George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
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<titlepage>

	THE ORDEAL

	OF

	RICHARD FEVEREL

	A History of a Father and Son


	by

	George Meredith


<text>
                    THE

         ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL.



	CHAPTER I.

	THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY.

  Some years ago a book was published under the title
of ``The Pilgrim's Scrip.'' It consisted of a selection of
original aphorisms by an anonymous gentleman, who in
this bashful manner gave a bruised heart to the world.
He made no pretension to novelty. ``Our new thoughts
have thrilled dead bosoms,'' he wrote; by which avowal it
may be seen that youth had manifestly gone from him, since
he had ceased to be jealous of the ancients. There was a
half-sigh floating through his pages for those days of intellectual
coxcombry, when ideas come to us affecting the
embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours alone, and
no one else have they ever visited: and we believe them.

  For an example of his ideas of the sex he said:

  ``I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by
Man.''

  Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by
so monstrous a scorn of them.

  One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds'
College, and there ascertained that a Griffin between two
Wheatsheaves, which stood on the title-page of the book,
formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy Bearne Feverel,
Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain Western county
folding Thames: a man of wealth and honour, and a somewhat
lamentable history.

  The outline of the baronet's story was by no means new.
He had a wife, and he had a friend. His marriage was for
love; his wife was a beauty; his friend was a sort of poet.
His wife had his whole heart, and his friend all his confidence.
When he selected Denzil Somers from among his
college chums, it was not on account of any similarity of
disposition between them, but from his intense worship of
genius, which made him overlook the absence of principle
in his associate for the sake of such brilliant promise.
Denzil had a small patrimony to lead off with, but that he
dissipated before he left college, and thenceforth he was
dependent upon his admirer, with whom he lived, filling a
nominal post of bailiff to the estates, and launching forth
verse of some satiric and sentimental quality; for being
inclined to vice, and occasionally, and in a quiet way, practising
it, he was of course a sentimentalist and a satirist,
entitled to lash the Age and complain of human nature.
His earlier poems, published under the pseudonym of Diaper
Sandoe, were so pure and bloodless in their love passages,
and at the same time so biting in their moral tone, that his
reputation was great among the virtuous, who form the
larger portion of the English book-buying public. Election-seasons
called him to ballad-poetry on behalf of the Tory
party. Diaper possessed undoubted fluency, but did little,
though Sir Austin was ever expecting much of him.

  A languishing, inexperienced woman, whose husband in
mental and in moral stature is more than the ordinary height
above her, and who, now that her first romantic admiration
of his lofty bearing has worn off, and her little fretful refinements
of taste and sentiment are not instinctively responded
to, is thrown into no wholesome household collision with a
fluent man, fluent in prose and rhyme. Lady Feverel, when
she first entered on her duties at Raynham, was jealous of
her husband's friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In
time he touched his guitar in her chamber, and they played
Rizzio and Mary together.

	``For I am not the first who found
	The name of Mary fatal!''

says a subsequent sentimental alliterative love-poem of
Diaper's.

  Such was the outline of the story. But the baronet could
fill it up. He had opened his soul to these two. He had
been noble Love to the one, and to the other perfect Friendship.
He had bid them be brother and sister whom he
loved, and live a Golden Age with him at Raynham. In fact,
he had been prodigal of the excellences of his nature, which
it is not good to be, and, like Timon, he became bankrupt,
and fell upon bitterness.

  The faithless lady was of no particular family; an orphan
daughter of an admiral who educated her on his half-pay,
and her conduct struck but at the man whose name she bore.

  After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship, Sir
Austin was left to his loneliness with nothing to ease his
heart of love upon save a little baby boy in a cradle. He
forgave the man: he put him aside as poor for his wrath,
The woman he could not forgive; she had sinned every way.
Simple ingratitude to a benefactor was a pardonable transgression,
for he was not one to recount and crush the culprit
under the heap of his good deeds. But her he had raised to
be his equal, and he judged her as his equal. She had
blackened the world's fair aspect for him.

  In the presence of that world, so different to him now, he
preserved his wonted demeanour, and made his features a
flexible mask. Mrs. Doria Forey, his widowed sister, said
that Austin might have retired from his Parliamentary
career for a time, and given up gaieties and that kind of
thing; her opinion, founded on observation of him in public
and private, was, that the light thing that had taken flight
was but a feather on her brother's Feverel-heart, and his
ordinary course of life would be resumed. There are times
when common men cannot bear the weight of just so much.
Hippias Feverel, one of his brothers, thought him immensely
improved by his misfortune, if the loss of such a person could
be so designated; and seeing that Hippias received in consequence
free quarters at Raynham, and possession of the
wing of the Abbey she had inhabited, it is profitable to
know his thoughts. If the baronet had given two or three
blazing dinners in the great hall he would have deceived
people generally, as he did his relatives and intimates. He
was too sick for that: fit only for passive acting.

  The nursemaid waking in the night beheld a solitary figure
darkening a lamp above her little sleeping charge, and
became so used to the sight as never to wake with a start.
One night she was strangely aroused by a sound of sobbing.
The baronet stood beside the cot in his long black cloak and
travelling cap. His fingers shaded a lamp, and reddened
against the fitful darkness that ever and anon went leaping
up the wall. She could hardly believe her senses to see the
austere gentleman, dead silent, dropping tear upon tear before
her eyes. She lay stone-still in a trance of terror and mournfulness,
mechanically counting the tears as they fell, one
by one. The hidden face, the fall and flash of those heavy
drops in the light of the lamp he held, the upright, awful
figure, agitated at regular intervals like a piece of clockwork
by the low murderous catch of his breath: it was so piteous
to her poor human nature that her heart began wildly palpitating.
Involuntarily the poor girl cried out to him, ``Oh,
sir!'' and fell a-weeping. Sir Austin turned the lamp on her
pillow, and harshly bade her go to sleep, striding from the
room forthwith. He dismissed her with a purse the next
day.

  Once, when he was seven years old, the little fellow woke
up at night to see a lady bending over him. He talked of
this the next day, but it was treated as a dream; until in the
course of the day his uncle Algernon was driven home from
Lobourne cricket-ground with a broken leg. Then it was
recollected that there was a family ghost; and, though no
member of the family believed in the ghost, none would have
given up a circumstance that testified to its existence; for to
possess a ghost is a distinction above titles.

  Algernon Feverel lost his leg, and ceased to be a gentleman
in the Guards. Of the other uncles of young Richard,
Cuthbert, the sailor, perished in a spirited boat expedition
against a slaving negro chief up the Niger. Some of the
gallant lieutenant's trophies of war decorated the little boy's
play-shed at Raynham, and he bequeathed his sword to
Richard, whose hero he was. The diplomatist and beau,
Vivian, ended his flutterings from flower to flower by making
an improper marriage, as is the fate of many a beau, and was
struck out of the list of visitors. Algernon generally occupied
the baronet's disused town-house, a wretched being, dividing
his time between horse and card exercise: possessed, it was
said, of the absurd notion that a man who has lost his balance
by losing his leg may regain it by sticking to the bottle.
At least, whenever he and his brother Hippias got together,
they never failed to try whether one leg, or two, stood the
bottle best. Much of a puritan as Sir Austin was in his
habits, he was too good a host, and too thorough a gentleman,
to impose them upon his guests. The brothers, and other
relatives, might do as they would while they did not disgrace
the name, and then it was final: they must depart to behold
his countenance no more.

  Algernon Feverel was a simple man, who felt, subsequent
to his misfortune, as he had perhaps dimly fancied it before,
that his career lay in his legs, and was now irrevocably cut
short. He taught the boy boxing, and shooting, and the arts
of fence, and superintended the direction of his animal vigour
with a melancholy vivacity. The remaining energies of
Algernon's mind were devoted to animadversions on swift
bowling. He preached it over the county, struggling through
laborious literary compositions, addressed to sporting newspapers,
on the Decline of Cricket. It was Algernon who
witnessed and chronicled young Richard's first fight, which
was with young Tom Blaize of Belthorpe Farm, three years
the boy's senior.

  Hippias Feverel was once thought to be the genius of the
family. It was his ill luck to have strong appetites and a
weak stomach; and, as one is not altogether fit for the battle
of life who is engaged in a perpetual contention with his
dinner, Hippias forsook his prospects at the Bar, and, in the
embraces of dyspepsia, compiled his ponderous work on the
Fairy Mythology of Europe. He had little to do with the
Hope of Raynham beyond what he endured from his juvenile
tricks.

  A venerable lady, known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who had
money to bequeath to the heir, occupied with Hippias the
background of the house and shared her caudles with him.
These two were seldom seen till the dinner-hour, for which
they were all day preparing, and probably all night remembering,
for the eighteenth century was an admirable trencherman,
and cast age aside while there was a dish on the
table.

  Mrs. Doria Forey was the eldest of the three sisters of the
baronet, a florid affable woman, with fine teeth, exceedingly
fine light wavy hair, a Norman nose, and a reputation for
understanding men, which, with these practical creatures,
always means the art of managing them. She had married
an expectant younger son of a good family, who deceased
before the fulfilment of his prospects; and, casting about in
her mind the future chances of her little daughter and sole
child, Clare, she marked down a probability; and the far
sight, the deep determination, the resolute perseverance of
her sex, where a daughter is to be provided for and a man
to be overthrown, instigated her to invite herself to Raynham,
where, with that daughter, she fixed herself.

  The other two Feverel ladies were the wife of Colonel
Wentworth and the widow of Mr. Justice Harley: and the
only thing remarkable about them was that they were mothers
of sons of some distinction.

  Austin Wentworth's story was of that wretched character
which to be comprehended, that justice should be dealt him,
must be told out and openly; which no one dares now do.

  For a fault in early youth, redeemed by him nobly, according
to his light, he was condemned to undergo the world's
harsh judgment: not for the fault---for its atonement.

  ``---Married his mother's housemaid,'' whispered Mrs.
Doria, with a ghastly look, and a shudder at young men of
republican sentiments, which he was reputed to entertain.

  ``The compensation for Injustice,'' says the ``Pilgrim's
Scrip,'' ``is, that in that dark Ordeal we gather the worthiest
around us.''

  And the baronet's fair friend, Lady Blandish, and some
few true men and women, held Austin Wentworth high.

  He did not live with his wife; and Sir Austin, whose mind
was bent on the future of our species, reproached him with
being barren to posterity, while knaves were propagating.

  The principal characteristic of the second nephew, Adrian
Harley, was his sagacity. He was essentially the wise youth,
both in counsel and in action.

  ``In action,'' the `Pilgrim's Scrip' observes, ``Wisdom
goes by majorities.''

  Adrian had an instinct for the majorities, and, as the world
invariably found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of
wise youth was acquiesced in without irony.

  The wise youth, then, had the world with him, but no
friends. Nor did he wish for those troublesome appendages
of success. He caused himself to be required by people who
could serve him; feared by such as could injure. Not that he
went out of the way to secure his end, or risked the expense
of a plot. He did the work as easily as he ate his daily bread.
Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have
scourged out of his garden, certainly: an epicurean of our
modern notions. To satisfy his appetites without rashly
staking his character, was the wise youth's problem for life.
He had no intimates except Gibbon and Horace, and the
society of these fine aristocrats of literature helped him to
accept humanity as it had been, and was; a supreme ironic
procession, with laughter of Gods in the background. Why
not laughter of mortals also? Adrian had his laugh in his
comfortable corner. He possessed peculiar attributes of a
heathen God. He was a disposer of men: he was polished,
luxurious, and happy---at their cost. He lived in eminent
self-content, as one lying on soft cloud, lapt in sunshine. Nor
Jove, nor Apollo, cast eye upon the maids of earth with
cooler fire of selection, or pursued them in the covert with
more sacred impunity. And he enjoyed his reputation for
virtue as something additional. Stolen fruits are said to be
sweet; undeserved rewards are exquisite.

  The best of it was, that Adrian made no pretences. He did
not solicit the favourable judgement of the world. Nature and
he attempted no other concealment than the ordinary mask
men wear. And yet the world would proclaim him moral,
as well as wise, and the pleasing converse every way of his
disgraced cousin Austin.

  In a word, Adrian Harley had mastered his philosophy at
the early age of one-and-twenty. Many would be glad to say
the same at that age twice-told: they carry in their breasts
a burden with which Adrian's was not loaded. Mrs. Doria
was nearly right about his heart. A singular mishap (at
his birth, possibly, or before it) had unseated that organ,
and shaken it down to his stomach, where it was a much
lighter, nay, an inspiring weight, and encouraged him merrily
onward. Throned there it looked on little that did not arrive
to gratify it. Already that region was a trifle prominent in
the person of the wise youth, and carried, as it were, the flag
of his philosophical tenets in front of him. He was charming
after dinner, with men or with women: delightfully sarcastic:
perhaps a little too unscrupulous in his moral tone,
but that his moral reputation belied him, and it must be set
down to generosity of disposition.

  Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's intellectual
favourites, chosen from mankind to superintend the
education of his son at Raynham. Adrian had been destined
for the Church. He did not enter into orders. He and the
baronet had a conference together one day, and from that
time Adrian became a fixture in the Abbey. His father died
in his promising son's college term, bequeathing him nothing
but his legal complexion, and Adrian became stipendiary
officer in his uncle's household.

  A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the only
comrade of his age that he ever saw, was Master Ripton
Thompson, the son of Sir Austin's solicitor, a boy without a
character.

  A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard
was neither to go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered
that the schools were corrupt, and maintained that
young lads might by parental vigilance be kept pretty secure
from the Serpent until Eve sided with him: a period that
might be deferred, he said. He had a system of education
for his son. How it worked we shall see.



	CHAPTER II.

	SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY
        TO TRY THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM.

  October shone royally on Richard's fourteenth birthday.
The brown beechwoods and golden birches glowed to a
brilliant sun. Banks of moveless cloud hung about the
horizon, mounded to the west, where slept the wind. Promise
of a great day for Raynham, as it proved to be, though
not in the manner marked out.

  Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising
on the lower grounds towards the river, whither the lads of
Bursley and Lobourne, in boats and in carts, shouting for a
day of ale and honour, jogged merrily to match themselves
anew, and pluck at the living laurel from each other's brows,
like manly Britons. The whole park was beginning to be
astir and resound with holiday cries. Sir Austin Feverel,
a thorough good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be
popular whenever he chose, which Sir Miles Papworth, on
the other side of the river, a fast-handed Whig and terror to
poachers, never could be. Half the village of Lobourne was
seen trooping through the avenues of the park. Fiddlers
and gipsies clamoured at the gates for admission: white
smocks, and slate, surmounted by hats of serious brim, and
now and then a scarlet cloak, smacking of the old country,
dotted the grassy sweeps to the levels.

  And all the time the star of these festivities was receding
further and further, and eclipsing himself with his reluctant
serf Ripton, who kept asking what they were to do and
where they were going, and how late it was in the day, and
suggesting that the lads of Lobourne would be calling out for
them, and Sir Austin requiring their presence, without getting
any attention paid to his misery or remonstrances. For
Richard had been requested by his father to submit to
medical examination like a boor enlisting for a soldier, and
he was in great wrath.

  He was flying as though he would have flown from the
shameful thought of what had been asked of him. By-and-by
he communicated his sentiments to Ripton, who said they
were those of a girl: an offensive remark, remembering
which, Richard, after they had borrowed a couple of guns at
the bailiff's farm, and Ripton had fired badly, called his friend
a fool.

  Feeling that circumstances were making him look wonderfully
like one, Ripton lifted his head and retorted defiantly,
``I'm not!''

  This angry contradiction, so very uncalled for, annoyed
Richard, who was still smarting at the loss of his birds,
owing to Ripton's bad shot, and was really the injured party.
He therefore bestowed the abusive epithet on Ripton anew,
and with increase of emphasis.

  ``You shan't call me so, then, whether I am or not,'' says
Ripton, and sticks his lips.

  This was becoming personal. Richard sent up his brows,
and stared at his defier an instant. He then informed him
that he certainly should call him so, and would not object to
call him so twenty times,

  ``Do it, and see!'' returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and
breathing quick.

  With a gravity of which only boys and other barbarians
are capable, Richard went through the entire number, stressing
the epithet to increase the defiance and avoid monotony,
as he progressed, while Ripton bobbed his head every time
in assent, as it were, to his comrade's accuracy, and as a
record for his profound humiliation. The dog they had with
them gazed at the extraordinary performance with interrogating
wags of the tail.

  Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the
obnoxious word.

  At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton's capital
shortcoming, Ripton delivered a smart backhander on
Richard's mouth, and squared precipitately; perhaps sorry
when the deed was done, for he was a kind-hearted lad, and
as Richard simply bowed in acknowledgment of the blow he
thought he had gone too far. He did not know the young
gentleman he was dealing with. Richard was extremely
cool.

  ``Shall we fight here?'' he said.

  ``Anywhere you like,'' replied Ripton.

  ``A little more into the wood, I think. We may be interrupted.''
And Richard led the way with a courteous reserve
that somewhat chilled Ripton's ardour for the contest. On
the skirts of the wood, Richard threw off his jacket and
waistcoat, and, quite collected, waited for Ripton to do the
same. The latter boy was flushed and restless; older and
broader, but not so tight-limbed and well-set. The Gods,
sole witnesses of their battle, betted dead against him.
Richard had mounted the white cockade of the Feverels, and
there was a look in him that asked for tough work to extinguish.
His brows, slightly lined upward at the temples,
converging to a knot about the well-set straight nose; his
full grey eyes, open nostrils, and planted feet, and a gentlemanly
air of calm and alertness, formed a spirited picture
of a young combatant. As for Ripton, he was all abroad,
and fought in school-boy style---that is, he rushed at the foe
head foremost, and struck like a windmill. He was a lumpy
boy. When he did hit, he made himself felt; but he was at
the mercy of science. To see him come dashing in, blinking
and puffing and whirling his arms abroad while the felling
blow went straight between them, you perceived that he
was fighting a fight of desperation, and knew it. For the
dreaded alternative glared him in the face that, if he yielded,
he must look like what he had been twenty times calumniously
called; and he would die rather than yield, and
swing his windmill till he dropped. Poor boy! he dropped
frequently. The gallant fellow fought for appearances, and
down he went. The Gods favour one of two parties. Prince
Turnus was a noble youth; but he had not Pallas at his
elbow. Ripton was a capital boy, but he had no science.
He could not prove he was not a fool! When one comes to
think of it, Ripton did choose the only possible way, and we
should all of us have considerable difficulty in proving the
negative by any other. Ripton came on the unerring fist
again and again; and if it was true, as he said in short colloquial
gasps, that he required as much beating as an egg to
be beaten thoroughly, a fortunate interruption alone saved
our friend from resembling that substance. The boys heard
summoning voices, and beheld Mr. Morton of Poer Hall and
Austin Wentworth stepping towards them.

  A truce was sounded, jackets were caught up, guns shouldered,
and off they trotted in concert through the depths of
the wood, not stopping till that and half-a-dozen fields and a
larch plantation were well behind them.

  When they halted to take breath, there was a mutual
study of faces. Ripton's was much discoloured, and looked
fiercer with its natural war-paint than the boy felt. Nevertheless,
he squared up dauntlessly on the new ground, and
Richard, whose wrath was appeased, could not refrain from
asking him whether he had not really had enough.

  ``Never!'' shouts the noble enemy.

  ``Well, look here,'' said Richard, appealing to common
sense, ``I'm tired of knocking you down. I'll say you're not
a fool, if you'll give me your hand.''

  Ripton demurred an instant to consult with honour, who
bade him catch at his chance.

  He held out his hand. ``There!'' and the boys grasped
hands and were fast friends. Ripton had gained his point,
and Richard decidedly had the best of it. So they were on
equal ground. Both could claim a victory, which was all
the better for their friendship.

  Ripton washed his face and comforted his nose at a brook,
and was now ready to follow his friend wherever he chose to
lead. They continued to beat about for birds. The birds
on the Raynham estates were found singularly cunning, and
repeatedly eluded the aim of these prime shots, so they pushed
their expedition into the lands of their neighbours, in search
of a stupider race, happily oblivious of the laws and conditions
of trespass; unconscious, too, that they were poaching
on the demesne of the notorious Farmer Blaize, the
free-trade farmer under the shield of the Papworths, no
worshipper of the Griffin between two Wheatsheaves;
destined to be much allied with Richard's fortunes from
beginning to end. Farmer Blaize hated poachers, and especially
young chaps poaching, who did it mostly from impudence.
He heard the audacious shots popping right and
left, and going forth to have a glimpse at the intruders, and
observing their size, swore he would teach my gentlemen a
thing, lords or no lords.

  Richard had brought down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and
was exulting over it, when the farmer's portentous figure
burst upon them, cracking an avenging horsewhip. His
salute was ironical.

  ``Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?''

  ``Just bagged a splendid bird!'' radiant Richard informed
him.

  ``Oh!'' Farmer Blaize gave an admonitory flick of the
whip.

  ``Just let me clap eye on't then.''

  ``Say, please,'' interposed Ripton, who, not being the
possessor of the bird, was not blind to doubtful aspects.

  Farmer Blaize threw up his chin, and grinned grimly.

  ``Please to you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye
didn't much mind what come t' yer nose, I reckon. You
looks an old poacher, you do. Tall ye what 'tis!'' He
changed his banter to business, ``That bird's mine! Now
you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young
scoundrels! I know ye!'' And he became exceedingly
opprobrious, and uttered contempt at the name of Feverel.
Richard opened his eyes.

  ``If you wants to be horsewhipped, you'll stay where
y'are!'' continued the farmer. ``Giles Blaize never stands
nonsense!''

  ``Then we'll stay,'' quoth Richard.

  ``Good! so be't! If you will have't, have't, my men!''
As a preparatory measure, Farmer Blaize seized a wing of
the bird, on which both boys flung themselves desperately,
and secured it minus the pinion.

  ``That's your game,'' cried the farmer. ``Here's a taste of
horsewhip for ye. I never stands nonsense!'' and sweetch
went the mighty whip, well swayed. The boys tried to close
with him. He kept his distance and lashed without mercy.
Black blood was made by Farmer Blaize that day! The boys
wriggled, in spite of themselves. It was like a relentless
serpent coiling, and biting, and stinging their young veins to
madness. Probably they felt the disgrace of the contortions
they were made to go through more than the pain, but the
pain was fierce, for the farmer laid about from a practised
arm, and did not consider that he had done enough till he
was well breathed and his ruddy jowl inflamed. He paused,
to receive the remainder of the cook-pheasant in his face.

  ``Take your beastly bird,'' cried Richard.

  ``Money, my lads, and interest,'' roared the farmer, lashing
out again.

  Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course
open to them. They decided to surrender the field.

  ``Look! you big brute,'' Richard shook his gun, hoarse
with passion, ``I'd have shot you, if I'd been loaded. Mind!
if I come across you when I'm loaded, you coward, I'll fire!''

  The un-English nature of this threat exasperated Farmer
Blaize, and he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow a few
farewell stripes as they were escaping tight-breeched into
neutral territory. At the hedge they parleyed a minute, the
farmer to inquire if they had had a mortal good tanning and
were satisfied, for when they wanted a further instalment of
the same they were to come for it to Belthorpe Farm, and
there it was in pickle: the boys meantime exploding in
menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer contemptuously
turned his back. Ripton had already stocked
an armful of flints for the enjoyment of a little skirmishing,
Richard, however, knocked them all out, saying, ``No!
Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave that to the blackguards.''

  ``Just one shy at him!'' pleaded Ripton, with his eye on
Farmer Blaize's broad mark, and his whole mind drunken
with a sudden revelation of the advantages of light troops in
opposition to heavies.

  ``No,'' said Richard, imperatively, ``no stones,'' and
marched briskly away. Ripton followed with a sigh. His
leader's magnanimity was wholly beyond him. A good
sparkling mark at the farmer would have relieved Master
Ripton; it would have done nothing to console Richard
Feverel for the ignominy he had been compelled to submit
to. Ripton was familiar with the rod, a monster much despoiled
of his terrors by intimacy. Birch-fever was past
with this boy. The horrible sense of shame, self-loathing,
universal hatred, impotent vengeance, as if the spirit were
steeped in abysmal blackness, which comes upon a courageous
and sensitive youth condemned for the first time to taste this
piece of fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he feels is a defilement,
Ripton had weathered and forgotten. He was seasoned
wood, and took the world pretty wisely; not reckless of
castigation, as some boys become, nor over-sensitive as to
dishonour, as his friend and comrade beside him was.

  Richard's blood was poisoned. He had the fever on him
severely. He would not allow stone-flinging, because it was
a habit of his to discountenance it. Mere gentlemanly considerations
had scarce shielded Farmer Blaize, and certain
very ungentlemanly schemes were coming to ghastly heads
in the tumult of his brain; rejected solely from their glaring
impracticability even to his young intelligence. A sweeping
and consummate vengeance for the indignity alone should
satisfy him. Something tremendous must be done, and done
without delay. At one moment he thought of killing all the
farmer's cattle; next of killing him; challenging him to
single combat with the arms, and according to the fashion
of gentlemen. But the farmer was a coward; he would
refuse. Then he, Richard Feverel, would stand by the
farmer's bedside, and rouse him; rouse him to fight with
powder and ball in his own chamber, in the cowardly midnight,
where he might tremble, but dare not refuse.

