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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/4451.txt b/4451.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0dd7993 --- /dev/null +++ b/4451.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2796 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext Adventures of Harry Richmond, by Meredith, v8 +#57 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. 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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 David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND + +By George Meredith + + +BOOK 8. +LII. STRANGE REVELATIONS, AND MY GRANDFATHER HAS HIS LAST OUTBURST +LIII. THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING +LIV. MY RETURN TO ENGLAND +LV. I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT +LVI. CONCLUSION + + + +CHAPTER LII + +STRANGE REVELATIONS, AND MY GRANDFATHER HAS HIS LAST OUTBURST + +My father and I stood at different windows, observing the unconcerned +people below. + +'Did you scheme to bring Prince Hermann over here as well?' I asked him. + +He replied laughing: 'I really am not the wonderful wizard you think me, +Richie. I left Prince Ernest's address as mine with Waddy in case the +Frau Feld-Marschall should take it into her head to come. Further than +that you must question Providence, which I humbly thank for its unfailing +support, down to unexpected trifles. Only this--to you and to all of +them: nothing bends me. I will not be robbed of the fruit of a +lifetime.' + +'Supposing I refuse?' + +'You refuse, Richie, to restore the princess her character and the prince +his serenity of mind at their urgent supplication? I am utterly unable +to suppose it. You are married in the papers this morning. I grieve to +say that the position of Prince Hermann is supremely ridiculous. I am +bound to add he is a bold boy. It requires courage in one of the +pretenders to the hand of the princess to undertake the office of +intercessor, for he must know--the man must know in his heart that he is +doing her no kindness. He does not appeal to me, you see. I have shown +that my arrangements are unalterable. What he will make of your grandad! +. . . Why on earth he should have been sent to--of all men in the +world--your grandad, Richie!' + +I was invited to sympathetic smiles of shrewd amusement. + +He caught sight of friends, and threw up the window, saluting them. + +The squire returned with my aunt Dorothy and Janet to behold the detested +man communicating with the outer world from his own rooms. He shouted +unceremoniously, 'Shut that window!' and it was easy to see that he had +come back heavily armed for the offensive. 'Here, Mr. Richmond, I don't +want all men to know you're in my apartments.' + +'I forgot, sir, temporarily,' said my father, 'I had vacated the rooms +for your convenience--be assured.' + +An explanation on the subject of the rooms ensued between the old man and +the ladies;--it did not improve his temper. + +His sense of breeding, nevertheless, forced him to remark, 'I can't thank +you, sir, for putting me under an obligation I should never have incurred +myself.' + +'Oh, I was happy to be of use to the ladies, Mr. Beltham, and require no +small coin of exchange,' my father responded with the flourish of a +pacifying hand. 'I have just heard from a posse of friends that the +marriage is signalled in this morning's papers--numberless +congratulations, I need not observe.' + +'No, don't,' said the squire. 'Nobody'll understand them here, and I +needn't ask you to sit down, because I don't want you to stop. I'll soon +have done now; the game's played. Here, Harry, quick; has all that money +been spent--no offence to you, but as a matter of business?' + +'Not all, sir,' I was able to say. + +'Half?' + +'Yes, I think so.' + +'Three parts?' + +'It may be.' + +'And liabilities besides?' + +'There are some.' + +'You're not a liar. That'll do for you.' + +He turned to my aunt: her eyes had shut. + +'Dorothy, you've sold out twenty-five thousand pounds' worth of stock. +You're a truthful woman, as I said, and so I won't treat you like a +witness in a box. You gave it to Harry to help him out of his scrape. +Why, short of staring lunacy, did you pass it through the hands of this +man? He sweated his thousands out of it at the start. Why did you make +a secret of it to make the man think his nonsense?--Ma'am, behave like a +lady and my daughter,' he cried, fronting her, for the sudden and blunt +attack had slackened her nerves; she moved as though to escape, and was +bewildered. I stood overwhelmed. No wonder she had attempted to break +up the scene. + +'Tell me your object, Dorothy Beltham, in passing the money through the +hands of this man? Were you for helping him to be a man of his word? +Help the boy--that I understand. However, you were mistress of your +money! I've no right to complain, if you will go spending a fortune to +whitewash the blackamoor! Well, it's your own, you'll say. So it is: +so 's your character!' + +The egregious mildness of these interjections could not long be +preserved. + +'You deceived me, ma'am. You wouldn't build school-houses, you couldn't +subscribe to Charities, you acted parsimony, to pamper a scamp and his +young scholar! You went to London--you did it in cool blood; you went to +your stockbroker, and from the stockbroker to the Bank, and you sold out +stock to fling away this big sum. I went to the Bank on business, and +the books were turned over for my name, and there at "Beltham" I saw +quite by chance the cross of the pen, and I saw your folly, ma'am; I saw +it all in a shot. I went to the Bank on my own business, mind that. Ha! +you know me by this time; I loathe spying; the thing jumped out of the +book; I couldn't help seeing. Now I don't reckon how many positive fools +go to make one superlative humbug; you're one of the lot, and I've learnt +it.' + +My father airily begged leave to say: 'As to positive and superlative, +Mr. Beltham, the three degrees of comparison are no longer of service +except to the trader. I do not consider them to exist for ladies. Your +positive is always particularly open to dispute, and I venture to assert +I cap you your superlative ten times over.' + +He talked the stuff for a diversion, presenting in the midst of us an +incongruous image of smiles that filled me with I knew not what feelings +of angry alienation, until I was somewhat appeased by the idea that he +had not apprehended the nature of the words just spoken. + +It seemed incredible, yet it was true; it was proved to be so to me by +his pricking his ears and his attentive look at the mention of the word +prepossessing him in relation to the money: Government. + +The squire said something of Government to my aunt Dorothy, with +sarcastical emphasis. + +As the observation was unnecessary, and was wantonly thrown in by him, +she seized on it to escape from her compromising silence: 'I know nothing +of Government or its ways.' + +She murmured further, and looked at Janet, who came to her aid, saying: +'Grandada, we've had enough talk of money, money! All is done that you +wanted done. Stocks, Shares, Banks--we've gone through them all. +Please, finish! Please, do. You have only to state what you have heard +from Prince Hermann.' + +Janet gazed in the direction of my father, carefully avoiding my eyes, +but evidently anxious to shield my persecuted aunty. + +'Speaking of Stocks and Shares, Miss Ilchester,' said my father, 'I +myself would as soon think of walking into a field of scythe-blades in +full activity as of dabbling in them. One of the few instances I +remember of our Jorian stooping to a pun, is upon the contango: ingenious +truly, but objectionable, because a pun. I shall not be guilty of +repeating it. "The stockmarket is the national snapdragon bowl," he +says, and is very amusing upon the Jews; whether quite fairly, Mr. +Beltham knows better than I, on my honour.' + +He appealed lightly to the squire, for thus he danced on the crater's +brink, and had for answer, + +'You're a cool scoundrel, Richmond.' + +'I choose to respect you, rather in spite of yourself, I fear, sir,' said +my father, bracing up. + +'Did you hear my conversation with my daughter?' + +'I heard, if I may say so, the lion taking his share of it.' + +'All roaring to you, was it?' + +'Mr. Beltham, we have our little peculiarities; I am accustomed to think +of a steam-vent when I hear you indulging in a sentence of unusual +length, and I hope it is for our good, as I thoroughly believe it is for +yours, that you should deliver yourself freely.' + +'So you tell me; like a stage lacquey!' muttered the old man, with +surprising art in caricaturing a weakness in my father's bearing, of +which I was cruelly conscious, though his enunciation was flowing. He +lost his naturalness through forcing for ease in the teeth of insult. + +'Grandada, aunty and I will leave you,' said Janet, waxing importunate. + +'When I've done,' said he, facing his victim savagely. 'The fellow +pretends he didn't understand. She's here to corroborate. Richmond, +there, my daughter, Dorothy Beltham, there's the last of your fools and +dupes. She's a truthful woman, I'll own, and she'll contradict me if +what I say is not the fact. That twenty-five thousand from "Government" +came out of her estate.' + +'Out of--' + +'Out of be damned, sir! She's the person who paid it.' + +'If the "damns" have set up, you may as well let the ladies go,' said I. + +He snapped at me like a rabid dog in career. + +'She's the person--one of your petticoat "Government"--who paid--do you +hear me, Richmond?--the money to help you to keep your word: to help you +to give your Balls and dinners too. She--I won't say she told you, and +you knew it--she paid it. She sent it through her Mr. Bannerbridge. Do +you understand now? You had it from her. My God! look at the fellow!' + +A dreadful gape of stupefaction had usurped the smiles on my father's +countenance; his eyes rolled over, he tried to articulate, and was indeed +a spectacle for an enemy. His convulsed frame rocked the syllables, as +with a groan, unpleasant to hear, he called on my aunt Dorothy by +successive stammering apostrophes to explain, spreading his hands wide. +He called out her Christian name. Her face was bloodless. + +'Address my daughter respectfully, sir, will you! I won't have your +infernal familiarities!' roared the squire. + +'He is my brother-in-law,' said Dorothy, reposing on the courage of her +blood, now that the worst had been spoken. 'Forgive me, Mr. Richmond, +for having secretly induced you to accept the loan from me.' + +'Loan!' interjected the squire. 'They fell upon it like a pair of kites. +You'll find the last ghost of a bone of your loan in a bill, and well +picked. They've been doing their bills: I've heard that.' + +My father touched the points of his fingers on his forehead, straining to +think, too theatrically, but in hard earnest, I believe. He seemed to be +rising on tiptoe. + +'Oh, madam! Dear lady! my friend! Dorothy, my sister! Better a +thousand times that I had married, though I shrank from a heartless +union! This money?--it is not--' + +The old man broke in: 'Are you going to be a damned low vulgar comedian +and tale of a trumpet up to the end, you Richmond? Don't think you'll +gain anything by standing there as if you were jumping your trunk from a +shark. Come, sir, you're in a gentleman's rooms; don't pitch your voice +like a young jackanapes blowing into a horn. Your gasps and your spasms, +and howl of a yawning brute! Keep your menagerie performances for your +pantomime audiences. What are you meaning? Do you pretend you're +astonished? She's not the first fool of a woman whose money you've +devoured, with your "Madam," and "My dear" and mouthing and elbowing your +comedy tricks; your gabble of "Government" protection, and scandalous +advertisements of the by-blow of a star-coated rapscallion. If you've a +recollection of the man in you, show your back, and be off, say you've +fought against odds--I don't doubt you have, counting the constables--and +own you're a villain: plead guilty, and be off and be silent, and do no +more harm. Is it "Government" still?' + +My aunt Dorothy had come round to me. She clutched my arm to restrain me +from speaking, whispering: + +'Harry, you can't save him. Think of your own head.' She made me +irresolute, and I was too late to check my father from falling into the +trap. + +'Oh! Mr. Beltham,' he said, 'you are hard, sir. I put it to you: had +you been in receipt of a secret subsidy from Government for a long course +of years--' + +'How long?' the squire interrupted. + +Prompt though he would have been to dismiss the hateful person, he was +not, one could see, displeased to use the whip upon so exciteable and +responsive a frame. He seemed to me to be basely guilty of leading his +victim on to expose himself further. + +'There's no necessity for "how long,"' I said. + +The old man kept the question on his face. + +My father reflected. + +'I have to hit my memory, I am shattered, sir. I say, you would be +justified, amply justified--' + +'How long?' was reiterated. + +'I can at least date it from the period of my marriage.' + +'From the date when your scoundrelism first touches my family, that's to +say! So "Government" agreed to give you a stipend to support your wife!' + +'Mr. Beltham, I breathe with difficulty. It was at that period, on the +death of a nobleman interested in restraining me--I was his debtor for +kindnesses . . . my head is whirling! I say, at that period, upon the +recommendation of friends of high standing, I began to agitate for the +restitution of my rights. From infancy----' + +'To the deuce, your infancy! I know too much about your age. Just hark, +you Richmond! none of your "I was a child" to provoke compassion from +women. I mean to knock you down and make you incapable of hurting these +poor foreign people you trapped. They defy you, and I'll do my best to +draw your teeth. Now for the annuity. You want one to believe 'you +thought you frightened "Government," eh?' + +'Annual proof was afforded me, sir.' + +'Oh! annual! through Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, deceased!' + +Janet stepped up to my aunt Dorothy to persuade her to leave the room, +but she declined, and hung by me, to keep me out of danger, as she hoped, +and she prompted me with a guarding nervous squeeze of her hand on my arm +to answer temperately when I was questioned: + +'Harry, do you suspect Government paid that annuity?' + +'Not now, certainly.' + +'Tell the man who 'tis you suspect.' + +My aunt Dorothy said: 'Harry is not bound to mention his suspicions.' + +'Tell him yourself, then.' + +'Does it matter--?' + +'Yes, it matters. I'll break every plank he walks on, and strip him +stark till he flops down shivering into his slough--a convicted common +swindler, with his dinners and Balls and his private bands! Richmond, +you killed one of my daughters; t' other fed you, through her agent, this +Mr. Charles Adolphus Bannerbridge, from about the date of your snaring my +poor girl and carrying her off behind your postillions--your trotting +undertakers! and the hours of her life reckoned in milestones. She's +here to contradict me, if she can. Dorothy Beltham was your "Government" +that paid the annuity.' + +I took Dorothy Beltham into my arms. She was trembling excessively, yet +found time to say, 'Bear up, dearest; keep still.' All I thought and +felt foundered in tears. + +For a while I heard little distinctly of the tremendous tirade which the +vindictive old man, rendered thrice venomous by the immobility of the +petrified large figure opposed to him, poured forth. My poor father did +not speak because he could not; his arms dropped; and such was the +torrent of attack, with its free play of thunder and lightning in the +form of oaths, epithets, short and sharp comparisons, bitter home thrusts +and most vehement imprecatory denunciations, that our protesting voices +quailed. Janet plucked at my aunt Dorothy's dress to bear her away. + +'I can't leave my father,' I said. + +'Nor I you, dear,' said the tender woman; and so we remained to be +scourged by this tongue of incarnate rage. + +'You pensioner of a silly country spinster!' sounded like a return to +mildness. My father's chest heaved up. + +I took advantage of the lull to make myself heard: I did but heap fuel on +fire, though the old man's splenetic impetus had partly abated. + +'You Richmond! do you hear him? he swears he's your son, and asks to be +tied to the stake beside you. Disown him, and I'll pay you money and +thank you. I'll thank my God for anything short of your foul blood in +the family. You married the boy's mother to craze and kill her, and +guttle her property. You waited for the boy to come of age to swallow +what was settled on him. You wait for me to lie in my coffin to pounce +on the strongbox you think me the fool to toss to a young donkey ready to +ruin all his belongings for you! For nine-and-twenty years you've sucked +the veins of my family, and struck through my house like a rotting- +disease. Nine-and-twenty years ago you gave a singing-lesson in my +house: the pest has been in it ever since! You breed vermin in the brain +to think of you! Your wife, your son, your dupes, every soul that +touches you, mildews from a blight! You were born of ropery, and you go +at it straight, like a webfoot to water. What's your boast?