the
+heaven-sent resolve.  Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy
+alternately.  She was wishing to ask a multitude of questions.  His face
+reassured her, and saying: "I will be dressed instantly," she also left
+the room.  Talking, bustling, preparing, wrapping up my lord, and looking
+to their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready within the time
+prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming over the baby.  "He'll
+sleep it through," she said.  "He's had enough for an alderman, and goes
+to sleep sound after his dinner, he do, a duck!"  Before they departed,
+Lucy ran up to Lady Feverel.  She returned for, the small one.
+
+"One moment, Mr. Wentworth?"
+
+"Just two," said Austin.
+
+Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were full
+of tears.
+
+"She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth."
+
+"She shall," Austin said simply.
+
+Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all upon
+the great act of courage she was performing.
+
+"I do hope baby will not wake," was her chief solicitude.
+
+"He!" cries nurse-woman Berry, from the rear, "his little tum-tum's as
+tight as he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty!  and ye may take
+yer oath he never wakes till that's slack.  He've got character of his
+own, a blessed!"
+
+There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by storm.
+The baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and rejoicing
+in the pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and to himself.
+Hearing Austin's name sonorously pronounced by the man of calves, he
+looked up from his book, and held out his hand.  "Glad to see you,
+Austin."  His appearance betokened complete security.  The next minute he
+found himself escaladed.
+
+It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room
+besides Austin.  Lucy stood a little behind the lamp: Mrs. Berry close to
+the door.  The door was half open, and passing through it might be seen
+the petrified figure of a fine man.  The baronet glancing over the lamp
+rose at Mrs. Berry's signification of a woman's personality.  Austin
+stepped back and led Lucy to him by the hand.  "I have brought Richard's
+wife, sir," he said with a pleased, perfectly uncalculating, countenance,
+that was  disarming.  Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed.  She felt her
+two hands taken, and heard a kind voice.  Could it be possible it
+belonged to the dreadful father of her husband?  She lifted her eyes
+nervously: her hands were still detained.  The baronet contemplated
+Richard's choice.  Had he ever had a rivalry with those pure eyes?  He
+saw the pain of her position shooting across her brows, and, uttering-
+gentle inquiries as to her health, placed her in a seat.  Mrs. Berry had
+already fallen into a chair.
+
+"What aspect do you like for your bedroom?--East?" said the baronet.
+
+Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: "Am I to stay?"
+
+"Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once," he pursued.
+"You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will feel
+more at home."
+
+Lucy's colour mounted.  Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should
+say, "The day is ours!"  Undoubtedly--strange as it was to think it--the
+fortress was carried.
+
+"Lucy is rather tired," said Austin, and to hear her Christian name thus
+bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.
+
+The baronet was about to touch the bell.  "But have you come alone?" he
+asked.
+
+At this Mrs. Berry came forward.  Not immediately: it seemed to require
+effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp,
+her agitation could not escape notice.  The blissful bundle shook in her
+arms.
+
+"By the way, what is he to me?" Austin inquired generally as he went and
+unveiled the younger hope of Raynham.  "My relationship is not so defined
+as yours, sir."
+
+An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson
+with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment
+the mother of anybody's child.
+
+"I really think he's like Richard," Austin laughed.  Lucy looked: I am
+sure he is!
+
+"As like as one to one," Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa not
+speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up.  "And he's as
+healthy as his father was, Sir Austin--spite o' the might 'a beens.
+Reg'lar as the clock!  We never want a clock since he come.  We knows the
+hour o' the day, and of the night."
+
+"You nurse him yourself, of course?" the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was
+satisfied on that point.
+
+Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs.  Lucy, fearing the
+consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him.
+"'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master
+Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it,
+considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions
+of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.
+
+"He looks healthy," said the baronet, "but I am not a judge of babies."
+
+Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new
+commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the
+housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.
+
+Austin cast no thought on his success.  The baronet said: "She is
+extremely well-looking."  He replied: "A person you take to at once."
+There it ended.
+
+But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy and
+Mrs. Berry sat alone.  Lucy expected her to talk about the reception they
+had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms, and the
+solid happiness that seemed in store.  Mrs. Berry all the while would
+persist in consulting the looking-glass.  Her first distinct answer was,
+"My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?"
+
+"Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would be so
+kind, so considerate?"
+
+"I am sure I looked a frump," returned Mrs. Berry.  "Oh dear! two birds
+at a shot.  What do you think, now?"
+
+"I never saw so wonderful a likeness," says Lucy.
+
+"Likeness! look at me."  Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the palms.
+
+"You're very feverish, dear Berry.  What can it be?"
+
+"Ain't it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear."
+
+"Go to bed, Berry, dear," says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing way.
+"I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart!  You've had so much
+excitement."
+
+"Ha! ha!" Berry laughed hysterically; "she thinks it's about this
+business of hers.  Why, it's child's-play, my darlin'.  But I didn't look
+for tragedy to-night.  Sleep in this house I can't, my love!"
+
+Lucy was astonished.  "Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?--Oh! why, you silly
+old thing?  I know."
+
+"Do ye!" said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.
+
+"You're afraid of ghosts."
+
+"Belike I am when they're six foot two in their shoes, and bellows when
+you stick a pin into their calves.  I seen my Berry!"
+
+"Your husband?"
+
+"Large as life!"
+
+Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry described him as the
+Colossus who had marched them into the library, and vowed that he had
+recognized her and quaked.  "Time ain't aged him," said Mrs. Berry,
+"whereas me! he've got his excuse now.  I know I look a frump."
+
+Lucy kissed her: "You look the nicest, dearest old thing."
+
+"You may say an old thing, my dear."
+
+"And your husband is really here?"
+
+"Berry's below!"
+
+Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of incredulity.
+
+"What will you do, Mrs. Berry?"
+
+"Go, my dear.  Leave him to be happy in his own way.  It's over atween
+us, I see that.  When I entered the house I felt there was something
+comin' over me, and lo and behold ye! no sooner was we in the hall-
+passage--if it hadn't been for that blessed infant I should 'a dropped.
+I must 'a known his step, for my heart began thumpin', and I knew I
+hadn't got my hair straight--that Mr. Wentworth was in such a hurry--nor
+my best gown.  I knew he'd scorn me.  He hates frumps."
+
+"Scorn you!" cried Lucy, angrily.  "He who has behaved so wickedly!"
+
+Mrs. Berry attempted to rise.  "I may as well go at once," she whimpered.
+"If I see him I shall only be disgracin' of myself.  I feel it all on my
+side already.  Did ye mark him, my dear?  I know I was vexin' to him at
+times, I was.  Those big men are so touchy about their dignity--nat'ral.
+Hark at me!  I'm goin' all soft in a minute.  Let me leave the house, my
+dear.  I daresay it was good half my fault.  Young women don't understand
+men sufficient--not altogether--and I was a young woman then; and then
+what they goes and does they ain't quite answerable for: they, feels, I
+daresay, pushed from behind.  Yes.  I'll go.  I'm a frump.  I'll go.
+'Tain't in natur' for me to sleep in the same house."
+
+Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry's shoulders, and forcibly fixed her in
+her seat.  "Leave baby, naughty woman?  I tell you he shall come to you,
+and fall on his knees to you and beg your forgiveness."
+
+"Berry on his knees!"
+
+"Yes.  And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him."
+
+"If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away words, great'll be my
+wonder!" said Mrs. Berry.
+
+"We will see," said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do something for the
+good creature that had befriended her.
+
+Mrs. Berry examined her gown.  "Won't it seem we're runnin' after him?"
+she murmured faintly.
+
+"He is your husband, Mrs. Berry.  He may be wanting to come to you now."
+
+"Oh!  Where is all I was goin' to say to that man when we met."  Mrs.
+Berry ejaculated.  Lucy had left the room.
+
+On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed in black, who
+stopped her and asked if she was Richard's wife, and kissed her, passing
+from her immediately.  Lucy despatched a message for Austin, and related
+the Berry history.  Austin sent for the great man and said: "Do you know
+your wife is here?"  Before Berry had time to draw himself up to
+enunciate his longest, he was requested to step upstairs, and as his
+young mistress at once led the way, Berry could not refuse to put his
+legs in motion and carry the stately edifice aloft.
+
+Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch that night.  "He
+began in the old way, my dear, and says I, a true heart and plain words,
+Martin Berry.  So there he cuts himself and his Johnson short, and down
+he goes--down on his knees.  I never could 'a believed it.  I kep my
+dignity as a woman till I see that sight, but that done for me.  I was a
+ripe apple in his arms 'fore I knew where I was.  There's something about
+a fine man on his knees that's too much for us women.  And it reely was
+the penitent on his two knees, not the lover on his one.  If he mean it!
+But ah! what do you think he begs of me, my dear?.--not to make it known
+in the house just yet!  I can't, I can't say that look well."
+
+Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct, and Mrs. Berry
+did her best to look on it in that light.
+
+"Did the bar'net kiss ye when you wished him goodnight?" she asked.  Lucy
+said he had not.  "Then bide awake as long as ye can," was Mrs. Berry's
+rejoinder.  "And now let us pray blessings on that simple-speaking
+gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little."