  ``Lord!'' cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots
were raging in his comrade's brain, now sparkling for immediate
execution, and anon lapsing disdainfully dark in their
chances of fulfilment, ``how I wish you'd have let me notch
him, Ricky! I'm a safe shot. I never miss. I should feel
quite jolly if I'd spanked him once. We should have had
the best of him at that game. I say!'' and a sharp thought
drew Ripton's ideas nearer home, ``I wonder whether my
nose is as bad as he says! Where can I see myself? Gracious!
what shall I do when we get to Raynham, if it is?
What'll the ladies think of me? O Lord, Ricky! suppose
it turns blue?''

  Ripton moved a meditative forefinger down the bridge of
his nose as this horrible suspicion clouded him. Farmer
Blaize passed from his mind. The wretched boy called aloud
in agony that his nose was turning blue. ``Oh, if I had a
bit of raw meat to lay across it!'' he cried. ``What a fool I
was to fight!---Won't I learn boxing!---What shall I look
like?'' To these doleful exclamations Richard was deaf,
and trudged steadily forward, facing but one object.

  After tearing through innumerable hedges, leaping fences,
jumping dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting
dirty, ragged, and tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of
Farmer Blaize and a blue nose to the vivid consciousness of
hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of light upon him,
till in the course of another minute he was enduring the
extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader
whither he was being conducted. Raynham was out of
sight. They were a long way down the valley, miles from
Lobourne, in a country of sour pools, yellow brooks, rank
pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen; the
smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey
grazing at leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a
horse-pond, gabbling as in the first loneliness of creation;
uncooked things that a famishing boy cannot possibly care
for, and must despise. Ripton was in despair.

  ``Where _are_ you going to?'' he inquired with a voice of
the last time of asking, and halted resolutely.

  Richard now broke his silence to reply, ``Anywhere.''

  ``Anywhere!'' Ripton took up the moody word. ``But
ain't you awfully hungry?'' he gasped vehemently in a way
that showed the total emptiness of his stomach.

  ``No,'' was Richard's brief response.

  ``Not hungry!'' Ripton's amazement lent him increased
vehemence. ``Why, you haven't had anything to eat since
breakfast! Not hungry? I declare I'm starving. I feel
such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and cheese!''

  Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated
a similar demonstration of the philosopher.

  ``Come,'' cried Ripton, ``at all events, tell us where you're
going to stop?''

  Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The
injured and hapless visage that met his eye disarmed him.
The lad's unhappy nose, though not exactly of the dreaded
hue, was really becoming discoloured. To upbraid him
would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the position,
and exclaiming ``Here!'' dropped down on a withered
bank, leaving Ripton to contemplate him as a puzzle whose
every new move was a worse perplexity.
 


	CHAPTER III.

	THE MAGIAN CONFLICT


  Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes,
not written or formally taught, but intuitively understood
by all, and invariably acted upon by the loyal and the true.
The race is not nearly civilized, we must remember. Thus,
not to follow your leader whithersoever he may think proper
to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end of it
frowns dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to
quit a comrade on the road, and return home without him.
these are tricks which no boy of spirit would be guilty of,
let him come to any description of mortal grief in consequence.
Better so than have his own conscience denouncing
him sneak. Some boys who behave boldly enough are
not troubled by this conscience, and the eyes and the lips
of their fellows have to supply the deficiency. They do it
with just as haunting, and even more horrible pertinacity,
than the inner voice, and the result, if the probation be not
very severe and searching, is the same. The leader can
rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade is sworn
to serve. Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal.
The idea of turning off and forsaking his friend never once
crossed his mind, though his condition was desperate, and
his friend's behaviour that of a Bedlamite. He announced
several times impatiently that they would be too late for
dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner seemed nothing
to him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old
dog's nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger
was. Ripton took half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at
last flung himself down beside the taciturn boy, accepting
his fate.

  Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a
smart shower from the sinking sun, and the wet sent two
strangers for shelter in the lane behind the hedge where the
boys reclined. One was a travelling tinker, who lit a pipe
and spread a tawny umbrella. The other was a burly young
countryman, pipeless and tentless. They saluted with a
nod, and began recounting for each other's benefit the day-long
doings of the weather, as it had affected their individual
experience, and followed their prophecies. Both had anticipated
and foretold a bit of rain before night, and therefore
both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A monotonous
betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony
with the still hum of the air. From the weather theme
they fell upon the blessings of tobacco; how it was the poor
man's friend, his company, his consolation, his comfort, his
refuge at night, his first thought in the morning.

  ``Better than a wife!'' chuckled the tinker. ``No curtain-lecturin'
with a pipe. Your pipe an't a shrew.''

  ``That be it!'' the other chimed in. ``Your pipe doan't
mak' ye out wi' all the cash Saturday evenin'.''

  ``Take one,'' said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the
moment, handing a grimy short clay. Speed-the-Plough
filled from the tinker's pouch, and continued his praises.

  ``Penny 'a day, and there y'are, primed! Better than a
wife? Ha, ha!''

  ``And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when
ye wants,'' added tinker.

  ``So ye can!'' Speed-the-Plough took him up, ``So ye
can! And ye doan't want for to. Leastways, t'other case.
I means pipe.''

  ``And,'' continued Tinker, comprehending him perfectly,
``it don't bring repentance after it.''

  ``Not nohow, master, it doan't! And''---Speed-the-Plough
cocked his eye---``it doan't eat up half the victuals,
your pipe doan't.''

  Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a
clincher, which the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to
speak, sealed up the subject by saying the best thing that
could be said, the two smoked for some time in silence to
the drip and patter of the shower.

  Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through
the briar hedge. He saw the tinker stroking a white cat,
and appealing to her, every now and then, as his missus,
for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought that a
curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full
length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the
tinker's pots, smoking profoundly contemplative. The
minutes seemed to be taken up alternately by the grey puffs
from their mouths.

  It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he,
``Times is bad!''

  His companion assented, ``Sure-ly!''

  ``But it somehow comes round right,'' resumed the tinker.
``Why, look here. Where's the good o' moping? I sees it
all come round right and tight. Now I travels about. I've
got beat. 'Casion calls me t'other day to Newcastle!---
Eh?''

  ``Coals!'' ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.

  ``Coals!'' echoed the tinker. ``You ask what I goes there
for, mayhap? Never you mind. One sees a mort o' life in
my trade. Not for coals it isn't. And I don't carry 'em
there, neither. Anyhow, I comes back. London's my mark.
Says I, I'll see a bit o' the sea, and steps aboard a collier.
We were as nigh wrecked as the prophet Paul.''

  ``A---who's him?'' the other wished to know.

  ``Read your Bible,'' said the tinker. ``We pitched and
tossed---'tain't that game at sea 'tis on land, I can tell ye!
I thinks, down we're agoing---Say your prayers, Bob Tiles!
That was a night, to be sure! But God's above the devil,
and here I am, ye see.''

  Speed-the-Plough lurched round on his elbow and regarded
him indifferently: ``D'ye call that doctrin'? He bean't
al'ays, or I shoo'n't 'be scrapin' my heels wi' nothin' to do,
and, what's warse, nothin' to eat. Why, look heer. Luck's
luck, and bad luck's the con-trary. Varmer Bollop, t'other
day' has's rick burnt down. Next night his gran'ry's burnt.
What do he tak' and go and do? He takes and goes and
hangs unsel', and turns us out of his employ. God warn't
above the devil then, I thinks, or I can't make out the
reckonin'.''

  The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.

  ``And a darn'd bad case. I'll tak' my oath on't!'' cried
Speed-the-Plough. ``Well, look heer! Heer's another
darn'd bad case. I threshed for Varmer Blaize---Blaize o'
Beltharpe---afore I goes to Varmer Bollop. Varmer Blaize
misses pilkins. He swears our chaps steals pilkins. 'Twarn't
me steals 'em. What do _he_ tak' and go and do? He takes
and tarns us off, me and another, neck and crop, to scuffle
about and starve, for all _he_ keers. God warn't above the
devil then, I thinks. Not nohow, as I can see!''

  The tinker shook his head, and said that was a bad case
also.

  ``And you can't mend it,'' added Speed-the-Plough. ``It's
bad, and there it be. But I'll tell ye what, master. Bad
wants payin' for.'' He nodded and winked mysteriously.

  ``Bad has its wages as well's honest work, I'm thinkin'.
Varmer Bollop I don't owe no grudge to: Varmer Blaize I
do. And I shud like to stick a Lucifer in his rick some dry
windy night.'' Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye villainously.
``He wants hittin' in the wind,---jest where the
pocket is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and he'll cry out
`O Lor'!' Varmer Blaize will. You won't get the better
o' Varmer Blaize by no means, as I makes out, if ye doan't
hit into him jest there.''

  The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from
his mouth, and said that would be taking the devil's side of
a bad case. Speed-the-Plough observed energetically that, if
Farmer Blaize was on the other, he should be on that side.

  There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with
him. The hope of Raynham had lent a careless half-compelled
attention to the foregoing dialogue, wherein a common
labourer and a travelling tinker had propounded and discussed
one of the most ancient theories of transmundane
dominion and influence on mundane affairs. He now started
to his feet, and came tearing through the briar hedge, calling
out for one of them to direct them the nearest road to Bursley.
The tinker was kindling preparations for his tea, under the
tawny umbrella. A loaf was set forth, on which Ripton's
eyes, stuck in the edge, fastened ravenously. Speed-the-Plough
volunteered information that Bursley was a good
three mile from where they stood, and a good eight mile from
Lobourne.

  ``I'll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow,''
said Richard to the tinker.

  ``It's a bargain,'' quoth the tinker, ``eh, missus?''
His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.
The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had
just succeeded in freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as
a hedgehog, collared the loaf.

  ``Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake,'' said
the tinker to his companion. ``Come! we'll to Bursley after
'em, and talk it out over a pot o' beer.'' Speed-the-Plough
was nothing loth, and in a short time they were following the
two lads on the road to Bursley, while a horizontal blaze
shot across the autumn land from the Western edge of the
rain-cloud.



	CHAPTER IV.

	ARSON.

  Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over
Raynham, and Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None
had seen them save Austin Wentworth and Mr. Morton.
The baronet sat construing their account of the flight of the
lads when they were hailed, and resolved it into an act of
rebellion on the part of his son. At dinner he drank the
young heir's health in ominous silence. Adrian Harley stood
up in his place to propose the health. His speech was a fine
piece of rhetoric. He warmed in it till, after the Ciceronic
model, inanimate objects were personified, and Richard's
table-napkin and vacant chair were invoked to follow the
steps of a peerless father, and uphold with his dignity the
honour of the Feverels. Austin Wentworth, whom a soldier's
death compelled to take his father's place in support of the
toast, was tame after such magniloquence. But the reply,
the thanks which young Richard should have delivered in
person were not forthcoming. Adrian's oratory had given
but a momentary life to napkin and chair. The company of
honoured friends, and aunts, and uncles, and remotest cousins,
were glad to disperse and seek amusement in music and tea.
Sir Austin did his utmost to be hospitably cheerful, and
requested them to dance. If he had desired them to laugh
he would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a manner.

  ``How triste!'' said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne's
curate, as that most enamoured automaton went through his
paces beside her with professional stiffness.

  ``One who does not suffer can hardly assent,'' the curate
answered, basking in her beams.

  ``Ah, you are good!'' exclaimed the lady. ``Look at my
Clare. She will not dance on her cousin's birthday with any
one but him. What are we to do to enliven these people?''

  ``Alas, madam! you cannot do for all what you do for
one,'' the curate sighed, and wherever she wandered in
discourse, drew her back with silken strings to gaze on his
enamoured soul.

  He was the only gratified stranger present. The others
had designs on the young heir. Lady Attenbury of Longford
House had brought her highly-polished specimen of market-ware,
the Lady Juliana Jaye, for a first introduction to him,
thinking he had arrived at an age to estimate and pine for
her black eyes and pretty pert mouth. The Lady Juliana
had to pair off with a dapper Papworth, and her mama
was subjected to the gallantries of Sir Miles, who talked land
and steam-engines to her till she was sick, and had to be
impertinent in self-defence. Lady Blandish, the delightful
widow, sat apart with Adrian, and enjoyed his sarcasms on
the company. By ten at night the poor show ended, and the
rooms were dark, dark as the prognosties multitudinously
hinted by the disappointed and chilled guests concerning
the probable future of the hope of Raynham. Little Clare
kissed her mama, curtsied to the lingering curate, and went
to bed like a very good girl. Immediately the maid had
departed, little Clare deliberately exchanged night attire for
that of day. She was noted as an obedient child. Her
light was always allowed to burn in her room for half an
hour, to counteract her fears of the dark. She took the light,
and stole on tiptoe to Richard's room. No Richard was
there. She peeped in further and further. A trifling agitation
of the curtains shot her back through the door and along
the passage to her own bedchamber with extreme expedition.
She was not much alarmed, but feeling guilty she was on
her guard. In a short time she was prowling about the
passages again. Richard had slighted and offended the little
lady, and was to be asked whether he did not repent such
conduct toward his cousin; not to be asked whether he had
forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from her; for, if he did
not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never remind
him of it, and to-night should be his last chance of a
reconciliation. Thus she meditated, sitting on a stair, and
presently heard Richard's voice below in the hall, shouting
for supper.

  ``Master Richard has returned,'' old Benson the butler
tolled out intelligence to Sir Austin.

  ``Well?'' said the baronet.

  ``He complains of being hungry,'' the butler hesitated,
with a look of solemn disgust.

  ``Let him eat.''

  Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that
the boy had called for wine. It was an unprecedented
thing. Sir Austin's brows were portending an arch, but
Adrian suggested that he wanted possibly to drink his birthday,
and claret was conceded.

  The boys were in the vortex of a partridge-pie when Adrian
strolled in to them. They had now changed characters.
Richard was uproarious. He drank a health with every
glass; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes brilliant. Ripton
looked very much like a rogue on the tremble of detection,
but his honest hunger and the partridge-pie shielded him
awhile from Adrian's scrutinizing glance. Adrian saw there
was matter for study, if it were only on Master Ripton's
betraying nose, and sat down to hear and mark.

  ``Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?'' he began his
quiet banter, and provoked a loud peal of laughter from
Richard.

  ``Ha, ha! I say, Rip: `Havin' good sport, gentlemen,
are ye?' You remember the farmer! Your health, parson!
We haven't had our sport yet. We're going to have some
first-rate sport. Oh, well! we haven't much show of birds.
We shot for pleasure, and returned them to the proprietors.
You're fond of game, parson! Ripton is a dead shot in what
cousin Austin calls the Kingdom of `would-have-done' and
`might-have-been.' Up went the birds, and cries Rip, `I've
forgotten to load!' Oh, ho!---Rip! some more claret.---Do
just leave that nose of yours alone.---Your health, Ripton
Thompson! The birds hadn't the decency to wait for him,
and so, parson, it's their fault, and not Rip's, you haven't a
dozen brace at your feet. What have you been doing at
home, Cousin Rady?''

  ``Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark.
The day without you, my dear boy, must be dull,
you know.''

	`` `He speaks: can I trust what he says is sincere?
	There's an edge to his smile which cuts much like a sneer.'

Sandoe's poems! You know the couplet, Mr. Rady. Why
shouldn't I quote Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady.
But, if you've missed me, I'm sorry. Rip and I have had a
beautiful day. We've made new acquaintances. We've seen
the world. I'm the monkey that has seen the world, and I'm
going to tell you all about it. First, there's a gentleman
who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next, there's a farmer
who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his premises.
Next, there's a tinker and a ploughman, who think
that God is always fighting with the devil which shall command
the kingdoms of the earth. The tinker's for God, and
the ploughman''------

  ``I'll drink your health, Ricky,'' said Adrian, interrupting.

  ``Oh, I forgot, parson.---I mean no harm, Adrian. I'm
only telling what I've heard.''

  ``No harm, my dear boy,'' returned Adrian. ``I'm perfectly
aware that Zoroaster is not dead. You have been
listening to a common creed. Drink the Fire-worshippers,
if you will.''

  ``Here's to Zoroaster, then!'' cried Richard. ``I say,
Rippy! we'll drink the Fire-worshippers to-night, won't
we?''

  A fearful conspiratorial frown, that would not have disgraced
Guido Fawkes, was darted back from the plastic
features of Master Ripton.

  Richard gave his lungs loud play.

  ``Why, what did you say about Blaizes, Rippy? Didn't
you say it was fun?''

  Another hideous and silencing frown was Ripton's answer.
Adrian watched the innocent youths, and knew that there
was talking under the table. ``See,'' thought he, ``this boy
has tasted his first scraggy morsel of life to-day, and already
he talks like an old stager, and has, if I mistake not, been
acting too. My respected chief,'' he apostrophised Sir
Austin, ``combustibles are only the more dangerous for compression.
This boy will be ravenous for Earth when he is let
loose, and very soon make his share of it look as foolish as
yonder game-pie!''---a prophecy Adrian kept to himself.

  Uncle Algernon shambled in to see his nephew before the
supper was finished, and his more genial presence brought
out a little of the plot.

  ``Look here, uncle!'' said Richard. ``Would you let a
churlish old brute of a farmer strike you without making
him suffer for it?''

  ``I fancy I should return the compliment, my lad,'' replied
his uncle.

  ``Of course you would! So would I. And he shall suffer
for it.'' The boy looked savage, and his uncle patted him
down.

  ``I've boxed his son; I'll box him,'' said Richard, shouting
for more wine.

  ``What, boy! Is it old Blaize has been putting you up?''

  ``Never mind, uncle!'' the boy nodded mysteriously.

  Look there! Adrian read on Ripton's face, he says `never
mind,' and lets it out!

  ``Did we beat to-day, uncle?''

  ``Yes, boy; and we'd beat them any day they bowl fair.
I'd beat them on one leg. There's only Natkins and Featherdene
among them worth a farthing.''

  ``We beat!'' cries Richard. ``Then we'll have some more
wine, and drink their healths.''

  The bell was rung; wine ordered. Presently comes in
heavy Benson, to say supplies are cut off. One bottle, and
no more. The Captain whistled: Adrian shrugged.
The bottle, however, was procured by Adrian subsequently.
He liked studying intoxicated urchins.

  One subject was at Richard's heart, about which he was
reserved, in the midst of his riot. Too proud to inquire how
his father had taken his absence, he burned to hear whether
he was in disgrace. He led to it repeatedly, and it was
constantly evaded by Algernon and Adrian. At last, when
the boy declared a desire to wish his father good-night,
Adrian had to tell him that he was to go straight to bed from
the supper-table. Young Richard's face fell at that, and his
gaiety forsook him. He marched to his room without another
word.

  Adrian gave Sir Austin an able version of his son's behaviour
and adventures; dwelling upon this sudden taciturnity
when he heard of his father's resolution not to see him. The
wise youth saw that his chief was mollified behind his moveless
mask, and went to bed, and Horace, leaving Sir Austin
in his study. Long hours the baronet sat alone. The house
had not its usual influx of Feverels that day. Austin Wentworth
was staying at Poer Hall, and had only come over for
an hour. At midnight the house breathed sleep. Sir Austin
put on his cloak and cap, and took the lamp to make his
rounds. He apprehended nothing special, but with a mind
never at rest he constituted himself the sentinel of Raynham.
He passed the chamber where the Great-Aunt Grantley
lay, who was to swell Richard's fortune, and so perform her
chief business on earth. By her door he murmured, ``Good
creature! you sleep with a sense of duty done,'' and paced
on, reflecting, ``She has not made money a demon of discord,''
and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's somnolent
door, and to them the world might have subscribed.

  A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in
slumber! thinks Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's
footfall, and truly that was a strange object to see.---Where
is the fortress that has not one weak gate? where the man
who is sound at each particular angle? Ay, meditates the
recumbent cynic, more or less mad is not every mother's
son? Favourable circumstances---good air, good company,
two or three good rules rigidly adhered to---keep the world
out of Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a passion, and is
not Bedlam the safest abode for it?

  Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely
towards the chamber where his son was lying in the left
wing of the Abbey. At the end of the gallery which led to
it he discovered a dim light. Doubting it an illusion, Sir
Austin accelerated his pace. This wing had aforetime a bad
character. Notwithstanding what years had done to polish
it into fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to tradition
still, and preserved certain stories of ghosts seen there, and
thought to have been seen, that effectually blackened it in
the susceptible minds of new housemaids and under-cooks,
whose fears would not allow the sinner to wash his sins.
Sir Austin had heard of the tales circulated by his domestics
underground. He cherished his own belief, but discouraged
theirs, and it was treason at Raynham to be caught traducing
the left wing. As the baronet advanced, the fact of a
light burning was clear to him. A slight descent brought
him into the passage, and he beheld a poor human candle
standing outside his son's chamber. At the same moment a
door closed hastily. He entered Richard's room. The boy
was absent. The bed was unpressed: no clothes about:
nothing to show that he had been there that night. Sir
Austin felt vaguely apprehensive. Has he gone to my room
to await me? thought the father's heart. Something like a
tear quivered in his and eyes as he meditated and hoped
this might be so. His own sleeping-room faced that of his
son. He strode to it with a heart. It was empty.
My son! my son! what is this? he murmured. Alarm dislodged
anger from his jealous heart, and dread of evil put a
thousand questions to him that were answered in air. After
pacing up and down his room he determined to go and ask
the boy Thompson, as he called Ripton, what was known to
him.

  The chamber assigned to Master Ripton Thompson was
at the northern extremity of the passage, and overlooked
Lobourne and the valley to the west. The bed stood between
the window and the door. Sir Austin found the door ajar,
and the interior dark. To his surprise, the boy Thompson's
coach, as revealed by the rays of his lamp, was likewise
vacant. He was turning back when he fancied he heard
the sibilation of a whispering in the room. Sir Austin
cloaked the lamp and trod silently toward the window.
The heads of his son Richard and the boy Thompson were
seen crouched against the glass, holding excited converse
together. Sir Austin listened, but he listened to a language
of which he possessed not the key. Their talk was of fire,
and of delay: of expected agrarian astonishment: of a
farmer's huge wrath: of violence exercised towards gentlemen,
and of vengeance: talk that the boys jerked out by fits,
and that came as broken links of a chain impossible to connect.
But they awoke curiosity. The baronet condescended
to play the spy upon his son.

  Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable
stars.

  ``How jolly I feel!'' exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret;
and then, after a luxurious pause---``I think that fellow has
rocketed his guinea, and cut his lucky.''

  Richard allowed a long minute to pass, during which the
baronet waited anxiously for his voice, hardly recognising it
when he heard its altered tones.

  ``If he has, I'll go; and I'll do it myself.''

  ``You would?'' returned Master Ripton. ``Well, I'm
hanged!---I say, if you went to school, wouldn't you get into
rows! Perhaps he hasn't found the place where the box
was stuck in. I think he funks it. I almost wish you
hadn't done it, upon my honour---eh? Look there! what
was that? That looked like something.---I say! do you
think we shall ever be found out?''

  Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation very
seriously.

  ``I don 't think about it,'' said Richard, all his faculties
bent on signs from Lobourne.

  ``Well, but,'' Ripton persisted, ``suppose we are found
out?''

  ``If we are, I must pay for it.''

  Sir Austin breathed the better for this reply. He was
beginning to gather a clue to the dialogue. His son was
engaged in a plot, and was, moreover, the leader of the plot.
He listened for further enlightenment.

  ``What was the fellow's name?'' inquired Ripton.

  His companion answered, ``Tom Bakewell.''

  ``I'll tell you what,'' continued Ripton. ``You let it all
clean out to your cousin and uncle at supper.---How capital
claret is with partridge-pie! What a lot I ate---Didn't you
see me frown?''

  The young sensualist was in an ecstasy of gratitude to his
late refection, and the slightest word recalled him to it.
Richard answered him---

  ``Yes; and felt your kick. It doesn't matter. Rady's
safe, and uncle never blabs.''

  ``Well, my plan is to keep it close. You're never safe if
you don't.---I never drank much claret before,'' Ripton was
off again. ``Won't I now, though! claret's my wine. You
know, it may come out any day, and then we're done for,''
he rather incongruously appended.

  Richard only took up the business-thread of his friend's
rambling chatter, and answered---

  ``You've got nothing to do with it, if we are.''

  ``Haven't I, though! I didn't stick in the box, but I'm
an accomplice, that's clear. Besides,'' added Ripton, ``do
you think I should leave you to bear it all on your shoulders?
I ain't that sort of chap, Ricky, I can tell you.''

  Sir Austin thought more highly of the boy Thompson.
Still it looked a detestable conspiracy, and the altered manner
of his son impressed him strangely. He was not the boy of
yesterday. To Sir Austin it seemed as if a gulf had suddenly
opened between them. The boy had embarked, and
was on the waters of life in his own vessel. It was as vain
to call him back as to attempt to erase what Time has written
with the Judgement Blood! This child, for whom he had
prayed nightly in such a fervour and humbleness to God, the
dangers were about him, the temptations thick on him, and
the devil on board piloting. If a day had done so much,
what would years do? Were prayers and all the watchfulness
he had expended of no avail?

  A sensation of infinite melancholy overcame the poor
gentleman---a thought that he was fighting with a fate in
this beloved boy.