--your +mother's disgrace! You shame your mother. Your whole life's a ballad o' +bastardy. You cry up the woman's infamy to hook at a father. You swell +and strut on her pickings. You're a cock forced from the smoke of the +dunghill! You shame your mother, damned adventurer! You train your boy +for a swindler after your own pattern; you twirl him in your curst +harlequinade to a damnation as sure as your own. The day you crossed my +threshold the devils danced on their flooring. I've never seen the sun +shine fair on me after it. With your guitar under the windows, of +moonlight nights! your Spanish fopperies and trickeries! your French +phrases and toeings! I was touched by a leper. You set your traps for +both my girls: you caught the brown one first, did you, and flung her +second for t' other, and drove a tandem of 'em to live the spangled hog +you are; and down went the mother of the boy to the place she liked +better, and my other girl here--the one you cheated for her salvation-- +you tried to cajole her from home and me, to send her the same way down. +She stuck to decency. Good Lord! you threatened to hang yourself, +guitar and all. But her purse served your turn. For why? You 're a +leech. I speak before ladies or I'd rip your town-life to shreds. Your +cause! your romantic history! your fine figure! every inch of you 's +notched with villany! You fasten on every moneyed woman that comes in +your way. You've outdone Herod in murdering the innocents, for he didn't +feed on 'em, and they've made you fat. One thing I'll say of you: you +look the beastly thing you set yourself up for. The kindest blow to you +'s to call you impostor.' + +He paused, but his inordinate passion of speech was unsated: his white +lips hung loose for another eruption. + +I broke from my aunt Dorothy to cross over to my father, saying on the +way: 'We 've heard enough, sir. You forget the cardinal point of +invective, which is, not to create sympathy for the person you assail.' + +'Oh! you come in with your infernal fine language, do you!' the old man +thundered at me. 'I 'll just tell you at once, young fellow--' + +My aunt Dorothy supplicated his attention. 'One error I must correct.' +Her voice issued from a contracted throat, and was painfully thin and +straining, as though the will to speak did violence to her weaker nature. +'My sister loved Mr. Richmond. It was to save her life, because I +believed she loved him much and would have died, that Mr. Richmond--in +pity--offered her his hand, at my wish': she bent her head: 'at my cost. +It was done for me. I wished it; he obeyed me. No blame--' her dear +mouth faltered. 'I am to be accused, if anybody.' + +She added more firmly: 'My money would have been his. I hoped to spare +his feelings, I beg his forgiveness now, by devoting some of it, unknown +to him, to assist him. That was chiefly to please myself, I see, and I +am punished.' + +'Well, ma'am,' said the squire, calm at white heat; 'a fool's confession +ought to be heard out to the end. What about the twenty-five thousand?' + +'I hoped to help my Harry.' + +'Why didn't you do it openly?' + +She breathed audible long breaths before she could summon courage to say: +'His father was going to make an irreparable sacrifice. I feared that if +he knew this money came from me he would reject it, and persist.' + +Had she disliked the idea of my father's marrying? + +The old man pounced on the word sacrifice. 'What sacrifice, ma'am? +What's the sacrifice?' + +I perceived that she could not without anguish, and perhaps peril of a +further exposure, bring herself to speak, and explained: 'It relates to +my having tried to persuade my father to marry a very wealthy lady, so +that he might produce the money on the day appointed. Rail at me, sir, +as much as you like. If you can't understand the circumstances without a +chapter of statements, I'm sorry for you. A great deal is due to you, I +know; but I can't pay a jot of it while you go on rating my father like a +madman.' + +'Harry!' either my aunt or Janet breathed a warning. + +I replied that I was past mincing phrases. The folly of giving the +tongue an airing was upon me: I was in fact invited to continue, and +animated to do it thoroughly, by the old man's expression of face, which +was that of one who says, 'I give you rope,' and I dealt him a liberal +amount of stock irony not worth repeating; things that any cultivated man +in anger can drill and sting the Boeotian with, under the delusion that +he has not lost a particle of his self-command because of his coolness. +I spoke very deliberately, and therefore supposed that the words of +composure were those of prudent sense. The error was manifest. The +women saw it. One who has indulged his soul in invective will not, if he +has power in his hand, be robbed of his climax with impunity by a cool +response that seems to trifle, and scourges. + +I wound up by thanking my father for his devotion to me: I deemed it, I +said, excessive and mistaken in the recent instance, but it was for me. + +Upon this he awoke from his dreamy-looking stupefaction. + +'Richie does me justice. He is my dear boy. He loves me: I love him. +None can cheat us of that. He loves his wreck of a father. You have +struck me to your feet, Mr. Beltham.' + +'I don't want to see you there, sir; I want to see you go, and not stand +rapping your breast-bone, sounding like a burst drum, as you are,' +retorted the unappeasable old man. + +I begged him in exasperation to keep his similes to himself. + +Janet and my aunt Dorothy raised their voices. + +My father said: 'I am broken.' + +He put out a swimming hand that trembled when it rested, like that of an +aged man grasping a staff. I feared for a moment he was acting, he spoke +so like himself, miserable though he appeared: but it was his well-known +native old style in a state of decrepitude. + +'I am broken,' he repeated. 'I am like the ancient figure of mortality +entering the mouth of the tomb on a sepulchral monument, somewhere, by a +celebrated sculptor: I have seen it: I forget the city. I shall +presently forget names of men. It is not your abuse, Mr. Beltham. I +should have bowed my head to it till the storm passed. Your facts . . +. Oh! Miss Beltham, this last privilege to call you dearest of human +beings! my benefactress! my blessing! Do not scorn me, madam.' + +'I never did; I never will; I pitied you,' she cried, sobbing. + +The squire stamped his foot. + +'Madam,' my father bowed gently. 'I was under heaven's special +protection--I thought so. I feel I have been robbed--I have not deserved +it! Oh! madam, no: it was your generosity that I did not deserve. One +of the angels of heaven persuaded me to trust in it. I did not know. . +. . Adieu, madam. May I be worthy to meet you!--Ay, Mr. Beltham, your +facts have committed the death-wound. You have taken the staff out of my +hand: you have extinguished the light. I have existed--ay, a pensioner, +unknowingly, on this dear lady's charity; to her I say no more. To you, +sir, by all that is most sacred to a man-by the ashes of my mother! by +the prospects of my boy! I swear the annuity was in my belief a tangible +token that my claims to consideration were in the highest sources +acknowledged to be just. I cannot speak! One word to you, Mr. Beltham: +put me aside, I am nothing:--Harry Richmond!--his fortunes are not lost; +he has a future! I entreat you--he is your grandson--give him your +support; go this instant to the prince--no! you will not deny your +countenance to Harry Richmond: let him abjure my name; let me be nameless +in his house. And I promise you I shall be unheard of both in +Christendom and Heathendom: I have no heart except for my boy's nuptials +with the princess: this one thing, to see him the husband of the fairest +and noblest lady upon earth, with all the life remaining in me I pray +for! I have won it for him. I have a moderate ability, immense +devotion. I declare to you, sir, I have lived, actually subsisted, on +this hope! and I have directed my efforts incessantly, sleeplessly, to +fortify it. I die to do it! I implore you, sir, go to the prince. If I' +(he said this touchingly) 'if I am any further in anybody's way, it is +only as a fallen tree.' But his inveterate fancifulness led him to add: +'And that may bridge a cataract.' + +My grandfather had been clearing his throat two or three times. + +'I 'm ready to finish and get rid of you, Richmond.' + +My father bowed. + +'I am gone, sir. I feel I am all but tongue-tied. Think that it is +Harry who petitions you to ensure his happiness. To-day I guarantee-it.' + +The old man turned an inquiring eyebrow upon me. Janet laid her hand on +him. He dismissed the feline instinct to prolong our torture, and +delivered himself briskly. + +'Richmond, your last little bit of villany 's broken in the egg. I +separate the boy from you: he's not your accomplice there, I'm glad to +know. You witched the lady over to pounce on her like a fowler, you +threatened her father with a scandal, if he thought proper to force the +trap; swore you 'd toss her to be plucked by the gossips, eh? She's free +of you! You got your English and your Germans here to point their bills, +and stretch their necks, and hiss, if this gentleman--and your +newspapers!--if he didn't give up to you like a funky traveller to a +highwayman. I remember a tale of a clumsy Turpin, who shot himself when +he was drawing the pistol out of his holsters to frighten the money-bag +out of a market farmer. You've done about the same, you Richmond; and, +of all the damned poor speeches I ever heard from a convicted felon, +yours is the worst--a sheared sheep'd ha' done it more respectably, grant +the beast a tongue! The lady is free of you, I tell you. Harry has to +thank you for that kindness. She--what is it, Janet? Never mind, I've +got the story--she didn't want to marry; but this prince, who called on +me just now, happened to be her father's nominee, and he heard of your +scoundrelism, and he behaved like a man and a gentleman, and offered +himself, none too early nor too late, as it turns out; and the princess, +like a good girl, has made amends to her father by accepting him. I've +the word of this Prince Hermann for it. Now you can look upon a game of +stale-mate. If I had gone to the prince, it wouldn't have been to back +your play; but, if you hadn't been guilty of the tricks of a blackguard +past praying for, this princess would never have been obliged to marry a +man to protect her father and herself. They sent him here to stop any +misunderstanding. He speaks good English, so that's certain. Your lies +will be contradicted, every one of 'em, seriatim, in to-morrow's +newspapers, setting the real man'in place of the wrong one; and you 'll +draw no profit from them in your fashionable world, where you 've been +grinning lately, like a blackamoor's head on a conjuror's plate--the +devil alone able to account for the body and joinings. Now you can be +off.' + +I went up to my father. His plight was more desperate than mine, for I +had resembled the condemned before the firing-party, to whom the expected +bullet brings a merely physical shock. He, poor man, heard his sentence, +which is the heart's pang of death; and how fondly and rootedly he had +clung to the idea of my marriage with the princess was shown in his +extinction after this blow. + +My grandfather chose the moment as a fitting one to ask me for the last +time to take my side. + +I replied, without offence in the tones of my voice, that I thought my +father need not lose me into the bargain, after what he had suffered that +day. + +He just as quietly rejoined with a recommendation to me to divorce myself +for good and all from a scoundrel. + +I took my father's arm: he was not in a state to move away unsupported. + +My aunt Dorothy stood weeping; Janet was at the window, no friend to +either of us. + +I said to her, 'You have your wish.' + +She shook her head, but did not look back. + +My grandfather watched me, step by step, until I had reached the door. + +'You're going, are you?' he said. 'Then I whistle you off my fingers!' + +An attempt to speak was made by my father in the doorway. He bowed wide +of the company, like a blind man. I led him out. + +Dimness of sight spared me from seeing certain figures, which were at the +toll-bar of the pier, on the way to quit our shores. What I heard was +not of a character to give me faith in the sanity of the companion I had +chosen. He murmured it at first to himself: + +'Waddy shall have her monument!' + +My patience was not proof against the repetition of it aloud to me. Had +I been gentler I might have known that his nature was compelled to look +forward to something, and he discerned nothing in the future, save the +task of raising a memorial to a faithful servant. + + + + +CHAPTER LIII + +THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING + +My grandfather lived eight months after a scene that had afforded him +high gratification at the heaviest cost a plain man can pay for his +pleasures: it killed him. + +My father's supple nature helped him to survive it in apparently +unimpeded health, so that the world might well suppose him unconquerable, +as he meant that it should. But I, who was with him, knew, though he +never talked of his wounds, they had been driven into his heart. He +collapsed in speech, and became what he used to call 'one of the ordinary +nodding men,' forsaken of his swamping initiative. I merely observed +him; I did not invite his confidences, being myself in no mood to give +sympathy or to receive it. I was about as tender in my care of him as a +military escort bound to deliver up a captive alive. + +I left him at Bulsted on my way to London to face the creditors. +Adversity had not lowered the admiration of the captain and his wife for +the magnificent host of those select and lofty entertainments which I was +led by my errand to examine in the skeleton, and with a wonder as big as +theirs, but of another complexion: They hung about him, and perused and +petted him quaintly; it was grotesque; they thought him deeply injured: +by what, by whom, they could not say; but Julia was disappointed in me +for refraining to come out with a sally on his behalf. He had quite +intoxicated their imaginations. Julia told me of the things he did not +do as marvellingly as of the things he did or had done; the charm, it +seemed, was to find herself familiar with him to the extent of all but +nursing him and making him belong to her. Pilgrims coming upon the +source of the mysteriously-abounding river, hardly revere it the less +because they love it more when they behold the babbling channels it +issues from; and the sense of possession is the secret, I suppose. Julia +could inform me rapturously that her charge had slept eighteen hours at a +spell. His remarks upon the proposal to fetch a doctor, feeble in +themselves, were delicious to her, because they recalled his old humour +to show his great spirit, and from her and from Captain William in turn I +was condemned to hear how he had said this and that of the doctor, which +in my opinion might have been more concise. 