+
+Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly where her own
+soft heart was concerned.  As she secretly anticipated, the baronet came
+into her room when all was quiet.  She saw him go and bend over Richard
+the Second, and remain earnestly watching him.  He then went to the half-
+opened door of the room where Lucy slept, leaned his ear a moment,
+knocked gently, and entered.  Mrs. Berry heard low words interchanging
+within.  She could not catch a syllable, yet she would have sworn to the
+context.  "He've called her his daughter, promised her happiness, and
+given a father's kiss to her."  When Sir Austin passed out she was in a
+deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+
+Briareus reddening angrily over the sea--what is that vaporous Titan?
+And Hesper set in his rosy garland--why looks he so implacably sweet?  It
+is that one has left that bright home to go forth and do cloudy work, and
+he has got a stain with which he dare not return.  Far in the West fair
+Lucy beckons him to come.  Ah, heaven! if he might!  How strong and
+fierce the temptation is! how subtle the sleepless desire! it drugs his
+reason, his honour.  For he loves her; she is still the first and only
+woman to him.  Otherwise would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise
+would his limbs be chained while her arms are spread open to him.  And if
+he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit, or a thousand?  Is
+not love the password to that beckoning bliss?  So may we say; but here
+is one whose body has been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.
+
+A temple, and desecrated!  For what is it fit for but for a dance of
+devils?  His education has thus wrought him to think.
+
+He can blame nothing but his own baseness.  But to feel base and accept
+the bliss that beckons--he has not fallen so low as that.
+
+Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable Wisp of the Fancy
+led him away from you, high in his conceit?  Poor wretch! that thought to
+be he of the hundred hands, and war against the absolute Gods.  Jove
+whispered a light commission to the Laughing Dame; she met him; and how
+did he shake Olympus? with laughter?
+
+Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in his ears, than
+one called to by a heavenly soul from whom he is for ever outcast.  He
+has not the oblivion of madness.  Clothed in the lights of his first
+passion, robed in the splendour of old skies, she meets him everywhere;
+morning, evening, night, she shines above him; waylays him suddenly in
+forest depths; drops palpably on his heart.  At moments he forgets; he
+rushes to embrace her; calls her his beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss
+brings agony of shame to his face.
+
+Daily the struggle endured.  His father wrote to him, begging him by the
+love he had for him to return.  From that hour Richard burnt unread all
+the letters he received.  He knew too well how easily he could persuade
+himself: words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish the
+spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that he clung to in
+desperate self-vindication.
+
+To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both a dangerous and
+thankless office.  It is, nevertheless, one that fair women greatly
+prize, and certain of them professionally follow.  Lady Judith, as far as
+her sex would permit, was also of the Titans in their battle against the
+absolute Gods; for which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord
+incapable in all save his acres.  Her achievements she kept to her own
+mind: she did not look happy over them.  She met Richard accidentally in
+Paris; she saw his state; she let him learn that she alone on earth
+understood him.  The consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in
+her train.  It soothed him to be near a woman.  Did she venture her guess
+as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility women
+have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught to participate in.
+She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows, much as he might speak of his--
+vaguely, and with self-blame.  And she understood him.  How the dark
+unfathomed wealth within us gleams to a woman's eye!  We are at compound
+interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!--almost as rich as we
+dreamed!  But then the instant we are away from her we find ourselves
+bankrupt, beggared.  How is that?  We do not ask.  We hurry to her and
+bask hungrily in her orbs.  The eye must be feminine to be thus creative:
+I cannot say why.  Lady Judith understood Richard, and he feeling
+infinitely vile, somehow held to her more feverishly, as one who dreaded
+the worst in missing her.  The spirit must rest; he was weak with what he
+suffered.
+
+Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland: Titans, male
+and female, who had not displaced Jove, and were now adrift, prone on
+floods of sentiment.  The blue-flocked peasant swinging behind his oxen
+of a morning, the gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even
+the doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows.  Horrible
+reflection!  Lady Judith is serene above it, but it frets at Richard when
+he is out of her shadow.  Often wretchedly he watches the young men of
+his own age trooping to their work.  Not cloud-work theirs!  Work solid,
+unambitious, fruitful!
+
+Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero.  He gaped blindfolded
+for anything, and she gave him the map of Europe in tatters.  He
+swallowed it comfortably.  It was an intoxicating cordial.  Himself on
+horseback overriding wrecks of Empires!  Well might common sense cower
+with the meaner animals at the picture.  Tacitly they agreed to recast
+the civilized globe.  The quality of vapour is to melt and shape itself
+anew; but it is never the quality of vapour to reassume the same shapes.
+Briareus of the hundred unoccupied hands may turn to a monstrous donkey
+with his hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes.  The
+phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those we see in the
+skies, and equally the sport of the wind.  Lady Judith blew.  There was
+plenty of vapour in him, and it always resolved into some shape or other.
+You that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will see the
+similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely seem foolish to you,
+that a young man of Richard's age, Richard's education and position,
+should be in this wild state.  Had he not been nursed to believe he was
+born for great things?  Did she not say she was sure of it?  And to feel
+base, yet born for better, is enough to make one grasp at anything
+cloudy.  Suppose the hero with a game leg.  How intense is his faith to
+quacks! with what a passion of longing is he not seized to break
+somebody's head!  They spoke of Italy in low voices.  "The time will
+come," said she.  "And I shall be ready," said he.  What rank was he to
+take in the liberating army?  Captain, colonel, general in chief, or
+simple private?  Here, as became him, he was much more positive and
+specific than she was: Simple private, he said.  Yet he save himself
+caracoling on horseback.  Private in the cavalry, then, of course.
+Private in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires.  She looked forth
+under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that object in the
+distance.  They read Petrarch to get up the necessary fires.  Italia mia!
+Vain indeed was this speaking to those thick and mortal wounds in her
+fair body, but their sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and
+their hands joined.  Who has not wept for Italy?  I see the aspirations
+of a world arise for her, thick and frequent as the puffs of smoke from
+cigars of Pannonian sentries!
+
+So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave Lady Judith, Lady
+Judith said she could not part with him.  For his sake, mind!  This
+Richard verified.  Perhaps he had reason to be grateful.  The high road
+of Folly may have led him from one that terminates worse.  Ho is foolish,
+God knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero because he has
+not got his occasion.  Meet him when he is, as it were, anointed by his
+occasion, and he is no laughing matter.
+
+Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world, we must term
+folly.  Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome process to him, and
+somebody who gave them shape and hue a beneficent Iris.  He told Austin
+plainly he could not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he
+could.
+
+"Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?"
+
+"For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin."
+
+He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness, and sadness at
+heart.  Austin he had always associated with his Lucy in that Hesperian
+palace of the West.  Austin waited patiently.  Lady Judith's old lord
+played on all the baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
+Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode.  So admirable a wife was
+to be pardoned for espousing an old man.  She was an enthusiast even in
+her connubial duties.  She had the brows of an enthusiast.  With occasion
+she might have been a Charlotte Corday.  So let her also be shielded from
+the ban of ridicule.  Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from
+nonsense of ninnies.  She was truly a high-minded person, of that order
+who always do what they see to be right, and always have confidence in
+their optics.  She was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she
+was unfit to be his guide.  She resumed her ancient intimacy with Austin
+easily, while she preserved her new footing with Richard.  She and Austin
+were not unlike, only Austin never dreamed, and had not married an old
+lord.
+
+The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the Lahn, where the
+shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the moonlight on the water brawling
+over slabs of slate.  A woman passed them bearing in her arms a baby,
+whose mighty size drew their attention.
+
+"What a wopper!" Richard laughed.
+
+"Well, that is a fine fellow," said Austin, "but I don't think he's much
+bigger than your boy."
+
+"He'll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius," Richard was saying.  Then
+he looked at Austin.
+
+"What was that you said?" Lady Judith asked of Austin.
+
+"What have I said that deserves to be repeated?" Austin counterqueried
+quite innocently.
+
+"Richard has a son?"
+
+"You didn't know it?"
+
+"His modesty goes very far," said Lady Judith, sweeping the shadow of a
+curtsey to Richard's paternity.
+
+Richard's heart throbbed with violence.  He looked again in Austin's
+face.  Austin took it so much as a matter of course that he said nothing
+more on the subject.
+
+"Well!" murmured Lady Judith.
+
+When the two men were alone, Richard said in a quick voice: "Austin! you
+were in earnest?"
+
+"You didn't know it, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, they all wrote to you.  Lucy wrote to you: your father, your aunt.
+I believe Adrian wrote too."
+
+"I tore up their letters," said Richard.
+
+"He's a noble fellow, I can tell you.  You've nothing to be ashamed of.
+He'll soon be coming to ask about you.  I made sure you knew."
+
+"No, I never knew."  Richard walked away, and then said: "What is he
+like?"
+
+"Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother's eyes."
+
+"And she's--"
+
+"Yes.  I think the child has kept her well."
+
+"They're both at Raynham?"
+
+"Both."
+
+Hence fantastic vapours!  What are ye to this!  Where are the dreams of
+the hero when he learns he has a child?  Nature is taking him to her
+bosom.  She will speak presently.  Every domesticated boor in these hills
+can boast the same, yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned
+prodigies as he does when he comes to hear of this most common
+performance.  A father?  Richard fixed his eyes as if he were trying to
+make out the lineaments of his child.