  He was half disposed to arrest the two conspirators on the
spot, and make them confess, and absolve themselves; but it
seemed to him better to keep an unseen eye over his son:
Sir Austin's old system prevailed.

  Adrian characterized this system well, in saying that Sir
Austin wished to be Providence to his son.

  If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, one human
being might almost impersonate Providence to another.
Alas! love, divine as it is, can do no more than lighten the
house it inhabits---must take its shape, sometimes intensify
its narrowness---can spiritualize, but not expel, the old life-long
lodgers above-stairs and below.

  Sir Austin decided to continue quiescent.

  The valley still lay black beneath the large autumnal
stars, and the exclamations of the boys were becoming fevered
and impatient. By-and-by one insisted that he had seen a
twinkle. The direction he gave was out of their anticipations.
Again the twinkle was announced. Both boys started
to their feet. It was a twinkle in the right direction now.

  ``He's done it!'' cried Richard in great heat. ``Now
you may say old Blaize'll soon be old Blazes, Rip. I hope
he's asleep.''

  ``I'm sure he's snoring!---Look there! He's alight fast
enough. He's dry. He'll burn.---I say,'' Ripton re-assumed
the serious intonation, ``do you think they'll ever suspect
us?''

  ``What if they do? We must brunt it.''

  ``Of course we will. But, I say! I wish you hadn't given
them the scent, though. I like to look innocent. I can't
when I know people suspect me. Lord! look there! Isn't
it just beginning to flare up!''

  The farmer's grounds were indeed gradually standing out
in sombre shadows.

  ``I'll fetch my telescope,'' said Richard. Ripton, somehow
not liking to be left alone, caught hold of him.

  ``No; don't go and lose the best of it. Here, I'll throw
open the window, and we can see.''

  The window was flung open, and the boys instantly
stretched half their bodies out of it; Ripton appearing to
devour the rising flames with his mouth: Richard with his
eyes.

  Opaque and statuesque stood the figure of the baronet
behind them. The wind was low. Dense masses of smoke
hung amid the darting snakes of fire, and a red malign light
was on the neighbouring leafage. No figures could be seen.
Apparently the flames had nothing to contend against, for
they were making terrible strides into the darkness.

  ``Oh!'' shouted Richard, overcome by excitement, ``if I
had my telescope! We must have it! Let me go and fetch
it! I will!''

  The boys struggled together, and Sir Austin stepped back.
As he did so, a cry was heard in the passage. He hurried
out, closed the chamber, and came upon little Clare lying
senseless along the floor.



	CHAPTER V.

	ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK.

  In the morning that followed this night, great gossip
was interchanged between Raynham and Lobourne. The
village told how Farmer Blaize, of Belthorpe Farm, had his
rick feloniously set fire to; his stables had caught fire, himself
had been all but roasted alive in the attempt to rescue
his cattle, of which numbers had perished in the flames.
Raynham counterbalanced arson with an authentic ghost
seen by Miss Clare in the left wing of the Abbey---the ghost
of a lady, dressed in deep mourning, a scar on her forehead,
and a bloody handkerchief at her breast, frightful to behold!
and no wonder the child was frightened out of her wits,
lay in a desperate state awaiting the arrival of the London
doctors. It was added that the servants had all threatened
to leave in a body, and that Sir Austin to appease them had
promised to pull down the entire left wing, like a gentleman;
for no decent creature, said Lobourne, could consent
to live in a haunted house.

  Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than
usual. Poor little Clare lay ill, and the calamity that had
befallen Farmer Blaize, as regards his rick and his cattle,
was not much exaggerated. Sir Austin caused an account
of it to be given him at breakfast, and appeared so scrupulously
anxious to hear the exact extent of injury sustained
by the farmer that heavy Benson went down to inspect the
scene. Mr. Benson returned, and, acting under Adrian's
malicious advice, framed a formal report of the catastrophe,
in which the farmer's breeches figured, and certain cooling
applications to a part of the farmer's person. Sir Austin
perused it without a smile. He took occasion to have it
read out before the two boys, who listened very demurely,
as to an ordinary newspaper incident; only when the report
particularized the garments damaged, and the unwonted
distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his
bed, an indecorous fit of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton
Thompson, and Richard bit his lip and burst into loud
laughter, Ripton joining him, lost to consequences.

  ``I trust you feel for this poor man,'' said Sir Austin to
his son, somewhat sternly.

  ``I'm sorry about the poor horses, sir,'' Richard replied.

  It was a difficult task for Sir Austin to keep his old
countenance toward the hope of Raynham, knowing him the
accomplice-incendiary, and believing the deed to have been
unprovoked and wanton. But he must do so, he knew, to
let the boy have a fair trial against himself. Be it said,
moreover, that the baronet's possession of his son's secret
flattered him. It allowed him to act, and in a measure to
feel, like Providence; enabled him to observe and provide
for the movements of creatures in the dark. He therefore
treated the boy as he commonly did, and young Richard
saw no change in his father to make him think he was
suspected.

  The game was not so easy against Adrian. Adrian did
not shoot or fish. Voluntarily he did nothing to work off
the destructive nervous fluid, or whatever it may be, which
is in man's nature; so that two culprit boys once in his
power were not likely to taste the gentle hand of mercy, and
Richard and Ripton paid for many a trout and partridge
spared. At every minute of the day Ripton was thrown
into sweats of suspicion that discovery was imminent, by
some stray remark or message from Adrian. He was as a fish
with the hook in his gills, mysteriously caught without
having nibbled; and dive into what depths he would he
was sensible of a summoning force that compelled him
perpetually towards the gasping surface, which he seemed
inevitably approaching when the dinner-bell sounded. There
the talk was all of Farmer Blaize. If it dropped, Adrian
revived it, and his caressing way with Ripton was just such
as a keen sportsman feels towards the creature that has
owned his skill, and is making its appearance for the world
to acknowledge the same. Sir Austin saw the man<oe>uvres,
and admired Adrian's shrewdness. But he had to check
the young natural lawyer, for the effect of so much masked
examination upon Richard was growing baneful. This fish
also felt the hook in its gills, but this fish was more of a
pike, and lay in different waters, where there were old
stumps and black roots to wind itself about, and defy alike
strong pulling and delicate handling. In other words,
Richard showed symptoms of a disposition to take refuge
in lies.

  ``You know the grounds, my dear boy,'' Adrian observed
to him. ``Tell me; do you think it easy to get to the rick
unperceived? I hear they suspect one of the farmer's
turned-off hands.''

  ``I tell you I don't know the grounds,'' Richard sullenly
replied.

  ``Not?'' Adrian counterfeited courteous astonishment.
``I thought Mr. Thompson said you were over there yesterday?''

  Ripton, glad to speak a truth, hurriedly assured Adrian
that it was not he had said so.

  ``Not? You had good sport, gentlemen, hadn't you?''

  ``Oh yes!'' mumbled the wretched victims, reddening as
they remembered, in Adrian's slightly drawled rusticity of
tone, Farmer Blaize's first address to them.

  ``I suppose you were among the Fire-worshippers last
night, too?'' persisted Adrian. ``In some countries, I hear,
they manage their best sport at night-time, and beat up for
game with torches. It must be a fine sight. After all, the
country would be dull if we hadn't a rip here and there to
treat us to a little conflagration.''

  ``A rip!'' laughed Richard, to his friend's disgust and
alarm at his daring. ``You don't mean this Rip, do you?''

  ``Mr. Thompson fire a rick? I should as soon suspect you,
my dear boy.---You are aware, young gentlemen, that it is
rather a serious thing---Eh? In this country, you know, the
landlord has always been the pet of the laws. By the way,''
Adrian continued, as if diverging to another topic, ``you met
two gentlemen of the road in your explorations yesterday,
Magians. Now, if I were a magistrate of the county, like Sir
Miles Papworth, my suspicions would light upon those gentlemen.
A tinker and a ploughman, I think you said, Mr.
Thompson. Not? Well, say two ploughmen.''

  ``More likely two tinkers,'' said Richard.

  ``Oh! if you wish to exclude the ploughman---was he out
of employ?''

  Ripton, with Adrian's eyes inveterately fixed on him, stammered
an affirmative.

  ``The tinker, or the ploughman?''

  ``The ploughm---.'' Ingenuous Ripton looking about, as
if to aid himself whenever he was able to speak the truth,
beheld Richard's face blackening at him, and swallowed back
half the word.

  ``The ploughman!'' Adrian took him up cheerily. ``Then
we have here a ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman
out of employ, and a rick burnt. The burning of a rick
is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman out of employ is a
vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are advancing
to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only
to prove their proximity at a certain hour, and our ploughman
voyages beyond seas.''

  ``Dear me, is it transportation for rick-burning?'' inquired
Ripton aghast.

  Adrian spoke solemnly: ``They shave your head. You are
manacled. Your diet is sour bread and cheese-parings. You
work in strings of twenties and thirties. =Arson= is branded
on your backs in an enormous A. Theological works are the
sole literary recreation of the well-conducted and deserving.
Consider the fate of this poor fellow, and what an act of
vengeance brings him to! Do you know his name?''

  ``How should I know his name?'' said Richard, with a
stubborn assumption of innocence painful to see.

  Sir Austin remarked that no doubt it would soon be known,
and Adrian perceived that he was to quiet his line, marveling
a little at the baronet's blindness to what was so clear.
He would not tell, for that would ruin his future influence
with Richard; still he wanted some present credit for his
discernment and devotion. The boys got away from dinner,
and, after deep consultation, agreed upon a course of conduct,
which was to commiserate Farmer Blaize loudly, and make
themselves look as much like the public as it was possible for
two desperate young malefactors to look, one of whom already
felt Adrian's enormous A devouring his back with the fierceness
of the Promethean eagle, and isolating him for ever
from mankind. Adrian relished their novel tactics sharply,
and led them to lengths of lamentation for Farmer Blaize.
Do what they might, the hook was in their gills. The farmer's
whip had reduced them to bodily contortions: these were
decorous compared with the spiritual writhings they had to
perform under Adrian's skilful manipulation. Ripton was fast
becoming a coward, and Richard a liar, when next morning
Austin Wentworth came over from Poer Hall bringing news
that one Mr. Thomas Bakewell, yeoman, had been arrested
on suspicion of the crime of Arson and lodged in jail, awaiting
the magisterial pleasure of Sir Miles Papworth. Austin's
eye rested on Richard as he spoke these terrible tidings.
The hope of Raynham returned his look, perfectly calm, and
had, moreover, the presence of mind not to look at Ripton.



  	CHAPTER VI.

	JUVENILE STRATAGEMS.


  As soon as they could escape, the boys got away together
into an obscure corner of the park, and there took counsel
of their extremity.

  ``Whatever shall we do now?'' asked Ripton of his
leader.

  Scorpion girt with fire was never in a more terrible prison-house
than poor Ripton, around whom the raging element
he had assisted to create seemed to be drawing momently
narrower circles.

  ``There's only one chance,'' said Richard, coming to a dead
halt, and folding his arms resolutely.

  His comrade inquired with the utmost eagerness what that
chance might be?

  Richard fixed his eyes on a flint, and replied: ``We must
rescue that fellow from jail.''

  ``Rescue him from jail!'' Ripton gazed at his leader,
and fell back with astonishment. ``My dear Ricky! but
how are we to do it?''

  Richard, still perusing his flint, replied: ``We must manage
to get a file in to him and a rope. It can be done, I
tell you. I don't care what I pay. I don't care what I do.
He must be got out.''

  ``Bother that old Blaize!'' exclaimed Ripton, taking off
his cap to wipe his frenzied forehead, and brought down his
friend's severe reproof.

  ``Never mind old Blaize now. Talk about letting it out.
Look at you. I'm ashamed of you. You talk about Robin
Hood and King Richard! Why, you haven't an atom of
courage. Why, you let it out every second of the day.
Whenever Rady begins speaking you start; I can see the
perspiration rolling down you. Are you afraid?---And
then you contradict yourself. You never keep to one story.
Now, follow me. We must risk everything to get him out.
Mind that! And keep out of Adrian's way as much as you
can. And keep to one story.''

  With these sage directions the young leader marched
his companion-culprit down to inspect the jail where Tom
Bakewell lay groaning over the results of the super-mundane
conflict, and the victim of it that he was.

  In Lobourne Austin Wentworth had the reputation of the
poor man's friend; a title he earned more largely ere he went
to the reward God alone can give to that supreme virtue.
Dame Bakewell, the mother of Tom, on hearing of her son's
arrest, had run to comfort him and render him what help
she could; but this was only sighs and tears, and, oh deary
me! which only perplexed poor Tom, who bade her leave
an unlucky chap to his fate, and not make himself a thundering
villain. Whereat the dame begged him to take
heart, and he should have a true comforter. ``And though
it's a gentleman that's coming to you, Tom---for he never
refuses a poor body,'' said Mrs. Bakewell, ``it's a true
Christian, Tom! and the Lord knows if the sight of him
mayn't be the saving of you, for he's light to look on, and a
sermon to listen to, he is!''

  Tom was not prepossessed by the prospect of a sermon,
and looked a sullen dog enough when Austin entered his
cell. He was surprised at the end of half an hour to find
himself engaged in man-to-man conversation with a gentleman
and a Christian. When Austin rose to go, Tom begged
permission to shake his hand.

  ``Take and tell young master up at the Abbey that I an't
the chap to peach. He'll know. He's a young gentleman
as 'll make any man do as he wants 'em! He's a mortal
wild young gentleman! And I'm a Ass! That's where
'tis. But I an't a blackguard. Tell him that, sir!''

  This was how it came that Austin eyed young Richard
seriously while he told the news at Raynham. The boy was
shy of Austin more than of Adrian. Why, he did not know;
but he made it a hard task for Austin to catch him alone,
and turned sulky that instant. Austin was not clever like
Adrian: he seldom divined other people's ideas, and always
went the direct road to his object; so instead of beating
about and setting the boy on the alert at all points, crammed
to the muzzle with lies, he just said, ``Tom Bakewell told
me to let you know he does not intend to peach on you,''
and left him.

  Richard repeated the intelligence to Ripton, who cried
aloud that Tom was a brick.

  ``He shan't suffer for it,'' said Richard, and pondered on a
thicker rope and sharper file.

  ``But will your cousin tell?'' was Ripton's reflection.

  ``He!'' Richard's lip expressed contempt. ``A ploughman
refuses to peach, and you ask if one of our family
will?''

  Ripton stood for the twentieth time reproved on this
point.

  The boys had examined the outer walls of the jail, and
arrived at the conclusion that Tom's escape might be managed
if Tom had spirit, and the rope and file could be anyway
reached to him. But to do this, somebody must gain
admittance to his cell, and who was to be taken into their
confidence?

  ``Try your cousin,'' Ripton suggested, after much debate.
Richard, smiling, wished to know if he meant Adrian?

  ``No, no!'' Ripton hurriedly reassured him. ``Austin.''
The same idea was knocking at Richard's head.

  ``Let's get the rope and file first,'' said he, and to Bursley
they went for those implements to defeat the law, Ripton
procuring the file at one shop and Richard the rope at
another, with such masterly cunning did they lay their
measures for the avoidance of every possible chance of detection.
And better to assure this, in a wood outside Bursley
Richard stripped to his shirt and wound the rope round his
body, tasting the tortures of anchorites and penitential friars,
that nothing should be risked to make Tom's escape a
certainty. Sir Austin saw the marks at night as his son lay
asleep, through the half-opened folds of his bed-gown.
It was a severe stroke when, after all their stratagems and
trouble, Austin Wentworth refused the office the boys had
zealously designed for him. Time pressed. In a few days
poor Tom would have to face the redoubtable Sir Miles, and
get committed, for rumours of overwhelming evidence to
convict him were rife about Lobourne, and Farmer Blaize's
wrath was unappeasable. Again and again young Richard
begged his cousin not to see him disgraced, and to help him
in this extremity. Austin was firm in his refusal.

  ``My dear Ricky,'' said he, ``there are two ways of getting
out of a scrape: a long way and a short way. When you've
tried the roundabout method, and failed, come to me, and
I'll show you the straight route.''

  Richard was too entirely bent upon the roundabout method
to consider this advice more than empty words, and only
ground his teeth at Austin's unkind refusal.

  He imparted to Ripton, at the eleventh hour, that they
must do it themselves, to which Ripton heavily assented.

  On the day preceding poor Tom's doomed appearance
before the magistrate, Dame Bakewell had an interview with
Austin, who went to Raynham immediately, and sought
Adrian's counsel what was to be done. Homeric laughter
and nothing else could be got out of Adrian when he heard
of the doings of these desperate boys: how they had entered
Dame Bakewell's smallest of retail shops, and purchased tea,
sugar, candles, and comfits of every description, till the shop
was clear of customers: how they had then hurried her into
her little back-parlour, where Richard had torn open his
shirt and revealed the coils of rope, and Ripton displayed the
point of a file from a serpentine recess in his jacket: how
they had then told the astonished woman that the rope she
saw and the file she saw were instruments for the liberation
of her son; that there existed no other means on earth to
save him, they, the boys, having unsuccessfully attempted
all: how upon that Richard had tried with the utmost
earnestness to persuade her to disrobe and wind the rope
round her own person: and Ripton had aired his eloquence
to induce her to secrete the file: how, when she resolutely
objected to the rope, both boys began backing the file, and
in an evil hour, she feared, said Dame Bakewell, she had
rewarded the gracious permission given her by Sir Miles
Papworth to visit her son, by tempting Tom to file the Law.
Though, thanks be to the Lord! Dame Bakewell added,
Tom had turned up his nose at the file, and so she had told
young Master Richard, who swore very bad for a young
gentleman.

  ``Boys are like monkeys,'' remarked Adrian, at the close
of his explosions, ``the gravest actors of farcical nonsense
that the world possesses. May I never be where there are
no boys! A couple of boys left to themselves will furnish
richer fun than any troop of trained comedians. No: no Art
arrives at the artlessness of nature in matters of comedy.
You can't simulate the ape. Your antics are dull. They
haven't the charming inconsequence of the natural animal.
Look at these two! Think of the shifts they are put to all
day long! They know I know all about it, and yet their
serenity of innocence is all but unruffled in my presence.
You're sorry to think about the end of the business, Austin?
So am I! I dread the idea of the curtain going down. Besides,
it will do Ricky a world of good. A practical lesson
is the best lesson.''

  ``Sinks deepest,'' said Austin, ``but whether he learns
good or evil from it is the question at stake.''

  Adrian stretched his length at ease.

  ``This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time's
fruit, hateful to the palate of youth! for which season only
hath it any nourishment! Experience! You know Coleridge's
capital simile?---Mournful you call it? Well! all
wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do
love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill
them. You shall find great poets, rare philosophers, night
after night on the broad grin before a row of yellow lights
and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's dark at home.
The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's how it
comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant
little minds, my dear Austin! How I hate that cant of
yours about an Age of Work---you, and your Mortons, and
your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all of you, base materialists!
What does Diaper Sandoe sing of your Age of
Work? Listen!

      ``An Age of petty tit for tat,
	    An Age of busy gabble:
	An Age that's like a brewer's vat,
	  Fermenting for the rabble!

      ``An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax
	  To virtuous abuses:
	Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
	  Too dainty for their uses.

      ``An Age that drives an Iron Horse
	  Of Time and Space defiant
	Exulting in a Giant's Force,
	  And trembling at the Giant.

      ``An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
	  By Mammon misbegotten;
	See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
	  And mark the Kings of Cotton!

      ``From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd,
	  A Future staggers crazy,
	Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd
	  With woeful weed and daisy!''

  Murmuring, ``Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!''
Adrian changed the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The
=Age= was an old battle-field between him and Austin.

  ``My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it,''
said Austin, ``not by hoping his best, which would probably
leave the Age to go mad to your satisfaction, but by doing
it. And he has and will answer your Diaper Sandoe in
better verse, as he confutes him in a better life.''

  ``You don't see Sandoe's depth,'' Adrian replied. ``Consider
that phrase, `Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley,
like a dozen other leading spirits---I think that's your term
---just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive her mad? She,
poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my
lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, and rants to the
Impalpable.''

  Austin laughed. ``Marriage and smiling babes she would
have in abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you
know him. He will be over at Poer Hall shortly, and you
will see what a Man of the Age means. But now pray consult
with me about these boys.''

  ``Oh, those boys!'' Adrian tossed a hand. ``Are there
boys of the Age as well as men? Not? Then boys are
better than men: boys are for all Ages. What do you think,
Austin? They've been studying Latude's Escape. I found
the book open in Ricky's room, on the top of Jonathan Wild.
Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and taught
them nothing. So they're going to make a Latude of Mr.
Tom Bakewell. He's to be Bastille Bakewell, whether he
will or no. Let them. Let the wild colt run free! We
can't help them. We can only look on. We should spoil
the play.''

  Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast
Impatience with pleasantries---a not congenial diet; and
Austin, the most patient of human beings, began to lose his
self-control.

  ``You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have
but a few hours left us. Work first, and joke afterwards.
The boy's fate is being decided now.''

  ``So is everybody's, my dear Austin!'' yawned the epicurean.

  ``Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship---
under yours especially.''

  ``Not yet! not yet!'' Adrian interjected languidly. ``No
getting into scrapes when I have him. The leash, young
hound! The collar, young colt! I'm perfectly irresponsible
at present.''

  ``You may have something different to deal with when you
are responsible, if you think that.''

  ``I take my young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a
Caracalla: a Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play
the fiddle to a conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must
be a disputatious apostate, at any rate he shall understand
logic and men, and have the habit of saying his prayers.''

  ``Then you leave me to act alone?'' said Austin, rising.

  ``Without a single curb!'' Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced
withdrawal. ``I'm sure you would not, still more
certain you cannot, do harm. And be mindful of my prophetic
words: Whatever's done, old Blaize will have to be bought
off. There's the affair settled at once. I suppose I must go
to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can't see this
poor devil condemned, though it's nonsense to talk of a boy
being the prime instigator.''

  Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of the wise
youth, his cousin, and the little that he knew of his fellows
told him he might talk for ever here, and not be comprehended.
The wise youth's two ears were stuffed with his
own wisdom. One evil only Adrian dreaded, it was clear--
the action of the law.

  As he was moving away, Adrian called out to him, ``Stop,
Austin! There! don't be anxious! You invariably take
the glum side. I've done something. Never mind what. If
you go down to Belthorpe, be civil, but not obsequious. You
remember the tactics of Scipio Africanus against the Punic
elephants? Well, don't say a word---in thine ear, coz: I've
turned Master Blaize's elephants. If they charge, 'twill be a
feint, and back to the destruction of his serried ranks! You
understand. Not? Well, 'tis as well. Only let none say
that I sleep. If I must see him to-night, I go down knowing
he has not got us in his power.'' The wise youth yawned,
and stretched out a hand for any book that might be within
his reach. Austin left him to look about the grounds for
Richard.



	CHAPTER VII.

	DAPHNE'S BOWER.

  A little laurel-shaded temple of white marble looked out
on the river from a knoll bordering the Raynham beechwoods,
and was dubbed by Adrian Daphne's Bower. To this spot
Richard had retired, and there Austin found him with his
head buried in his hands, a picture of desperation, whose last
shift has been defeated. He allowed Austin to greet him and
sit by him without lifting his head. Perhaps his eyes were
not presentable.

  ``Where's your friend?'' Austin began.

  ``Gone!'' was the answer, sounding cavernous from behind
hair and fingers. An explanation presently followed, that a
summons had come for him in the morning from Mr. Thompson;
and that Mr. Ripton had departed against his will.

  In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent
and remain by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the
post of danger. Sir Austin signified his opinion that a boy
should obey his parent, by giving orders to Benson for
Ripton's box to be packed and ready before noon; and
Ripton's alacrity in taking the baronet's view of filial duty
was as little feigned as his offer to Richard to throw filial
duty to the winds. He rejoiced that the Fates had agreed to
remove him from the very hot neighbourhood of Lobourne,
while he grieved, like an honest lad, to see his comrade left
to face calamity alone. The boys parted amicably, as they
could hardly fail to do, when Ripton had sworn fealty to
the Feverels with a fervour that made him declare himself
bond, and due to appear at any stated hour and at any stated
place to fight all the farmers in England, on a mandate from
the heir of the house.

  ``So you're left alone,'' said Austin, contemplating the
boy's shapely head. ``I'm glad of it. We never know what's
in us till we stand by ourselves.''

  There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity,
however, replied at last, ``He wasn't much support.''

  ``Remember his good points now he's gone, Ricky.''

  ``Oh! he was staunch,'' the boy grumbled.

  ``And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now,
have you tried your own way of rectifying this business,
Ricky?''

  ``I have done everything.''

  ``And failed!''

  There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion---

  ``Tom Bakewell's a coward!''

  ``I suppose, poor fellow,'' said Austin, in his kind way,
``he doesn't want to get into a deeper mess. I don't think
he's a coward.''

  ``He is a coward,'' cried Richard. ``Do you think if I
had a file I would stay in prison? I'd be out the first
night! And he might have had the rope, too---a rope thick
enough for a couple of men his size and weight. Ripton and
I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour, and it didn't
give way. He's a coward, and deserves his fate. I've no
compassion for a coward.''

  ``Nor I much,'' said Austin.

  Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation
of poor Tom. He would have hidden it had he known the
thought in Austin's clear eyes while he faced them.