'Really, deuced good +indeed!' Captain William would exclaim. 'Don't you see it, Harry, my +boy? He denies the doctor has a right to cast him out of the world on +account of his having been the official to introduce him, and he'll only +consent to be visited when he happens to be as incapable of resisting as +upon their very first encounter.' + +The doctor and death and marriage, I ventured to remind the captain, had +been riddled in this fashion by the whole army of humourists and their +echoes. + +He and Julia fancied me cold to my father's merits. Fond as they were of +the squire, they declared war against him in private, they criticized +Janet, they thought my aunt Dorothy slightly wrong in making a secret of +her good deed: my father was the victim. Their unabated warmth consoled +me in the bitterest of seasons. He found a home with them at a time when +there would have been a battle at every step. The world soon knew that +my grandfather had cast me off, and with this foundation destroyed, the +entire fabric of the Grand Parade fell to the ground at once. The crash +was heavy. Jorian DeWitt said truly that what a man hates in adversity +is to see 'faces'; meaning that the humanity has gone out of them in +their curious observation of you under misfortune. You see neither +friends nor enemies. You are too sensitive for friends, and are blunted +against enemies. You see but the mask of faces: my father was sheltered +from that. Julia consulted his wishes in everything; she set traps to +catch his whims, and treated them as birds of paradise; she could submit +to have the toppling crumpled figure of a man, Bagenhope, his pensioner +and singular comforter, in her house. The little creature was fetched +out of his haunts in London purposely to soothe my father with +performances on his ancient clarionet, a most querulous plaintive +instrument in his discoursing, almost the length of himself; and she +endured the nightly sound of it in the guest's blue bedroom, heroically +patient, a model to me. Bagenhope drank drams: she allowanced him. He +had known my father's mother, and could talk of her in his cups: his +playing, and his aged tunes, my father said, were a certification to him +that he was at the bottom of the ladder. Why that should afford him +peculiar comfort, none of us could comprehend. 'He was the humble lover +of my mother, Richie,' I heard with some confusion, and that he adored +her memory. The statement was part of an entreaty to me to provide +liberally for Bagenhope's pension before we quitted England. 'I am not +seriously anxious for much else,' said my father. Yet was he fully +conscious of the defeat he had sustained and the catastrophe he had +brought down upon me: his touch of my hand told me that, and his desire +for darkness and sleep. He had nothing to look to, nothing to see +twinkling its radiance for him in the dim distance now; no propitiating +Government, no special Providence. But he never once put on a sorrowful +air to press for pathos, and I thanked him. He was a man endowed to +excite it in the most effective manner, to a degree fearful enough to win +English sympathies despite his un-English faults. He could have drawn +tears in floods, infinite pathetic commiseration, from our grangousier +public, whose taste is to have it as it may be had to the mixture of one- +third of nature in two-thirds of artifice. I believe he was expected to +go about with this beggar's petition for compassion, and it was a +disappointment to the generous, for which they punished him, that he +should have abstained. And moreover his simple quietude was really +touching to true-hearted people. The elements of pathos do not permit of +their being dispensed from a stout smoking bowl. I have to record no +pathetic field-day. My father was never insincere in emotion. + +I spared his friends, chums, associates, excellent men of a kind, the +trial of their attachment by shunning them. His servants I dismissed +personally, from M. Alphonse down to the coachman Jeremy, whose speech to +me was, that he should be happy to serve my father again, or me, if he +should happen to be out of a situation when either of us wanted him, +which at least showed his preference for employment: on the other hand, +Alphonse, embracing the grand extremes of his stereotyped national +oratory, where 'SI JAMAIS,' like the herald Mercury new-mounting, takes +its august flight to set in the splendour of 'ausqu'n LA MORT,' declared +all other service than my father's repugnant, and vowed himself to a +hermitage, remote from condiments. They both meant well, and did but +speak the diverse language of their blood. Mrs. Waddy withdrew a +respited heart to Dipwell; it being, according to her experiences, the +third time that my father had relinquished house and furniture to go into +eclipse on the Continent after blazing over London. She strongly +recommended the Continent for a place of restoration, citing his likeness +to that animal the chameleon, in the readiness with which he forgot +himself among them that knew nothing of him. We quitted Bulsted previous +to the return of the family to Riversley. My grandfather lay at the +island hotel a month, and was brought home desperately ill. Lady Edbury +happened to cross the channel with us. She behaved badly, I thought; +foolishly, my father said. She did as much as obliqueness of vision and +sharpness of feature could help her to do to cut him in the presence of +her party: and he would not take nay. It seemed in very bad taste on his +part; he explained to me off-handedly that he insisted upon the exchange +of a word or two for the single purpose of protecting her from calumny. +By and by it grew more explicable to me how witless she had been to give +gossip a handle in the effort to escape it. She sent for him in Paris, +but he did not pay the visit. + +My grandfather and I never saw one another again. He had news of me from +various quarters, and I of him from one; I was leading a life in marked +contrast from the homely Riversley circle of days: and this likewise was +set in the count of charges against my father. Our Continental +pilgrimage ended in a course of riotousness that he did not participate +in, and was entirely innocent of, but was held accountable for, because +he had been judged a sinner. + +'I am ordered to say,' Janet wrote, scrupulously obeying the order, 'that +if you will leave Paris and come home, and not delay in doing it, your +grandfather will receive you on the same footing as heretofore.' + +As heretofore! in a letter from a young woman supposed to nourish a +softness! + +I could not leave my father in Paris, alone; I dared not bring him to +London. In wrath at what I remembered, I replied that I was willing to +return to Riversley if my father should find a welcome as well. + +Janet sent a few dry lines to summon me over in April, a pleasant month +on heath-lands when the Southwest sweeps them. The squire was dead. I +dropped my father at Bulsted. I could have sworn to the terms of the +Will; Mr. Burgin had little to teach me. Janet was the heiress; three +thousand pounds per annum fell to the lot of Harry Lepel Richmond, to be +paid out of the estate, and pass in reversion to his children, or to +Janet's should the aforesaid Harry die childless. + +I was hard hit, and chagrined, but I was not at all angry, for I knew +what the Will meant. My aunt Dorothy supplied the interlining eagerly to +mollify the seeming cruelty. 'You have only to ask to have it all, +Harry.' The sturdy squire had done his utmost to forward his cherished +wishes after death. My aunt received five-and-twenty thousand pounds, +the sum she had thrown away. 'I promised that no money of mine should go +where the other went,' she said. + +The surprise in store for me was to find how much this rough-worded old +man had been liked by his tenantry, his agents and servants. I spoke of +it to Janet. 'They loved him,' she said. 'No one who ever met him +fairly could help loving him.' They followed him to his grave in a body. +From what I chanced to hear among them, their squire was the man of their +hearts: in short, an Englishman of the kind which is perpetually +perishing out of the land. Janet expected me to be enthusiastic +likewise, or remorseful. She expected sympathy; she read me the long +list of his charities. I was reminded of Julia Bulsted commenting on my +father, with her this he did and that. 'He had plenty,' I said, and +Janet shut her lips. Her coldness was irritating. + +What ground of accusation had she against me? Our situation had become +so delicate that a cold breath sundered us as far as the Poles. I was at +liberty to suspect that now she was the heiress, her mind was simply +obedient to her grandada's wish; but, as I told my aunt Dorothy, I would +not do her that injustice. + +'No,' said Dorothy; 'it is the money that makes her position so +difficult, unless you break the ice.' + +I urged that having steadily refused her before, I could hardly advance +without some invitation now. + +'What invitation?' said my aunt. + +'Not a corpse-like consent,' said I. + +'Harry,' she twitted me, 'you have not forgiven her.' That was true. + +Sir Roderick and Lady Ilchester did not conceal their elation at their +daughter's vast inheritance, though the lady appealed to my feelings in +stating that her son Charles was not mentioned in the Will. Sir Roderick +talked of the squire with personal pride:--'Now, as to his management of +those unwieldy men, his miners they sent him up the items of their +complaints. He took them one by one, yielding here, discussing there, +and holding to his point. So the men gave way; he sent them a month's +pay to reward them for their good sense. He had the art of moulding the +men who served him in his own likeness. His capacity for business was +extraordinary; you never expected it of a country gentleman. He more +than quadrupled his inheritance--much more!' I state it to the worthy +Baronet's honour, that although it would have been immensely to his +satisfaction to see his daughter attracting the suitor proper to an +heiress of such magnitude, he did not attempt to impose restriction upon +my interviews with Janet: Riversley was mentioned as my home. I tried to +feel at home; the heir of the place seemed foreign, and so did Janet. +I attributed it partly to her deep mourning dress that robed her in so +sedate a womanliness, partly, in spite of myself, to her wealth. + +'Speak to her kindly of your grandfather,' said my aunt Dorothy. To do +so, however, as she desired it, would be to be guilty of a form of +hypocrisy, and I belied my better sentiments by keeping silent. Thus, +having ruined myself through anger, I allowed silly sensitiveness to +prevent the repair. + +It became known that my father was at Bulsted. + +I saw trouble one morning on Janet's forehead. + +We had a conversation that came near to tenderness; at last she said: +'Will you be able to forgive me if I have ever the misfortune to offend +you?' + +'You won't offend me,' said I. + +She hoped not. + +I rallied her: 'Tut, tut, you talk like any twelve-years-old, Janet.' + +'I offended you then!' + +'Every day! it's all that I care much to remember.' + +She looked pleased, but I was so situated that I required passion and +abandonment in return for a confession damaging to my pride. Besides, +the school I had been graduating in of late unfitted me for a young +English gentlewoman's shades and intervolved descents of emotion. A +glance up and a dimple in the cheek, were pretty homely things enough, +not the blaze I wanted to unlock me, and absolutely thought I had +deserved. + +Sir Roderick called her to the library on business, which he was in the +habit of doing ten times a day, as well as of discussing matters of +business at table, ostentatiously consulting his daughter, with a solemn +countenance and a transparently reeling heart of parental exultation. +'Janet is supreme,' he would say: 'my advice is simple advice; I am her +chief agent, that is all.' Her chief agent, as director of three +Companies and chairman of one, was perhaps competent to advise her, he +remarked. Her judgement upon ordinary matters he agreed with my +grandfather in thinking consummate. + +Janet went to him, and shortly after drove him to the station for London. +My aunt Dorothy had warned me that she was preparing some deed in my +favour, and as I fancied her father to have gone to London for that +purpose, and supposed she would now venture to touch on it, I walked away +from the East gates of the park as soon as I heard the trot of her +ponies, and was led by an evil fate (the stuff the fates are composed of +in my instance I have not kept secret) to walk Westward. Thither my evil +fate propelled me, where accident was ready to espouse it and breed me +mortifications innumerable. My father chanced to have heard the +particulars of Squire Beltham's will that morning: I believe Captain +William's coachman brushed the subject despondently in my interests; it +did not reach him through Julia. + +He stood outside the Western gates, and as I approached, I could perceive +a labour of excitement on his frame. He pulled violently at the bars of +the obstruction. + +'Richie, I am interdicted house and grounds!' he called, and waved his +hand toward the lodge: 'they decline to open to me.' + +'Were you denied admission?' I asked him. + +'--Your name, if you please, sir?--Mr. Richmond Roy.