+
+Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied into the
+air, and walked on and on.  "A father!" he kept repeating to himself: "a
+child!"  And though he knew it not, he was striking the keynotes of
+Nature.  But he did know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over
+his whole being.
+
+The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy and still.  He
+left the high road and pierced into the forest.  His walk was rapid: the
+leaves on the trees brushed his cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the
+dells noised to his feet.  Something of a religious joy--a strange sacred
+pleasure--was in him.  By degrees it wore; he remembered himself: and now
+he was possessed by a proportionate anguish.  A father! he dared never
+see his child.  And he had no longer his phantasies to fall upon.  He was
+utterly bare to his sin.  In his troubled mind it seemed to him that
+Clare looked down on him--Clare who saw him as he was; and that to her
+eyes it would be infamy for him to go and print his kiss upon his child.
+Then came stern efforts to command his misery and make the nerves of his
+face iron.
+
+By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of past summers,
+beside a brook, he halted as one who had reached his journey's end.
+There he discovered he had a companion in Lady Judith's little dog.  He
+gave the friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were silent in
+the forest-silence.
+
+It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was surcharged.  He
+must advance, and on he footed, the little dog following.
+
+An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches.  In the dells and
+on the heights was the same dead heat.  Here where the brook tinkled it
+was no cool-lipped sound, but metallic, and without the spirit of water.
+Yonder in a space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white
+fire to sight and feeling.  No haze spread around.  The valleys were
+clear, defined to the shadows of their verges, the distances sharply
+distinct, and with the colours of day but slightly softened.  Richard
+beheld a roe moving across a slope of sward far out of rifle-mark.  The
+breathless silence was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue
+heaven.  Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched
+panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started
+afresh.  Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk
+of the forest.
+
+On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey
+topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades.  Richard mechanically
+sat down on the crumbling flints to rest, and listened to the panting of
+the dog.  Sprinkled at his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of glow-
+worms studded the dark dry ground.
+
+He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all.  His energies were expended in
+action.  He sat as a part of the ruins, and the moon turned his shadow
+Westward from the South.  Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of
+silver cloud were imperceptibly stealing toward her.  They were the van
+of a tempest.  He did not observe them or the leaves beginning to
+chatter.  When he again pursued his course with his face to the Rhine, a
+huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over him, and he had it in his mind
+to scale it.  He got no nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous
+outstepping.  The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky.  Then
+heavy, thunder-drops streak his cheek, the leaves were singing, the earth
+breathed, it was black before him, and behind.  All at once the thunder
+spoke.  The mountain he had marked was bursting over him.
+
+Up startled the whole forest in violet fire.  He saw the country at the
+foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam, quiver, extinguished.
+Then there were pauses; and the lightning seemed as the eye of heaven,
+and the thunder as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him;
+filling him with awful rapture.  Alone there--sole human creature among
+the grandeurs and mysteries of storm--he felt the representative of his
+kind, and his spirit rose, and marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let
+it be ruin!  Lower down the lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful
+crash; then white thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and great
+curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were supernaturally
+agitated, and vanished.  Then a shrill song roused in the leaves and the
+herbage.  Prolonged and louder it sounded, as deeper and heavier the
+deluge pressed.  A mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the
+earth.  Even in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard
+had a savage pleasure.  Keeping in motion, he was scarcely conscious of
+the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds was refreshing.  Suddenly
+he stopped short, lifting a curious nostril.  He fancied he smelt meadow-
+sweet.  He had never seen the flower in Rhineland--never thought of it;
+and it would hardly be met with in a forest.  He was sure he smelt it
+fresh in dews.  His little companion wagged a miserable wet tail some way
+in advance.  He went an slowly, thinking indistinctly.  After two or
+three steps he stooped and stretched out his hand to feel for the flower,
+having, he knew not why, a strong wish to verify its growth there.
+Groping about, his hand encountered something warm that started at his
+touch, and he, with the instinct we have, seized it, and lifted it to
+look at it.  The creature was very small, evidently quite young.
+Richard's eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, were able to discern it
+for what it was, a tiny leveret, and ha supposed that the dog had
+probably frightened its dam just before he found it.  He put the little
+thing on one hand in his breast, and stepped out rapidly as before.
+
+The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain poured.  So cool and
+easy had his mind become that he was speculating on what kind of shelter
+the birds could find, and how the butterflies and moths saved their
+coloured wings from washing.  Folded close they might hang under a leaf,
+he thought.  Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness of the coverts
+on each side, as one of their children.  He was next musing on a strange
+sensation he experienced.  It ran up one arm with an indescribable
+thrill, but communicated nothing to his heart.  It was purely physical,
+ceased for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all through his blood,
+wonderfully thrilling.  He grew aware that the little thing he carried in
+his breast was licking his hand there.  The small rough tongue going over
+and over the palm of his hand produced the strange sensation he felt.
+Now that he knew the cause, the marvel ended; but now that he knew the
+cause, his heart was touched and made more of it.  The gentle scraping
+continued without intermission as on he walked.  What did it say to him?
+Human tongue could not have said so much just then.
+
+A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the dawn.
+Richard was walking hurriedly.  The green drenched weeds lay all about in
+his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly.  Impelled as a
+man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was
+passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths,
+where the peasant halts to kneel and pray.  Cold, still, in the twilight
+it stood, rain-drops pattering round it.  He looked within, and saw the
+Virgin holding her Child.  He moved by.  But not many steps had he gone
+ere his strength went out of him, and he shuddered.  What was it?  He
+asked not.  He was in other hands.  Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life
+illumined him.  He felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's
+touch.  With shut eyes he saw them both.  They drew him from the depths;
+they led him a blind and tottering man.  And as they led him he had a
+sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.
+
+When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
+birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills.  He
+was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn
+under a spacious morning sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+
+They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming.  Lucy had the news first
+in a letter from Ripton Thompson, who met him at Bonn.  Ripton did not
+say that he had employed his vacation holiday on purpose to use his
+efforts to induce his dear friend to return to his wife; and finding
+Richard already on his way, of course Ripton said nothing to him, but
+affected to be travelling for his pleasure like any cockney.  Richard
+also wrote to her.  In case she should have gone to the sea he directed
+her to send word to his hotel that he might not lose an hour.  His letter
+was sedate in tone, very sweet to her.  Assisted by the faithful female
+Berry, she was conquering an Aphorist.
+
+"Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts," was one of his rough
+notes, due to an observation of Lucy's maternal cares.  Let us remember,
+therefore, we men who have drunk of it largely there, that she has it.
+
+Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master Richard's  education
+had commenced, and the great future historian he must consequently be.
+This trait in Lucy was of itself sufficient to win Sir Austin.
+
+"Here my plan with Richard was false," he reflected: "in presuming that
+anything save blind fortuity would bring him such a mate as he should
+have."  He came to add: "And has got!"
+
+He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten science; for as
+Richard was coming, as all were to be happy, his wisdom embraced them all
+paternally as the author of their happiness.  Between him and Lucy a
+tender intimacy grew.
+
+"I told you she could talk, sir," said Adrian.
+
+"She thinks!" said the baronet.
+
+The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle, he settled
+generously.  Farmer Blaize should come up to Raynham when he would: Lucy
+must visit him at least three times a week.  He had Farmer Blaize and
+Mrs. Berry to study, and really excellent Aphorisms sprang from the plain
+human bases this natural couple presented.
+
+"It will do us no harm," he thought, "some of the honest blood of the
+soil in our veins."  And he was content in musing on the parentage of the
+little cradled boy.  A common sight for those who had the entry to the
+library was the baronet cherishing the hand of his daughter-in-law.
+
+So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham were beating
+quicker measures as the minutes progressed.  That night he would be with
+them.  Sir Austin gave Lucy a longer, warmer salute when she came down to
+breakfast in the morning.  Mrs. Berry waxed thrice amorous.  "It's your
+second bridals, ye sweet livin' widow!" she said.  "Thanks be the Lord!
+it's the same man too! and a baby over the bed-post," she appended
+seriously.
+
+"Strange," Berry declared it to be, "strange I feel none o' this to my
+Berry now.  All my feelin's o' love seem t'ave gone into you two sweet
+chicks."
+
+In fact, the faithless male Berry complained of being treated badly, and
+affected a superb jealousy of the baby; but the good dame told him that
+if he suffered at all he suffered his due.  Berry's position was
+decidedly uncomfortable.  It could not be concealed from the lower
+household that he had a wife in the establishment, and for the
+complications this gave rise to, his wife would not legitimately console
+him.  Lucy did intercede, but Mrs. Berry, was obdurate.  She averred she
+would not give up the child till he was weaned.  "Then, perhaps," she
+said prospectively.  "You see I ain't so soft as you thought for."
+
+"You're a very unkind, vindictive old woman," said Lucy.
+
+"Belike I am," Mrs. Berry was proud to agree.  We like a new character,
+now and then.  Berry had delayed too long.
+
+Were it not notorious that the straightlaced prudish dare not listen to,
+the natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry thought it advisable to
+impart to the young wife with regard to Berry's infidelity, and the
+charity women should have toward sinful men, might here be reproduced.
+Enough that she thought proper to broach the matter, and cite her own
+Christian sentiments, now that she was indifferent in some degree.