  ``I never met a coward myself,'' Austin continued. ``I
have heard of one or two. One let an innocent man die for
him.''

  ``How base!'' exclaimed the boy.

  ``Yes, it was bad,'' Austin acquiesced.

  ``Bad!'' Richard scorned the poor contempt. ``How I
would have spurned him! He was a coward!''

  ``I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his
excuse, and tried every means to get him off. I have read
also in the confessions of a celebrated philosopher that in
his youth he committed some act of pilfering, and accused a
young servant-girl of his own theft, who was condemned and
dismissed for it, pardoning her guilty accuser.''

  ``What a coward!'' shouted Richard. ``And he confessed
it publicly?''

  ``You may read it yourself.''

  ``He actually wrote it down, and printed it?''

  ``You have the book in your father's library. Would you
have done so much?''

  Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could
have told people.

  ``Then who is to call that man a coward?'' said Austin.
``He expiated his cowardice as all who give way in moments
of weakness, and are not cowards, must do. The coward
chooses to think `God does not see. I shall escape.' He
who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that God
has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make
his heart bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to
know myself an imposter when men praised me.''

  Young Richard's eyes were wandering on Austin's gravely
cheerful face. A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and
he dropped his head.

  ``So I think you're wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor
Tom a coward because he refuses to try your means of
escape,'' Austin resumed. ``A coward hardly objects to
drag in his accomplice. And, where the person involved
belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor
plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything
but a coward.''

  Richard was silent. Altogether to surrender his rope and
file was a fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and
study he had spent on those two saving instruments. If he
avowed Tom's manly behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a
totally new position. Whereas, by keeping Tom a coward,
Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem injured is
always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys
or men.

  In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long.
He had but a blind notion of the fierceness with which it
raged in young Richard. Happily for the boy, Austin was
not a preacher. A single insistence, a cant phrase, a fatherly
manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing ancient or
latent opposition. The born preacher we feel instinctively to
be our foe. He may do some good to the wretches that have
been struck down, and lie gasping on the battlefield: he
rouses antagonism in the strong. Richard's nature, left to
itself, wanted little more than an indication of the proper
track, and when he said, ``Tell me what I can do, Austin?''
he had fought the best half of the battle. His voice was
subdued. Austin put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

  ``You must go down to Farmer Blaize.''

  ``Well!'' said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of
penance.

  ``You'll know what to say to him when you're there.''

  The boy bit his lip and frowned. ``Ask a favour of that
big brute, Austin? I can't!''

  ``Just tell him the whole case, and that you don't intend
to stand by and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to
help him out of his scrape.''

  ``But, Austin,'' the boy pleaded, ``I shall have to ask
him to help off Tom Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I
hate him?''

  Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences
till he got there.

  Richard groaned in soul.

  ``You've no pride, Austin.''

  ``Perhaps not.''

  ``You don't know what it is to ask a favour of a brute
you hate.''

  Richard stuck to that view of the case, and stuck to it
the faster the more imperatively the urgency of a movement
dawned upon him.

  ``Why,'' continued the boy, ``I shall hardly be able to keep
my fists off him!''

  ``Surely you've punished him enough, boy?'' said Austin.

  ``He struck me!'' Richard's lip quivered. ``He dared not
come at me with his hands. He struck me with a whip.
He'll be telling everybody that he horsewhipped me, and that
I went down and begged his pardon. Begged his pardon!
A Feverel beg his pardon! Oh, if I had my will!''

  ``The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his
grounds. He turned you off, and you fired his rick.''

  ``And I'll pay him for his loss. And I won't do any
more.''

  ``Because you won't ask a favour of him?''

  ``No! I will not ask a favour of him.''

  Austin looked at the boy steadily. ``You prefer to receive
a favour from poor Tom Bakewell?''

  At Austin's enunciation of this obverse view of the matter
Richard raised his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon
him. ``Favour from Tom Bakewell, the ploughman? How
do you mean, Austin?''

  ``To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country
lad to sacrifice himself for you? I confess I should not have
so much pride.''

  ``Pride!'' shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his
sight hard at the blue ridges of the hills.

  Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew
a picture of Tom in prison, and repeated Tom's volunteer
statement. The picture, though his intentions were far from
designing it so, had to Richard, whose perception of humour
was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon smack about it.
Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear, unkempt,
coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with the
strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with
pity and remorse a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom;
hobnail Tom! a bacon-munching, reckless, beer-swilling
animal! and yet a man; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding;
capable of devotion and unselfishness. The boy's
better spirit was touched, and it kindled his imagination to
realize the abject figure of poor clodpole Tom, and surround
it with a halo of mournful light. His soul was alive. Feelings
he had never known streamed in upon him as from an ethereal
casement, an unwonted tenderness, an embracing humour, a
consciousness of some ineffable glory, an irradiation of the
features of humanity. All this was in the bosom of the boy,
and through it all the vision of an actual hob-nail Tom,
coarse, unkempt, open from ear to ear; whose presence was
a finger of shame to him and an oppression of clodpole; yet
toward whom he felt just then a loving-kindness beyond
what he felt for any living creature. He laughed at him,
and wept over him. He prized him, while he shrank from
him. It was a genial strife of the angel in him with constituents
less divine; but the angel was uppermost and led the
van---extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured
pride---pride that would persistently contemplate
the corduroys of gaping Tom, and cry to Richard, in the
very tone of Adrian's ironic voice, ``Behold your benefactor!''

  Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he
had stirred. Little of it was perceptible in Richard's countenance.
The lines of his mouth were slightly drawn; his
eyes still hard set into the distance. He remained thus
many minutes. Finally he jumped to his legs, saying, ``I'll
go at once to old Blaize and tell him.''

  Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of
Daphne's Bower, in the direction of Lobourne.



	CHAPTER VIII.

	THE BITTER CUP.

  Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard
Feverel as that young gentleman expected him to be. The
farmer, seated in his easy-chair in the little low-roofed
parlour of an old-fashioned farm-house, with a long clay
pipe on the table at his elbow, and a veteran pointer at his
feet, had already given audience to three distinguished
members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately,
according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one
object. In the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly
after his departure, arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his
heels, Algernon, known about Lobourne as the Captain,
popular wherever he was known. Farmer Blaize reclined
in considerable elation. He had brought these great people
to a pretty low pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably,
as a British yeoman should; but not budged a foot in his
demands: not to the baronet: not to the Captain: not to
good young Mr. Wentworth. For Farmer Blaize was a solid
Englishman; and, on hearing from. the baronet a frank confession
of the hold he had on the family, he determined to
tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for tangible
advantages---compensation to his pocket, his wounded person,
and his still more wounded feelings: the total indemnity
being, in round figures, three hundred pounds, and a spoken
apology from the prime offender, young Mister Richard.
Even then there was a reservation. Provided, the farmer
said, nobody had been tampering with any of his witnesses.
In that case Farmer Blaize declared the money might go,
and he would transport Tom Bakewell, as he had sworn he
would. And it goes hard, too, with an accomplice, by law,
added the farmer, knocking the ashes leisurely out of his
pipe. He had no wish to bring any disgrace anywhere; he
respected the inmates of Raynham Abbey, as in duty bound;
he should be sorry to see them in trouble. Only no tampering
with his witnesses. He was a man for Law. Rank was
much: money was much: but Law was more. In this
country Law was above the sovereign. To tamper with the
Law was treason to the realm.

  ``I come to you direct,'' the baronet explained. ``I tell
you candidly in what way I discovered my son to be mixed
up in this miserable affair. I promise you indemnity for
your loss, and an apology that shall I trust, satisfy your
feelings, assuring you that to tamper with witnesses is not
the province of a Feverel. All I ask of you in return is, not
to press the prosecution. At present it rests with you. I
am bound to do all that lies in my power for this imprisoned
man. How and wherefore my son was prompted to suggest,
or assist in, such an act, I cannot explain, for I do not
know.''

  ``Hum!'' said the farmer. ``I think I do.''

  ``You know the cause?'' Sir Austin stared. ``I beg you
to confide it to me.''

  ``'Least, I can pretty nigh neighbour it with a guess,'' said
the farmer. ``We an't good friends, Sir Austin, me and your
son, just now---not to say cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I'm a
man as don't like young gentlemen a-poachin' on his grounds
without his permission,---in special when birds is plentiful
on their own. It appear he do like it. Consequently I has
to flick this whip---as them fellers at the races: All in this
'ere Ring's mine! as much as to say; and who's been hit,
he's had fair warnin'. I'm sorry for't, but that's just the
case.''

  Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he
should find him.

  Algernon's interview passed off in ale and promises. He
also assured Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected
by his proviso.

  No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.
``Money's safe, I know,'' said he; ``now for the 'pology!''
and Farmer Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his head
further back.

  The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate
visits had been conspired together. Still the baronet's
frankness, and the baronet's not having reserved himself for
the third and final charge, puzzled him. He was considering
whether they were a deep, or a shallow lot, when young
Richard was announced.

  A pretty little girl with the roses of thirteen springs in
her cheeks, and abundant beautiful bright tresses, tripped
before the boy, and loitered shyly by the farmer's arm-chair
to steal a look at the handsome new-comer. She was introduced
to Richard as the farmer's niece, Lucy Desborough,
the daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and, what
was better, though the farmer did not pronounce it so loudly,
a real good girl.

  Neither the excellence of her character, nor her rank in
life, tempted Richard to inspect the little lady. He made
an awkward bow, and sat down.

  The farmer's eyes twinkled. ``Her father,'' he continued,
``fought and fell for his coontry. A man as fights for's
coontry 's a right to hould up his head---ay! with any in
the land. Desb'roughs o' Dorset! d'ye know that family,
Master Feverel?''

  Richard did not know them, and, by his air, did not
desire to become acquainted with any offshoot of that
family.

  ``She can make puddens and pies,'' the farmer went on,
regardless of his auditor's gloom. ``She's a lady, as good as
the best of 'em. I don't care about their being Catholics---
the Desb'roughs o' Dorset are gentlemen. And she's good
for the pianer, too! She strums to me of evenin's. I'm for
the old tunes: she's for the new. Gal-like! While she's
with me she shall be taught things use'l. She can parley-voo
a good 'un and foot it, as it goes; been in France a
couple of year. I prefer the singin' of 't to the talkin' of 't.
Come, Luce! toon up---eh?---Ye wun't? That song about
the Viffendeer---a female''---Farmer Blaize volunteered the
translation of the title---``who wears the---you guess what?
and marches along with the French sojers: a pretty brazen
bit o' goods, I sh'd fancy.''

  Mademoiselle Lucy corrected her uncle's French, but
objected to do more. The handsome cross boy had almost
taken away her voice for speech, as it was, and sing in his
company she could not; so she stood, a hand on her uncle's
chair to stay herself from falling, while she wriggled a
dozen various shapes of refusal, and shook her head at the
farmer with fixed eyes.

  ``Aha!'' laughed the farmer, dismissing her, ``they soon
learn the difference 'twixt the young 'un and the old 'un.
Go along, Luce! and learn yer lessons for to-morrow.''

  Reluctantly the daughter of the Royal Navy glided away.
Her uncle's head followed her to the door, where she dallied
to catch a last impression of the young stranger's lowering
face, and darted through.

  Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. ``She an't so fond
of her uncle as that, every day! Not that she an't a good
nurse---the kindest little soul you'd meet of a winter's walk!
She'll read t' ye, and make drinks, and sing, too, if ye likes
it, and she won't be tired. A obstinate good 'un, she be!
Bless her!''

  The farmer may have designed, by these eulogies of his
niece, to give his visitor time to recover his composure, and
establish a common topic. His diversion only irritated and
confused our shame-eaten youth. Richard's intention had
been to come to the farmer's threshold: to summon the
farmer thither, and in a loud and haughty tone then and
there to take upon himself the whole burden of the charge
against Tom Bakewell. He had strayed, during his passage
to Belthorpe, somewhat back to his old nature; and his
being compelled to enter the house of his enemy, sit in his
chair, and endure an introduction to his family, was more
than he bargained for. He commenced blinking hard in
preparation for the horrible dose to which delay and the
farmer's cordiality added inconceivable bitters. Farmer
Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a hurry. He spoke
of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at the
Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing; hoped that no
future Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw
and heard Arson in it all. He blinked harder as he neared
the cup. In a moment of silence, he seized it with a gasp.

  ``Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person
who set fire to your rick the other night.''

  An odd contraction formed about the farmer's mouth. He
changed his posture, and said, ``Ay? that's what ye're come
to tell me, sir?''

  ``Yes!'' said Richard firmly.

  ``And that be all?''

  ``Yes!'' Richard reiterated.

  The farmer again changed his posture. ``Then, my lad,
ye've come to tell me a lie!''

  Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by
the dark flush of ire had kindled.

  ``You dare to call me a liar!'' cried Richard, starting
up.

  ``I say,'' the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and
smacked his thigh thereto, ``that's a lie!''

  Richard held out his clenched fist. ``You have twice insulted
me. You have struck me: you have dared to call me
a liar. I would have apologised---I would have asked your
pardon, to have got off that fellow in prison. Yes! I would
have degraded myself that another man should not suffer for
my deed''------

  ``Quite proper!'' interposed the farmer.

  ``And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh.
You're a coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have
insulted me in his own house.''

  ``Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master,'' said the
farmer, indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with
his hand. ``Sit ye down. Don't ye be hasty. If ye hadn't
been hasty t' other day, we sh'd a been friends yet. Sit ye
down, sir. I sh'd be sorry to reckon you out a liar, Mr.
Feverel, or anybody o' your name. I respects yer father,
though we're opp'site politics. I'm willin' to think well o'
you. What I say is, that as you say an't the trewth. Mind!
I don't like you none the worse for't. But it an't what is.
That's all! You knows it as well's I!''

  Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily
reseated himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy,
after his late interview with Austin, had become capable of
perceiving vaguely that a towering passion is hardly the
justification for a wrong course of conduct.

  ``Come,'' continued the farmer, not unkindly, ``what else
have you to say?''

  Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained
brimming at Richard's lips again! Alas, poor human
nature! that empties to the dregs a dozen of these evil
drinks, to evade the single one which Destiny, less cruel,
had insisted upon.

  The boy blinked and tossed it off.

  ``I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken
on you for your striking me.''

  Farmer Blaize nodded.

  ``And now ye've done, young gentleman?''

  Still another cupful!

  ``I should be very much obliged,'' Richard formally began:
but his stomach was turned; he could but sip and sip, and
gather a distaste which threatened to make the penitential
act impossible. ``Very much obliged,'' he repeated: ``much
obliged, if you would be so kind,'' and it struck him that
had he spoken this at first he would have given it a wording
more persuasive with the farmer and more worthy of his
own pride: more honest, in fact: for a sense of the dishonesty
of what he was saying caused him to cringe and
simulate humility to deceive the farmer, and the more he
said the less he felt his words, and, feeling them less, he
inflated them more. ``So kind,'' he stammered, ``so kind''
(fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so kind!) ``as
to do me the favour'' (_me_ the favour!) ``to exert yourself''
(it's all to please Austin) ``to endeavour to---hem! to''
(there's no saying it!)

  The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.
``What I came to ask is, whether you would have the
kindness to try what you could do'' (what an infamous shame
to have to beg like this!) ``do to save---do to ensure---whether
you would have the kindness''--- It seemed out of all
human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and
more abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to apologise for
one's wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a
favour of the offended party---that was beyond the self-abasement
any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however,
whose inevitab1e battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains
of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time, ``Behold
year Benefactor!'' and, with the words burning in his ears,
Richard swallowed the dose:

  ``Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,---if you don't mind
---will you help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?''

  To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for
the boy, though he could not quite see why he did not take
the gate at the first offer.

  ``Oh!'' said he, when he heard and had pondered on the
request; ``Hum! ha! we'll see about it t'morrow. But if
he's innocent, you know, we shan't mak'n guilty.''

  ``It was I did it!'' Richard declared.

  The farmer's half-amused expression sharpened a bit
``So, young gentleman! and you're sorry for the night's
work?''

  ``I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your
losses.''

  ``Thank'ee,'' said the farmer drily.

  ``And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don't care
what the amount is.''

  Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. ``Bribery,''
one motion expressed: ``Corruption,'' the other,

  ``Now,'' said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on
his knees, while he counted the case at his finger's ends,
``excuse the liberty, but wishin' to know where this 'ere
money's to come from, I sh'd like jest t'ask if so be Sir
Austin know o' this?''

  ``My father knows nothing of it,'' replied Richard.
The farmer flung back in his chair. ``Lie number Two,''
said his shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being
plotted at, and not dealt with openly.

  ``And ye've the money ready, young gentleman?''

  ``I shall ask my father for it.''

  ``And he'll hand't out?''

  ``Certainly he will!''

  Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting
his father into his counsels.

  ``A good three hundred pounds, ye know?'' the farmer
suggested.

  No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of
the sum, affected young Richard, who said boldly, ``He will
not object to pay it when I tell him.''

  It was natural Farmer Blaize should be a trifle suspicious
that a youth's guarantee would hardly be given for his
father's readiness to disburse such a thumping bill, unless
he had previously received his father's sanction and authority.

  ``Hum!'' said he, ``why not 'a told him before?''

  The farmer threw an objectionable shrewdness into his
query, that caused Richard to compress his mouth and glance
high.

  Farmer Blaize was positive 'twas a lie.

  ``Hum! Ye still hold to 't you fired the rick?'' he
asked,

  ``The blame is mine!'' quoth Richard, with the loftiness
of a patriot of old Rome.

  ``Na, na!'' the straightforward Briton put him aside.
``Ye did't, or ye didn't do't. Did ye do't, or no?''

  Thrust in a corner, Richard said, ``I did it.''

  Farmer Blaize reached his hand to the bell. It was
answered in an instant by little Lucy, who received orders
to fetch in a dependent at Belthorpe going by the name of
the Bantam, and made her exit as she entered, with her eyes
on the young stranger.

  ``Now,'' said the farmer, ``these be my principles. I'm a
plain man, Mr. Feverel. Above board with me, and you'll
find me handsome. Try to circumvent me, and I'm a ugly
customer. I'll show you I've no animosity. Your father pays
---you apologize. That's enough for me! Let Tom Bakewell
fight't out with the Law, and I'll look on. The Law wasn't
on the spot, I suppose? so the Law ain't much witness.
But I am. Leastwise the Bantam is. I tell you, young
gentleman, the Bantam saw't! It's no mortal use whatever
your denyin' that ev'dence. And where's the good, sir, I
ask? What comes of 't? Whether it be you, or whether
it be Tom Bakewell---ain't all one? If I holds back, ain't it
sim'lar? It's the trewth I want! And here't comes,''
added the farmer, as Miss Lucy ushered in the Bantam,
who presented a curious figure for that rare divinity to
enliven.



	CHAPTER IX.

	A FINE DISTINCTION.

  In build of body, gait, and stature, Giles Jinkson, the
Bantam, was a tolerably fair representative of the Punic
elephant, whose part, with diverse anticipations, the generals
of the Blaize and Feverel forces, from opposing ranks, expected
him to play. Giles, surnamed the Bantam, on
account of some forgotten sally of his youth or infancy,
moved and looked elephantine. It sufficed that Giles was
well fed to assure that Giles was faithful---if uncorrupted.
The farm which supplied to him ungrudging provender had
all his vast capacity for work in willing exercise: the farmer
who held the farm his instinct reverenced as the fountain-source
of beef and bacon, to say nothing of beer, which was
plentiful at Belthorpe, and good. This Farmer Blaize well
knew, and he reckoned consequently that here was an animal
always to be relied on---a sort of human composition out of
dog, horse, and bull, a cut above each of these quadrupeds
in usefulness, and costing proportionately more, but on the
whole worth the money, and therefore invaluable, as everything
worth its money must be to a wise man. When the
stealing of grain had been made known at Belthorpe, the
Bantam, a follow-thresher with Tom Bakewell, had shared
with him the shadow the guilt. Farmer Blaize, if he hesitated
which to suspect, did not debate a second as to which
he would discard; and, when the Bantam said he had seen
Tom secreting pilkins in a sack, Farmer Blaize chose to
believe him, and off went poor Tom, told to rejoice in the
clemency that spared his appearance at Sessions.

  The Bantam's small sleepy orbits saw many things, and
just at the right moment it seemed. He was certainly the
first to give the clue at Belthorpe on the night of the conflagration,
and he may, therefore, have seen poor Tom
retreating stealthily from the scene, as he averred he did.
Lobourne had its say on the subject. Rustic Lobourne
hinted broadly at a young woman in the case, and, moreover,
told a tale of how these fellow-threshers had, in noble
rivalry, one day turned upon each other to see which of the
two threshed the best; whereof the Bantam still bore marks,
and malice, it was said. However, there he stood, and
tugged his forelocks to the company, and if Truth really had
concealed herself in him she must have been hard set to find
her unlikeliest hiding-place.

  ``Now,'' said the farmer, marshalling forth his elephant
with the confidence of one who delivers his ace of trumps,
``tell this young gentleman what ye saw on the night of the
fire, Bantam!''

  The Bantam jerked a bit of a bow to his patron, and then
swung round, fully obscuring him from Richard.

  Richard fixed his eyes on the floor, while the Bantam in
rudest Doric commenced his narrative. Knowing what was
to come, and thoroughly nerved to confute the main incident,
Richard barely listened to his barbarous locution: but
when the recital arrived at the point where the Bantam
affirmed he had seen ``I'm Baak'll wi's owen hoies,'' Richard
faced him, and was amazed to find himself being mutely
addressed by a series of intensely significant grimaces, signs,
and winks.

  ``What do you mean? Why are you making those faces
at me?'' cried the boy indignantly. 

  Farmer Blaize leaned round the Bantam to have a look at
him, and beheld the stolidest mask ever given to man.

  ``Bain't makin' no faces at nobody,'' growled the sulky
elephant.

  The farmer commanded him to face about and finish.

  ``A see T'm Baak'll,'' the Bantam recommenced, and
again the contortions of a horrible wink were directed at
Richard. The boy might well believe this churl was lying,
and he did, and was emboldened to exclaim---

  ``You never saw Tom Bakewell set fire to that rick!''

  The Bantam swore to it, grimacing an accompaniment.

  ``I tell you,'' said Richard, ``I put the lucifers there
myself!''

  The suborned elephant was staggered. He meant to
telegraph to the young gentleman that he was loyal and true
to certain gold pieces that had been given him, and that in
the right place and at the right time he should prove so.
Why was he thus suspected? Why was he not understood?

  ``A thowt I see 'un, then,'' muttered the Bantam, trying a
middle course.

  This brought down on him the farmer, who roared,
``Thought! Ye thought! What d'ye mean? Speak out,
and don't be thinkin'. Thought? What the devil's
that?''

  ``How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?''
Richard put in.

  ``Thought!'' the farmer bellowed louder. ``Thought---
Devil take ye, when ye took yer oath on't. Hulloa! What
are ye screwin' yer eve at Mr. Feverel for?---I say, young
gentleman, have you spoke to this chap before now?''

  ``I?'' replied Richard. ``I have not seen him before.''

  Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat
on, and glared his doubts.

  ``Come,'' said he to the Bantam, ``speak out, and ha' done
wi't. Say what ye saw, and none o' yer thoughts. Damn
yer thoughts! Ye saw Tom Bakewell fire that there
rick!'' The farmer pointed at some musk-pots in the
window. ``What business ha' you to be a-thinkin'? You're
a witness? Thinkin' an't ev'dence. What'll ye say to-morrow
before magistrate! Mind! what you says to-day,
you'll stick by to-morrow.''

  Thus adjured, the Bantam hitched his breech. What on
earth the young gentleman meant he was at a loss to speculate.
He could not believe that the young gentleman
wanted to be transported, but if he had been paid to help
that, why, he would. And considering that this day's
evidence rather bound him down to the morrow's, he determined,
after much ploughing and harrowing through obstinate
shocks of hair, to be not altogether positive as to the
person. It is possible that he became thereby more a
mansion of truth than he previously had been; for the
night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see your
hand before your face; and though, as he expressed it, you
might be mortal sure of a man, you could not identify him
upon oath, and the party he had taken for Tom Bakewell,
and could have sworn to, might have been the young gentleman
present, especially as he was ready to swear it upon
oath.

  So ended the Bantam.

  No sooner had he ceased, than Farmer Blaize jumped up
from his chair, and made a fine effort to lift him out of the
room from the point of his toe. He failed, and sank back
groaning with the pain of the exertion and disappointment.

  ``They're liars, every one!'' he cried. ``Liars, perj'rers,
bribers, and c'rrupters!---Stop!'' to the Bantam, who was
slinking away. ``You've done for yerself already! You
swore to it!''

  ``A din't!'' said the Bantam doggedly.

  ``You swore to 't,'' the farmer vociferated afresh.

  The Bantam played a tune upon the handle of the door,
and still affirmed that he did not; a double contradiction at
which the farmer absolutely raged in his chair, and was
hoarse, as he called out a third time that the Bantam had
sworn to it.

  ``Noa!'' said the Bantam, ducking his poll. ``Noa!'' he
repeated in a lower note; and then, while a sombre grin
betokening idiotic enjoyment of his profound casuistical
quibble worked at his jaw:---

  ``Not up'n o-ath!'' he added, with a twitch of the shoulder
and an angular jerk of the elbow.