--We are sorry we +have orders not to admit you. And they declined; they would not admit me +to see my son.' + +'Those must be the squire's old orders,' I said, and shouted to the +lodge-keeper. + +My father, with the forethoughtfulness which never forsook him, stopped +me. + +'No, Richie, no; the good woman shall not have the responsibility of +letting me in against orders; she may be risking her place, poor soul! +Help me, dear lad.' + +He climbed the bars to the spikes, tottering, and communicating a +convulsion to me as I assisted him in the leap down: no common feat for +one of his age and weight. + +He leaned on me, quaking. + +'Impossible! Richie, impossible!' he cried, and reviewed a series of +interjections. + +It was some time before I discovered that they related to the Will. He +was frenzied, and raved, turning suddenly from red to pale under what I +feared were redoubtable symptoms, physical or mental. He came for sight +of the Will; he would contest it, overthrow it. Harry ruined? He would +see Miss Beltham and fathom the plot;--angel, he called her, and was +absurdly exclamatory, but in dire earnest. He must have had the +appearance of a drunken man to persons observing him from the Grange +windows. + +My father was refused admission at the hall-doors. + +The butler, the brute Sillabin, withstood me impassively. + +Whose orders had he? + +Miss Ilchester's. + +'They are afraid of me!' my father thundered. + +I sent a message to Janet. + +She was not long in coming, followed by a footman who handed a twist of +note-paper from my aunt Dorothy to my father. He opened it and made +believe to read it, muttering all the while of the Will. + +Janet dismissed the men-servants. She was quite colourless. + +'We have been stopped in the doorway,' I said. + +She answered: 'I wish it could have been prevented.' + +'You take it on yourself, then?' + +She was inaudible. + +'My dear Janet, you call Riversley my home, don't you?' + +'It is yours.' + +'Do you intend to keep up this hateful feud now my grandfather is dead?' + +'No, Harry, not I.' + +'Did you give orders to stop my father from entering the house and +grounds?' + +'I did.' + +'You won't have him here?' + +'Dear Harry, I hoped he would not come just yet.' + +'But you gave the orders?' + +'Yes.' + +'You're rather incomprehensible, my dear Janet.' + +'I wish you could understand me, Harry.' + +'You arm your servants against him!' + +'In a few days--' she faltered. + +'You insult him and me now,' said I, enraged at the half indication of +her relenting, which spoiled her look of modestly--resolute beauty, and +seemed to show that she meant to succumb without letting me break her. +'You are mistress of the place.' + +'I am. I wish I were not.' + +'You are mistress of Riversley, and you refuse to let my father come in!' + +'While I am the mistress, yes.' + +'Anywhere but here, Harry! If he will see me or aunty, if he will kindly +appoint any other place, we will meet him, we shall be glad.' + +'I request you to let him enter the house. Do you consent or not?' + +'He was refused once at these doors. Do you refuse him a second time?' + +'I do.' + +'You mean that?' + +'I am obliged to.' + +'You won't yield a step to me?' + +'I cannot.' + +The spirit of an armed champion was behind those mild features, soft +almost to supplication to me, that I might know her to be under a +constraint. The nether lip dropped in breathing, the eyes wavered: such +was her appearance in open war with me, but her will was firm. + +Of course I was not so dense as to be unable to perceive her grounds for +refusing. + +She would not throw the burden on her grandada, even to propitiate me-- +the man she still loved. + +But that she should have a reason, and think it good, in spite of me, and +cling to it, defying me, and that she should do hurt to a sentient human +creature, who was my father, for the sake of blindly obeying to the +letter the injunction of the dead, were intolerable offences to me and +common humanity. I, for my own part, would have forgiven her, as I +congratulated myself upon reflecting. It was on her account--to open her +mind, to enlighten her concerning right and wrong determination, to bring +her feelings to bear upon a crude judgement--that I condescended to argue +the case. Smarting with admiration, both of the depths and shallows of +her character, and of her fine figure, I began:--She was to consider how +young she was to pretend to decide on the balance of duties, how little +of the world she had seen; an oath sworn at the bedside of the dead was a +solemn thing, but was it Christian to keep it to do an unnecessary +cruelty to the living? if she had not studied philosophy, she might at +least discern the difference between just resolves and insane--between +those the soul sanctioned, and those hateful to nature; to bind oneself +to carry on another person's vindictiveness was voluntarily to adopt +slavery; this was flatly-avowed insanity, and so forth, with an emphatic +display of patience. + +The truth of my words could not be controverted. Unhappily I confounded +right speaking with right acting, and conceived, because I spoke so +justly, that I was specially approved in pressing her to yield. + +She broke the first pause to say, 'It's useless, Harry. I do what I +think I am bound to do.' + +'Then I have spoken to no purpose!' + +'If you will only be kind, and wait two or three days?' + +'Be sensible!' + +'I am, as much as I can be.' + +'Hard as a flint--you always were! The most grateful woman alive, I +admit. I know not another, I assure you, Janet, who, in return for +millions of money, would do such a piece of wanton cruelty. What! You +think he was not punished enough when he was berated and torn to shreds +in your presence? They would be cruel, perhaps--we will suppose it of +your sex--but not so fond of their consciences as to stamp a life out to +keep an oath. I forget the terms of the Will. Were you enjoined in it +to force him away?' + +My father had stationed himself in the background. Mention of the Will +caught his ears, and he commenced shaking my aunt Dorothy's note, +blinking and muttering at a great rate, and pressing his temples. + +'I do not read a word of this,' he said,--'upon my honour, not a word; +and I know it is her handwriting. That Will!--only, for the love of +heaven, madam,'--he bowed vaguely to Janet 'not a syllable of this to the +princess, or we are destroyed. I have a great bell in my head, or I +would say more. Hearing is out of the question.' + +Janet gazed piteously from him to me. + +To kill the deer and be sorry for the suffering wretch is common. + +I begged my father to walk along the carriage-drive. He required that +the direction should be pointed out accurately, and promptly obeyed me, +saying: 'I back you, remember. I should certainly be asleep now but for +this extraordinary bell.' After going some steps, he turned to shout +'Gong,' and touched his ear. He walked loosely, utterly unlike the walk +habitual to him even recently in Paris. + +'Has he been ill?' Janet asked. + +'He won't see the doctor; the symptoms threaten apoplexy or paralysis, +I 'm told. Let us finish. You were aware that you were to inherit +Riversley?' + +'Yes, Riversley, Harry; I knew that; I knew nothing else.' + +'The old place was left to you that you might bar my father out?' + +'I gave my word.' + +'You pledged it--swore?' + +'No.' + +'Well, you've done your worst, my dear. If the axe were to fall on your +neck for it, you would still refuse, would you not?' + +Janet answered softly: 'I believe so.' + +'Then, good-bye,' said I. + +That feminine softness and its burden of unalterable firmness pulled me +two ways, angering me all the more that I should feel myself susceptible +to a charm which came of spiritual rawness rather than sweetness; for she +needed not to have made the answer in such a manner; there was pride in +it; she liked the soft sound of her voice while declaring herself +invincible: I could see her picturing herself meek but fixed. + +'Will you go, Harry? Will you not take Riversley?' she said. + +I laughed. + +'To spare you the repetition of the dilemma?' + +'No, Harry; but this might be done.' + +'But--my fullest thanks to you for your generosity: really! I speak in +earnest: it would be decidedly against your grandada's wishes, seeing +that he left the Grange to you, and not to me.' + +'Grandada's wishes! I cannot carry out all his wishes,' she sighed. + +'Are you anxious to?' + +We were on the delicate ground, as her crimson face revealed to me that +she knew as well as I. + +I, however, had little delicacy in leading her on it. She might well +feel that she deserved some wooing. + +I fancied she was going to be overcome, going to tremble and show herself +ready to fall on my bosom, and I was uncertain of the amount of +magnanimity in store there. + +She replied calmly, 'Not immediately.' + +'You are not immediately anxious to fulfil his wishes?' + +'Harry, I find it hard to do those that are thrust on me.' + +'But, as a matter of serious obligation, you would hold yourself bound by +and by to perform them all?' + +'I cannot speak any further of my willingness, Harry.' + +'The sense of duty is evidently always sufficient to make you act upon +the negative--to deny, at least?' + +'Yes, I daresay,' said Janet. + +We shook hands like a pair of commercial men. + +I led my father to Bulsted. He was too feverish to remain there. In the +evening, after having had a fruitless conversation with my aunt Dorothy +upon the event of the day, I took him to London that he might visit his +lawyers, who kindly consented to treat him like doctors, when I had +arranged to make over to them three parts of my annuity, and talked of +his Case encouragingly; the effect of which should not have astonished +me. He closed a fit of reverie resembling his drowsiness, by exclaiming: +'Richie will be indebted to his dad for his place in the world after +all!' Temporarily, he admitted, we must be fugitives from creditors, and +as to that eccentric tribe, at once so human and so inhuman, he imparted +many curious characteristics gained of his experience. Jorian DeWitt had +indeed compared them to the female ivy that would ultimately kill its +tree, but inasmuch as they were parasites, they loved their debtor; he +was life and support to them, and there was this remarkable fact about +them: by slipping out of their clutches at critical moments when they +would infallibly be pulling you down, you were enabled to return to them +fresh, and they became inspired with another lease of lively faith in +your future: et caetera. I knew the language. It was a flash of +himself, and a bad one, but I was not the person whom he meant to deceive +with it. He was soon giving me other than verbal proof out of England +that he was not thoroughly beaten. We had no home in England. At an +hotel in Vienna, upon the close of the aristocratic season there, he +renewed an acquaintance with a Russian lady, Countess Kornikoff, and he +and I parted. She disliked the Margravine of Rippau, who was in Vienna, +and did not recognize us. I heard that it was the Margravine who had +despatched Prince Hermann to England as soon as she discovered Ottilia's +flight thither. She commissioned him to go straightway to Roy in London, +and my father's having infatuatedly left his own address for Prince +Ernest's in the island, brought Hermann down: he only met Eckart in the +morning train. I mention it to show the strange working of events. + +Janet sent me a letter by the hands of Temple in August. It was +moderately well written for so blunt a writer, and might have touched me +but for other news coming simultaneously that shook the earth under my +feet. + +She begged my forgiveness for her hardness, adding characteristically +that she could never have acted in any other manner. The delusion, that +what she was she must always be, because it was her nature, had mastered +her understanding, or rather it was one of the doors of her understanding +not yet opened: she had to respect her grandada's wishes. She made it +likewise appear that she was ready for further sacrifices to carry out +the same. + +'At least you will accept a division of the property, Harry. It should +be yours. It is an excess, and I feel it a snare to me. I was a selfish +child: I may not become an estimable woman. You have not pardoned my +behaviour at the island last year, and I cannot think I was wrong: +perhaps I might learn: I want your friendship and counsel. Aunty will +live with me: she says that you would complete us. At any rate I +transfer Riversley to you. Send me your consent. Papa will have it +before the transfer is signed.' + +The letter ended with an adieu, a petition for an answer, and ' yours +affectionately.' + +On the day of its date, a Viennese newspaper lying on the Salzburg Hotel +table chronicled Ottilia's marriage with Prince Hermann. + +I turned on Temple to walk him off his legs if I could. + +Carry your fever to the Alps, you of minds diseased not to sit down in +sight of them ruminating, for bodily ease and comfort will trick the soul +and set you measuring our lean humanity against yonder sublime and +infinite; but mount, rack the limbs, wrestle it out among the peaks; +taste danger, sweat, earn rest: learn to discover ungrudgingly that +haggard fatigue is the fair vision you have run to earth, and that rest +is your uttermost reward. Would you know what it is to hope again, and +have all your hopes at hand?--hang upon the crags at a gradient: that +makes your next step a debate between the thing you are and the thing you +may become. There the merry little hopes grow for the climber like +flowers and food, immediate, prompt to prove their uses, sufficient: if +just within the grasp, as mortal hopes should be. How the old lax life +closes in about you there! You are the man of your faculties, nothing +more. Why should a man pretend to more? We ask it wonderingly when we +are healthy. Poetic rhapsodists in the vales below may tell you of the +joy and grandeur of the upper regions, they cannot pluck you the medical +herb. He gets that for himself who wanders the marshy ledge at nightfall +to behold the distant Sennhiittchen twinkle, who leaps the green-eyed +crevasses, and in the solitude of an emerald alp stretches a salt hand to +the mountain kine. + + + + +CHAPTER LIV + +MY RETURN TO ENGLAND + +I passed from the Alps to the desert, and fell in love with the East, +until it began to consume me. History, like the air we breathe, must be +in motion to keep us uncorrupt: otherwise its ancient homes are +infectious. My passion for the sun and his baked people lasted awhile, +the drudgery of the habit of voluntary exile some time longer, and then, +quite unawares, I was seized with a thirst for England, so violent that I +abandoned a correspondence of several months, lying for me both at +Damascus and Cairo, to catch the boat for Europe. A dream of a rainy +morning, in the midst of the glowing furnace, may have been the origin of +the wild craving I had for my native land and Janet. The moist air of +flying showers and drenched spring buds surrounded her; I saw her plainly +lifting a rose's head; was it possible I had ever refused to be her +yokefellow? Could so noble a figure of a fair young woman have been +offered and repudiated again and again by a man in his senses? I spurned +the intolerable idiot, to stop reflection. Perhaps she did likewise now. +There was nothing to alarm me save my own eagerness. + +The news of my father was perplexing, leading me to suppose him +re-established in London, awaiting the coming on of his Case. Whence the +money? + +Money and my father, I knew, met as they divided, fortuitously; in +illustration of which, I well remembered, while passing in view of the +Key of the Adige along the Lombard plain, a circumstance during my Alpine +tour with Temple, of more importance to him than to me, when my emulous +friend, who would never be beaten, sprained his ankle severely on the +crags of a waterfall, not far from Innsbruck, and was invited into a +house by a young English lady, daughter of a retired Colonel of Engineers +of our army. The colonel was an exile from his country for no grave +crime: but, as he told us, as much an exile as if he had committed a +capital offence in being the father of nine healthy girls. He had been, +against his judgement, he averred, persuaded to fix on his Tyrolese spot +of ground by the two elder ones. Five were now married to foreigners; +thus they repaid him, by scattering good English blood on the race of +Counts and Freiherrs! 