+
+Oily calm is on the sea.  At Raynham they look up at the sky and
+speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded.  He comes to throw
+himself on his darling's mercy.  Lucy irradiated over forest and sea,
+tempest and peace--to her the hero comes humbly.  Great is that day when
+we see our folly!  Ripton and he were the friends of old.  Richard
+encouraged him to talk of the two he could be eloquent on, and Ripton,
+whose secret vanity was in his powers of speech, never tired of
+enumerating Lucy's virtues, and the peculiar attributes of the baby.
+
+"She did not say a word against me, Rip?"
+
+"Against you, Richard!  The moment she knew she was to be a mother, she
+thought of nothing but her duty to the child.  She's one who can't think
+of herself."
+
+"You've seen her at Raynham, Rip?"
+
+"Yes, once.  They asked me down.  And your father's so fond of her--I'm
+sure he thinks no woman like her, and he's right.  She is so lovely, and
+so good."
+
+Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his father: too British
+to expose his emotions.  Ripton divined how deep and changed they were by
+his manner.  He had cast aside the hero, and however Ripton had obeyed
+him and looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him tenfold now.
+He told his friend how much Lucy's mere womanly sweetness and excellence
+had done for him, and Richard contrasted his own profitless extravagance
+with the patient beauty of his dear home angel.  He was not one to take
+her on the easy terms that offered.  There was that to do which made his
+cheek burn as he thought of it, but he was going to do it, even though it
+lost her to him.  Just to see her and kneel to her was joy sufficient to
+sustain him, and warm his blood in the prospect.  They marked the white
+cliffs growing over the water.  Nearer, the sun made them lustrous.
+Houses and people seemed to welcome the wild youth to common sense,
+simplicity, and home.
+
+They were in town by mid-day.  Richard had a momentary idea of not
+driving to his hotel for letters.  After a short debate he determined to
+go there.  The porter said he had two letters for Mr. Richard Feverel--
+one had been waiting some time.  He went to the box and fetched them.
+The first Richard opened was from Lucy, and as he read it, Ripton
+observed the colour deepen on his face, while a quivering smile played
+about his mouth.  He opened the other indifferently.  It began without
+any form of address.  Richard's forehead darkened at the signature.  This
+letter was in a sloping feminine hand, and flourished with light strokes
+all over, like a field of the bearded barley.  Thus it ran:
+
+"I know you are in a rage with me because I would not consent to ruin
+you, you foolish fellow.  What do you call it?  Going to that unpleasant
+place together.  Thank you, my milliner is not ready yet, and I want to
+make a good appearance when I do go.  I suppose I shall have to some day.
+Your health, Sir Richard.  Now let me speak to you seriously.  Go home to
+your wife at once.  But I know the sort of fellow you are, and I must be
+plain with you.  Did I ever say I loved you?  You may hate me as much as
+you please, but I will save you from being a fool.
+
+"Now listen to me.  You know my relations with Mount.  That beast Brayder
+offered to pay all my debts and set me afloat, if I would keep you in
+town.  I declare on my honour I had no idea why, and I did not agree to
+it.  But you were such a handsome fellow--I noticed you in the park
+before I heard a word of you.  But then you fought shy--you were just as
+tempting as a girl.  You stung me.  Do you know what that is?  I would
+make you care for me, and we know how it ended, without any intention of
+mine, I swear.  I'd have cut off my hand rather than do you any harm,
+upon my honour.  Circumstances!  Then I saw it was all up between us.
+Brayder came and began to chaff about you.  I dealt the animal a stroke
+on the face with my riding-whip--I shut him up pretty quick.  Do you
+think I would let a man speak about you?--I was going to swear.  You see
+I remember Dick's lessons.  O my God!  I do feel unhappy.--Brayder
+offered me money.  Go and think I took it, if you like.  What do I care
+what anybody thinks!  Something that black-guard said made me suspicious.
+I went down to the Isle of Wight where Mount was, and your wife was just
+gone with an old lady who came and took her away.  I should so have liked
+to see her.  You said, you remember, she would take me as a sister, and
+treat me--I laughed at it then.  My God! how I could cry now, if water
+did any good to a devil, as you politely call poor me.  I called at your
+house and saw your man-servant, who said Mount had just been there.  In a
+minute it struck me.  I was sure Mount was after a woman, but it never
+struck me that woman was your wife.  Then I saw why they wanted me to
+keep you away.  I went to Brayder.  You know how I hate him.  I made love
+to the man to get it out of him.  Richard! my word of honour, they have
+planned to carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot seduce her.  Talk of
+devils!  He's one; but he is not so bad as Brayder.  I cannot forgive a
+mean dog his villany.
+
+"Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a man to stop away
+from her another moment.  I have no more to say.  I suppose we shall not
+see each other again, so good-bye, Dick!  I fancy I hear you cursing me.
+Why can't you feel like other men on the subject?  But if you were like
+the rest of them I should not have cared for you a farthing.  I have not
+worn lilac since I saw you last.  I'll be buried in your colour, Dick.
+That will not offend you--will it?
+
+"You are not going to believe I took the money?  If I thought you thought
+that--it makes me feel like a devil only to fancy you think it.
+
+"The first time you meet Brayder, cane him publicly.
+
+"Adieu!  Say it's because you don't like his face.  I suppose devils must
+not say Adieu.  Here's plain old good-bye, then, between you and me.
+Good-bye, dear Dick!  You won't think that of me?
+
+"May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took or ever will touch
+a scrap of their money.  BELLA."
+
+Richard folded up the letter silently.
+
+"Jump into the cab," he said to Ripton.
+
+"Anything the matter, Richard?"
+
+"No."
+
+The driver received directions.  Richard sat without speaking. His friend
+knew that face.  He asked whether there was bad news in the letter.  For
+answer, he had the lie circumstancial.  He ventured to remark that they
+were going the wrong way.
+
+"It'd the right way," cried Richard, and his jaws were hard and square,
+and his eyes looked heavy and full.
+
+Ripton said no more, but thought.
+
+The cabman pulled up at a Club.  A gentleman, in whom Ripton recognized
+the Hon. Peter Brayder, was just then swinging a leg over his horse, with
+one foot in the stirrup.  Hearing his name called, the Hon. Peter turned
+about, and stretched an affable hand.
+
+"Is Mountfalcon in town?" said Richard taking the horse's reins instead
+of the gentlemanly hand.  His voice and aspect were quite friendly.
+
+"Mount?" Brayder replied, curiously watching the action; "yes.  He's off
+this evening."
+
+"He is in town?" Richard released his horse.  "I want to see him.  Where
+is he?"
+
+The young man looked pleasant: that which might have aroused Brayder's
+suspicions was an old affair in parasitical register by this time.  "Want
+to see him?  What about?" he said carelessly, and gave the address.
+
+"By the way," he sang out, "we thought of putting your name down,
+Feverel."  He indicated the lofty structure.  "What do you say?"
+
+Richard nodded back at him, crying, "Hurry."  Brayder returned the nod,
+and those who promenaded the district soon beheld his body in elegant
+motion to the stepping of his well-earned horse.
+
+"What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for, Richard?" said Ripton.
+
+"I just want to see him," Richard replied.
+
+Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord's residence.  He had to
+wait there a space of about ten minutes, when Richard returned with a
+clearer visage, though somewhat heated.  He stood outside the cab, and
+Ripton was conscious of being examined by those strong grey eyes.  As
+clear as speech he understood them to say to him, "You won't do," but
+which of the many things on earth he would not do for he was at a loss to
+think.
+
+"Go down to Raynham, Ripton.  Say I shall be there tonight certainly.
+Don't bother me with questions.  Drive off at once. Or wait.  Get another
+cab.  I'll take this."
+
+Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in the street.  As
+he was on the point of rushing after the galloping cab-horse to get a
+word of elucidation, he heard some one speak behind him.
+
+"You are Feverel's friend?"
+
+Ripton had an eye for lords.  An ambrosial footman, standing at the open
+door of Lord Mountfalcon's house, and a gentleman standing on the
+doorstep, told him that he was addressed by that nobleman.  He was
+requested to step into the house.  When they were alone, Lord
+Mountfalcon, slightly ruffled, said: "Feverel has insulted me grossly.  I
+must meet him, of course.  It's a piece of infernal folly!--I suppose he
+is not quite mad?"
+
+Ripton's only definite answer was, a gasping iteration of "My lord."
+
+My lord resumed: "I am perfectly guiltless of offending him, as far as I
+know.  In fact, I had a friendship for him.  Is he liable to fits of this
+sort of thing?"
+
+Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: "Fits, my lord?"
+
+"Ah!" went the other, eying Ripton in lordly cognizant style.  "You know
+nothing of this business, perhaps?"
+
+Ripton said he did not.
+
+"Have you any influence with him?"
+
+"Not much, my lord.  Only now and then--a little."
+
+"You are not in the Army?"
+
+The question was quite unnecessary.  Ripton confessed to the law, and my
+lord did not look surprised.
+
+"I will not detain you," he said, distantly bowing.
+
+Ripton gave him a commoner's obeisance; but getting to the door, the
+sense of the matter enlightened him.
+
+"It's a duel, my lord?"