  Farmer Blaize looked vacantly at Richard, as if to ask
him what he thought of England's peasantry after the
sample they had there. Richard would have preferred not
to laugh, but his dignity gave way to his sense of the ludicrous,
and he let fly an irrepressible peal. The farmer was
in no laughing mood. He turned a wide eye back to the
door, ``Lucky for'm,'' he exclaimed, seeing the Bantam had
vanished, for his fingers itched to break that stubborn head.
He grew very puffy, and addressed Richard solemnly:

  ``Now, look ye here, Mr. Feverel! You've been a tampering
with my witness. It's no use denyin'! I say y' 'ave, sir!
You, or some of ye. I don't care about no Feverel! My
witness there has been bribed. The Bantam's been bribed,''
and he shivered his pipe with an energetic thump on the
table---``Bribed! I knows it! I could swear to 't!''-----

  ``Upon oath?'' Richard inquired, with a grave face.

  ``Ay, upon oath!'' said the farmer, not observing the
impertinence.

  ``I'd take my Bible oath on't! He's been corrupted, my
principal witness! Oh! it's dam cunnin', but it won't do
the trick. I'll transpoort Tom Bakewell, sure as a gun. He
shall travel, that man shall. Sorry for you, Mr. Feverel---
sorry ye haven't seen how to treat me proper---you, or yours.
Money won't do everything---no! it won't. It'll c'rrupt a
witness, but it won't clear a felon. I'd ha' 'sensed you, sir!
You're a boy and 'll learn better. I asked no more than
payment and a 'pology; and that I'd ha' taken content---
always provided my witnesses weren't tampered with. Now
you must stand yer luck, all o' ye.''

  Richard stood up and replied, ``Very well, Mr. Blaize.''

  ``And if,'' continued the farmer, ``Tom Bakewell don't
drag you into 't after 'm, why, you're safe, as I hope ye'll
be, sincere!''

  ``It was not in consideration of my own safety that I
sought this interview with you,'' said Richard, head erect.

  ``Grant ye that,'' the farmer responded. ``Grant ye that!
Yer bold enough, young gentleman---comes of the blood that
should be! If y' had only ha' spoke trewth!---I believe yer
father---believe every word he said. I do wish I could ha'
said as much of Sir Austin's son and heir.''

  ``What!'' cried Richard, with an astonishment hardly
to be feigned, ``you have seen my father?''

  But Farmer Blaize had now such a scent for lies that he
could detect them where they did not exist, and mumbled
gruffly,

  ``Ay, we knows all about that!''

  The boy's perplexity saved him from being irritated. Who
could have told his father? An old fear of his father came
upon him, and a touch of an old inclination to revolt.

  ``My father knows of this?'' said he, very loudly, and
staring, as lie spoke, right through the farmer. ``Who has
played me false? Who would betray me to him? It was
Austin! No one knew it but Austin. Yes, and it was Austin
who persuaded me to come here and submit to these indignities.
Why couldn't he be open with me? I shall never
trust him again!''------

  ``And why not you with me, young gentleman?'' said the
farmer. ``I sh'd trust you if ye had.''

  Richard did not see the analogy. He bowed stiffly and
bade him good afternoon.

  Farmer Blaize pulled the bell. ``'Company the young
gentleman out, Lucy,'' he waved to the little damsel in the
doorway. ``Do the honours. And Mr. Richard, ye might
ha' made a friend o' me, sir, and it's not too late so to do.
I'm not cruel, but I hate lies. I whipped my boy Tom,
bigger than you, for not bein' above-board, only yesterday,---
ay! made 'un stand within swing o' this chair, and take 's
measure. Now, if ye'll come down to me, and speak trewth
before the trial---if it's only five minutes before 't; or if Sir
Austin, who 's a gentleman, 'll say there's been no tamperin'
with any o' my witnesses, his word for 't---well and good!
I'll do my best to help off Tom Bakewell. And I'm glad,
young gentleman, you've got a conscience about a poor man,
though he's a villain. Good afternoon, sir.''

  Richard marched hastily out of the room, and through the
garden, never so much as deigning a glance at his wistful
little guide, who hung at the garden gate to watch him up
the lane, wondering a world of fancies about the handsome
proud boy.


	CHAPTER X.

	RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE
	OCCASION OF AN APHORISM.

  To have determined upon an act something akin to
heroism in its way, and to have fulfilled it by lying heartily,
and so subverting the whole structure built by good resolution,
seems a sad downfall if we forget what human nature,
in its green weedy spring, is composed of. Young Richard had
quitted his cousin Austin fully resolved to do his penance
and drink the bitter cup; and he had drunk it; drained
many cups to the dregs; and it was to no purpose. Still
they floated before him, brimmed, trebly bitter. Away from
Austin's influence, he was almost the same boy who had
slipped the guinea into Tom Bakewell's hand, and the
lucifers into Farmer Blaize's rick. For good seed is long
ripening; a good boy is not made in a minute. Enough that
the seed was in him. He chafed on his road to Raynham
at the scene he had just endured, and the figure of Belthorpe's
fat tenant burnt like hot copper on the tablet of
his brain, insufferably condescending, and, what was worse,
in the right. Richard, obscured as his mind's eye was by
wounded pride, saw that clearly, and hated his enemy for it
the more.

  Heavy Benson's tongue was knelling dinner as Richard
arrived at the Abbey. He hurried up to his room to dress.
Accident, or design, had laid the book of Sir Austin's aphorisms
open on the dressing-table. Hastily combing his hair,
Richard glanced down and read---

  ``The Dog returneth to his vomit: the Liar must eat his
Lie.''

  Underneath was interjected in pencil: ``The Devil's
mouthful!''

  Young Richard ran downstairs feeling that his father had
struck him in the face.

  Sir Austin marked the scarlet stain on his son's cheek-bones.
He sought the youth's eye, but Richard would not
look, and sat conning his plate, an abject copy of Adrian's
succulent air at that employment. How could he pretend
to the relish of an epicure when he was painfully endeavouring
to masticate The Devil's mouthful?

  Heavy Benson sat upon the wretched dinner. Hippias,
usually the silent member, as if awakened by the unnatural
stillness, became sprightly, like the goatsucker owl at midnight,
and spoke much of his book, his digestion, and his
dreams, and was spared both by Algernon and Adrian. One
inconsequent dream he related, about fancying himself quite
young and rich, and finding himself suddenly in a field
cropping razors around him, when, just as he had, by steps
dainty as those of a French dancing-master, reached the
middle, he to his dismay beheld a path clear of the blood-thirsty
steel-crop, which he might have taken at first had
he looked narrowly; and there he was.

  Hippias's brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly
said they wished he had remained there. Sir Austin, however,
drew forth his note-book, and jotted down a reflection.
A composer of aphorisms can pluck blossoms even from a
razor-crop. Was not Hippias's dream the very counterpart
of Richard's position? He, had he looked narrowly, might
have taken the clear path: he, too, had been making dainty
steps till he was surrounded by the grinning blades. And
from that text Sir Austin preached to his son when they
were alone. Little Clare was still too unwell to be permitted
to attend the dessert, and father and son were soon
closeted together.

  It was a strange meeting. They seemed to have been
separated so long. The father took his son's hand; they
sat without a word passing between them. Silence said
most. The boy did not understand his father: his father
frequently thwarted him: at times he thought his father
foolish: but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent
to him of how warmly he was beloved. He tried once or
twice to steal his hand away, conscious it was melting him.
The spirit of his pride, and old rebellion, whispered him to
be hard, unbending, resolute. Hard he had entered his
father's study: hard he had met his father's eyes. He
could not meet them now. His father sat beside him gently;
with a manner that was almost meekness, so he loved this
boy. The poor gentleman's lips moved. He was praying
internally to God for him.

  By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy's bosom. Love
is that blessed wand which wins the waters from the hardness
of the heart. Richard fought against it, for the dignity
of old rebellion. The tears would come; hot and struggling
over the dams of pride. Shamefully fast they began to fall.
He could no longer conceal them, or cheek the sobs. Sir
Austin drew him nearer and nearer, till the beloved head
was on his breast.

  An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth,
and Algernon Feverel were summoned to the baronet's
study.

  Adrian came last. There was a style of affable omnipotence
about the wise youth as he slung himself into a chair,
and made an arch of the points of his fingers, through which
to gaze on his blundering kinsmen. Careless as one may be
whose sagacity has foreseen, and whose benevolent efforts
have forestalled, the point of danger at the threshold, Adrian
crossed his legs, and only intruded on their introductory
remarks so far as to hum half audibly at intervals---

	``Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,''

in parody of the old ballad. Young Richard's red eyes, and
the baronet's ruffled demeanour, told him that an explanation
had taken place, and a reconciliation. That was well. The
baronet would now pay cheerfully. Adrian summed and
considered these matters, and barely listened when the
baronet called attention to what he had to say: which was
elaborately to inform all present, what all present very well
knew, that a rick had been fired, that his son was implicated
as an accessory to the fact, that the perpetrator was now
imprisoned, and that Richard's family were, as it seemed to
him, bound in honour to do their utmost to effect the man's
release.

  Then the baronet stated that he had himself been down
to Belthorpe, his son likewise: and that he had found every
disposition in Blaize to meet his wishes.

  The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to
illumine the acts of this secretive race began slowly to
dispread its rays; and, as statement followed statement, they
saw that all had known of the business: that all had been
down to Belthorpe: all save the wise youth Adrian, who,
with due deference and a sarcastic shrug, objected to the
proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man Blaize.
His wisdom shone forth in an oration so persuasive and
aphoristic that had it not been based on a plea against
honour, it would have made Sir Austin waver. But its
basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better aphorism
of his own to confute him with.

  ``Expediency is man's wisdom, Adrian Harley. Doing
right is God's.''

  Adrian curbed his desire to ask Sir Austin whether an
attempt to counteract the just working of the law was doing
right. The direct application of an aphorism was unpopular
at Raynham.

  ``I am to understand then,'' said he, ``that Blaize consents
not to press the prosecution.''

  ``Of course he won't,'' Algernon remarked. ``Confound
him! he'll have his money, and what does he want
besides?''

  ``These agricultural gentlemen are delicate customers to
deal with. However, if he really consents''------

  ``I have his promise,'' said the baronet, fondling his son.
Young Richard looked up to his father, as if he wished to
speak. He said nothing, and Sir Austin took it as a mute
reply to his caresses, and caressed him the more. Adrian
perceived a reserve in the boy's manner, and as he was not
quite satisfied that his chief should suppose him to have
been the only idle, and not the most acute and vigilant
member of the family, he commenced a cross-examination
of him by asking who had last spoken with the tenant of
Belthorpe?

  ``I think I saw him last,'' murmured Richard, and relinquished
his father's hand.

  Adrian fastened on his prey. ``And left him with a
distinct and satisfactory assurance of his amicable intention?''

  ``No,'' said Richard.

  ``Not?'' the Feverels joined in astounded chorus.
Richard sidled away from his father, and repeated a
shamefaced ``No.''

  ``Was he hostile?'' inquired Adrian, smoothing his palms,
and smiling.

  ``Yes,'' the boy confessed.

  Here was quite another view of their position. Adrian,
generally patient of results, triumphed strongly at having
evoked it, and turned upon Austin Wentworth, reproving
him for inducing the boy to go down to Belthorpe. Austin
looked grieved. He feared that Richard had failed in his
good resolve.

  ``I thought it his duty to go,'' he observed.

  ``It was!'' said the baronet emphatically.

  ``And you see what comes of it, sir,'' Adrian struck in.
``These agricultural gentlemen, I repeat, are delicate customers
to deal with. For my part I would prefer being in the
hands of a policeman. We are decidedly collared by Blaize.
What were his words, Ricky? Give it in his own Doric.''

  ``He said he would transport Tom Bakewell.''

  Adrian smoothed his palms, and smiled again. Then they
could afford to defy Mr. Blaize, he informed them significantly,
and made once more a mysterious allusion to the
Punic elephant, bidding his relatives be at peace. They were
attaching, in his opinion, too much importance to Richard's
complicity. The man was a fool, and a very extraordinary
arsonite, to have an accomplice at all. It was a thing
unknown in the annals of rick-burning. But one would be
severer than law itself to say that a boy of fourteen had
instigated to crime a full-grown man. At that rate the boy
was ``father of the man'' with a vengeance, and one might
hear next that ``the baby was father of the boy.'' They
would find common sense a more benevolent ruler than
poetical metaphysics.

  When he had done, Austin, with his customary directness,
asked him what he meant.

  ``I confess, Adrian,'' said the baronet, hearing him expostulate
with Austin's stupidity, ``I for one am at a loss.
I have heard that this man, Bakewell, chooses voluntarily
not to inculpate my son. Seldom have I heard anything that
so gratified me. It is a view of innate nobleness in the
rustic's character which many gentlemen might take example
from. We are bound to do our utmost for the man.'' And,
saying that he should pay a second visit to Belthorpe, to
inquire into the reasons for the farmer's sudden exposition
of vindictiveness, Sir Austin rose.

  Before he left the room Algernon asked Richard if the
farmer had vouchsafed any reasons, and the boy then spoke
of the tampering with the witnesses, and the Bantam's ``Not
upon oath!'' which caused Adrian to choke with laughter.
Even the baronet smiled at so cunning a distinction as that
involved in swearing a thing, and not swearing it upon oath.

  ``How little,'' he exclaimed, ``does one yeoman know
another! To elevate a distinction into a difference is the
natural action of their minds. I will point that out to
Blaize. He shall see that the idea is native born.''

 Remorselessly Richard saw his father go forth. Adrian,
too, was ill at ease.

  ``This trotting down to Belthorpe spoils all,'' said he.
``The affair would pass over to-morrow---Blaize has no witnesses.
The old rascal is only standing out for more
money.''

  ``No, he isn't,'' Richard corrected him. ``It's not that. I'm
sure he believes his witnesses have been tampered with, as he
calls it.''

  ``What if they have, boy?'' Adrian put it boldly, ``The
ground is cut from under his feet.''

  ``Blaize told me that if my father would give his word
there had been nothing of the sort, he would take it. My
father will give his word.''

  ``Then,'' said Adrian, ``you had better stop him from going
down.''

  Austin looked at Adrian keenly, and questioned him
whether he thought the farmer was justified in his suspicions.
The wise youth was not to be entrapped. He had only been
given to understand that the witnesses were tolerably unstable,
and, like the Bantam, ready to swear lustily, but not upon the
Book. How given to understand, he chose not to explain,
but he reiterated that the chief should not be allowed to go
down to Belthorpe.

  Sir Austin was in the lane leading to the farm when he
heard steps of some one running behind him. It was dark,
and he shook off the hand that laid hold of his cloak, roughly,
not recognising his son.

  ``It's I, sir,'' said Richard panting. ``Pardon me. You
mustn't go in there.''

  ``Why not?'' said the baronet, putting his arm about him.

  ``Not now,'' continued the boy. ``I will tell you all to-night.
I must see the farmer myself. It was my fault, sir. I---I
lied to him---the Liar must eat his Lie. Oh, forgive me for
disgracing you, sir. I did it---I hope I did it to save Tom
Bakewell. Let me go in alone, and speak the truth.''

  ``Go, and I will wait for you here,'' said his father.
The wind that bowed the old elms, and shivered the dead
leaves in the air, had a voice and a meaning for the baronet
during that half-hour's lonely pacing up and down under the
darkness, awaiting his boy's return. The solemn gladness of
his heart gave nature a tongue. Through the desolation flying
overhead---the wailing of the Mother of Plenty across the
bare-swept land---he caught intelligible signs of the beneficent
order of the universe, from a heart newly confirmed in its
grasp of the principle of human goodness, as manifested in
the dear child who had just left him. confirmed in its belief
in the ultimate victory of good within us, without which
nature has neither music nor meaning, and is rock, stone,
tree, and nothing more.

  In the dark, the dead leaves beating on his face, he drew
forth the note-book, and with groping fingers traced out:
``There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness: from
that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we see that this
world is well designed.''


	CHAPTER XI.

	IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN
	A LETTER.

  Of all the chief actors in the Bakewell Comedy Master
Ripton Thompson awaited the fearful morning which was
to decide Tom's fate, in dolefulest mood, and suffered
the gravest mental terrors. Adrian, on parting with him,
had taken casual occasion to speak of the position of the
criminal in modern Europe, assuring him that International
Treaty now did what Universal Empire had aforetime done,
and that among Atlantic barbarians now, as among the
Scythians of old, an offender would find precarious refuge
and an emissary haunting him.

  In the paternal home, under the roofs of Law, and
removed from the influence of his conscienceless young chief,
the staggering nature of the act he had put his hand to, its
awful felonious aspect, overwhelmed poor Ripton. He saw
it now for the first time. ``Why it's next to murder!'' he
cried out to his amazed soul, and wandered about the house
with a prickly skin. Thoughts of America, and commencing
life afresh as an innocent gentleman, had crossed the
agitated brain of Ripton. He wrote to his friend Richard,
proposing to collect disposable funds, and embark, in case of
Tom's breaking his word, or of accidental discovery. He
dared not confide the secret to his family, as his leader had
sternly enjoined him to avoid any weakness of that kind;
and, being by nature honest and communicative, the restriction
was painful, and melancholy fell upon the boy. Mama
Thompson attributed it to love. The daughters of parchment
rallied him concerning Miss Clare Forey. His hourly
letters to Raynham, his silence as to everything and everybody
there, his loss of appetite, nervousness, and unwonted
propensity to sudden inflammation of the cheeks, were set
down for sure signs of the passion. Miss Letitia Thompson,
the pretty and least parchmenty one, destined by her Papa
for the heir of Raynham, and perfectly aware of her brilliant
future, up to which she had, since Ripton's departure,
dressed and grimaced, and studied cadences (the latter with
such success, though not yet fifteen, that she languished to
her maid, and melted the small factotum footman)---Miss
Letty, whose insatiable thirst for intimations about the
young heir Ripton could not satisfy, tormented him daily in
revenge, and once, quite unconsciously, gave the lad a fearful
turn; for after dinner, when Mr. Thompson read the paper
by the fire, preparatory to sleeping at his accustomed post,
and Mama Thompson and her submissive female brood sat
tasking the swift intricacies of the needle, and emulating
them with the tongue, Miss Letty stole behind Ripton's
chair, and introduced between him and his book the Latin
initial letter, large and illuminated, of the theme she supposed
to be absorbing him, as it did herself. The unexpected
vision of this accusing Captain of the Alphabet, this
resplendent and haunting A, fronting him bodily, threw
Ripton straight back in his chair, while Guilt, with her
ancient indecision what colours to assume on detection, flew
from red to white, from white to red, across his fallen chaps.
Letty laughed triumphantly.

  ``Ah-a!'' she sang, ``you are found out, Mr. Mum!'' and
innocently followed up the attack by asking him how he
would wear his badge, before or behind? which precipitated
Ripton from the room, in sick certainty that he was discovered,
and thrilled the motherly heart of Mama Thompson
with the blissful prospect of marrying two of her brood to
the House of Feverel.

  ``Why, what does A stand for? Silly!'' said Letitia, after
rallying her brother next morning at breakfast. ``For
Angel, doesn't it?''

  ``Yes, and for America,'' Ripton answered gloomily.

  ``Yes, and you know what else!'' rejoined his persecutor,
while another sister, previously instructed, presumed it
might possibly stand for Amor.

  ``And for Arson,'' added the deep paternal voice, unwittingly
springing a mine under poor Ripton.

  Letty's study of the aspects of love, and of the way young
people should look, and of the things they should do, under
the dominion of the passion, was not much assisted by its
outward development in the supposed love-stricken youth.
``I'm sure,'' she thought, ``I shall never be like that. He
bounds in his seat. He never looks comfortable. He seems
to hate us all, and does nothing but mumble his food, and
growl, and frown. If that's love, I can't do it!'' she sorrowfully
concluded her reflections.

  The delivery of a letter into Master Ripton's hands, however,
furnished her with other and likelier appearances to
study. For scarce had Ripton plunged his head into the
missive than he gave way to violent transports, such as the
healthy-minded little damsel, for all her languishing
cadences, deemed she really could express were a downright
declaration to be made to her. The boy did not stop at
table. Quickly recollecting the presence of his family, he
rushed to his own room. And now Miss Letty's ingenuity
was taxed to gain possession of that letter. In love, it is
said, all stratagems are fair, and many little ladies transverse
the axiom by applying it to discover the secrets of
their friends. Letty ransacked the drawers in Ripton's
room, she dived her hands into the pockets of his garments
lying about, she turned down the pillow, she spied under
the mattress of his bed, with an easy conscience; and if she
found nothing, of course, as she was doing a wrong, she did
not despair of gaining her object, and soon knew that Ripton
carried it about in his left jacket-pocket, persecuting
Ripton with her caresses, till she felt the tantalising treasure
crack beneath her fingers. Some sisters would have
coaxed him for a sight of it. Letty was not so foolish: she
did not allude to it, and was still hovering round the pocket,
at a loss to devise any new scheme, when accident bestowed
on her what artifice denied. They were standing on a hill
together, and saw some people of their acquaintance coming
up in a pony-chaise. Letty told Ripton to wave his handkerchief,
which he snatched from the very pocket, and
waved vigorously, and continued waving, heedless that his
sister had on a sudden lost her interest in the pony-chaise.
Indeed she presently commanded him to turn a contrary
way, and was voluble with reasons for getting home immediately,
though they had set out for a long walk into the
country. Once home, Letitia darted up stairs to be alone
with her naughty self. She had the letter. Ripton had
dropped it as he drew forth his handkerchief. With the
eyes of amazement she read this foreign matter:---

  ``Dear Ripton,---If Tom had been committed I would have
shot old Blaize. Do you know my father was behind us
that night when Clare saw the ghost and heard all we said
before the fire burst out. It is no use trying to conceal anything
from him. Well as you are in an awful state I will
tell you all about it. After you left Ripton I had a conversation
with Austin and he persuaded me to go down to old
Blaize and ask him to help off Tom. I went for I would
have done anything for Tom after what he said to Austin
and I defied the old churl to do his worst. Then he said if
my father paid the money and nobody had tampered with
his witnesses he would not mind if Tom did get off and he
had his chief witness in called the Bantam very like his
master I think and the Bantam began winking at me
tremendjously as you say, and said he had sworn he saw
Tom Bakewell but not upon oath. He meant not on the
Bible. He could swear to it but not on the Bible. I burst
out laughing and you should have seen the rage old Blaize
was in. It was splendid fun. Then we had a consultation
at home Austin Rady my father Uncle Algernon who has
come down to us again and your friend in prosperity and
adversity R. D. F. My father said he would go down to old
Blaize and give him the word of a gentleman we had not
tampered with his witnesses and when he was gone we were
all talking and Rady says he must not see the farmer. I am
as certain as I live that it was Rady bribed the Bantam.
Well I ran and caught up my father and told him not to go
in to old Blaize but I would and eat my words and tell him
the truth. He waited for me in the lane. Never mind what
passed between me and old Blaize. He made me beg and
pray of him not to press it against Tom and then to complete
it he brought in a little girl a niece of his and says to me
she's your best friend after all and told me to thank her.
A little girl twelve years of age. What business had she to
mix herself up in my matters. Depend upon it Ripton
wherever there is mischief there are girls I think. She had
the insolence to notice my face, and ask me not to be unhappy.
I was polite of course but I would not look at her. Well the
morning came and Tom was had up before Sir Miles Papworth.
It was Sir Miles gout gave us the time or Tom would
have been had up before we could do anything. Adrian did
not want me to go but my father said I should accompany
him and held my hand all the time. I shall be careful about
getting into these scrapes again. When you have done
anything honourable you do not mind but getting among
policemen and magistrates makes you ashamed of yourself.
Sir Miles was very attentive to my father and me and dead
against Tom. We sat beside him and Tom was brought in.
Sir Miles told my father that if there was one thing that
showed a low villain it was rick-burning. What do you
think of that. I looked him straight in the face and he said
to me he was doing me a service in getting Tom committed
and clearing the country of such fellows and Rady began
laughing. I hate Rady. My father said his son was not in
haste to inherit and have estates of his own to watch and
Sir Miles laughed too. I thought we were discovered at
first. Then they began the examination of Tom. The
Tinker was the first witness and he proved that Tom had
spoken against old Blaize and said something about burning
his rick. I wished I had stood in the lane to Bursley with
him alone. Our country lawyer we engaged for Tom cross-questioned
him and then he said he was not ready to swear
to the exact words that had passed between him and Tom.
I should think not. Then came another who swore he had
seen Tom lurking about the farmer's grounds that night.
Then came the Bantam and I saw him look at Rady. I was
tremendously excited and my father kept pressing my hand.
Just fancy my being brought to feel that a word from that
fellow would make me miserable for life and he must perjure
himself to help me. That comes of giving way to passion.
My father says when we do that we are calling in the devil
as doctor. Well the Bantam was told to state what he had
seen and the moment he began Rady who was close by me
began to shake and he was laughing I knew though his face
was as grave as Sir Miles. You never heard such a rigmarole
but I could not laugh. He said he thought he was certain
he had seen somebody by the rick and it was Tom Bakewell
who was the only man he knew who had a grudge against
Farmer Blaize and if the object had been a little bigger he
would not mind swearing to Tom and would swear to him
for he was dead certain it was Tom only what he saw looked
smaller and it was pitch-dark at the time. He was asked
what time it was he saw the person steal away from the rick
and then he began to scratch his head and said supper-time.
Then they asked what time he had supper and he said nine
o'clock by the clock and we proved that at nine o'clock Tom
was drinking in the ale-house with the Tinker at Bursley and
Sir Miles swore and said he was afraid he could not commit
Tom and when he heard that Tom looked up at me and I say
he is a noble fellow and no one shall sneer at Tom while I
live. Mind that. Well Sir Miles asked us to dine with him
and Tom was safe and I am to have him and educate him if
I like for my servant and I will. And I will give money to
his mother and make her rich and he shall never repent he
knew me. I say Rip. The Bantam must have seen me.
It was when I went to stick in the lucifers. As we were all
going home from Sir Miles's at night he has lots of red-faced
daughters but I did not dance with them though they
had music and were full of fun and I did not care to I was
so delighted and almost let it out. When we left and rode
home Rady said to my father the Bantam was not such a
fool as he was thought and my father said one must be in a
state of great personal exaltation to apply that epithet to any
man and Rady shut his mouth and I gave my pony a clap of
the heel for joy. I think my father suspects what Rady
did and does not approve of it. And he need not have done
it after all and might have spoilt it. I have been obliged to
order him not to call me Ricky for he stops short at Rick so
that everybody knows what he means. My dear Austin is
going to South America. My pony is in capital condition.
My father is the cleverest and best man in the world. Clare
is a little better. I am quite happy. I hope we shall meet
soon my dear Old Rip and we will not get into any more tremendjous
scrapes will we.---I remain, Your sworn friend,
				``=Richard Doria Feverel.=''

  ``_P.S._ I am to have a nice River Yacht. Good-bye, Rip.
Mind you learn to box. Mind you are not to show this to
any of your friends on pain of my displeasure.''