'I could understand the decrees of Providence +before I was a parent,' said this dear old Colonel Heddon. 'I was +looking up at the rainbow when I heard your steps, asking myself whether +it was seen in England at that instant, and why on earth I should be out +of England!' He lived abroad to be able to dower his girls. His sons- +in-law were gentlemen; so far he was condemned to be satisfied, but +supposing all his girls married foreigners? His primitive frankness +charmed us, and it struck me that my susceptible Temple would have liked +to be in a position to reassure him with regard to the Lucy of the four. +We were obliged to confess that she was catching a foreign accent. The +old colonel groaned. He begged us to forgive him for not treating us as +strangers; his heart leapt out to young English gentlemen. + +My name, he said, reminded him of a great character at home, in the old +days: a certain Roy-Richmond, son of an actress and somebody, so the +story went: and there was an old Lord Edbury who knew more about it than +most. 'Now Roy was an adventurer, but he had a soul of true chivalry, by +gad, he had! Plenty of foreign whiffmajigs are to be found, but you +won't come upon a fellow like that. Where he got his money from none +knew: all I can say is, I don't believe he ever did a dirty action for +it. And one matter I'll tell you of: pardon me a moment, Mr. Richmond, +I haven't talked English for half a century, or, at least, a quarter. +Old Lord Edbury put him down in his will for some thousands, and he +risked it to save a lady, who hated him for his pains. Lady Edbury was +of the Bolton blood, none of the tamest; they breed good cavalry men. +She ran away from her husband once. The old lord took her back. "It 's +at your peril, mind!" says she. Well, Roy hears by-and-by of afresh +affair. He mounted horse; he was in the saddle, I've been assured, a +night and a day, and posted himself between my lady's park-gates, and the +house, at dusk. The rumour ran that he knew of the marquis playing spy +on his wife. However, such was the fact; she was going off again, and +the marquis did play the mean part. She walked down the parkroad, and, +seeing the cloaked figure of a man, she imagined him to be her Lothario, +and very naturally, you will own, fell into his arms. The gentleman in +question was an acquaintance of mine; and the less you follow our example +the better for you. It was a damnable period in morals! He told me that +he saw the scene from the gates, where he had his carriage-and-four +ready. The old lord burst out of an ambush on his wife and her supposed +paramour; the lady was imprisoned in her rescuer's arms, and my friend +retired on tiptoe, which was, I incline to think, the best thing he could +do. Our morals were abominable. Lady Edbury would never see Roy- +Richmond after that, nor the old lord neither. He doubled the sum he had +intended to leave him, though. I heard that he married a second young +wife. Roy, I believe, ended by marrying a great heiress, and reforming. +He was an eloquent fellow, and stood like a general in full uniform, +cocked hat and feathers; most amusing fellow at table; beat a Frenchman +for anecdote.' + +I spared Colonel Heddon the revelation of my relationship to his hero, +thanking his garrulity for interrupting me. + +How I pitied him when I drove past the gates of the main route to +Innsbruck! For I was bound homeward: I should soon see England, green +cloudy England, the white cliffs, the meadows, the heaths! And I thanked +the colonel again in my heart for having done something to reconcile me +to the idea of that strange father of mine. + +A banner-like stream of morning-coloured smoke rolled North-eastward as I +entered London, and I drove to Temple's chambers. He was in Court, +engaged in a case as junior to his father. Temple had become that +radiant human creature, a working man, then? I walked slowly to the +Court, and saw him there, hardly recognising him in his wig. All that he +had to do was to prompt his father in a case of collision at sea; the +barque Priscilla had run foul of a merchant brig, near the mouth of the +Thames, and though I did not expect it on hearing the vessel's name, it +proved to be no other than the barque Priscilla of Captain Jasper Welsh. +Soon after I had shaken Temple's hand, I was going through the same +ceremony with the captain himself, not at all changed in appearance, who +blessed his heart for seeing me, cried out that a beard and mustachios +made a foreign face of a young Englishman, and was full of the +'providential' circumstance of his having confided his case to Temple and +his father. + +'Ay, ay, Captain Welsh,' said Temple, 'we have pulled you through, only +another time mind you keep an eye on that look-out man of yours. Some of +your men, I suspect, see double with an easy conscience. A close net +makes slippery eels.' + +'Have you anything to say against my men?' the captain inquired. + +Temple replied that he would talk to him about it presently, and laughed +as he drew me away. + +'His men will get him into a deuce of a scrape some day, Richie. I shall +put him on his guard. Have you had all my letters? You look made of +iron. I'm beginning capitally, not afraid of the Court a bit, and I hope +I'm not pert. I wish your father had taken it better!' + +'Taken what?' said I. + +'Haven't you heard from him?' + +'Two or three times: a mass of interjections.' + +'You know he brought his Case forward at last? Of course it went as we +all knew it would.' + +'Where is he? Have you seen Janet lately?' + +'He is at Miss Ilchester's house in London.' + +'Write the address on a card.' + +Temple wrote it rather hesitatingly, I thought. + +We talked of seeing one another in the evening, and I sprang off to +Janet's residence, forgetting to grasp my old friend's hand at parting. +I was madly anxious to thank her for the unexpected tenderness to my +father. And now nothing stood between us! + +My aunt Dorothy was the first to welcome me. 'He must be prepared for +the sight of you, Harry. The doctors say that a shock may destroy him. +Janet treats him so wonderfully.' + +I pressed her on my heart and cheered her, praising Janet. She wept. + +'Is there anything new the matter?' I said. + +'It 's not new to us, Harry. I'm sure you're brave?' + +'Brave! what am I asked to bear?' + +'Much, if you love her, Harry!' + +'Speak.' + +'It is better you should hear it from me, Harry. I wrote you word of it. +We all imagined it would not be disagreeable to you. Who could foresee +this change in you? She least of all!' + +'She's in love with some one?' + +'I did not say in love.' + +'Tell me the worst.' + +'She is engaged to be married.' + +Janet came into the room--another Janet for me. She had engaged herself +to marry the Marquis of Edbury. At the moment when she enslaved me with +gratitude and admiration she was lost to me. I knew her too well to see +a chance of her breaking her pledged word. + +My old grandfather said of Janet, 'She's a compassionate thing.' I felt +now the tears under his speech, and how late I was in getting wisdom. +Compassion for Edbury in Janet's bosom was the matchmaker's chief engine +of assault, my aunt Dorothy told me. Lady Ilchester had been for this +suitor, Sir Roderick for the other, up to the verge of a quarrel between +the most united of wedding couples. Janet was persecuted. She heard +that Edbury's life was running to waste; she liked him for his cricketing +and hunting, his frankness, seeming manliness, and general native English +enthusiasm. I permitted myself to comprehend the case as far as I could +allow myself to excuse her. + +Dorothy Beltham told me something of Janet that struck me to the dust. + +'It is this, dear Harry; bear to hear it! Janet and I and his good true +woman of a housekeeper, whose name is Waddy, we are, I believe, the only +persons that know it. He had a large company to dine at a City tavern, +she told us, on the night after the decision--when the verdict went +against him. The following morning I received a note from this good Mrs. +Waddy addressed to Sir Roderick's London house, where I was staying with +Janet; it said that he was ill; and Janet put on her bonnet at once to go +to him.' + +'The lady didn't fear contagion any longer?' + +'She went, walking fast. He was living in lodgings, and the people of +the house insisted on removing him, Mrs. Waddy told us. She was cowering +in the parlour. I had not the courage to go upstairs. Janet went by +herself.' + +My heart rose on a huge swell. + +'She was alone with him, Harry. We could hear them.' + +Dorothy Beltham looked imploringly on me to waken my whole comprehension. + +'She subdued him. When I saw him he was white as death, but quiet, not +dangerous at all.' + +'Do you mean she found him raving?' I cried out on our Maker's name, in +grief and horror. + +'Yes, dear Harry, it was so.' + +'She stepped between him and an asylum?' + +'She quitted Sir Roderick's house to lodge your father safe in one that +she hired, and have him under her own care. She watched him day and +night for three weeks, and governed him, assisted only at intervals by +the poor frightened woman, Mrs. Waddy, and just as frightened me. And I +am still subject to the poor woman's way of pressing her hand to her +heart at a noise. It 's over now. Harry, Janet wished that you should +never hear of it. She dreads any excitement for him. I think she is +right in fancying her own influence the best: he is used to it. You know +how gentle she is though she is so firm.' + +'Oh! don't torture me, ma'am, for God's sake,' I called aloud. + + + + +CHAPTER LV + +I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT + +There came to me a little note on foreign paper, unaddressed, an +enclosure forwarded by Janet, and containing merely one scrap from the +playful XENIEN of Ottilia's favourite brotherly poets, of untranslatable +flavour:-- + + Who shuns true friends flies fortune in the concrete: + Would he see what he aims at? let him ask his heels. + +It filled me with a breath of old German peace. + +From this I learnt that Ottilia and Janet corresponded. Upon what +topics? to what degree of intimacy? + +Janet now confessed to me that their intimacy had never known reserve. +The princess had divined her attachment for Harry Richmond when their +acquaintance was commenced in the island, and knew at the present moment +that I had travelled round to the recognition of Janet's worth. + +Thus encouraged by the princess's changeless friendship, I wrote to her, +leaving little to be guessed of my state of mind, withholding nothing of +the circumstances surrounding me. Imagination dealt me all my sharpest +misery, and now that Ottilia resumed her place there, I became infinitely +peacefuller, and stronger to subdue my hungry nature. It caused me no +pang, strangely though it read in my sight when written, to send warm +greetings and respects to the prince her husband. + +Is it any waste of time to write of love? The trials of life are in it, +but in a narrow ring and a fierier. You may learn to know yourself +through love, as you do after years of life, whether you are fit to lift +them that are about you, or whether you are but a cheat, and a load on +the backs of your fellows. The impure perishes, the inefficient +languishes, the moderate comes to its autumn of decay--these are of the +kinds which aim at satisfaction to die of it soon or late. The love that +survives has strangled craving; it lives because it lives to nourish and +succour like the heavens. + +But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death before you reach +your immortality. + +But again, to write of a love perverted by all the elements contributing +to foolishness, and foredoomed to chastisement, would be a graceless +business. Janet and I went through our trial, she, you may believe, the +braver under the most to bear. + +I was taken by Temple down to the ship--smelling East of London, for the +double purpose of trying to convince Captain Welsh of the extravagance of +a piece of chivalry he was about to commit, and of seeing a lady with a +history, who had recently come under his guardianship. Temple thought I +should know her, but he made a mystery of it until the moment of our +introduction arrived, not being certain of her identity, and not wishing +to have me disappointed. It appeared that Captain Welsh questioned his +men closely after he had won his case, and he arrived at the conclusion +that two or three of them had been guilty of false swearing in his +interests. He did not dismiss them, for, as he said, it was twice a bad +thing to turn sinners loose: it was to shove them out of the direct road +of amendment, and it was a wrong to the population. He insisted, +however, on paying the legal costs and an indemnity for the collision at +sea; and Temple was in great distress about it, he having originally +suggested the suspicion of his men to Captain Welsh. 'I wanted to put +him on his guard against those rascals,' Temple said, 'and I suppose,' +he sighed, 'I wanted the old captain to think me enormously clever all +round.' He shook himself, and assumed a bearish aspect, significant of +disgust and recklessness. 'The captain 'll be ruined, Richie; and he's +not young, you know, to go on sailing his barque Priscilla for ever. If +he pays, why, I ought to pay, and then you ought to pay, for I shouldn't +have shown off before him alone, and then the wind that fetched you ought +to pay. Toss common sense overboard, there's no end to your fine- +drawings; that's why it's always safest to swear by the Judge.' + +We rolled down to the masts among the chimneys on the top of an omnibus. +The driver was eloquent on cricket-matches. Now, cricket, he said, was +fine manly sport; it might kill a man, but it never meant mischief: +foreigners themselves had a bit of an idea that it was the best game in +the world, though it was a nice joke to see a foreigner playing at it! +None of them could stand to be bowled at. Hadn't stomachs for it; they'd +have to train for soldiers first. On one occasion he had seen a +Frenchman looking on at a match. 'Ball was hit a shooter twixt the +slips: off starts Frenchman, catches it, heaves it up, like his head, +half-way to wicket, and all the field set to bawling at him, and sending +him, we knew where. He tripped off: "You no comprong politeness in dis +country." Ha! ha!' + +To prove the aforesaid Frenchman wrong, we nodded to the driver's +laughter at his exquisite imitation. + +He informed us that he had backed the Surrey Eleven last year, owing to +the report of a gentleman-bowler, who had done things in the way of +tumbling wickets to tickle the ears of cricketers. Gentlemen-batters +were common: gentlemen-bowlers were quite another dish. Saddlebank was +the gentleman's name. + +'Old Nandrew Saddle?' Temple called to me, and we smiled at the +supposition of Saddlebank's fame, neither of us, from what we had known +of his bowling, doubting that he deserved it. + +'Acquainted with him, gentlemen?' the driver inquired, touching his hat. +'Well, and I ask why don't more gentlemen take to cricket? 