+
+"No help for it, if his friends don't shut him up in Bedlam between this
+and to-morrow morning."
+
+Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton's imagination.  He
+stood holding the handle of the door, revolving this last chapter of
+calamity suddenly opened where happiness had promised.
+
+"A duel! but he won't, my lord,--he mustn't fight, my lord."
+
+"He must come on the ground," said my lord, positively.
+
+Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff.  Finally Lord Mountfalcon said:
+"I went out of my way, sir, in speaking to you.  I saw you from the
+window.  Your friend is mad.  Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad.  I
+have particular reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and if an
+apology is to be got out of him when we're on the ground, I'll take it,
+and we'll stop the damned scandal, if possible.  You understand?  I'm the
+insulted party, and I shall only require of him to use formal words of
+excuse to come to an amicable settlement.  Let him just say he regrets
+it.
+Now, sir," the nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness,
+"should anything happen--I have the honour to be known to Mrs. Feverel--
+and I beg you will tell her.  I very particularly desire you to let her
+know that I was not to blame."
+
+Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out.  With this on his mind
+Ripton hurried down to those who were waiting in joyful trust at Raynham.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+
+The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his pulse, in occult
+calculation hideous to mark, said half-past eleven on the midnight.
+Adrian, wearing a composedly amused expression on his dimpled plump
+face,--held slightly sideways, aloof from paper and pen,--sat writing at
+the library table.  Round the baronet's chair, in a semi-circle, were
+Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that very ill bird at
+Raynham.  They were silent as those who question the flying minutes.
+Ripton had said that Richard was sure to come; but the feminine eyes
+reading him ever and anon, had gathered matter for disquietude, which
+increased as time sped.  Sir Austin persisted in his habitual air of
+speculative repose.
+
+Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the first to speak and
+betray his state.
+
+"Pray, put up that watch.  Impatience serves nothing," he said, half-
+turning hastily to his brother behind him.
+
+Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: "It's no nightmare,
+this!"
+
+His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained obscure.  Adrian's
+pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript; whether in commiseration or
+infernal glee, none might say.
+
+"What are you writing?" the baronet inquired testily of Adrian, after a
+pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of jealousy of the wise youth's
+coolness.
+
+"Do I disturb you, sir?" rejoined Adrian.  "I am engaged on a portion of
+a Proposal for uniting the Empires and Kingdoms of Europe under one
+Paternal Head, on the model of the ever-to-be-admired and lamented Holy
+Roman.  This treats of the management of Youths and Maids, and of certain
+magisterial functions connected therewith.  'It is decreed that these
+officers be all and every men of science,' etc."  And Adrian cheerily
+drove his pen afresh.
+
+Mrs. Doria took Lucy's hand, mutely addressing encouragement to her, and
+Lucy brought as much of a smile as she could command to reply with.
+
+"I fear we must give him up to-night," observed Lady Blandish.
+
+"If he said he would come, he will come," Sir Austin interjected.
+Between him and the lady there was something of a contest secretly going
+on.  He was conscious that nothing save perfect success would now hold
+this self-emancipating mind.  She had seen him through.
+
+"He declared to me he would be certain to come," said Ripton; but he
+could look at none of them as he said it, for he was growing aware that
+Richard might have deceived him, and was feeling like a black conspirator
+against their happiness.  He determined to tell the baronet what he knew,
+if Richard did not come by twelve.
+
+"What is the time?" he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
+
+"Time for me to be in bed," growled Hippias, as if everybody present had
+been treating him badly.
+
+Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above.  She
+quietly rose.  Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: "You had
+better not come down again, my child."  She kept her eyes on him.
+"Oblige me by retiring for the night," he added.  Lucy shook their hands,
+and went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
+
+"This agitation will be bad for the child," he said, speaking to himself
+aloud.
+
+Lady Blandish remarked: "I think she might just as well have returned.
+She will not sleep."
+
+"She will control herself for the child's sake."
+
+"You ask too much of her."
+
+"Of her, not," he emphasized.
+
+It was twelve o'clock when Hippies shut his watch, and said with
+vehemence: "I'm convinced my circulation gradually and steadily
+decreases!"
+
+"Going back to the pre-Harvey period!" murmured Adrian as he wrote.
+
+Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce
+them to the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was
+sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve.  Taking it
+for acquiescence in his deplorable condition, Hippies resumed
+despairingly: "It's a fact.  I've brought you to see that.  No one can be
+more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse.  My system is organically
+sound--I believe: I do every possible thing, and yet I get worse.  Nature
+never forgives!  I'll go to bed."
+
+The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
+
+Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: "I suppose nothing short of a
+miracle helps us when we have offended her."
+
+"Nothing short of a quack satisfies us," said Adrian, applying wax to an
+envelope of official dimensions.
+
+Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by
+Lucy's last look at him.  He got up his courage presently and went round
+to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and
+accompanied him out of the room, shrugging.  When they had gone, Lady
+Blandish said to the baronet: "He is not coming."
+
+"To-morrow, then, if not tonight," he replied.  "But I say he will come
+to-night."
+
+"You do really wish to see him united to his wife?"
+
+The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
+
+"Can you ask me?"
+
+"I mean," said, the ungenerous woman, "your System will require no
+further sacrifices from either of them?"
+
+When he did answer, it was to say: "I think her altogether a superior
+person.  I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her."
+
+"Admit that your science does not accomplish everything."
+
+"No: it was presumptuous--beyond a certain point," said the baronet,
+meaning deep things.
+
+Lady Blandish eyed him.  "Ah me!" she sighed, "if we would always be true
+to our own wisdom!"
+
+"You are very singular to-night, Emmeline."  Sir Austin stopped his walk
+in front of her.
+
+In truth, was she not unjust?  Here was an offending son freely forgiven.
+Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family
+and permitted to stand upon her qualities.  Who would have done more--or
+as much?  This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have
+fought it.  All the people of position that he was acquainted with would
+have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly.  But while the
+baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional education his
+son had received.  He, took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his
+System when it was absolutely on trial.  False to his son it could not be
+said that he had been false to his System he was.  Others saw it plainly,
+but he had to learn his lesson by and by.
+
+Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table,
+saying, "Well! well!"  She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and
+drew forth a little book she recognized.  "Ha! what is this?" she said.
+
+"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her.  "The stupid fellow
+took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."
+
+It was nothing other than the old Note-book.  Lady Blandish turned over
+the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
+
+She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with the
+mouthpiece of narrower?"
+
+"I do not agree with that," she observed.  He was in no humour for
+argument.
+
+"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"
+
+He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings.  A
+proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority
+rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be flattered by his
+company?"
+
+She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again.  There must
+be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and
+admirable aptitude.
+
+Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?--He who sneers at the
+failings of Humanity!"
+
+"Oh! that is true!  How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame as
+she beamed intellectual raptures.
+
+Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more
+grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the
+mercy of his feelings."
+
+"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an
+example--strange man that he is!"
+
+Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly
+insubordinate.  She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she
+reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that
+should hold her captive.  The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest
+manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands.  Nevertheless Sir Austin
+had only to be successful, and this lady's allegiance was his for ever.
+The trial was at hand.
+
+She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on whose
+visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past,
+quietly added: "He is come."
+
+Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
+
+There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir.
+Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that her
+involuntary coldness had enhanced her value--"Such is men!" as the soft
+woman reflected--Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in pompous
+tones and wheedling gestures.  "The best word you've spoke for many a
+day," says she, and leaves him unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour
+bliss into Lucy's ears.
+
+"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're got
+to be happy at last.  They men have come to their senses.  I could cry to
+your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
+
+"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her knees.
+The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes started
+awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing, but
+thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to still
+her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper from
+bursting Mrs. Berry.
+
+Richard had come.  He was under his father's roof, in the old home that
+had so soon grown foreign to him.  He stood close to his wife and child.
+He might embrace them both: and now the fulness of his anguish and the
+madness of the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he tasted
+hard earthly misery.
+
+Had not God spoken to him in the tempest?  Had not the finger of heaven
+directed him homeward?  And he had come: here he stood: congratulations
+were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was
+invited to drink of it.  Which was the dream? his work for the morrow, or
+this?  But for a leaden load that he felt like a bullet in his breast, he
+might have thought the morrow with death sitting on it was the dream.
+Yes; he was awake.  Now first the cloud of phantasms cleared away: he
+beheld his real life, and the colours of true human joy: and on the
+morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them.  That leaden bullet
+dispersed all unrealities.
+
+They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria,
+Adrian, Ripton; people who had known him long.  They shook his hand: they
+gave him greetings he had never before understood the worth of or the
+meaning.  Now that he did they mocked him.  There was Mrs. Berry in the
+background bobbing, there was Martin Berry bowing, there was Tom Bakewell
+grinning.  Somehow he loved the sight of these better.
+
+"Ah, my old Penelope!" he said, breaking through the circle of his
+relatives to go to her.  "Tom! how are you?"
+
+"Bless ye, my Mr, Richard," whimpered Mrs. Berry, and whispered, rosily,
+"all's agreeable now.  She's waiting up in bed for ye, like a new-born."
+
+The person who betrayed most agitation was, Mrs. Doria.  She held close
+to him, and eagerly studied his face and every movement, as one
+accustomed to masks.  "You are pale, Richard?"  He pleaded exhaustion.