  ``N.B. Lady B. was so angry when I told her that I had
not come to her before. She would do anything in the world
for me. I like her next best to my father and Austin. Good-bye
old Rip.''


  Poor little Letitia, after three perusals of this ingenuous
epistle, where the laws of punctuation were so loftily disregarded,
resigned it to one of the pockets of her brother
Ripton's best jacket, deeply smitten with the careless composer.
And so ended the last act of the Bakewell Comedy,
on which the curtain closes with Sir Austin's pointing out
to his friends the beneficial action of the System in it from
beginning to end.


	CHAPTER XII.

	THE BLOSSOMING SEASON.

  Laying of ghosts is a public duty, and as the mystery of
the apparition that had frightened little Clare was never
solved on the stage of events at Raynham, where dread
walked the Abbey, let us go behind the scenes a moment.
Morally superstitious as the baronet was, the character of
his mind was opposed to anything like spiritual agency in
the affairs of men, and, when the matter was made clear to
him, it shook off a weight of weakness and restored his
mental balance; so that from this time he went about more
like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly
the great truth, that This World is well designed. Nay, he
could laugh on hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck
of one of the family members at its first manifestation, call
the uneasy spirit, Algernon's Leg. Mrs. Doria was outraged.
She maintained that her child had seen------. Not to believe
in it was almost to rob her of her personal property. After
satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her, Sir
Austin, moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed
her that her Ghost could write words in the flesh. It was
a letter from the unhappy lady who had given Richard birth,
---brief cold lines, simply telling him his house would be
disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by what
heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them what anguish
of soul! Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel
thought her husband a man fatally stern and implacable,
and she acted as silly creatures will act when they fancy
they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned for her
right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning
by stealth, and now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not
wanting in the family tenderness and softness, shuddered at
him for accepting the sacrifice so composedly: but he bade
her to think how distracting to this boy would be the sight
of such relations between mother and father. A few years,
and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. ``Let
this be her penance, not inflicted by me!'' Mrs. Doria
bowed to the System for another, not opining when it would
be her turn to bow for herself.

  Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary
grown older, much disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,
---he with gouty fingers on a greasy guitar. The Diaper
Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small hires. His fame
has sunk; his bodily girth has sensibly increased. What he
can do, and will do, is still his theme; meantime the juice of
the juniper is in requisition, and it seems those small hires
cannot be performed without it. Returning from her wretched
journey to her wretcheder home, the lady had to listen to a
mild reproof from easy-going Diaper,---a reproof so mild that
he couched it in blank verse: for, seldom writing metrically
now, he took to talking it. With a fluent sympathetic tear,
he explained to her that she was damaging her interests by
these proceedings; nor did he shrink from undertaking to
elucidate wherefore. Pluming a smile upon his succulent
mouth, he told her that the poverty she lived in was utterly
unbefitting her gentle nurture, and that he had reason to
believe---could assure her---that an annuity was on the point
of being granted her by her husband. And Diaper broke
his bud of a smile into full flower as he delivered the radiant
information. She learnt that he had applied to her husband
for money. It is hard to have one's last prop of self-respect
cut away just when we are suffering a martyr's agony at the
stake. There was a five minutes' tragic colloquy in the
recesses behind the scenes,---totally tragic to Diaper, who
had fondly hoped to bask in the warm sun of that annuity,
and re-emerge from his state of grub. The lady then wrote
the letter Sir Austin held open to his sister. The atmosphere
behind the scenes is not wholesome, so, having laid the
Ghost, we will return and face the curtain.

  That infinitesimal dose of =The World= which Master
Ripton Thompson had furnished to the System with such
instantaneous and surprising effect was considered by Sir
Austin to have worked well, and to be for the time quite
sufficient, so that Ripton did not receive a second invitation
to Raynham, and Richard had no special intimate of his own
age to rub his excessive vitality against, and wanted none.
His hands were full enough with Tom Bakewell. Moreover,
his father and he were heart in heart. The boy's mind was
opening, and turned to his father affectionately reverent.
At this period, when the young savage grows into higher
influences, the faculty of worship is foremost in him. At
this period Jesuits stamp the future of their chargeling
flocks; and all who bring up youth by a System, and watch
it, know that it is the malleable moment. Boys possessing
any mental or moral force to give them a tendency, then
predestinate their careers; or, if under supervision, take the
impress that is given them: not often to cast it off, and
seldom to cast it off altogether.

  In Sir Austin's Note-book was written: ``Between Simple
Boyhood and Adolescence---The Blossoming Season---on the
threshold of Puberty, there is one Unselfish Hour---say,
Spiritual Seed-time.''

  He took care that good seed should be planted in Richard,
and that the most fruitful seed for a youth, namely, Example,
should be of a kind to germinate in him the love of every
form of nobleness.

  ``I am only striving to make my son a Christian,'' he said,
answering them who persisted in expostulating with the
System. And to these instructions he gave an aim: ``First
be virtuous,'' he told his son, ``and then serve your country
with heart and soul.'' The youth was instructed to cherish
an ambition for statesmanship, and he and his father read
history and the speeches of British orators to some purpose;
for one day Sir Austin found him leaning cross-legged, and
with his hand to his chin, against a pedestal supporting the
bust of Chatham, contemplating the hero of our Parliament,
his eyes streaming with tears.

  People said the baronet carried the principle of Example
so far that he only retained his boozing dyspeptic brother
Hippias at Raynham in order to exhibit to his son the woful
retribution nature wreaked upon a life of indulgence; poor
Hippias having now become a walking complaint. This was
unjust, but there is no doubt he made use of every illustration
to disgust or encourage his son that his neighbourhood
afforded him, and did not spare his brother, for whom Richard
entertained a contempt in proportion to his admiration of
his father, and was for flying into penitential extremes which
Sir Austin had to soften.

  The boy prayed with his father morning and night.

  ``How is it, sir,'' he said one night, ``I can't get Tom
Bakewell to pray?''

  ``Does he refuse?'' Sir Austin asked.

  ``He seems to be ashamed to,'' Richard replied. ``He
wants to know what is the good? and I don't know what
to tell him.''

  ``I'm afraid it has gone too far with him,'' said Sir Austin,
``and until he has had some deep sorrows he will not find
the divine want of Prayer. Strive, my son, when you represent
the people, to provide for their education. He feels
everything now through a dull impenetrable rind. Culture
is half-way to Heaven. Tell him, my son, should he ever be
brought to ask how he may know the efficacy of Prayer, and
that his prayer will be answered, tell him (he quoted The
=Pilgrim's Scrip=):

  `` `Who rises from Prayer a better man, his prayer is
answered.' ''

  ``I will, sir,'' said Richard, and went to sleep happy.

  Happy in his father and in himself, the youth now lived.
Conscience was beginning to inhabit him, and he carried
some of the freightage known to men; though in so crude a
form that it overweighed him, now on this side, now on
that.

  The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary
developments in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was
under Sir Austin's interdict not to banter him, and eased his
acrid humours inspired by the sight of a felonious young
rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of sympathy
and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant
dates of his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase
lasted a fortnight: the Vegetarian (an imitation of his
cousin Austin), little better than a month: the religious,
somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when he was
for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Bursley, and
the domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell),
longer still, and hard to bear;---he tried to convert Adrian!
All the while Tom was being exercised like a raw recruit.
Richard had a drill-sergeant from the nearest barracks
down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself, and
marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and
nearly broke his heart trying to get the round-shouldered
rustic to take in the rudiments of letters: for the boy had
unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero in grain.

  Richard's pride also was cast aside. He affected to be,
and really thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as
by accident, imparted to him the fact that men were
animals, and he an animal with them.

  ``_I_ an animal!'' cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he
was as troubled by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom
by his letters. Sir Austin had him instructed in the wonders
of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.

  =Seed-Time= passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on,
and his cousin Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite
sex to him. She too was growing, but nobody cared how
she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed absorbed in
the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree, and
Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.
Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell
him: ``If I had been a girl, I would have had you for my
husband.'' And he with the frankness of his years would
reply: ``And how do you know I would have had you?''
causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not
heard her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he
knew not then the meaning of!

  ``You don't read your father's Book,'' she said. Her own
copy was bound in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative
ladies like to have holier books, and she carried it about
with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian remarked to Mrs.
Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at him
therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted
her brother would not be on his guard.

  ``See here,'' said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy
finger-nail to one of the Aphorisms, which instanced how
age and adversity must clay-enclose us ere we can effectually
resist the magnetism of any human creature in our path.
``Can you understand it, child?''

  Richard informed her that when she read he could.

  ``Well, then, my squire,'' she touched his cheek and ran
her fingers through his hair, ``learn as quick as you can not
to be all hither and yon with a hundred different attractions,
as I was before I met a wise man to guide me.''

  ``Is my father very wise?'' Richard asked.

  ``I think so,'' the lady emphasized her individual judgment.

  ``Do you------'' Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a
beating of his heart.

  ``Do I---what?'' she calmly queried.

  ``I was going to say, do you---I mean, I love him so
much.''

  Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured.

  They frequently approached this theme, and always
retreated from it; always with the same beating of heart to
Richard, accompanied by the sense of a growing mystery,
which, however, did not as yet generally disturb him.

  Life was made very pleasant to him at Raynham, as it
was part of Sir Austin's principle of education that his boy
should be thoroughly joyous and happy; and whenever
Adrian sent in a satisfactory report of his pupil's advancement,
which he did pretty liberally, diversions were planned,
just as prizes are given to diligent school-boys, and Richard
was supposed to have all his desires gratified while he
attended to his studies. The System flourished. Tall,
strong, bloomingly healthy, he took the lead of his companions
on land and water, and had more than one bondsman
in his service besides Ripton Thompson---the boy without
a Destiny! Perhaps the boy with a Destiny was growing
up a trifle too conscious of it. His generosity to his
occasional companions was princely, but was exercised something
too much in the manner of a prince; and, notwithstanding
his contempt for baseness, he would overlook that
more easily than an offence to his pride, which demanded an
utter servility when it had once been rendered susceptible.
If Richard had his followers he had also his feuds. The
Papworths were as subservient as Ripton, but young Ralph
Morton, the nephew of Mr. Morton, and a match for Richard
in numerous promising qualities, comprising the noble
science of fisticuffs, this youth spoke his mind too openly,
and moreover would not be snubbed. There was no middle
course for Richard's comrades between high friendship or
absolute slavery. He was deficient in those cosmopolite
habits and feelings which enable boys and men to hold
together without caring much for each other; and, like
every insulated mortal, he attributed the deficiency, of which
he was quite aware, to the fact of his possessing a superior
nature. Young Ralph was a lively talker: therefore, argued
Richard's vanity, he had no intellect. He was affable:
therefore he was frivolous. The women liked him: therefore
he was a butterfly. In fine, young Ralph was popular,
and our superb prince, denied the privilege of despising,
ended by detesting him.

  Early in the days of their contention for leadership,
Richard saw the absurdity of affecting to scorn his rival.
Ralph was an Eton boy, and hence, being robust, a swimmer
and a cricketer. A swimmer and a cricketer is nowhere to
be scorned in youth's republic. Finding that man<oe>uvre
would not do, Richard was prompted once or twice to
entrench himself behind his greater wealth and his position;
but he soon abandoned that also, partly because his
chilliness to ridicule told him he was exposing himself, and
chiefly that his heart was too chivalrous. And so he was
dragged into the lists by Ralph, and experienced the luck of
champions. For cricket, and for diving, Ralph bore away
the belt: Richard's middle-stump tottered before his ball,
and he could seldom pick up more than three eggs underwater
to Ralph's half-dozen. He was beaten, too, in jumping
and running. Why will silly mortals strive to the
painful pinnacles of championship? Or why, once having
reached them, not have the magnanimity and circumspection
to retire into private life immediately? Stung by his
defeats, Richard sent one of his dependent Papworths to
Poer Hall, with a challenge to Ralph Barthrop Morton;
matching himself to swim across the Thames and back, once,
twice, or thrice, within a less time than he, Ralph Barthrop
Morton, would require for the undertaking. It was accepted,
and a reply returned, equally formal in the trumpeting of
Christian names, wherein Ralph Barthrop Morton acknowledged
the challenge of Richard Doria Feverel, and was his
man. The match came off on a midsummer morning, under
the direction of Captain Algernon. Sir Austin was a
spectator from the cover of a plantation by the river-side,
unknown to his son, and, to the scandal of her sex, Lady
Blandish accompanied the baronet. He had invited her
attendance, and she, obeying her frank nature, and knowing
what =The Pilgrim Scrip= said about prudes, at once agreed
to view the match, pleasing him mightily. For was not
here a woman worthy the golden ages of the world? one
who could look upon man as a creature divinely made, and
look with a mind neither tempted, nor taunted, by the
Serpent! Such a women was rare. Sir Austin did not
discompose her by uttering his praises. She was conscious
of his approval only in an increased gentleness of manner,
and something in his voice and communications, as if he
were speaking to a familiar, a very high compliment from
him. While the lads were standing ready for the signal to
plunge from the steep decline of greensward into the shining
waters, Sir Austin called upon her to admire their beauty,
and she did, and even advanced her head above his shoulder
delicately. In so doing, and just as the start was given, a
bonnet became visible to Richard. Young Ralph was heels
in air before he moved, and then he dropped like lead. He
was beaten by several lengths.

  The result of the match was unaccountable to all present,
and Richard's friends unanimously pressed him to plead a
false start. But though the youth, with full confidence in
his better style and equal strength, had backed himself
heavily against his rival, and had lost his little river-yacht
to Ralph, he would do nothing of the sort. It was the
Bonnet had beaten him, not Ralph. The Bonnet, typical of
the mystery that caused his heart those violent palpitations,
the Bonnet was his dear, detestable enemy. He took a
savage pleasure in attributing his evil luck to the Bonnet.
It distilled an exquisite bitter-sweet.

  And now, as he progressed from mood to mood, his ambition
turned towards a field where Ralph could not rival him,
and where the Bonnet was etherealized, and reigned glorious
mistress. A cheek to the pride of a boy will frequently
divert him to the path where lie his subtlest powers. Richard
gave up his companions, servile or antagonistic: he relinquished
the material world to young Ralph, and retired into
himself, where he was growing to be lord of kingdoms:
where Beauty was his handmaid, and History his minister,
and Time his ancient harper, and sweet Romance his bride;
where he walked in a realm vaster and more gorgeous than
the great Orient, peopled with the heroes that have been.
For there is no princely wealth, and no loftiest heritage, to
equal this early one that is made bountifully common to so
many, when the ripening blood has put a spark to the
imagination, and the earth is seen through rosy mists of a
thousand fresh-awakened nameless and aimless desires;
panting for bliss and taking it as it comes; making of any
sight or sound, perforce of the enchantment they carry with
them, a key to infinite, because innocent, pleasure. The
passions then are gambolling cubs; not the ravaging gluttons
they grow to. They have their teeth and their talons, but
they neither tear nor bite. They are in counsel and fellowship
with the quickened heart and brain. The whole sweet
system moves to music.

  Something akin to the indications of a change in the spirit
of his son, which were now seen, Sir Austin had marked
down to be expected, as due to his plan. The blushes of the
youth, his long vigils, his clinging to solitude, his abstraction,
and downcast but not melancholy air, were matters for
rejoicing to the prescient gentleman. ``For it comes,'' said
he to Dr. Clifford of Lobourne, after consulting him medically
on the youth's behalf and being assured of his soundness, ``it
comes of a thoroughly sane condition. The blood is healthy,
the mind virtuous: neither instigates the other to evil, and
both are perfecting toward the flower of manhood. If he
reach that pure---in the untainted fulness and perfection of
his natural powers---I am indeed a happy father! But one
thing he will owe to me: that at one period of his life he
knew paradise, and could read God's handwriting on the
earth! Now those abominations whom you call precocious
boys---your little pet monsters, doctor!---and who can wonder
that the world is what it is? when it is full of them---as they
will have no divine time to look back upon in their own lives,
how can they believe in innocence and goodness, or be other
than sons of selfishness and the Devil? But my boy,'' and
the baronet dropped his voice to a key that was touching to
hear, ``my boy, if he fall, will fall from an actual region of
purity. He dare not be a sceptic as to that. Whatever his
darkness, he will have the guiding light of a memory behind
him. So much is secure.''

  To talk nonsense, or poetry, or the dash between the two,
in a tone of profound sincerity, and to enunciate solemn
discordances with received opinion so seriously as to convey
the impression of a spiritual insight, is the peculiar gift by
which monomaniacs, having first persuaded themselves, contrive
to influence their neighbours, and through them to
make conquest of a good half of the world, for good or for ill.
Sir Austin had this gift. He spoke as if he saw the truth,
and, persisting in it so long, he was accredited by those who
did not understand him, and silenced them that did. ``We
shall see,'' was all the argument left to Dr. Clifford, and other
unbelievers.

  So far certainly the experiment had succeeded. A comlier,
braver, better boy was nowhere to be met. His promise was
undeniable. The vessel, too, though it lay now in harbour
and had not yet been proved by the buffet; of the elements
on the great ocean, had made a good trial trip, and got well
through stormy weather, as the records of the Bakewell
Comedy witnessed to at Raynham. No augury could be
hopefuler. The Fates must indeed be hard, the Ordeal
severe, the Destiny dark, that could destroy so bright a
Spring! But, bright as it was, the baronet relaxed nothing
of his vigilant supervision. He said to his intimates:
``Every act, every fostered inclination, almost every thought,
in this Blossoming Season, bears its seed for the Future.
The living Tree now requires incessant watchfulness.'' And,
acting up to his light, Sir Austin did watch. The youth
submitted to an hour's examination every night before
he sought his bed; professedly to give an account of his
studies; but really to recapitulate his moral experiences of
the day. He could do so, for he was pure. Any wildness in
him that his father noted, any remoteness or richness of
fancy in his expressions, was set down as incidental to the
Blossoming Season. The Blossoming Season explained and
answered for all. There is nothing like a theory for binding
the wise. Sir Austin, despite his rigid watch and ward,
knew less of his son than the servant of his household. And
he was deaf, as well as blind. Adrian thought it his duty to
tell him that the youth was consuming paper. Lady
Blandish likewise hinted at his mooning propensities. Sir
Austin from his lofty watch-tower of the System had foreseen
it, he said. But when he came to hear that the youth
was writing poetry, his wounded heart had its reasons for
being much disturbed.

  ``Surely,'' said Lady Blandish, ``you knew he scribbled?''

  ``A very different thing from writing poetry, madam,''
said the baronet. ``No Feverel has ever written poetry.''

  ``I don't think it's a sign of degeneracy,'' the lady
remarked. ``He rhymes very prettily to me.''

  A London phrenologist, and a friendly Oxford Professor
of poetry, quieted Sir Austin's fears.

  The phrenologist said he was totally deficient in the imitative
faculty; and the Professor, that he was equally so in the
rhythmic, and instanced several consoling false quantities in
the few effusions submitted to him. Added to this, Sir
Austin told Lady Blandish that Richard had, at his best,
done what no poet had ever been known to be capable of
doing: he had, with his own hands, and in cold blood, committed
his virgin manuscript to the flames: which made
Lady Blandish sigh forth, ``Poor boy!''

  Killing one's darling child is a painful imposition. For a
youth in his Blossoming Season, who fancies himself a poet,
to be requested to destroy his first-born, without a reason
(though to pretend a reason cogent enough to justify the
request were a mockery), is a piece of abhorrent despotism,
and Richard's blossoms withered under it. A strange man
had been introduced to him, who traversed and bisected his
skull with sagacious stiff fingers, and crushed his soul while,
in an infallible voice, declaring him the animal he was:
making him feel such an animal! Not only his blossoms
withered, his being seemed to draw in its shoots and twigs.
And when, coupled thereunto (the strange man having
departed, his work done), his father, in his tenderest manner,
stated that it would give him pleasure to see those
same precocious, utterly valueless, scribblings among the
cinders, the last remaining mental blossoms spontaneously
fell away. Richard's spirit stood bare. He protested not.
Enough that it could be wished! He would not delay a
minute in doing it. Desiring his father to follow him, he
went to a drawer in his room, and from a clean-linen recess,
never suspected by Sir Austin, the secretive youth drew out
bundle after bundle: each neatly tied, named, and numbered:
and pitched them into flames. And so Farewell my
young Ambition! and with it Farewell all true confidence
between Father and Son.


	CHAPTER XIII

	THE MAGNETIC AGE.

  It was now, as Sir Austin had written it down, The Magnetic
Age: the Age of violent attractions, when to hear
mention of love is dangerous, and to see it, a communication
of the disease. People at Raynham were put on their guard
by the baronet, and his reputation for wisdom was severely
criticized in consequence of the injunctions he thought fit to
issue through butler and housekeeper down to the lower
household, for the preservation of his son from any visible
symptom of the passion. A footman and two housemaids are
believed to have been dismissed on the report of heavy
Benson that they were in or inclining to the state; upon
which an undercook and a dairymaid voluntarily threw up
their places, averring that ``they did not want no young
men, but to have their sex spied after by an old wretch like
that,'' indicating the ponderous butler, ``was a little too
much for a Christian woman,'' and then they were ungenerous
enough to glance at Benson's well-known marital
calamity, hinting that some men met their deserts. So
intolerable did heavy Benson's espionage become, that Raynham
would have grown depopulated of its womankind had
not Adrian interfered, who pointed out to the baronet what
a fearful arm his butler was wielding. Sir Austin acknowledged
it despondently. ``It only shows,'' said he, with a
fine spirit of justice, ``how all but impossible it is to legislate
where there are women!''

  ``I do not object,'' he added; ``I hope I am too just to
object to the exercise of their natural inclinations. All I
ask from them is discreetness.''

  ``Ay,'' said Adrian, whose discreetness was a marvel.

  ``No gadding about in couples,'' continued the baronet,
``no kissing in public. Such occurrences no boy should
witness. Whenever people of both sexes are thrown together,
they will be silly; and where they are high-fed, uneducated,
and barely occupied, it must be looked for as a matter of
course. Let it be known that I only require discreetness.''
Discreetness, therefore, was instructed to reign at the
Abbey. Under Adrian's able tuition the fairest of its
domestics acquired that virtue.

  Discreetness, too, was enjoined to the upper household.
Sir Austin, who had not previously appeared to notice the
case of Lobourne's hopeless curate, now desired Mrs. Doria
to interdict, or at least discourage, his visits, for the appearance
of the man was that of an embodied sigh and groan.

  ``Really, Austin!'' said Mrs. Doria, astonished to find her
brother more awake than she had supposed, ``I have never
allowed him to hope.''

  ``Let him see it, then,'' replied the baronet; ``let him see
it.''

  ``The man amuses me,'' said Mrs. Doria. ``You know,
we have few amusements here, we inferior creatures. I confess
I should like a barrel-organ better; that reminds one of
town and the opera; and besides, it plays more than one
tune. However, since you think my society bad for him,
let him stop away.''