'stead of +horses all round the year! Now, there's my notion of happiness,' said +the man condemned to inactivity, in the perpetual act of motion; 'cricket +in cricket season! It comprises--count: lots o' running; and that's +good: just enough o' taking it easy; that's good: a appetite for your +dinner, and your ale or your Port, as may be the case; good, number +three. Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow, and +you say good morning to the doctor and the parson; for you're in health +body and soul, and ne'er a parson 'll make a better Christian of ye, that +I'll swear.' + +As if anxious not to pervert us, he concluded: 'That's what I think, +gentlemen.' + +Temple and I talked of the ancient raptures of a first of May cricketing- +day on a sunny green meadow, with an ocean of a day before us, and well- +braced spirits for the match. I had the vision of a matronly, but not +much altered Janet, mounted on horseback, to witness the performance of +some favourite Eleven of youngsters with her connoisseur's eye; and then +the model of an English lady, wife, and mother, waving adieu to the field +and cantering home to entertain her husband's guests. Her husband! + +Temple was aware of my grief, but saw no remedy. I knew that in his +heart he thought me justly punished, though he loved me. + +We had a long sitting with Captain Welsh, whom I found immoveable, as I +expected I should. His men, he said, had confessed their sin similarly +to the crab in a hole, with one claw out, as the way of sinners was. He +blamed himself mainly. 'Where you have accidents, Mr. Richmond, you have +faults; and where you have faults aboard a ship you may trace a line to +the captain. I should have treated my ship's crew like my conscience, +and gone through them nightly. As it is, sir, here comes round one of +your accidents to tell me I have lived blinded by conceit. That is my +affliction, my young friend. The payment of the money is no more so than +to restore money held in trust.' + +Temple and I argued the case with him, as of old on our voyage, on board +the barque Priscilla, quite unavailingly. + +'Is a verdict built on lies one that my Maker approves of?' said he. +'If I keep possession of that money, my young friends, will it clothe me? +Ay, with stings! Will it feed me? Ay, with poison. And they that +should be having it shiver and want!' + +He was emphatic, as he would not have been, save to read us an example, +owing to our contention with him. 'The money is Satan in my very hands!' +When he had dismissed the subject he never returned to it. + +His topic of extreme happiness, to which Temple led him, was the rescue +of a beautiful sinner from a life of shame. It appeared that Captain +Welsh had the habit between his voyages of making one holiday expedition +to the spot of all creation he thought the fairest, Richmond Hill, +overlooking the Thames; and there, one evening, he espied a lady in +grief, and spoke to her, and gave her consolation. More, he gave her a +blameless home. The lady's name was Mabel Bolton. She was in distress +of spirit rather than of circumstances, for temptation was thick about +one so beautiful, to supply the vanities and luxuries of the father of +sin. He described her. + +She was my first playfellow, the miller's daughter of Dipwell, Mabel +Sweetwinter, taken from her home by Lord Edbury during my German +university career, and now put away by him upon command of his family on +the eve of his marriage. + +She herself related her history to me, after telling me that she had seen +me once at the steps of Edbury's Club. Our meeting was no great surprise +to either of us. She had heard my name as that of an expected visitor; +she had seen Temple, moreover, and he had prompted me with her Christian +name and the praise of her really glorious hair, to anticipate the person +who was ushered into the little cabin-like parlour by Captain Welsh's +good old mother. + +Of Edbury she could not speak for grief, believing that he loved her +still and was acting under compulsion. Her long and faithful attachment +to the scapegrace seemed to preserve her from the particular regrets +Captain Welsh supposed to occupy her sinner's mind; so that, after some +minutes of the hesitation and strangeness due to our common +recollections, she talked of him simply and well--as befitted her +situation, a worldling might say. But she did not conceal her relief in +escaping to this quaint little refuge (she threw a kindly-comical look, +not overtoned, at the miniature ships on the mantelpiece, and the picture +of Joseph leading Mary with her babe on the ass) from the temptations I +could imagine a face like hers would expose her to. The face was +splendid, the figure already overblown. I breathed some thanks to my +father while she and I conversed apart. The miller was dead, her brother +in America. She had no other safe home than the one Captain Welsh had +opened to her. When I asked her (I had no excuse for it) whether she +would consent to go to Edbury again, she reddened and burst into tears. +I cursed my brutality. 'Let her cry,' said Captain Welsh on parting with +us at his street door. 'Tears are the way of women and their comfort.' + +To our astonishment he told us he intended to take her for a voyage in +the Priscilla. 'Why?' we asked. + +'I take her,' he said, 'because not to do things wholly is worse than not +to do things at all, for it 's waste of time and cause for a chorus +below, down in hell, my young friends. The woman is beautiful as +Solomon's bride. She is weak as water. And the man is wicked. He has +written to her a letter. He would have her reserved for himself, a +wedded man: such he is, or is soon to be. I am searching, and she is not +deceitful; and I am a poor man again and must go the voyage. I wrestled +with her, and by grace I conquered her to come with me of a free will, +and be out of his snares. Aboard I do not fear him, and she shall know +the mercy of the Lord on high seas.' + +We grimaced a little on her behalf, but had nothing to reply. + +Seeing Janet after Mabel was strange. In the latter one could perceive +the palpably suitable mate for Edbury. + +I felt that my darling was insulted--no amends for it I had to keep +silent and mark the remorseless preparations going forward. Not so +Heriot. He had come over from the camp in Ireland on leave at this +juncture. His talk of women still suggested the hawk with the downy +feathers of the last little plucked bird sticking to his beak; but his +appreciation of Janet and some kindness for me made him a vehement +opponent of her resolve. He took licence of his friendship to lay every +incident before her, to complete his persuasions. She resisted his +attacks, as I knew she would, obstinately, and replied to his entreaties +with counter-supplications that he should urge me to accept old +Riversley. The conflicts went on between those two daily, and I heard of +them from Heriot at night. He refused to comprehend her determination +under the head of anything save madness. Varied by reproaches of me for +my former inveterate blindness, he raved upon Janet's madness +incessantly, swearing that he would not be beaten. I told him his +efforts were useless, but thought them friendly, and so they were, only +Janet's resistance had fired his vanity, and he stalked up and down my +room talking a mixture of egregious coxcombry and hearty good sense that +might have shown one the cause he meant to win had become personal to +him. Temple, who was sometimes in consultation with him, and was always +amused by his quasi-fanfaronade, assured me that Herriot was actually +scheming. The next we heard of him was, that he had been seen at a +whitebait hotel down the river drunk with Edbury. Janet also heard of +that, and declined to see Heriot again. + +Our last days marched frightfully fast. Janet had learnt that any the +most distant allusion to her marriage day was an anguish to the man who +was not to marry her, so it was through my aunt Dorothy that I became +aware of Julia Bulsted's kindness in offering to take charge of my father +for a term. Lady Sampleman undertook to be hostess to him for one night, +the eve of Janet's nuptials. He was quiet, unlikely to give annoyance to +persons not strongly predisposed to hear sentences finished and +exclamations fall into their right places. + +Adieu to my darling! There have been women well won; here was an +adorable woman well lost. After twenty years of slighting her, did I +fancy she would turn to me and throw a man over in reward of my ultimate +recovery of my senses?--or fancy that one so tenacious as she had proved +would snap a tie depending on her pledged word? She liked Edbury; she +saw the best of him, and liked him. The improved young lord was her +handiwork. After the years of humiliation from me, she had found herself +courted by a young nobleman who clung to her for help, showed +improvement, and brought her many compliments from a wondering world. +She really felt that she was strength and true life to him. She resisted +Heriot: she resisted a more powerful advocate, and this was the princess +Ottilia. My aunt Dorothy told me that the princess had written. Janet +either did or affected to weigh the princess's reasonings; and she did +not evade the task of furnishing a full reply. + +Her resolution was unchanged. Loss of colour, loss of light in her eyes, +were the sole signs of what it cost her to maintain it. Our task was to +transfer the idea of Janet to that of Julia in my father's whirling +brain, which at first rebelled violently, and cast it out like a stick +thrust between rapidly revolving wheels. + +The night before I was to take him away, she gave me her hand with a +'good-bye, dear Harry.' My words were much the same. She had a ghastly +face, but could not have known it, for she smiled, and tried to keep the +shallow smile in play, as friends do. There was the end. + +It came abruptly, and was schoolingly cold and short. + +It had the effect on me of freezing my blood and setting what seemed to +be the nerves of my brain at work in a fury of calculation to reckon the +minutes remaining of her maiden days. I had expected nothing, but now we +had parted I thought that one last scene to break my heart on should not +have been denied to me. My aunt Dorothy was a mute; she wept when I +spoke of Janet, whatever it was I said. + +The minutes ran on from circumstance to circumstance of the destiny Janet +had marked for herself, each one rounded in my mind of a blood colour +like the edge about prismatic hues. I lived through them a thousand +times before they occurred, as the wretch who fears death dies +multitudinously. + +Some womanly fib preserved my father from a shock on leaving Janet's +house. She left it herself at the same time that she drove him to Lady +Sampleman's, and I found him there soon after she had gone to her +bridesmaids. A letter was for me:-- + + 'DEAR HARRY,--I shall not live at Riversley, never go there again; + do not let it be sold to a stranger; it will happen unless you go + there. For the sake of the neighbourhood and poor people, I cannot + allow it to be shut up. I was the cause of the chief misfortune. + You never blamed me. Let me think that the old place is not dead. + Adieu. + + 'Your affectionate, + 'JANET.' + +I tore the letter to pieces, and kept them. + +The aspect of the new intolerable world I was to live in after to-morrow, +paralyzed sensation. My father chattered, Lady Sampleman hushed him; she +said I might leave him to her, and I went down to Captain Welsh to bid +him good-bye and get such peace as contact with a man clad in armour +proof against earthly calamity could give. + +I was startled to see little Kiomi in Mabel's company. + +They had met accidentally at the head of the street, and had been friends +in childhood, Captain Welsh said, adding: 'She hates men.' + +'Good reason, when they're beasts,' said Kiomi. + +Amid much weeping of Mabel and old Mrs. Welsh, Kiomi showed as little +trouble as the heath when the woods are swept. + +Captain Welsh wanted Mabel to be on board early, owing, he told me, to +information. Kiomi had offered to remain on board with her until the +captain was able to come. He had business to do in the City. + +We saw them off from the waterside. + +'Were I to leave that young woman behind me, on shore, I should be giving +the devil warrant to seize upon his prey,' said Captain Welsh, turning +his gaze from the boat which conveyed Kiomi and Mabel to the barque +Priscilla. He had information that the misleader of her youth was +hunting her. + +He and I parted, and for ever, at a corner of crossways in the central +city. There I saw the last of one who deemed it as simple a matter to +renounce his savings for old age, to rectify an error of justice, as to +plant his foot on the pavement; a man whose only burden was the folly of +men. + +I thought to myself in despair, under what protest can I also escape from +England and my own intemperate mind? It seemed a miraculous answer:-- +There lay at my chambers a note written by Count Kesensky; I went to the +embassy, and heard of an Austrian ship of war being at one of our ports +upon an expedition to the East, and was introduced to the captain, a +gentlemanly fellow, like most of the officers of his Government. Finding +in me a German scholar, and a joyful willingness, he engaged me to take +the post of secretary to the expedition in the place of an invalided +Freiherr von Redwitz. The bargain was struck immediately: I was to be +ready to report myself to the captain on board not later than the +following day. Count Kesensky led me aside: he regretted that he could +do nothing better for me: but I thought his friendliness extreme and +astonishing, and said so; whereupon the count assured me that his +intentions were good, though he had not been of great use hitherto--an +allusion to the borough of Chippenden he had only heard of von Redwitz's +illness that afternoon. I thanked him cordially, saying I was much in +his debt, and he bowed me out, letting me fancy, as my father had fancied +before me, and as though I had never observed and reflected in my life, +that the opportuneness of this intervention signified a special action of +Providence. + +The flattery of the thought served for an elixir. But with whom would my +father abide during my absence? Captain Bulsted and Julia saved me from +a fit of remorse; they had come up to town on purpose to carry him home +with them, and had left a message on my table, and an invitation to +dinner at their hotel, where the name of Janet was the Marino Faliero of +our review of Riversley people and old times. The captain and his wife +were indignant at her conduct. Since, however, I chose to excuse it, +they said they would say nothing more about her, and she was turned face +to the wall. I told them how Janet had taken him for months. 'But I 'll +take him for years,' said Julia. 'The truth is, Harry, my old dear! +William and I are never so united--for I'm ashamed to quarrel with him-- +as when your father's at Bulsted. He belongs to us, and other people +shall know you 're not obliged to depend on your family for help, and +your aunt Dorothy can come and see him whenever she likes.' + +That was settled. Captain Bulsted went with me to Lady Sampleman's to +prepare my father for the change of nurse and residence. We were +informed that he had gone down with Alderman Duke Saddlebank to dine at +one of the great City Companies' halls. I could hardly believe it. 