+"What detained you, dear?"  "Business," he said.  She drew him
+imperiously apart from the others.  "Richard! is it over?"  He asked what
+she meant.  "The dreadful duel, Richard."  He looked darkly.  "Is it
+over? is it done, Richard?"  Getting no immediate answer, she continued--
+and such was her agitation that  the words were shaken by pieces from her
+mouth: "Don't pretend not to understand me, Richard!  Is it over?  Are
+you going to die the death of my child--Clare's death?  Is not one in a
+family enough?  Think of your dear young wife--we love her so!--your
+child!--your father!  Will you kill us all?"
+
+Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton's communication to
+Adrian, and had built thereon with the dark forces of a stricken soul.
+
+Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard calmly said:
+"It's arranged--the matter you allude to."
+
+"Indeed!--truly, dear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Tell me"--but he broke away from her, saying: "You shall hear the
+particulars to-morrow," and she, not alive to double meaning just then,
+allowed him to leave her.
+
+He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he would
+take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the
+library.  He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat before
+he saw the young hope of Raynham: so there he  sat, breaking bread, and
+eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine, talking of what
+they would.  His father's studious mind felt itself years behind him, he
+was so completely altered.  He had the precision of speech, the bearing
+of a man of thirty.  Indeed he had all that the necessity for cloaking an
+infinite misery gives.  But let things be as they might, he was, there.
+For one night in his life Sir Austin's perspective of the future was
+bounded by the night.
+
+"Will your go to your wife now?" he had asked and Richard had replied
+with a strange indifference.  The baronet thought it better that their
+meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs.  The
+others perceived that father and son should now be left alone.  Adrian
+went up to him, and said: "I can no longer witness this painful sight, so
+Good-night, Sir Famish!  You may cheat yourself into the belief that
+you've made a meal, but depend upon it your progeny--and it threatens to
+be numerous--will cry aloud and rue the day.  Nature never forgives!  A
+lost dinner can never be replaced!  Good-night, my dear boy.  And here--
+oblige me by taking this," he handed Richard the enormous envelope
+containing what he had written that evening.  "Credentials!" he exclaimed
+humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder.  Ripton heard also the
+words "propagator--species," but had no idea of their import.  The wise
+youth looked: You see we've made matters all right for you here, and
+quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.
+
+Richard shook his hand, and Ripton's.  Then Lady Blandish said her good-
+night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual happiness.
+The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke together outside.
+Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that the duel would not be
+fought, but Adrian said: "Time enough tomorrow.  He's safe enough while
+he's here.  I'll stop it to-morrow:" ending with banter of Ripton and
+allusions to his adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian said,
+have led him into many affairs of the sort.  Certainly Richard was there,
+and while he was there he must be safe.  So thought Ripton, and went to
+his bed.  Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and likewise thought him safe
+while he was there.  For once in her life she thought it better not to
+trust to her instinct, for fear of useless disturbance where peace should
+be.  So she said not a syllable of it to her brother.  She only looked
+more deeply into Richard's eyes, as she kissed him, praising Lucy.  "I
+have found a second daughter in her, dear.  Oh! may you both be happy!"
+
+They all praised Lucy, now.  His father commenced the moment they were
+alone.  "Poor Helen!  Your wife has been a great comfort to her, Richard.
+I think Helen must have sunk without her.  So lovely a young person,
+possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have never
+before met."
+
+He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some hours
+back he would have succeeded.  Now it had the contrary effect.
+
+"You compliment me on my choice, sir?"
+
+Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible and he could speak
+no other way, his bitterness was so intense.
+
+"I think you very fortunate," said his father.
+
+Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal
+feeling was frozen.  Richard did not approach him.  He leaned against the
+chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only when he
+spoke.  Fortunate! very fortunate!  As he revolved his later history, and
+remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must love Lucy if he
+but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade her to come with
+him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain.  But could he blame
+that gentle soul?  Whom could he blame?  Himself?  Not utterly.  His
+father?  Yes, and no.  The blame was here, the blame was there: it was
+everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, and
+looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.
+
+"Richard," said his father, coming close to him, "it is late to-night.  I
+do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I should have
+explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think--or at least hope--you
+would have justified me.  I had cause to believe that you had not only
+violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me.  It was not so, I now
+know.  I was mistaken.  Much of our misunderstanding has resulted from
+that mistake.  But you were married--a boy: you knew nothing of the
+world, little of yourself.  To save you in after-life--for there is a
+period when mature men and women who have married young are more impelled
+to temptation than in youth,--though not so exposed to it,--to save you,
+I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and learn
+something of your fellows of both sexes, before settling into a state
+that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the woman who
+is your mate.  My System with you would have been otherwise imperfect,
+and you would have felt the effects of it.  It is over now.  You are a
+man.  The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end.
+I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray God to
+conduct and strengthen you both."
+
+Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly.  True or
+not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers over, and
+happiness, mockery.
+
+Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.
+
+"We will go to her," said the baronet.  "I will leave you at her door."
+
+Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the
+colour rushed, Richard said: "A husband who has been unfaithful to his
+wife may go to her there, sir?"
+
+It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that.  He wanted no advice on
+such a matter, having fully resolved what to do.  Yesterday he would have
+listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what was to be
+done humbly before God and her: now in the recklessness of his misery he
+had as little pity for any other soul as for his own.  Sir Austin's brows
+were deep drawn down.
+
+"What did you say, Richard?"
+
+Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could hear-
+-this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and cast
+aside--could it be?
+
+Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last parted.
+What else do you think would have kept me from her?"
+
+Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to her
+now?"
+
+"That will be between us two," was the reply.
+
+Sir Austin fell into his chair.  Meditation was impossible.  He spoke
+from a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"--
+
+"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not.  Have no fear."
+
+"Then you did not love your wife?"
+
+"Did I not?" A smile passed faintly over Richard's face.
+
+"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"
+
+"So much?  If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had
+none."
+
+O base human nature!  Then how? then why?  A thousand questions rose in
+the baronet's mind.  Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.
+
+"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.
+Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true forgiving
+heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.
+
+He proposed to Richard to spare her.  Vast is the distinction between
+women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical
+and moral citations.  His argument carried him so far, that to hear him
+one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed.  His
+words were idle.
+
+"She must know it," said Richard, sternly.  "I will go to her now, sir,
+if you please."
+
+Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded
+his principles, made nonsense of all his theories.  He could not induce
+his son to waver in his resolve.  Ultimately, their good-night being
+interchanged, he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on
+Lucy's mercy.  He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange
+thing to have come to.  On which should the accusation fall--on science,
+or on human nature?
+
+He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times
+breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted suspicion
+of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he deserved that
+blow from his son which had plunged him into wretchedness.  Richard went
+straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and told him to have
+his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East within an hour.
+Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a faithful slave to his
+master, and in doing this he acted to his conception of that high and
+glorious character.  He got up and heroically dashed his head into cold
+water.  "She shall be ready, sir," he nodded.
+
+"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go on
+being paid to you."
+
+"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.
+
+"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."
+
+"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared.  "God bless me, Mr. Richard"--
+
+"No questions.  You'll do what I say."
+
+"Ay, sir; that I will.  Did'n Isle o' Wight."
+
+The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood; and he had to walk
+up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door.  That infamous
+conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him
+the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
+
+The soft beloved voice responded to his knock.  He opened the door, and
+stood before her.  Lucy was half-way toward him.  In the moment that
+passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in her.
+He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming woman: for pale at
+first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and deep on her
+face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose dressing-robe, and
+the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart thump and his eyes swim.
+
+"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was
+fastened on his.
+
+They spoke no more.  His soul was drowned in her kiss.  Supporting her,
+whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and
+clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the
+oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace.
+Heaven granted him that.  He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet
+with both arms around her.  Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted him:
+their light as the light on a rolling wave.  This young creature,
+commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in her
+husband's arms--womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love;
+tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood.  Terrible
+tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly--far on the horizon of
+memory--the fatal truth returned to him.
+
+Lose her? lose this?  He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
+
+The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying
+glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and
+glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling
+wave.
+
+And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven!  And his
+she was! a woman--his wife!  The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was
+all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the
+prayer of his vital forces.  Again he strained her to him, but this time
+it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure--with exultation and
+defiance.  One instant of this.  Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now
+surmounted the first wild passion of their meeting, bent back her head
+from her surrendered body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids
+wistfully quivering: "Come and see him--baby;" and then in great hope of
+the happiness she was going to give her husband, and share with him, and
+in tremour and doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and her
+brows worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of
+separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
+
+"Darling! come and see him.  He is here."  She spoke more clearly, though
+no louder.
+
+Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered himself
+to be led to the other side of the bed.  His heart began rapidly
+throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot covered with lace
+like milky summer cloud.
+
+It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that child's
+face.
+
+"Stop!" he cried suddenly.
+
+Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should have
+been disturbed.
+
+"Lucy, come back."
+
+"What is it, darling?" said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip he
+had unwittingly given her hand.
+
+O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death,
+perhaps die and be torn from his darling--his wife and his child; and
+that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and lean his
+head reproachfully on his young wife's breast--for the last time, it
+might be--he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of
+him.