  The sight of the Note-book backing a sardonic smile,
caused Mrs. Doria her unusual flash of irony; and truly it
was hard upon a lady to mark this cold Rhadamanthus
deliberately and openly jotting her down to Prejudgement
and condemnation at her sex in some future edition of the
Verdicts. With the self-devotion of a woman she abjured
it, and grew patient and sweet the moment her daughter
Clare was spoken of, and the business of her life in view.
Mrs. Doria's maternal heart had betrothed the two cousins,
Richard and Clare; had already beheld them espoused and
fruitful. For this she yielded the pleasures of town; for
this she immured herself at Raynham; for this she bore
with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences, things
abhorrent to her, and Heaven knows what forms of torture
and self-denial, which are smilingly endured by that greatest
of voluntary martyrs---a mother with a daughter to marry.
Mrs. Doria, an amiable widow, had surely married but for
her daughter Clare. The lady's hair no woman could possess
without feeling it her pride. It was the daily theme of her
lady's-maid,---a natural aureole to her head. She was gay,
witty, still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny;
and she sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter's! sacrificed,
as with heroic scissors, hair, wit, gaiety---let us not attempt
to enumerate how much! more than may be said. And she
was only one of thousands; thousands who have no portion
of the hero's reward; for he may reckon on applause, and
condolence, and sympathy, and honour; they, poor slaves!
must look for nothing but the opposition of their own sex
and the sneers of ours. O, Sir Austin! had you not been
so blinded, what an Aphorism might have sprung from this
point of observation! Mrs. Doria was coolly told, between
sister and brother, that during the Magnetic Age her
daughter's presence at Raynham was undesireable. Instead
of nursing offence, her sole thought was the mountain of
prejudice she had to contend against. She bowed, and said,
Clare wanted sea-air---she had never quite recovered the
shock of that dreadful night. How long, Mrs. Doria wished
to know, might the Peculiar Period be expected to last?

  ``That,'' said Sir Austin, ``depends. A year, perhaps.
He is entering on it. I shall be most grieved to lose you,
Helen. Clare is now---how old?''

  ``Seventeen.''

  ``She is marriageable.''

  ``Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don't name such a
thing. My child shall not be robbed of her youth.''

  ``Our women marry early, Helen.''

  ``My child shall not!''

  The baronet reflected a moment. He did not wish to lose
his sister.

  ``As you are of that opinion, Helen,'' said he, ``perhaps
we may still make arrangements to retain you with
us. Would you think it adviseable to send Clare---she
should know discipline---to some establishment for a few
months?'' . . .

  ``To an asylum, Austin?'' cried Mrs. Doria, controlling
her indignation as well as she could.

  ``To some select superior seminary, Helen. There are
such to be found.''

  ``Austin!'' Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a
moisture in her eyes. ``Unjust! absurd!'' she murmured.
The baronet thought it a natural proposition that Clare
should be a bride or a schoolgirl.

  ``I cannot leave my child.'' Mrs. Doria trembled. ``Where
she goes, I go. I am aware that she is only one of our sex,
and therefore of no value to the world, but she is my child.
I will see, poor dear, that you have no cause to complain of
her.''

  ``I thought,'' Sir Austin remarked, ``that you acquiesced
in my views with regard to my son.''

  ``Yes---generally,'' said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that
she had not before, and could not then, tell her brother that
he had set up an Idol in his house---an Idol of flesh! more
retributive and abominable than wood, or brass, or gold.
But she had bowed to the Idol too long---she had too
entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency
to enjoy that gratification now. She had, and she dimly
perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics, in teaching
her daughter to bow to the Idol also. Love of that kind
Richard took for tribute. He was indifferent to Clare's soft
eyes. The parting kiss he gave her was ready and cold as
his father could desire, and Sir Austin had hardly slept
overnight for thinking of the effect it might have on the
magnetic youth. He caressed his son as if Richard had
done something virtuous. Compensation his boy should
have for any trifling crosses to his feelings. He should
have yachts, horses, whatever he fancied. Sir Austin now
grew eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits: but
Richard thought his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship
awkward, and all manly pursuits and aims, life
itself, vain and worthless. To what end? sighed the blossomless
youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he was relieved
of his father's society, what was the good of anything?
Whatever he did---whichever path he selected, led back to
Raynham. And whatever he did, and however wretched
and wayward he showed himself, only confirmed Sir Austin
more and more in the truth of his provisions. Tom Bakewell,
now the youth's groom, had to give the baronet a
report of his young master's proceedings, in common with
Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell Tom spoke out.
``He do ride like fire every day to Pig's Snout,'' naming the
highest hill in the neighbourhood, ``and stand there and
stare, never movin', like a mad 'un. And then hoam agin
all slack as if he'd been beaten in a race by somebody.''

  To the interrogation---Did he look East or West? Tom,
dreading a snare, replied that he had not marked: ``He
seemed for to look where he could look fur away.''

  ``There is no woman in that!'' mused the baronet. ``He
would have ridden back as hard as he went,'' reflected this
profound scientific humanist, ``had there been a woman in
it. He would shun vast expanses, and seek shade, concealment,
solitude. The desire for distances betokens emptiness
and undirected hunger: when the heart is possessed by an
image we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty.''

  Adrian's report accused his pupil of an extraordinary
access of cynicism.

  ``Exactly,'' said the baronet. ``As I foresaw. At this
period an insatiate appetite is accompanied by a fastidious
palate. Nothing but the quintessences of existence, and
those in exhaustless supplies, will satisfy this craving, which
is not to be satisfied! Hence his bitterness. Life can
furnish no food fitting for him. The strength and purity of
his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and
roam through the Inane. Poetry, love, and such-like, are
the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to
low ones debauchery. 'Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is
subject to none of the empiricisms that are afloat. Now to
keep him clear of them!''

  The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus. As
yet, however, it could not be said that Sir Austin's System
had failed. On the contrary, it had reared a youth, handsome,
intelligent, well-bred, and, observed the ladies, with
acute emphasis, innocent. Where, they asked, was such
another young man to be found?

  ``Oh!'' said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, ``if men could
give their hands to women unsoiled---how different would
many a marriage be! She will be a happy girl who calls
Richard husband.''

  ``Happy, indeed!'' was the baronet's caustic ejaculation.
``But where shall I meet one equal to him, and his mate?''

  ``I was innocent when I was a girl,'' said the lady.

  Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.

  ``Do you think no girls innocent?''

  Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.

  ``No, that you know they are not,'' said the lady, stamping.
``But they are more innocent than boys, I am sure.''

  ``Because of their education, madam. You see now what
a youth can be. Perhaps, when my System is published, or
rather---to speak more humbly---when it is practised, the
balance may be restored, and we shall have virtuous young
men.''

  ``It's too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one
of them,'' said the lady, pouting and laughing.

  ``It is never too late for beauty to waken love,'' returned
the baronet, and they trifled a little. They were approaching
Daphne's Bower, which they entered, and sat there to
taste the coolness of a descending midsummer day.

  The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the
lady for serious converse.

  ``I shall believe again in Arthur's knights,'' she said.
``When I was a girl I dreamed of one.''

  ``And he was in quest of the San Greal?''

  ``If you like.''

  ``And showed his good taste by turning aside for the more
tangible San Blandish?''

  ``Of course you consider it would have been so,'' sighed
the lady ruffling.

  ``I can only judge by our generation,'' said Sir Austin,
with a bend of homage.

  The lady gathered her mouth. ``Either we are very
mighty, or you are very weak.''

  ``Both, madam.''

  ``But whatever we are, and if we are bad, bad! we love
virtue, and truth, and lofty souls, in men: and, when we
meet those qualities in them, we are constant, and would
die for them---die for them. Ah! you know men but not
women.''

  ``The knights possessing such distinctions must be
young, I presume?'' said Sir Austin.

  ``Old, or young!''

  ``But if old, they are scarce capable of enterprise?''

  ``They are loved for themselves, not for their deeds.''

  ``Ah!''

  ``Yes---ah!'' said the lady mocking him. ``Intellect may
subdue women---make slaves of them; and they worship
beauty perhaps as much as you do. But they only love for
ever and are mated when they meet a noble nature.''

  Sir Austin looked at her wistfully.

  ``And did you encounter the knight of your dream?''

  ``Not then.'' She lowered her eyelids. It was prettily
done.

  ``And how did you bear the disappointment?''

  ``My dream was in the nursery. The day my frock was
lengthened to a gown I stood at the altar. I am not the
only girl that has been made a woman in a day, and given
to an ogre instead of a true knight.''

  ``Good God!'' exclaimed Sir Austin, ``women have much
to bear.''

  Here the couple changed characters. The lady became
gay as the baronet grew earnest.

  ``You know it is our lot,'' she said. ``And we are allowed
many amusements. If we fulfil our duty in producing children,
that, like our virtue, is its own reward. Then, as a
widow, I have wonderful privileges.''

  ``To preserve which, you remain a widow?''

  ``Certainly,'' she responded. ``I have no trouble now in
patching and piecing that rag the world calls---a character.
I can sit at your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure,
others do the same, but they are female eccentrics, and have
cast off the rag altogether: mind mends itself.''

  Sir Austin drew nearer to her. ``You would have made
an admirable mother, madam.''

  The lady smiled. This from Sir Austin was very like
positive wooing.

  ``It is,'' he continued, ``ten thousand pities that you are
not one.''

  ``Do you think so?'' She spoke with an extreme humility.

  ``I would,'' he went on, ``that heaven had given you a
daughter.''

  ``Would you have thought her worthy of Richard?''

  ``Our blood, madam, should have been one!''

  The lady tapped her toe with her parasol, blushing. ``But
I am a mother,'' she said.

  Sir Austin's brows started up.

  ``Richard is my son.''

  That he could look relieved by so presumptuous a speech
was a sign how far the lady had gone with him.

  ``Yes! Richard is my boy,'' she reiterated.

  Sir Austin's most graciously appended, ``Call him ours,
madam,'' and held his head as if to catch the word from her
lips, which, however, she chose to refuse, or defer. They
made the coloured West a common point for their eyes several
minutes, and then Sir Austin said, ``Listen, madam.''

  Lady Blandish turned to him very sweetly.

  ``As you will not say `ours,' madam, let me. And, as you
have therefore an equal claim on the boy, I will confide to
you a project I have lately conceived.''

  The announcement of a project hardly savoured of a coming
proposal, but for Sir Austin to confide one to a woman was
almost tantamount to a declaration. So Lady Blandish
thought, and so said her soft, deep-eyed smile, as she perused
the ground while listening to the project. It concerned
Richard's nuptials. He was now nearly eighteen. He was
to marry when he was five-and-twenty. Meantime a young
lady, some years his junior, was to be sought for in the homes
of England, who would be every way fitted by education,
instincts, and blood---on each of which qualifications Sir
Austin unreservedly enlarged---to espouse so perfect a youth
and accept the honourable duty of assisting in the perpetuation
of the Feverels. The baronet went on to say that he
proposed to set forth immediately, and devote a couple of
mouths, to the first essay in his C<oe>lebite search.

  ``I fear,'' said Lady Blandish, when the project had been
fully unfolded, ``you have laid down for yourself a difficult
task. You must not be too exacting.''

  ``I know it.'' The baronet's shake of the head was piteous.
``Even in England she will be rare. But I confine myself
to no class. If I ask for blood it is for untainted, not what
you call high blood. I believe many of the middle classes
are frequently more careful---more pure-blooded---than our
aristocracy. Show me among them a God-fearing family
who educate their children---I should prefer a girl without
brothers and sisters---as a Christian damsel should be educated
---say, on the model of my son, and she may be penniless,
I will pledge her to Richard Feverel.''

  Lady Blandish bit her lip. ``And what do you do with
Richard while you are absent on this expedition?''

  ``Oh!'' said the baronet, ``he accompanies his father.''

  ``Then give it up. His future bride is now pinafored and
bread-and-buttery. She romps, she cries, she dreams of play
and pudding. How can he care for her? He thinks more
at his age of old women like me. He will be certain to kick
against her, and destroy your plan, believe me, Sir Austin.''

  ``Ay? ay? do you think that?'' said the baronet.

  Lady Blandish gave him a multitude of reasons.

  ``Ay! true,'' he muttered. ``Adrian said the same. He
must not see her. How could I think of it! The child is
naked woman. He would despise her. Naturally!''

  ``Naturally!'' echoed the lady.

  ``Then, madam,'' and the baronet rose, ``there is one thing
for me to determine upon. I must, for the first time in his
life, leave him.''

  ``Will you, indeed?'' said the lady.

  ``It is my duty, madam, having thus brought him up, to
see that he is properly mated,---not wrecked upon the quicksands
of marriage, as a youth so delicately trained might be;
more easily than another! Betrothed, he will be safe from
a thousand snares. I may, I think, leave him for a term.
My precautions have saved him from the temptations of his
season.''

  ``And under whose charge will you leave him?'' Lady
Blandish inquired.

  She had emerged from the temple, and stood beside Sir
Austin on the upper steps, under a clear summer twilight.

  ``Madam!'' he took her hand, and his voice was gallant
and tender, ``under whose but yours?''

  As the baronet said this, he bent above her hand, and
raised it to his lips.

  Lady Blandish felt that she had been wooed and asked in
wedlock. She did not withdraw her hand. The baronet's
salute was flatteringly reverent. He deliberated over it, as
one going through a grave ceremony. And he, the scorner of
women, had chosen her for his homage! Lady Blandish forgot
that she had taken some trouble to arrive at it. She
received the exquisite compliment in all its unique honey-sweet:
for in love we must deserve nothing or the fine
bloom of fruition is gone.

  The lady's hand was still in durance, and the baronet had
not recovered from his profound inclination, when a noise
from the neighbouring beechwood startled the two actors in
this courtly pantomime. They turned their heads, and beheld
the hope of Raynham on horseback, surveying the scene
aghast. The next moment he had galloped away.


	CHAPTER XIV.

	AN ATTRACTION.

  All night Richard tossed on his bed with his heart in a
rapid canter, and his brain bestriding it, traversing the rich
untasted world, and the great Realm of Mystery, from which
he was now restrained no longer. Months he had wandered
about the gates of the Bonnet, wondering, sighing, knocking
at them, and getting neither admittance nor answer. He had
the key now. His own father had given it to him. His
heart was a lightning steed, and bore him on and on over
limitless regions bathed in superhuman beauty and strangeness,
where cavaliers and ladies leaned whispering upon close
green swards, and knights and ladies cast a splendour upon
savage forests, and tilts and tourneys were held in golden
courts lit to a glorious day by ladies' eyes, one pair of which,
dimly visioned, constantly distinguishable, followed him
through the boskage and dwelt upon him in the press,
beaming while he bent above a hand glittering white and
fragrant as the frosted blossom of a May night. Awhile the
heart would pause and flutter to a shock: he was in the act
of consummating all earthly bliss by pressing his lips to the
small white hand. Only to do that, and die! cried the
Magnetic Youth: to fling the Jewel of Life into that one
cup and drink it off! He was intoxicated by anticipation.
For that he was born. There was, then, some end in existence,
something to live for! to kiss a woman's hand, and die!
He would leap from the couch, and rush to pen and paper to
relieve his swarming sensations. Scarce was he seated when
the pen was dashed aside, the paper sent flying with the
exclamation, ``Have I not sworn I would never write again?''
Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve. The nonsense that
was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its
urgency for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly
oblivious of his oath, and found himself seated under the
lamp in the act of composition before pride could speak a
word. Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had been
swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a time,
and a single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads
were demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of
stormy billows, pressed impetuously for expression, and
despair of reducing them to form, quite as much as pride, to
which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the
powerless pen, and sent him panting to hid outstretched
length and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled
land.

  Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat,
and he went forth into the air. A lamp was still
burning in his father's room, and Richard thought, as he
looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on the watch.
Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold
against the hues of dawn. Had he cast a second glance at
his own chamber he might then have seen the ever-vigilant
head on the watch. Sir Austin had slept no more than his
son. Beholding him so early abroad his worst fears were
awakened. He hurried to gaze at the forsaken couch, a
picture of tempest; the papers, with half-written words
ending in reckless tails and wild dashes, strewn everywhere
about, blankly eloquent; chairs upset, drawers left open,
companion slippers astray about the room. The abashed
baronet dared not whisper to his soul what had thus distracted
the youth. As little could he make self-confession
that it was impossible for him to face his son for some time
to come. No doubt his conscious eye looked inward, and
knew; but he chose to juggle with it, and say to himself,
that not an hour must be lost in betrothing Richard, and
holding him bond to virtue, and therefore he would immediately
depart on his expedition. The pain of not folding
the beloved son to his breast before he went was moreover
a fortunate beguilement of the latent dread that his going
just now was a false step. It would be their first separation.
Sir Austin ascended to the roof of the Abbey, and descried
him hastening to the boat-house by the riverside. Ere he
was out of sight, the baronet's sense of sacrifice had blinded
his conscious eye, and enabled him to feel altogether a martyr
to duty.

  Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain
classes of fever. Richard took to it instinctively. The
clear fresh water, burnished with sunrise, sparkled against
his arrowy prow; the soft deep shadows curled smiling away
from his gliding keel. Overhead solitary morning unfolded
itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still delicious
changes of light and colour, to whose influences he was heedless
as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets
of river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself
the sole tenant of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of
the world lay the land he was rowing toward; something of
its shadowed lights might be discerned here and there. It
was not a dream, now he knew. There was a secret abroad.
The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the
winds. Oh, why could not one in these days do some high
knightly deed which should draw down ladies' eyes from
their heaven, as in the days of Arthur! To such a meaning
breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had
pulled through his first feverish energy.

  He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing
quietude which follows strenuous exercise, when he heard a
hail and his own name called. It was no lady, no fairy, but
young Ralph Morton, an irruption of miserable masculine
prose. Heartily wishing him abed with the rest of mankind,
Richard rowed in and jumped ashore. Ralph immediately
seized his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a
talk with him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth from his
water-dreams, up and down the wet mown grass. That he
had to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and Richard,
though he barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival's
gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience;
whereat Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat
foreign to his mind, but of great human interest and importance,
put the question to him.

  ``I say, what woman's name do you like best?''

  ``I don't know any,'' quoth Richard indifferently. ``Why
are you out so early?''

  In answer to this, Ralph suggested that the name of Mary
might be considered a pretty name.

  Richard agreed that it might be; the housekeeper at
Raynham, half the women cooks, and all the housemaids,
enjoyed that name; the name of Mary was equivalent for
woman at home.

  ``Yes, I know,'' said Ralph. ``We have lots of Marys.
It's so common. Oh! I don't like Mary best. What do you
think of Lucy?''

  Richard thought it just like another.

  ``Do you know,'' Ralph continued, throwing off the mask
and plunging into the subject, ``I'd do anything on earth
for some names---one or two. It's not Mary, nor Lucy.
Clarinda's pretty, but it's like a novel. Claribel, I like.
Names beginning with 'Cl' I prefer. The 'Cl's' are always
gentle and lovely girls you would die for! Don't you think
so?''

  Richard had never been acquainted with any of them to
inspire that emotion. Indeed these urgent appeals to his
fancy in feminine names at five o'clock in the morning
slightly surprised him, though he was but half awake to the
outer world. By degrees he perceived that Ralph was quite
hanged. Instead of the lusty, boisterous boy, his rival in
manly sciences, who spoke straightforwardly and acted up to
his speech, here was an abashed and blush-persecuted youth,
who sued piteously for a friendly ear wherein to pour the one
idea possessing him. Gradually, too, Richard apprehended
that Ralph likewise was on the frontiers of the Realm of
Mystery, perhaps further towards it than he himself was;
and then, as by a sympathetic stroke, was revealed to him
the wonderful beauty and depth of meaning in feminine
names. The theme appeared novel and delicious, fitted to
the season and the hour. But the hardship was that Richard
could choose none from the number; all were the same to
him; he loved them all.

  ``Don't you really prefer the `Cl's'?'' said Ralph, most
persuasively.

  ``Not better than the names ending in `a' and `y,'
Richard replied, wishing he could, for Ralph was evidently
ahead of him.

  ``Come under these trees,'' said Ralph. And under the
trees Ralph unbosomed. His name was down for the army:
Eton was quitted for ever. In a few months he would
have to join his regiment, and before he left he must say
good-bye to his friends. . . . . Would Richard tell him Mrs.
Forey's address? he had heard she was somewhere by the
sea. Richard did not remember the address, but said he
would willingly take charge of any letter and forward it.

  ``Will you?'' cried Ralph, diving his hand into his
pocket; ``here it is. But don't let anybody see it.''

  ``My aunt's name is not Clare,'' said Richard, perusing
what was composed of the exterior formula. ``Ah! why,
you've addressed it to Clare herself.''

  ``Have I?'' murmured Ralph, hiding his hot face in a
stumble, and then peeping at the address to verify. ``So I
have. The address, you know . . . . It's because I like to
write the name of Clare,'' he added hurriedly by way of
excellent justification.

  ``Is that the name you like best?''

  Ralph counterqueried, ``Don't you think it very nice---
beautiful, I mean?''

  ``Not so good as Clara,'' said Richard.

  ``Oh! a hundred times better,'' shouted young Ralph in a
fervour.

  Richard meditated unwittingly---``I suppose we like the
names of the people we like best?''

  No answer from Ralph.

  ``Emmeline Clementina Matilda Laura, Countess Blandish,''
Richard continued in a low tone, transferring the
names, and playing on them like musical strings.

  ``Eh?'' quoth Ralph.

  ``I'm certain,'' said Richard, as he finished his performance,
``I'm certain we like the names of the people we like
best.'' And, having made this great discovery for himself,
he fixed his eyes on blushing Ralph. If he discovered anything
further he said nothing, but bade him good-bye,
jumped back into his boat, and pulled down the tide. The
moment Ralph was hidden by an abutment of the banks,
Richard reperused the address. For the first time it
struck him that his cousin Clare was a very charming
creature. he remembered the look of her eyes, and especially
the last reproachful glance she gave him at parting.
What business, pray, had Ralph to write to her? Did she
not belong to him Richard Feverel? He read the words
again and again: Clara Doria Forey. Why, Clare was
the name he liked best---nay, he loved it. Doria, too---she
shared his own name with him. Away went his heart, not at
a canter now, at a, gallop, as one who sights the quarry.
He felt too weak to pull. Clare Doria Forey---oh, perfect
melody! Sliding with the tide, he heard it fluting in the
bosom of the hills.

  When nature has made us ripe for love, it seldom occurs
that the Fates are behindhand in furnishing a temple for
the flame.

  Above green-flashing plunges of a weir, and shaken by the
thunder below, lilies, golden and white, were swaying at
anchor among the reeds. Meadow-sweet hung from the
banks thick with weed and trailing bramble, and there also
hung a daughter of earth. Her face was shaded by a broad
straw hat with a flexible brim that left her lips and chin in the
sun, and, sometimes nodding, sent forth a light of promising
eyes. Across her shoulders, and behind, flowed large loose
curls, brown in shadow, almost golden where the ray touched
them. She was simply dressed, befitting decency and the
season. On a closer inspection you might see that her lips
were stained. This blooming young person was regaling on
dewberries. They grew between the bank and the water.
Apparently she found the fruit abundant, for her hand was
making pretty progress to her month. Fastidious youth,
which shudders and revolts at woman plumping her exquisite
proportions on bread-and-butter, and would (we
must suppose) joyfully have her quite scraggy to have her
quite poetical, can hardly object to dewberries. Indeed the
act of eating them is dainty and induces musing. The dewberry
is a sister to the lotus, and an innocent sister. You
eat: mouth, eye, and hand are occupied, and the undrugged
mind free to roam. And so it was with the damsel who
knelt there. The little skylark went up above her, all song,
to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue: from a
dewy copse standing dark over her nodding hat the blackbird
fluted, calling to her with thrice mellow note: the king-fisher
flashed emerald out of green osiers: a bow-winged
heron travelled aloft, seeking solitude: a boat slipped toward
her, containing a dreamy youth; and still she plucked
the fruit, and ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading
her territories, and as if she wished not for one, or
knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green shaven
meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weirfall's thundering
white, amid the breath and beauty of wild flowers, she
was a bit of lovely human life in a fair setting; a terrible
attraction. The Magnetic Youth leaned round to note his
proximity to the weir-piles, and beheld the sweet vision.
Stiller and stiller grew nature, as at the meeting of two
electric clouds. Her posture was so graceful that, though
he was making straight for the weir, he dared not dip a
scull. Just then one most enticing dewberry caught her
eyes. He was floating by unheeded, and saw that her hand
stretched low, and could not gather what it sought. A
stroke from his right brought him beside her. The damsel
glanced up dismayed, and her whole shape trembled over
the brink. Richard sprang from his boat into the water.
Pressing a hand beneath her foot, which she had thrust
against the crumbling wet sides of the bank to save herself,
he enabled her to recover her balance, and gain safe earth,
whither, emboldened by the incident, touching her finger's
tip, he followed her.


	CHAPTER XV.

	FERDINAND AND MIRANDA.

  He had landed on an island of the still-vexed Bermoothes.
The world lay wrecked behind him: Raynham hung in mists,
remote, a phantom to the vivid reality of this white hand
which had drawn him thither away thousands of leagues in
an eye-twinkle. Hark, how Ariel sung overhead! What
splendour in the heavens! What marvels of beauty about
his enchanted head! And, O you wonder! Fair Flame! by
whose light the glories of being are now first seen . . . . .
Radiant Miranda! Prince Ferdinand is at your feet.

  Or is it Adam, his rib taken from his side in sleep, and
thus transformed, to make him behold his Paradise, and lose
it? . . .