'Ah! +my dear Mr. Harry,' said Lady Sampleman, 'old friends know one another +best, believe that, now. I treated him as if he was as well as ever he +was, gave him his turtle and madeira lunch; and Alderman Saddlebank, who +lunched here--your father used to say, he looks like a robin hopping out +of a larderquite jumped to dine him in the City like old times; and he +will see a great spread of plate!' + +She thought my father only moderately unwell, wanting novelty. Captain +Bulsted agreed with me that it would be prudent to go and fetch him. At +the door of the City hall stood Andrew Saddlebank, grown to be simply a +larger edition of Rippenger's head boy, and he imparted to us that my +father was 'on his legs' delivering a speech: It alarmed me. With +Saddlebank's assistance I pushed in. + +'A prince! a treacherous lover! an unfatherly man!' + +Those were the words I caught: a reproduction of many of my phrases +employed in our arguments on this very subject. + +He bade his audience to beware of princes, beware of idle princes; and +letting his florid fancy loose on these eminent persons, they were at one +moment silver lamps, at another poising hawks, and again sprawling +pumpkins; anything except useful citizens. How could they be? They had +the attraction of the lamp, the appetite of the hawk, the occupation of +the pumpkin: nothing was given them to do but to shine, destroy, and +fatten. Their hands were kept empty: a trifle in their heads would +topple them over; they were monuments of the English system of +compromise. Happy for mankind if they were monuments only! Happy for +them! But they had the passions of men. The adulation of the multitude +was raised to inflate them, whose self-respect had not one prop to rest +an, unless it were contempt for the flatterers and prophetic foresight of +their perfidy. They were the monuments of a compromise between the past +and terror of the future; puppets as princes, mannikins as men, the +snares of frail women, stop-gaps of the State, feathered nonentities! + +So far (but not in epigram) he marshalled the things he had heard to his +sound of drum and trumpet, like one repeating a lesson off-hand. +Steering on a sudden completely round, he gave his audience an outline of +the changes he would have effected had he but triumphed in his cause; and +now came the lashing of arms, a flood of eloquence. Princes with brains, +princes leaders, princes flowers of the land, he had offered them! +princes that should sway assemblies, and not stultify the precepts of a +decent people 'by making you pay in the outrage of your morals for what +you seem to gain in policy.' These or similar words. The whole scene +was too grotesque and afflicting. But his command of his hearers was +extraordinary, partly a consolation I thought, until, having touched the +arm of one of the gentlemen of the banquet and said, ' I am his son; I +wish to remove him,' the reply enlightened me: 'I 'm afraid there's +danger in interrupting him; I really am.' + +They were listening obediently to one whom they dared not interrupt for +fear of provoking an outburst of madness. + +I had to risk it. His dilated eyes looked ready to seize on me for an +illustration. I spoke peremptorily, and he bowed his head low, saying, +'My son, gentlemen,' and submitted himself to my hands. The feasters +showed immediately that they felt released by rising and chatting in +groups. Alderman Saddlebank expressed much gratitude to me for the +service I had performed. 'That first half of your father's speech was +the most pathetic thing I ever heard!' I had not shared his privilege, +and could not say. The remark was current that a great deal was true of +what had been said of the Fitzs. My father leaned heavily on my arm with +the step and bent head of an ancient pensioner of the Honourable City +Company. He was Julia Bulsted's charge, and I was on board the foreign +vessel weighing anchor from England before dawn of Janet's marriage-day. + + + + +CHAPTER LVI + +CONCLUSION + +The wind was high that morning. The rain came in gray rings, through +which we worked on the fretted surface of crumbling seas, heaving up and +plunging, without an outlook. + +I remember having thought of the barque Priscilla as I watched our lithe +Dalmatians slide along the drenched decks of the Verona frigate. At +night it blew a gale. I could imagine it to have been sent +providentially to brush the torture of the land from my mind, and make me +feel that men are trifles. + +What are their passions, then? The storm in the clouds--even more short- +lived than the clouds. + +I philosophized, but my anguish was great. + +Janet's 'Good-bye, Harry,' ended everything I lived for, and seemed to +strike the day, and bring out of it the remorseless rain. A featureless +day, like those before the earth was built; like night under an angry +moon; and each day the same until we touched the edge of a southern +circle and saw light, and I could use my brain. + +The matter most present to me was my injustice regarding my poor father's +speech in the City hall. He had caused me to suffer so much that I +generally felt for myself when he appealed for sympathy, or provoked some +pity: but I was past suffering, and letting kindly recollection divest +the speech of its verbiage, I took it to my heart. It was true that he +had in his blind way struck the keynote of his position, much as I myself +had conceived it before. Harsh trials had made me think of my own +fortunes more than of his. This I felt, and I thought there never had +been so moving a speech. It seemed to make the world in debt to us. +What else is so consolatory to a ruined man? + +In reality the busy little creature within me, whom we call self, was +digging pits for comfort to flow in, of any kind, in any form; and it +seized on every idea, every circumstance, to turn it to that purpose, and +with such success, that when by-and-by I learnt how entirely inactive +special Providence had been in my affairs, I had to collect myself before +I could muster the conception of gratitude toward the noble woman who +clothed me in the illusion. It was to the Princess Ottilia, acting +through Count Kesensky, that I owed both my wafting away from England at +a wretched season, and that chance of a career in Parliament! The +captain of the Verona hinted as much when, after a year of voyaging, we +touched at an East Indian seaport, and von Redwitz joined the vessel to +resume the post I was occupying. Von Redwitz (the son of Prince Ernest's +Chancellor, I discovered) could have told me more than he did, but he +handed me a letter from the princess, calling me home urgently, and even +prescribing my route, and bidding me come straight to Germany and to +Sarkeld. The summons was distasteful, for I had settled into harness +under my scientific superiors, and had proved to my messmates that I was +neither morose nor over-conceited. Captain Martinitz persuaded me to +return, and besides, there lay between the lines of Ottilia's letter a +signification of welcome things better guessed at than known. Was I not +bound to do her bidding? Others had done it: young von Redwitz, for +instance, in obeying the telegraph wires and feigning sickness to +surrender his place to me, when she wished to save me from misery by +hurrying me to new scenes with a task for my hand and head;--no mean +stretch of devotion on his part. Ottilia was still my princess; she my +providence. She wrote: + +'Come home, my friend Harry: you have been absent too long. He who +intercepts you to displace you has his career before him in the vessel, +and you nearer home. The home is always here where I am, but it may now +take root elsewhere, and it is from Ottilia you hear that delay is now +really loss of life. I tell you no more. You know me, that when I say +come, it is enough.' + +A simple adieu and her name ended the mysterious letter. Not a word of +Prince Hermann. What had happened? I guessed at it curiously and +incessantly and only knew the nature of my suspicion by ceasing to hope +as soon as I seemed to have divined it. I did not wrong my soul's high +mistress beyond the one flash of tentative apprehension which in +perplexity struck at impossibilities. Ottilia would never have summoned +me to herself. But was Janet free? The hope which refused to live in +that other atmosphere of purest calm, sprang to full stature at the bare +thought, and would not be extinguished though all the winds beset it. +Had my girl's courage failed, to spare her at the last moment? I fancied +it might be: I was sure it was not so. Yet the doubt pressed on me with +the force of a world of unimagined shifts and chances, and just kept the +little flame alive, at times intoxicating me, though commonly holding me +back to watch its forlorn conflict with probabilities known too well. It +cost me a struggle to turn aside to Germany from the Italian highroad. + +I chose the line of the Brenner, and stopped half a day at Innsbruck to +pay a visit to Colonel Heddon, of whom I had the joyful tidings that two +of his daughters were away to go through the German form of the betrothal +of one of them to an Englishman. The turn of the tide had come to him. +And it comes to me, too, in a fresh spring tide whenever I have to speak +of others instead of this everlastingly recurring I of the +autobiographer, of which the complacent penman has felt it to be his duty +to expose the mechanism when out of action, and which, like so many of +our sins of commission, appears in the shape of a terrible offence when +the occasion for continuing it draws to a close. The pleasant narrator +in the first person is the happy bubbling fool, not the philosopher who +has come to know himself and his relations toward the universe. The +words of this last are one to twenty; his mind is bent upon the causes of +events rather than their progress. As you see me on the page now, I +stand somewhere between the two, approximating to the former, but with +sufficient of the latter within me to tame the delightful expansiveness +proper to that coming hour of marriage-bells and bridal-wreaths. It is a +sign that the end, and the delivery of reader and writer alike, should +not be dallied with. + +The princess had invited Lucy Heddon to Sarkeld to meet Temple, and +Temple to meet me. Onward I flew. I saw the old woods of the lake- +palace, and, as it were, the light of my past passion waning above them. +I was greeted by the lady of all nobility with her gracious warmth, and +in his usual abrupt manful fashion by Prince Hermann. And I had no time +to reflect on the strangeness of my stepping freely under the roof where +a husband claimed Ottilia, before she led me into the library, where sat +my lost and recovered, my darling; and, unlike herself, for a moment, she +faltered in rising and breathing my name. + +We were alone. I knew she was no bondwoman. The question how it had +come to pass lurked behind everything I said and did; speculation on the +visible features, and touching of the unfettered hand, restrained me from +uttering or caring to utter it. But it was wonderful. It thrust me back +on Providence again for the explanation--humbly this time. It was +wonderful and blessed, as to loving eyes the first-drawn breath of a +drowned creature restored to life. I kissed her hand. 'Wait till you +have heard everything, Harry,' she said, and her voice was deeper, +softer, exquisitely strange in its known tones, as her manner was, and +her eyes. She was not the blooming, straight-shouldered, high-breathing +girl of other days, but sister to the day of her 'Good-bye, Harry,' pale +and worn. The eyes had wept. This was Janet, haply widowed. She wore +no garb nor a shade of widowhood. Perhaps she had thrown it off, not to +offend an implacable temper in me. I said, 'I shall hear nothing that +can make you other than my own Janet--if you will?' + +She smiled a little. 'We expected Temple's arrival sooner than yours, +Harry.! + +'Do you take to his Lucy?' + +'Yes, thoroughly.' + +The perfect ring of Janet was there. + +Mention of Riversley made her conversation lively, and she gave me +moderately good news of my father, quaint, out of Julia Bulsted's latest +letter to her. + +'Then how long,' I asked astonished, 'how long have you been staying with +the princess?' + +She answered, colouring, 'So long, that I can speak fairish German.' + +'And read it easily?' + +'I have actually taken to reading, Harry.' + +Her courage must have quailed, and she must have been looking for me on +that morning of miserable aspect when I beheld the last of England +through wailful showers, like the scene of a burial. I did not speak of +it, fearing to hurt her pride, but said, 'Have you been here--months?' + +'Yes, some months,' she replied. + +'Many?' + +'Yes,' she said, and dropped her eyelids, and then, with a quick look at +me, 'Wait for Temple, Harry. He is a day behind his time. We can't +account for it.' + +I suggested, half in play, that perhaps he had decided, for the sake of a +sea voyage, to come by our old route to Germany on board the barque +Priscilla, with Captain Welsh. + +A faint shudder passed over her. She shut her eyes and shook her head. + +Our interview satisfied my heart's hunger no further. The Verona's +erratic voyage had cut me off from letters. + +Janet might be a widow, for aught I knew. She was always Janet to me; +but why at liberty? why many months at Sarkeld, the guest of the +princess? Was she neither maid nor widow--a wife flown from a brutal +husband? or separated, and forcibly free? Under such conditions Ottilia +would not have commanded my return but what was I to imagine? A boiling +couple of hours divided me from the time for dressing, when, as I +meditated, I could put a chance question or two to the man commissioned +to wait on me, and hear whether the English lady was a Fraulein. The +Margravine and Prince Ernest were absent. Hermann worked in his museum, +displaying his treasures to Colonel Heddon. I sat with the ladies in the +airy look-out tower of the lake-palace, a prey to intense speculations, +which devoured themselves and changed from fire to smoke, while I +recounted the adventures of our ship's voyage, and they behaved as if +there were nothing to tell me in turn, each a sphinx holding the secret I +thirsted for. I should not certainly have thirsted much if Janet had met +me as far half-way as a delicate woman may advance. The mystery lay in +her evident affection, her apparent freedom and unfathomable reserve, and +her desire that I should see Temple before she threw off her feminine +armour, to which, judging by the indications, Ottilia seemed to me to +accede. + +My old friend was spied first by his sweetheart Lucy, winding dilatorily +over the hill away from Sarkeld, in one of the carriages sent to meet +him. He was guilty of wasting a prodigious number of minutes with his +trumpery 'How d' ye do's,' and his glances and excuses, and then I had +him up in my room, and the tale was told; it was not Temple's fault if he +did not begin straightforwardly. + +I plucked him from his narrator's vexatious and inevitable commencement: +'Temple, tell me, did she go to the altar?' + +He answered 'Yes!' + +'She did? Then she's a widow?' + +'No, she isn't,' said Temple, distracting me by submitting to the lead I +distracted him by taking. + +'Then her husband's alive?' + +Temple denied it, and a devil seized him to perceive some comicality in +the dialogue. + +'Was she married?' + +Temple said 'No,' with a lurking drollery about his lips. He added, +'It 's nothing to laugh over, Richie.' + +'Am I laughing? Speak out. Did Edbury come to grief overnight in any +way?' + +Again Temple pronounced a negative, this time wilfully enigmatical: he +confessed it, and accused me of the provocation. He dashed some laughter +with gravity to prepare for my next assault. + +'Was Edbury the one to throw up the marriage? Did he decline it?' + +'No,' was the answer once more. + +Temple stopped my wrath by catching at me and begging me to listen. + +'Edbury was drowned, Richie.' + +'Overnight?' + +'No, not overnight. I can tell it all in half-a-dozen words, if you'll +be quiet; and I know you're going to be as happy as I am, or I shouldn't +trifle an instant. He went overnight on board the barque Priscilla to +see Mabel Sweetwinter, the only woman he ever could have cared for, and +he went the voyage, just as we did. He was trapped, caged, and +transported; it's a repetition, except that the poor old Priscilla never +came to land. She foundered in a storm in the North Sea. That 's all we +know. Every soul perished, the captain and all. I knew how it would be +with that crew of his some day or other. Don't you remember my saying +the Priscilla was the kind of name of a vessel that would go down with +all hands, and leave a bottle to float to shore? A gin-bottle was found +on our East coast-the old captain must have discovered in the last few +moments that such things were on board--and in it there was a paper, and +the passengers' and crew's names in his handwriting, written as if he had +been sitting in his parlour at home; over them a line--"The Lord's will +is about to be done"; and underneath--"We go to His judgement resigned +and cheerful." You know the old captain, Richie? + +Temple had tears in his eyes. We both stood blinking for a second or +two. + +I could not but be curious to hear the reason for Edbury's having +determined to sail. + +'Don't you understand how it was, Richie?' said Temple. 