+
+"Lucy!"  She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the
+whiteness of his--she bending forward to him, all her faculties strung to
+hearing.
+
+He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the
+horrible wound he was going to lay open to her eyes.
+
+"Lucy.  Do you know why I came to you to-night?"
+
+She moved her lips repeating his words.
+
+"Lucy.  Have you guessed why I did not come before?"
+
+Her head shook widened eyes.
+
+"Lucy.  I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife!  Do you
+understand?"
+
+"Darling," she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching under him, "what
+have I done to make you angry with me?"
+
+"O beloved!" cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes.  "O beloved!"
+was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.
+
+She waited, reassured, but in terror.
+
+"Lucy.  I stayed away from you--I could not come to you, because...  I
+dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved!  I could not come because I
+was a coward: because--hear me--this was the reason: I have broken my
+marriage oath."
+
+Again her lips moved.  She caught at a dim fleshless meaning in them.
+"But you love me?  Richard!  My husband! you love me?"
+
+"Yes.  I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but you."
+
+"Darling!  Kiss me."
+
+"Have you understood what I have told you?"
+
+"Kiss me," she said.
+
+He did not join lips.  "I have come to you to-night to ask your
+forgiveness."
+
+Her answer was: "Kiss me."
+
+"Can you forgive a man so base?"
+
+"But you love me, Richard?"
+
+"Yes: that I can say before God.  I love you, and I have betrayed you,
+and am unworthy of you--not worthy to touch your hand, to kneel at your
+feet, to breathe the same air with you."
+
+Her eyes shone brilliantly.  "You love me! you love me, darling!" And as
+one who has sailed through dark fears into daylight, she said: "My
+husband! my darling! you will never leave me?  We never shall be parted
+again?"
+
+He drew his breath painfully.  To smooth her face growing rigid with
+fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth.  That kiss in which she
+spoke what her soul had to say, calmed her, and she smiled happily from
+it, and in her manner reminded him of his first vision of her on the
+summer morning in the field of the meadow-sweet.  He held her to him, and
+thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and Child: of the sweet
+wonders of life she had made real to him.
+
+Had he not absolved his conscience?  At least the pangs to come made him
+think so.  He now followed her leading hand.  Lucy whispered: "You
+mustn't disturb him--mustn't touch him, dear!"  and with dainty fingers
+drew off the covering to the little shoulder.  One arm of the child was
+out along the pillow; the small hand open.  His baby-mouth was pouted
+full; the dark lashes of his eyes seemed to lie on his plump cheeks.
+Richard stooped lower down to him, hungering for some movement as a sign
+that he lived.  Lucy whispered.  "He sleeps like you, Richard--one arm
+under his head."  Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping tenderness was
+in Richard.  He breathed quick and soft, bending lower, till Lucy's
+curls, as she nestled and bent with him, rolled on the crimson quilt of
+the cot.  A smile went up the plump cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth
+was in rapid motion.  The young mother whispered, blushing: "He's
+dreaming of me," and the simple words did more than Richard's eyes to
+make him see what was.  Then Lucy began to hum and buzz sweet baby-
+language, and some of the tiny fingers stirred, and he made as if to
+change his cosy position, but reconsidered, and deferred it, with a
+peaceful little sigh.  Lucy whispered: "He is such a big fellow.  Oh!
+when you see him awake he is so like you, Richard."
+
+He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven dropped there
+in his likeness: the more human the fact of the child grew the more
+heavenly it seemed.  His son! his child! should he ever see him awake?
+At the thought, he took the words that had been spoken, and started from
+the dream he had been in.  "Will he wake soon, Lucy?"
+
+"Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours.  I would have kept him awake for
+you, but he was so sleepy."
+
+Richard stood back from the cot.  He thought that if he saw the eyes of
+his boy, and had him once on his heart, he never should have force to
+leave him.  Then he looked down on him, again struggled to tear himself
+away.  Two natures warred in his bosom, or it may have been the Magian
+Conflict still going on.  He had come to see his child once and to make
+peace with his wife before it should be too late.  Might he not stop with
+them?  Might he not relinquish that devilish pledge?  Was not divine
+happiness here offered to him?--If foolish Ripton had not delayed to tell
+him of his interview with Mountfalcon all might have been well.  But
+pride said it was impossible.  And then injury spoke.  For why was he
+thus base and spotted to the darling of his love?  A mad pleasure in the
+prospect of wreaking vengeance on the villain who had laid the trap for
+him, once more blackened his brain.  If he would stay he could not.  So
+he resolved, throwing the burden on Fate.  The struggle was over, but oh,
+the pain!
+
+Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his face on the child's cot.
+She marvelled at such excess of emotion.  But when his chest heaved, and
+the extremity of mortal anguish appeared to have seized him, her heart
+sank, and she tried to get him in her arms.  He turned away from her and
+went to the window.  A half-moon was over the lake.
+
+"Look!" he said, "do you remember our rowing there one night, and we saw
+the shadow of the cypress?  I wish I could have come early to-night that
+we might have had another row, and I have heard you sing there!"
+
+"Darling!" said she, "will it make you happier if I go with you now?  I
+will."
+
+"No, Lucy.  Lucy, you are brave!"
+
+"Oh, no! that I'm not.  I thought so once.  I know I am not now."
+
+"Yes! to have lived--the child on your heart--and never to have uttered a
+complaint!--you are brave.  O my Lucy! my wife! you that have made me
+man!  I called you a coward.  I remember it.  I was the coward--I the
+wretched vain fool!  Darling!  I am going to leave you now.  You are
+brave, and you will bear it.  Listen: in two days, or three, I may be
+back--back for good, if you will accept me.  Promise me to go to bed
+quietly.  Kiss the child for me, and tell him his father has seen him.
+He will learn to speak soon.  Will he soon speak, Lucy?"
+
+Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only clutch one arm of
+his with both her hands.
+
+"Going?" she presently gasped.
+
+"For two or three days.  No more--I hope."
+
+"To-night?"
+
+"Yes.  Now."
+
+"Going now? my husband!" her faculties abandoned her.
+
+"You will be brave, my Lucy!"
+
+"Richard! my darling husband!  Going?  What is it takes you from me?"
+But questioning no further, she fell on her knees, and cried piteously to
+him to stay--not to leave them.  Then she dragged him to the little
+sleeper, and urged him to pray by his side, and he did, but rose abruptly
+from his prayer when he had muttered a few broken words--she praying on
+with tight-strung nerves, in the faith that what she said to the
+interceding Mother above would be stronger than human hands on him.  Nor
+could he go while she knelt there.
+
+And he wavered.  He had not reckoned on her terrible suffering.  She came
+to him, quiet.  "I knew you would remain."  And taking his hand,
+innocently fondling it: "Am I so changed from her he loved?  You will not
+leave me, dear?"  But dread returned, and the words quavered as she spoke
+them.
+
+He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood.  She drew
+his hand to her heart, and strained it there under one breast.  "Come:
+lie on my heart," she murmured with a smile of holy sweetness.
+
+He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning the powers of hell,
+kissed her suddenly, cried the words of parting, and hurried to the door.
+It was over in an instant.  She cried out his name, clinging to him
+wildly, and was adjured to be brave, for he would be dishonoured if he
+did not go.  Then she was shaken off.
+
+Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child,
+which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any answer
+to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.  There she
+saw Lucy, the child in her lap, sitting on the floor senseless:--she had
+taken it from its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as her
+strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.
+
+"Oh my! oh my!" Mrs. Berry moaned, "and I just now thinkin' they was so
+happy!"
+
+Warming and caressing the poor infant, she managed by degrees to revive
+Lucy, and heard what had brought her to that situation.
+
+"Go to his father," said Mrs. Berry.  "Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O!  Go, my
+love, and every horse in Raynham shall be out after 'm.  This is what men
+brings us to!  Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah!  Or you take blessed baby, and
+I'll go."
+
+The baronet himself knocked at the door.  "What is this?" he said.  "I
+heard a noise and a step descend."
+
+"It's Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from his wife and
+babe!  Rum-te-um-te-iddledy--Oh, my goodness! what sorrow's come on us!"
+and Mrs. Berry wept, and sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently, and
+Lucy, sobbing, took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips
+and tears dropping over him.  And if the Scientific Humanist to the day
+of his death forgets the sight of those two poor true women jigging on
+their wretched hearts to calm the child, he must have very little of the
+human in him.
+
+There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+
+"His ordeal is over.  I have just come from his room and seen him bear
+the worst that could be.  Return at once--he has asked for you.  I can
+hardly write intelligibly, but I will tell you what we know.
+
+"Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his father heard from
+Ralph Morton.  Richard had fought a duel in France with Lord Mountfalcon,
+and was lying wounded at a hamlet on the coast.  His father started
+immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in company with his aunt
+and his child.  The wound was not dangerous.  He was shot in the side
+somewhere, but the ball injured no vital part.  We thought all would be
+well.  Oh! how sick I am of theories, and Systems, and the pretensions of
+men!  There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still
+unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of.  I could hardly bear the
+sight of his composure.  I shall hate the name of Science till the day I
+die.  Give me nothing but commonplace unpretending people!
+
+"They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely, where we still
+remain, and the people try as much as they can do to compensate for our
+discomforts by their kindness.  The French poor people are very
+considerate where they see suffering.  I will say that for them.  The
+doctors had not allowed his poor Lucy to go near him.  She sat outside
+his door, and none of us dared disturb her.  That was a sight for
+Science.  His father and myself, and Mrs. Berry, were the only ones
+permitted to wait on him, and whenever we came out, there she sat, not
+speaking a word--for she had been told it would endanger his life--but
+she looked such awful eagerness.  She had the sort of eye I fancy mad
+persons have.  I was sure her reason was going.  We did everything we
+could think of to comfort her.  A bed was made up for her and her meals
+were brought to her there.  Of course there was no getting her to eat.
+What do you suppose his alarm was fixed on?  He absolutely said to me--
+but I have not patience to repeat his words.  He thought her to blame for
+not commanding herself for the sake of her maternal duties.  He had
+absolutely an idea of insisting that she should make an effort to suckle
+the child.  I shall love that Mrs. Berry to the end of my days.  I really
+believe she has twice the sense of any of us--Science and all.  She asked
+him plainly if he wished to poison the child, and then he gave way, but
+with a bad grace.
+
+"Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him.  I remember that you said Richard
+had done wrong.  Yes; well, that may be.  But his father eclipsed his
+wrong in a greater wrong--a crime, or quite as bad; for if he deceived
+himself in the belief that he was acting righteously in separating
+husband and wife, and exposing his son as he did, I can only say that
+there are some who are worse than people who deliberately commit crimes.
+No doubt Science will benefit by it.  They kill little animals for the
+sake of Science.
+
+"We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician from Dieppe, a
+very skilful man.  It was he who told us where the real danger lay.  We
+thought all would be well.  A week had passed, and no fever supervened.
+We told Richard that his wife was coming to him, and he could bear to
+hear it.  I went to her and began to circumlocute, thinking she listened
+--she had the same eager look.  When I told her she might go in with me
+to see her dear husband, her features did not change.  M. Despres, who
+held her pulse at the time, told me, in a whisper, it was cerebral fever
+--brain fever coming on.  We have talked of her since.  I noticed that
+though she did not seem to understand me, her bosom heaved, and she
+appeared to be trying to repress it, and choke something.  I am sure now,
+from what I know of her character, that she--even in the approaches of
+delirium--was preventing herself from crying out.  Her last hold of
+reason was a thought for Richard.  It was against a creature like this
+that we plotted!  I have the comfort of knowing that I did my share in
+helping to destroy her.  Had she seen her husband a day or two before--
+but no! there was a new System to interdict that!  Or had she not so
+violently controlled her nature as she did, I believe she might have been
+saved.
+
+"He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb.  Will you
+believe that when he saw his son's wife--poor victim! lying delirious, he
+could not even then see his error.  You said he wished to take Providence
+out of God's hands.  His mad self-deceit would not leave him.  I am
+positive, that while he was standing over her, he was blaming her for not
+having considered the child.  Indeed he made a remark to me that it was
+unfortunate 'disastrous,' I think he said--that the child should have to
+be fed by hand.  I dare say it is.  All I pray is that this young child
+may be saved from him.  I cannot bear to see him look on it.  He does not
+spare himself bodily fatigue--but what is that? that is the vulgarest
+form of love.  I know what you will say.  You will say I have lost all
+charity, and I have.  But I should not feel so, Austin, if I could be
+quite sure that he is an altered man even now the blow has struck him.
+He is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is evident, but I
+have doubts.  He heard her while she was senseless call him cruel and
+harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and I saw then his mouth contract
+as if he had been touched.  Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be
+clearer, but what he has done cannot be undone.  I do not imagine he will
+abuse women any more.  The doctor called her a 'forte et belle jeune
+femme:' and he said she was as noble a soul as ever God moulded clay
+upon.  A noble soul 'forte et belle!'  She lies upstairs.  If he can look
+on her and not see his sin, I almost fear God will never enlighten him."
+
+She died five days after she had been removed.  The shock had utterly
+deranged her.  I was with her.  She died very quietly, breathing her last
+breath without pain--asking for no one--a death I should like to die.
+
+"Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud.  She screamed that she was
+'drowning in fire,' and that her husband would not come to her to save
+her.  We deadened the sound as much as we could, but it was impossible to
+prevent Richard from hearing.  He knew her voice, and it produced an
+effect like fever on him.  Whenever she called he answered.  You could
+not hear them without weeping.  Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with
+him, and his father moved from one to the other.
+
+"But the trial for us came when she was gone.  How to communicate it to
+Richard--or whether to do so at all!  His father consulted with us.  We
+were quite decided that it would be madness to breathe it while he was in
+that state.  I can admit now--as things have turned out--we were wrong.
+His father left us--I believe he spent the time in prayer--and then
+leaning on me, he went to Richard, and said in so many words, that his
+Lucy was no more.  I thought it must kill him.  He listened, and smiled.
+I never saw a smile so sweet and so sad.  He said he had seen her die, as
+if he had passed through his suffering a long time ago.  He shut his
+eyes.  I could see by the motion of his eyeballs up that he was straining
+his sight to some inner heaven.--I cannot go on.
+
+"I think Richard is safe.  Had we postponed the tidings, till he came to
+his clear senses, it must have killed him.  His father was right for
+once, then.  But if he has saved his son's body, he has given the death-
+blow to his heart.  Richard will never be what he promised.
+
+"A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the quarrel.  I
+have had an interview with Lord M. this morning.  I cannot say I think
+him exactly to blame: Richard forced him to fight.  At least I do not
+select him the foremost for blame.  He was deeply and sincerely affected
+by the calamity he has caused.  Alas! he was only an instrument.  Your
+poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks strange things of her daughter's
+death.  She is only happy in drudging.  Dr. Bairam says we must under any
+circumstances keep her employed.  Whilst she is doing something, she can
+chat freely, but the moment her hands are not occupied she gives me an
+idea that she is going into a fit.
+
+"We expect the dear child's uncle to-day.  Mr. Thompson is here.  I have
+taken him upstairs to look at her.  That poor young man has a true heart.
+
+"Come at once.  You will not be in time to see her.  She will lie at
+Raynham.  If you could you would see an angel.  He sits by her side for
+hours.  I can give you no description of her beauty.
+
+"You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want you, for your
+presence will make me more charitable than I find it possible to be.
+Have you noticed the expression in the eyes of blind men?  That is just
+how Richard looks, as he lies there silent in his bed--striving to image
+her on his brain."
+
+THE END
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit
+Feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being
+Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?"
+Gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little
+Hermits enamoured of wind and rain
+Heroine, in common with the hero, has her ambition to be of use
+I rather like to hear a woman swear.  It embellishes her!
+I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care
+Intensely communicative, but inarticulate
+Just bad inquirin' too close among men
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns
+South-western Island has few attractions to other than invalids
+Take 'em somethin' like Providence--as they come
+Task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women
+This was a totally different case from the antecedent ones
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Ordeal Richard Feverel, v6
+by George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, RICHARD FEVEREL, COMPLETE:
+
+A woman who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization
+A style of affable omnipotence about the wise youth
+A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind wit
+A young philosopher's an old fool!
+After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship
+Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon
+Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes
+An edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer
+And so Farewell my young Ambition! and with it farewell all true
+And to these instructions he gave an aim: "First be virtuous"
+As when nations are secretly preparing for war
+Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beauty
+Cold charity to all
+Come prepared to be not very well satisfied with anything
+Complacent languor of the wise youth
+Feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her well-being
+Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?"
+Gentleman who does so much 'cause he says so little
+Habit had legalized his union with her
+Hermits enamoured of wind and rain
+Hero embarked in the redemption of an erring beautiful woman
+Heroine, in common with the hero, has her ambition to be of use
+His equanimity was fictitious
+His fancy performed miraculous feats
+How many instruments cannot clever women play upon
+Huntress with few scruples and the game unguarded
+I rather like to hear a woman swear.  It embellishes her!
+I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care
+I ain't a speeder of matrimony
+I cannot get on with Gibbon
+In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood.  We go to wreck!
+In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: "Between Simple Boyhood..."
+Intensely communicative, but inarticulate
+It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach
+It is no use trying to conceal anything from him
+It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic Age
+January was watering and freezing old earth by turns
+Just bad inquirin' too close among men
+Laying of ghosts is a public duty
+Minutes taken up by the grey puffs from their mouths
+No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards
+On the threshold of Puberty, there is one Unselfish Hour
+Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder
+Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher
+Rogue on the tremble of detection
+Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual
+Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on
+Serene presumption
+She can make puddens and pies
+South-western Island has few attractions to other than invalids
+Take 'em somethin' like Providence--as they come
+Task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive to good women
+The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing
+The world is wise in its way
+The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable
+The born preacher we feel instinctively to be our foe
+There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness
+They believe that the angels have been busy about them
+This was a totally different case from the antecedent ones
+Those days of intellectual coxcombry
+Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity
+To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman
+Troublesome appendages of success
+Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted
+Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is answered
+Wise in not seeking to be too wise
+Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man
+Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters
+Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh
+You've got no friend but your bed
+Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext Ordeal Richard Feverel, complete
+by George Meredith
+
diff --git a/old/gm18v10.zip b/old/gm18v10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d97350
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/gm18v10.zip