'Edbury went to +persuade her to stay, or just to see her for once, and he came to +persuasions. He seems to have been succeeding, but the captain stepped +on board and he treated Edbury as he did us two: he made him take the +voyage for discipline's sake and "his soul's health."' + +'How do you know all this, Temple?' + +'You know your friend Kiomi was one of the party. The captain sent her +back on shore because he had no room for her. She told us Edbury offered +bribes of hundreds and thousands for the captain to let him and Mabel go +off in the boat with Kiomi, and then he took to begging to go alone. He +tried to rouse the crew. The poor fellow cringed, she says; he +threatened to swim off. The captain locked him up.' + +My immediate reflections hit on the Bible lessons Edbury must have had to +swallow, and the gaping of the waters when its truths were suddenly and +tremendously brought home to him. + +An odd series of accidents! I thought. + +Temple continued: 'Heriot held his tongue about it next morning. He was +one of the guests, though he had sworn he wouldn't go. He said something +to Janet that betrayed him, for she had not seen him since.' + +'How betrayed him?' said I. + +'Why,' said Temple, 'of course it was Heriot who put Edbury in Kiomi's +hands. Edbury wouldn't have known of Mabel's sailing, or known the +vessel she was in, without her help. She led him down to the water and +posted him in sight before she went to Captain Welsh's; and when you and +Captain Welsh walked away, Edbury rowed to the Priscilla. Old Heriot is +not responsible for the consequences. What he supposed was likely +enough. He thought that Edbury and Mabel were much of a pair, and +thought, I suppose, that if Edbury saw her he'd find he couldn't leave +her, and old Lady Kane, who managed him, would stand nodding her plumes +for nothing at the altar. And so she did: and a pretty scene it was. +She snatched at the minutes as they slipped past twelve like fishes, and +snarled at the parson, and would have kept him standing till one P.M., if +Janet had not turned on her heel. The old woman got in front of her to +block her way. "Ah, Temple," she said to me, "it would be hard if I +could not think I had done all that was due to them." I didn't see her +again till she was starting for Germany. And, Richie, she thinks you can +never forgive her. She wrote me word that the princess is of another +mind, but her own opinion, she says, is based upon knowing you.' + +'Good heaven! how little!' cried I. + +Temple did me a further wrong by almost thanking me on Janet's behalf for +my sustained love for her, while he praised the very qualities of pride +and a spirited sense of obligation which had reduced her to dread my +unforgivingness. Yet he and Janet had known me longest. Supposing that +my idea of myself differed from theirs for the simple reason that I +thought of what I had grown to be, and they of what I had been through +the previous years? Did I judge by the flower, and they by root and +stem? But the flower is a thing of the season; the flower drops off: it +may be a different development next year. Did they not therefore judge +me soundly? + +Ottilia was the keenest reader. Ottilia had divined what could be +wrought out of me. I was still subject to the relapses of a not +perfectly right nature, as I perceived when glancing back at my thought +of 'An odd series of accidents!' which was but a disguised fashion of +attributing to Providence the particular concern, in my fortunes: an +impiety and a folly! This is the temptation of those who are rescued and +made happy by circumstances. The wretched think themselves spited, and +are merely childish, not egregious in egoism. Thither on leads to a +chapter--already written by the wise, doubtless. It does not become an +atom of humanity to dwell on it beyond a point where students of the +human condition may see him passing through the experiences of the flesh +and the brain. + +Meantime, Temple and I, at two hand-basins, soaped and towelled, and I +was more discreet toward him than I have been to you, for I reserved from +him altogether the pronunciation of the council of senators in the secret +chamber of my head. Whether, indeed, I have fairly painted the outer +part of myself waxes dubious when I think of his spluttering laugh and +shout; ' Richie, you haven't changed a bit--you're just like a boy!' +Certain indications of external gravity, and a sinking of the natural +springs within characterized Temple's approach to the responsible +position of a British husband and father. We talked much of Captain +Welsh, and the sedate practical irony of his imprisoning one like Edbury +to discipline him on high seas, as well as the singular situation of the +couple of culprits under his admonishing regimen, and the tragic end. My +next two minutes alone with Janet were tempered by it. Only my eagerness +for another term of privacy persuaded her that I was her lover instead of +judge, and then, having made the discovery that a single-minded gladness +animated me in the hope that she and I would travel together one in body +and soul, she surrendered, with her last bit of pride broken; except, it +may be, a fragment of reserve traceable in the confession that came +quaintly after supreme self-blame, when she said she was bound to tell me +that possibly--probably, were the trial to come over again, she should +again act as she had done. + +Happily for us both, my wits had been sharpened enough to know that there +is more in men and women than the stuff they utter. And blessed +privilege now! if the lips were guilty of nonsense, I might stop them. +Besides, I was soon to be master upon such questions. She admitted it, +admitting with an unwonted emotional shiver, that absolute freedom could +be the worst of perils. 'For women?' said I. She preferred to say, 'For +girls,' and then 'Yes, for women, as they are educated at present.' Spice +of the princess's conversation flavoured her speech. The signs +unfamiliar about her for me were marks of the fire she had come out of; +the struggle, the torture, the determined sacrifice, through pride's +conception of duty. She was iron once. She had come out of the fire +finest steel. + +'Riversley! Harry,' she murmured, and my smile, and word, and squeeze in +reply, brought back a whole gleam of the fresh English morning she had +been in face, and voice, and person. + +Was it conceivable that we could go back to Riversley single? + +Before that was answered she had to make a statement; and in doing it she +blushed, because it involved Edbury's name, and seemed to involve her +attachment to him; but she paid me the compliment of speaking it frankly. +It was that she had felt herself bound in honour to pay Edbury's debts. +Even by such slight means as her saying, 'Riversley, Harry,' and my kiss +of her fingers when a question of money was in debate, did we burst aside +the vestiges of mutual strangeness, and recognize one another, but with +an added warmth of love. When I pleaded for the marriage to be soon, she +said, 'I wish it, Harry.' + +Sentiment you do not obtain from a Damascus blade. She most cordially +despised the ladies who parade and play on their sex, and are for ever +acting according to the feminine standard:--a dangerous stretch of +contempt for one less strong than she. + +Riding behind her and Temple one day with the princess, I said, 'What +takes you most in Janet?' + +She replied, 'Her courage. And it is of a kind that may knot up +every other virtue worth having. I have impulses, and am capable of +desperation, but I have no true courage: so I envy and admire, even if I +have to blame her; for I know that this possession of hers, which +identifies her and marks her from the rest of us, would bear the ordeal +of fire. I can imagine the qualities I have most pride in withering and +decaying under a prolonged trial. I cannot conceive her courage failing. +Perhaps because I have it not myself I think it the rarest of precious +gifts. It seems to me to imply one half, and to dispense with the +other.' + +I have lived to think that Ottilia was right. As nearly right, too, in +the wording of her opinion as one may be in three or four sentences +designed to be comprehensive. + +My Janet's readiness to meet calamity was shown ere we reached home upon +an evening of the late autumn, and set eye on a scene, for her the very +saddest that could have been devised to test her spirit of endurance, +when, driving up the higher heath-land, we saw the dark sky ominously +reddened over Riversley, and, mounting the ridge, had the funeral flames +of the old Grange dashed in our faces. The blow was evil, sudden, +unaccountable. Villagers, tenants, farm-labourers, groups of a +deputation that had gone to the railway station to give us welcome; and +returned, owing to a delay in our arrival, stood gazing from all +quarters. The Grange was burning in two great wings, that soared in +flame-tips and columns of crimson smoke, leaving the central hall and +chambers untouched as yet, but alive inside with mysterious ranges of +lights, now curtained, now made bare--a feeble contrast to the savage +blaze to right and left, save for the wonder aroused as to its +significance. These were soon cloaked. Dead sable reigned in them, and +at once a jet of flame gave the whole vast building to destruction. My +wife thrust her hand in mine. Fire at the heart, fire at the wings--our +old home stood in that majesty of horror which freezes the limbs of men, +bidding them look and no more. + +'What has Riversley done to deserve this?' I heard Janet murmur to +herself. 'His room !' she said, when at the South-east wing, where my +old grandfather had slept, there burst a glut of flame. We dove down to +the park and along the carriage-road to the first red line of gazers. +They told us that no living creatures were in the house. My aunt Dorothy +was at Bulsted. I perceived my father's man Tollingby among the +servants, and called him to me; others came, and out of a clatter of +tongues, and all eyes fearfully askant at the wall of fire, we gathered +that a great reception had been prepared for us by my father: lamps, +lights in all the rooms, torches in the hall, illuminations along the +windows, stores of fireworks, such a display as only he could have +dreamed of. The fire had broken out at dusk, from an explosion of +fireworks at one wing and some inexplicable mismanagement at the other. +But the house must have been like a mine, what with the powder, the +torches, the devices in paper and muslin, and the extraordinary +decorations fitted up to celebrate our return in harmony with my father's +fancy. + +Gentlemen on horseback dashed up to us. Captain Bulsted seized my hand. +He was hot from a ride to fetch engines, and sang sharp in my ear, 'Have +you got him?' It was my father he meant. The cry rose for my father, and +the groups were agitated and split, and the name of the missing man, +without an answer to it, shouted. Captain Bulsted had left him bravely +attempting to quench the flames after the explosion of fireworks. He +rode about, interrogating the frightened servants and grooms holding +horses and dogs. They could tell us that the cattle were safe, not a +word of my father; and amid shrieks of women at fresh falls of timber and +ceiling into the pit of fire, and warnings from the men, we ran the +heated circle of the building to find a loophole and offer aid if a +living soul should be left; the night around us bright as day, busier +than day, and a human now added to elemental horror. Janet would not +quit her place. She sent her carriage-horses to Bulsted, and sat in the +carriage to see the last of burning Riversley. Each time that I came to +her she folded her arms on my neck and kissed me silently. + +We gathered from the subsequent testimony of men and women of the +household who had collected their wits, that my father must have remained +in the doomed old house to look to the safety of my aunt Dorothy. He was +never seen again. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Absolute freedom could be the worst of perils +Add on a tired pipe after dark, and a sound sleep to follow +Allowed silly sensitiveness to prevent the repair +As little trouble as the heath when the woods are swept +Bade his audience to beware of princes +But the flower is a thing of the season; the flower drops off +But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death +Is it any waste of time to write of love? +Not to do things wholly is worse than not to do things at all +Payment is no more so than to restore money held in trust +Self, was digging pits for comfort to flow in +Tears are the way of women and their comfort +The love that survives has strangled craving +The wretch who fears death dies multitudinously +There is more in men and women than the stuff they utter +Those who are rescued and made happy by circumstances +To kill the deer and be sorry for the suffering wretch is common +Twice a bad thing to turn sinners loose +What a man hates in adversity is to see 'faces' +What else is so consolatory to a ruined man? +Who shuns true friends flies fortune in the concrete +Would he see what he aims at? let him ask his heels +You may learn to know yourself through love + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Adventures of Harry Richmond, v8 +by George Meredith + diff --git a/4451.zip b/4451.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9d8569 --- /dev/null +++ b/4451.zip 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. 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