  The youth looked on her with as glowing an eye. It was
the First Woman to him.

  And she---mankind was all Caliban to her, saving this one
princely youth.

  So to each other said their changeing eyes in the moment
they stood together; he pale, and she blushing.

  She was indeed sweetly fair, and would have been held
fair among rival damsels. On a magic shore, and to a youth
educated by a System, strung like an arrow drawn to the
head, he, it might be guessed, could fly fast and far with
her. The soft rose in her cheeks, the clearness of her eyes,
bore witness to the body's virtue; and health and happy
blood were in her bearing. Had she stood before Sir Austin
among rival damsels, that Scientific Humanist, for the consummation
of his System, would have thrown her the handkerchief
for his son. The wide summer-hat, nodding over
her forehead to her brows, seemed to flow with the flowing
heavy curls, and those fire-threaded mellow curls, only half-curls,
waves of hair call them, rippling at the ends, went
like a sunny red-veined torrent down her back almost to
her waist: a glorious vision to the youth, who embraced it as
a flower of beauty, and read not a feature. There were
curious features of colour in her face for him to have read.
Her brows, thick and brownish against a soft skin showing
the action of the blood, met in the bend of a bow, extending
to the temples long and level: you saw that she was
fashioned to peruse the sights of earth, and by the pliability
of her brows that the wonderful creature used her
faculty, and was not going to be a statue to the gazer.
Under the dark thick brows an arch of lashes shot out, giving
a wealth of darkness to the full frank blue eyes, a
mystery of meaning---more than brain was ever meant to
fathom: richer, henceforth, than all mortal wisdom to Prince
Ferdinand. For when nature turns artist, and produces
contrasts of colour on a fair face, where is the Sage, or what
the Oracle, shall match the depth of its lightest look

  Prince Ferdinand was also fair. In his slim boating-attire
his figure looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting
to the right of his forehead, in what his admiring Lady
Blandish called his plume, fell away slanting silkily to the
temples across the nearly imperceptible upward curve of
his brows there---felt more than seen, so slight it was---and
gave to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful,
breathless air was a flattering charm. An arrow drawn to
the head, capable of flying fast and far with her! He
leaned a little forward to her, drinking her in with all his
eyes, and young Love has a thousand. Then truly the
System triumphed, just ere it was to fall; and could Sir
Austin have been content to draw the arrow to the head, and
let it fly, when it would fly, he might have pointed to his son
again,---and said to the world, ``Match him!'' Such keen
bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth
alone has powers of soul in him to experience.

			<*>

  ``O Women!'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= in one of its solitary
outbursts, ``Women, who like, and will have for hero, a
rake! how soon are you not to learn that you have taken
bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the putrescent gold that
attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!''

			<*>

  If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was
not Prospero, and was not present, or their fates might have
been different.

  So they stood a moment, changeing eyes, and then Miranda
spoke, and they came down to earth, feeling no less in
heaven.

  She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common
simple words; and used them, no doubt, to express a
common simple meaning: but to him she was uttering magic,
casting spells, and the effect they had on him was manifested
in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish to
be chronicled.

  The couple were again mute. Suddenly Miranda, with an
exclamation of anguish, and innumerable lights and shadows
playing: over her lovely face, clapped her hands, crying
aloud,  ``My book! my book!'' and ran to the bank.

  Prince Ferdinand was at her side. ``What have you
lost?'' he said.

  ``My book! my book!'' she answered, her long delicious
curls swinging across her shoulders to the stream. Then
turning to him, divining his rash intention, ``Oh, no, no! let
me entreat you not to,'' she said; ``I do not so very much
mind losing it.'' And in her eagerness to restrain him she
unconsciously laid her gentle hand upon his arm, and took
the force of motion out of him.

  ``Indeed, I do not really care for the silly book,'' she continued,
withdrawing her hand quickly, and reddening.
``Pray do not!''

  The young gentleman had kicked off his shoes. No sooner
was the spell of contact broken than he jumped in. The
water was still troubled and discoloured by his introductory
adventure, and, though he ducked his head with the spirit of
a dabchick, the book was missing. A scrap of paper floating
from the bramble just above the water, and looking as if
had caught its edges and it had flown from one adverse
element to the other, was all he could lay hold of; and he
returned to land disconsolately, to hear Miranda's murmured
mixing of thanks and pretty expostulations.

  ``Let me try again,'' he said.

  ``No, indeed!'' she replied, and used the awful threat:
``I will run away if you do,'' which effectually restrained
him.

  Her eye fell on the fire-stained scrap of paper, and
brightened, as she cried, ``There, there! you have what I
want. It is that. I do not care for the book. No, please!
You are not to look at it. Give it me.''

  Before her playfully imperative injunction was fairly
spoken, Richard had glanced at the document and discovered
a Griffin between Two Wheatsheaves: his crest in silver:
and below---O wonderment immense! his own handwriting!
remnant of his burnt-offering! a page of the sacrificed
poems! one blossom preserved from the deadly universal
blight.

  He handed it to her in silence. She took it, and put it in
her bosom.

  Who would have said, have thought, that, where all else
perished, Odes, flattering bits of broad-winged Epic, Idyls,
Lines, Stanzas, this one Sonnet to the stars should be
miraculously reserved for such a starry fate! passing
beatitude!

  As they walked silently across the meadow, Richard
strove to remember the hour and the mood of mind in which
he had composed the notable production. The stars were
invoked, as seeing and foreseeing all, to tell him where then
his love reclined, and so forth; Hesper was complacent
enough to do so, and described her in a couplet---

	``Through sunset's amber see me shining fair,
	As her blue eyes shine through her golden hair.''

And surely no words could be more prophetic. Here were
two blue eyes and golden hair; and by some strange chance,
that appeared like the working of a divine finger, she had
become the possessor of the prophecy, she that was to fulfil
it! The youth was too charged with emotion to speak.
Doubtless the damsel had less to think of, or had some
trifling burden on her conscience, for she seemed to grow
embarrassed. At last she drew up her chin to look at her
companion under the nodding brim of her hat (and the
action gave her a charmingly freakish air), crying, ``But
where are you going to? You are wet through. Let me
thank you again; and pray leave me, and go home and
change instantly.''

  ``Wet?'' replied the magnetic muser, with a voice of
tender interest; ``not more than one foot, I hope? I will
leave you while you dry your stockings in the sun.''

  At this she could not withhold a shy and lovely laugh.

  ``Not I, but you. You know you saved me, and would
try to get that silly book for me, and you are dripping wet.
Are you not very uncomfortable?''

  In all sincerity he assured her that he was not.

  ``And you really do not feel that you are wet?''

  He really did not: and it was a fact that he spoke truth.
She pursed her sweet dewberry mouth in the most comical
way, and her blue eyes lightened laughter out of the half-closed
lids.

  ``I cannot help it,'' she said, her mouth opening, and
sounding harmonious bells of laughter in his ears. ``Pardon
me, won't you?''

  His face took the same soft smiling curves in admiration
of her.

  ``Not to feel that you have been in the water the very
moment after!'' she musically interjected, seeing she was
excused.

  ``It's true,'' he said; and his own gravity then touched
him to join a duet with her, which made them no longer feel
strangers, and did the work of a month of intimacy. Better
than sentiment, laughter opens the breast to love; opens the
whole breast to his full quiver, instead of a corner here and
there for a solitary arrow. Hail the occasion propitious,
O British young! and laugh and treat love as an honest
God, and dabble not with the sentimental rouge. These two
laughed, and the souls of each cried out to other, ``It is I,
It is I.''

  They laughed and forgot the cause of their laughter, and
the sun dried his light river-clothing, and they strolled
toward the blackbird's copse, and stood near a stile in sight
of the foam of the weir and the many-coloured rings of
eddies streaming forth from it.

  Richard's boat, meanwhile, had contrived to shoot the
weir, and was swinging, bottom upward, broadside with
the current down the rapid backwater.

  ``Will you let it go,'' said the damsel, eyeing it curiously.

  ``Yes,'' he replied, and low, as if he spoke in the core of
his thought. ``What do I care for it now!''

  His old life was whirled away with it, dead, drowned,
His new life was with her, alive, divine.

  She flapped low the brim of her hat. ``You must really
not come any farther,'' she softly said.

  ``And will you go, and not tell me who you are?'' he
asked, growing bold as the fears of losing her came across
him. ``And will you not tell me before you we''---his face
burned---``how you came by that---that paper?''	

  She chose to select the easier question to reply to: ``You
ought to know me; we have been introduced.'' Sweet was
her winning off-hand affability.

  ``Then who, in heaven's name, are you? Tell me! I
never could have forgotten you.''

  ``You have, I think,'' she said demurely.

  ``Impossible that we could ever have met, and I forget
you!''

  She looked up to him quickly.

  ``Do you remember Belthorpe?''

  ``Belthorpe! Belthorpe!'' quoth Richard, as if he had to
touch his brain to recollect there was such a place. ``Do
you mean old Blaize's farm?''

  ``Then I am old Blaize's niece.'' She tripped him a soft
curtsey.

  The magnetized youth gazed at her. By what magic was
it that this divine sweet creature could be allied with that
old churl!

  ``Then what---what is your name?'' said his mouth, while
his eyes added, ``O wonderful creature! How came you to
enrich the earth?''

  ``Have you forgot the Desboroughs of Dorset, too?'' she
peered at him archly from a side-bend of the flapping
brim.

  ``The Desboroughs of Dorset?'' A light broke in on
him. ``And have you grown to this? That little girl I saw
there!''

  He drew close to her to read the nearest features of the
vision. She could no more laugh off the piercing fervour of
his eyes. Her volubility fluttered under his deeply wistful
look, and now neither voice was high, and they were
mutually constrained.

  ``You see,'' she murmured, ``we are old acquaintances.''

  Richard, with his eyes still intently fixed on her, returned,
``You are very beautiful!''

  The words slipped out. Perfect simplicity is unconsciously
audacious. Her overpowering beauty struck his
heart, and, like an instrument that is touched and answers to
the touch, he spoke.

  Miss Desborough made an effort to trifle with this terrible
directness; but his eyes would not be gainsaid, and checked
her lips. She turned away from them, her bosom a little
rebellious. Praise so passionately spoken, and by one who
has been a damsel's first dream, dreamed of nightly many
long nights, and clothed in the virgin silver of her thoughts
in bud, praise from him is coin the heart cannot reject, if it
would. She quickened her steps to the stile.

  ``I have offended you!'' said a mortally wounded voice
across her shoulder.

  That he should think so were too dreadful.

  ``Oh no, no! you would never offend me.'' She gave him
her whole sweet face.

  ``Then why---why do you leave me?''

  ``Because,'' she hesitated, ``I must go.''

  ``No. You must not go. Why must you go? Do not
go.''

  ``Indeed I must,'' she said, pulling at the obnoxious broad
brim of her hat; and, interpreting a pause he made for his
assent to her rational resolve, shyly looking at him, she held
her hand out, and said, ``Good-bye,'' as if it were a natural
thing to say.

  The hand was pure white---white and fragrant as the
frosted blossom of a Maynight. It was the hand whose
shadow, cast before, he had last night bent his head reverentially
above, and kissed---resigning himself thereupon over
to execution for payment of the penalty of such daring---
by such bliss well rewarded.

  He took the hand, and held it, gazing between her eyes.

  ``Good-bye,'' she said again, as frankly as she could, and
at the same time slightly compressing her fingers on his in
token of adieu. It was a signal for his to close firmly upon
hers.

  ``You will not go?''

  ``Pray let me,'' she pleaded, her sweet brows suing in
wrinkles.

  ``You will not go?'' Mechanically he drew the white
hand nearer his thumping heart.

  ``I must,'' she faltered piteously.

  ``You will not go?''

  ``Oh yes! yes!''

  ``Tell me. Do you wish to go?''

  The question was subtle. A moment or two she did not
answer, and then forswore herself, and said, Yes.

  ``Do you---do you wish to go?'' He looked with quivering
eyelids under hers.

  A fainter Yes responded to his passionate repetition.

  ``You wish---wish to leave me?'' His breath went with
the words.

  ``Indeed I must.''

  Her hand became a closer prisoner.

  All at once an alarming delicious shudder went through
her frame. From him to her it coursed, and back from her
to him. Forward and back love's electric messenger rushed
from heart to heart, knocking at each, till it surged tumultuously
against the bars of its prison, crying out for its mate.
They stood trembling in unison, a lovely couple under these
fair heavens of the morning.

  When he could get his voice it said, ``Will you go?''

  But she had none to reply with, and could only mutely
bend upward her gentle wrist.

  ``Then, farewell!'' he said, and, dropping his lips to the
soft fair hand, kissed it, and hung his head, swinging away
from her, ready for death.

  Strange, that now she was released she should linger by
him. Strange, that his audacity, instead of the executioner,
brought blushes and timid tenderness to his side, and the
sweet words, ``You are not angry with me?''

  ``With you, O Beloved!'' cried his soul. ``And you forgive
me, fair charity!''

  She repeated her words in deeper sweetness to his bewildered
look; and he, inexperienced, possessed by her,
almost lifeless with the divine new emotions she had realized
in him, could only sigh and gaze at her wanderingly.

  ``I think it was rude of me to go without thanking you
again,'' she said, and again proffered her hand.

  The sweet heaven-bird shivered out his song above him.
The gracious glory of heaven fell upon his soul. He touched
her hand, not moving his eyes from her, nor speaking, and
she, with a soft word of farewell, passed across the stile, and
up the pathway through the dewy shades of the copse, and
out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.

			<*>

  And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked
on barren air. But it was no more the world of yesterday.
The marvellous splendours had sown seeds in him, ready to
spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his bosom now the
vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes
them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings---
ghosts of the vanished sun.

  There was nothing to tell him that he had been making
love and declaring it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did
he know it. Soft flushed cheeks! sweet mouth! strange sweet
brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his ripe eyes behold
you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let you
go? And he seriously asked himself that question.

  To-morrow this place will have a memory---the river and
the meadow, and the white falling weir: his heart will
build a temple here; and the skylark will be its high-priest,
and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there
will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the grass is
grass: his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.
Only when the most tender freshness of his flower
comes across him does he taste a moment's calm; and no
sooner does it come than it gives place to keen pangs of fear
that she may not be his for ever.

  Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he
meets Ralph, and discovers that in a day he has distanced
him by a sphere. Erelong he and Ralph and the curate of
Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical discussions
on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from those
of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. ``Fair! fair! all of them fair!''
sighs the melancholy curate, ``as are those women formed for
our perdition! I think we have in this country what will
match the Italian or the Greek.'' His mind flutters to Mrs.
Doria, Richard blushes before the vision of Lucy, and Ralph,
whose heroine's hair is a dark luxuriance, dissents, and
claims a noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-haired
Wonders. They have no mutual confidences, but they
are singularly kind to each other, these three children of
instinct.



	CHAPTER XVI.

	UNMASKING OF MASTER RIPTON THOMPSON.


  Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in
the fortunes and future of the systematized youth, had occasionally
mentioned names of families whose alliance according
to apparent calculations, would not degrade his blood:
and over these names, secretly preserved on an open leaf of
the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly
dropped his eye. There were names historic and
names mushroomic; names that the Conqueror might have
called in his muster-roll; names that had been, clearly,
tossed into the upper stratum of civilized life by a mill-wheel
or a merchant-stool. Against them the baronet had
written M. or Po,, or Pr.---signifying, Money, Position,
Principles, favouring the latter with special brackets. The
wisdom of a worldly man, which he could now and then
adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round of
visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician
thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the rats who know
best the merits of a house, and on what sort of foundation it
is standing.

  Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The
memory of his misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no
years had intervened, and it were but yesterday that he
found the letter telling him that he had no wife and his son
no mother. He wandered on foot through the streets the
first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and
shows and bustle of the world from which he had divorced
himself; feeling as destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had
almost forgotten how to find his way about, and came across
his old mansion in his efforts to regain his hotel. The windows
were alight-signs of merry life within. He stared at
it from the shadow of the opposite side. It seemed to him
he was a ghost gazing upon his living past. And then the
phantom which had stood there mocking while he felt as
other men---the phantom, now flesh and blood reality, seized
and convulsed his heart, and filled its unforgiving crevices
with bitter ironic venom. He remembered by the time
reflection returned to him that it was Algernon, who had the
house at his disposal, probably giving a card-party, or something
of the sort. In the morning, too, he remembered that
he had divorced the world to wed a System, and must
be faithful to that exacting Spouse, who, now alone of things
on earth, could fortify and recompense him.

  Mr. Thompson received his client with the dignity and
emotion due to such a rent-roll and the unexpectedness of
the honour. He was a thin stately man of law, garbed
as one who gave audience to acred bishops, and carrying on
his countenance the stamp of paternity to the parchment-skins,
and of a virtuous attachment to Port wine sufficient to
increase his respectability in the eyes of moral Britain.
After congratulating Sir Austin on the fortunate issue of two
or three suits, and being assured that the baronet's business
in town had no concern therewith, Mr. Thompson ventured
to hope that the young heir was all his father could desire
him to be, and heard with satisfaction that he was a pattern
to the youth of the Age.

  ``A difficult time of life, Sir Austin!'' said the old lawyer,
shaking his head. ``We must keep our eyes on them---keep
awake! The mischief is done in a minute.''

  ``We must take care to have seen where we planted, and
that the root was sound, or the mischief will do itself in
spite of, or under the very spectacles of, supervision,'' said
the baronet.

  His legal adviser murmured ``Exactly,'' as if that were
his own idea, adding, ``It is my plan with Ripton, who has
had the honour of an introduction to you, and a very
pleasant time he spent with my young friend, whom he does
not forget. Ripton follows the Law. He is articled to me,
and will, I trust, succeed me worthily in your confidence. I
bring him into town in the morning; I take him back at
night. I think I may say that I am quite content with
him.''

  ``Do you think,'' said Sir Austin, fixing his brows, ``that
you can trace every act of his to its motive?''

  The old lawyer bent forward and humbly requested that
this might be repeated.

  ``Do you''---Sir Austin held the same searching expression---
``do you establish yourself in a radiating centre of intuition:
do you base your watchfulness on so thorough an
acquaintance with his character, so perfect a knowledge of
the instrument, that all its movements---even the eccentric
ones---are anticipated by you, and provided for?''

  The explanation was a little too long for the old lawyer to
entreat another repetition. Winking with the painful deprecation
of a deaf man, Mr. Thompson smiled urbanely,
coughed conciliatingly, and said he was afraid he could not
affirm that much, though he was happily enabled to say
that Ripton had borne an extremely good character at
school.

  ``I find,'' Sir Austin remarked, as sardonically he relaxed
his inspecting pose and mien, ``there are fathers who are
content to be simply obeyed. Now I require not only that my
son should obey; I world have him guiltless of the impulse
to gainsay my wishes---feeling me in him stronger than his
undeveloped nature, up to a certain period, where my responsibility
ends and his commences. Man is a self-acting
machine. He cannot cease to be a machine; but, though
self-acting, he may lose the powers of self-guidance, and in
a wrong course his very vitalities hurry him to perdition.
Young, he is an organism ripening to the set mechanic
diurnal round, and while so he needs all the angels to hold
watch over him that he grow straight and healthy, and fit
for what machinal duties he may have to perform'' . . .

  Mr. Thompson agitated his eyebrows dreadfully. He was
utterly lost. He respected Sir Austin's estates too much to
believe for a moment he was listening to downright folly,
Yet how otherwise explain the fact of his excellent client
being incomprehensible to him? For a middle-aged gentleman,
and one who has been in the habit of advising and managing,
will rarely have a notion of accusing his understanding;
and Mr. Thompson had not the slightest notion of accusing
his. But the baronet's condescension in coming thus to him,
and speaking on the subject nearest his heart, might well
affect him, and he quickly settled the case in favour of both
parties, pronouncing mentally that his honoured client had
a meaning, and so deep it was, so subtle, that no wonder he
experienced difficulty in giving it fitly significant words.

  Sir Austin elaborated his theory of the Organism and the
Mechanism, for his lawyer's edification. At a recurrence of
the word ``healthy'' Mr. Thompson caught him up---

  ``I apprehended you! Oh, I agree with you, Sir Austin!
entirely! Allow me to ring for my son Ripton. I think, if
you condescend to examine him, you will say that regular
habits, and a diet of nothing but law-reading---for other
forms of literature I strictly interdict---have made him all
that you instance.''

  Mr. Thompson's hand was on the bell. Sir Austin arrested
him.

  ``Permit me to see the lad at his occupation,'' said he.

  Our old friend Ripton sat in a room apart with the confidential
clerk, Mr. Beazley, a veteran of law, now little
better than a document, looking already signed and sealed,
and shortly, to be delivered, who enjoined nothing from his
pupil and companion save absolute silence, and sounded his
praises to his father at the close of days when it had been
rigidly observed---not caring, or considering, the finished dry
old document that he was, under what kind of spell a turbulent
commonplace youth could be charmed into stillness six
hours a day. Ripton was supposed to be devoted to the
study of Blackstone. A tome of the classic legal commentator
lay extended outside his desk, under the partially
lifted lid of which nestled the assiduous student's head
---law being thus brought into direct contact with his brain-pan.
The office-door opened, and he heard not; his name
was called, and he remained equally moveless. His method
of taking in Blackstone seemed absorbing as it was novel.

  ``Comparing notes, I daresay,'' whispered Mr. Thompson
to Sir Austin. ``I call that study!''

  The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.

  ``Is it like this every day, Beazley?'' Mr. Thompson
asked with parental pride.

  ``Ahem!'' the old clerk replied, ``he is like this every day,
sir. I could not ask more of a mouse.''

  Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity
roused one of Ripton's senses, which blew a call to the others.
Down went the lid of the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of
study, flashed together in Ripton's face. He slouched from
his perch with the air of one who means rather to defend his
position than welcome a superior, the right hand in his
waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching at his
vacant stool.

  Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth's shoulder, and
said, leaning his head a little on one side, in a way habitual
to him, ``I am glad to find my son's old comrade thus profitably
occupied. I know what study is myself. But beware
of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not be
offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the
thread again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed
to the visits of your client.''

  So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr.
Thompson, that, seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance
of disorder and sneaking defiance, he thought fit to nod and
frown at the youth, and desired him to inform the baronet
what particular part of Blackstone he was absorbed in
mastering at that moment.

  Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with
dubious articulation, ``The Law of Gravelkind.''

  ``What Law?'' said Sir Austin, perplexed.

  ``Gravelkind,'' again rumbled Ripton's voice.
Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation.
The old lawyer was shaking his law-box.

  ``Singular!'' he exclaimed. ``He will make that mistake!
What law, sir?''

  Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of
his father's face, and corrected himself. ``Gavelkind, sir.''

  ``Ah!'' said Mr. Thompson with a sigh of relief.
``Gravelkind, indeed! Gavelkind! An old Kentish''---
He was going to expound, but Sir Austin assured him he
knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, ``I should
like to look at your son's notes, or remarks on the judiciousness
of that family arrangement, if he has any.''

  ``You were making notes, or referring to them, as we
entered,'' said Mr. Thompson to the sucking lawyer; ``a
very good plan, which I have always enjoined on you. Were
you not?''

  Ripton stammered that he was afraid he had not any notes
to show, worth seeing.

  ``What were you doing then, sir?''

  ``Making notes,'' muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.

  ``Exhibit!''

  Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir
Austin, and at the confidential clerk. He took out his key.
It would not fit the hole.

  ``Exhibit!'' was peremptorily called again.

  In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole,
Ripton discovered that the desk was already unlocked. Mr.
Thompson marched to it, and held the lid aloft. A book was
lying open within, which Ripton immediately hustled among
a mass of papers and tossed into a dark corner, not before
the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by Sir
Austin's eye.

  The baronet smiled, and said, ``You study Heraldry, too?
Are you fond of the science?''

  Ripton replied that he was very fond of it---extremely
attached, and threw a further pile of papers into the dark
corner.

  The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the
search for them was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or
the fruits of study, were found that made Mr. Thompson
more intimate with the condition of his son's exchequer;
nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of Gavelkind.

  Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be
among those scraps he had thrown carelessly into the dark
corner. Ripton, though he consented to inspect them, was
positive they were not there.

  ``What have we here?'' said Mr. Thompson, seizing a
neatly folded paper addressed to the Editor of a law publication,
as Ripton brought them forth, one by one. Forthwith
Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read aloud:

  ``_To the Editor of the Jurist._

  ``Sir,---In your recent observations on the great case of
Crim''------

  Mr. Thompson hem'd! and stopped short, like a man who
comes unexpectedly upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley's
feet shuffled. Sir Austin charged the position of an arm.

  ``It's on the other side, I think,'' gasped Ripton.

  Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with
emphasis.


  ``To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of
Bond Court, Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to
Venus, I O U Five pounds, when I can pay.

		``Signed: =Ripton Thompson.=''


  Underneath this fictitious legal instrument was discreetly
appended:

  ``(Mem. Document not binding.)''


  There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified
wonderment and reproach passed round the office. Sir
Austin assumed an attitude. Mr. Thompson shed a glance
of severity on his confidential clerk, who parried by throwing
up his hands.

  Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper
under his father's nose, hoping the outside perhaps would
satisfy him: it was marked ``Legal Considerations.'' Mr.
Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding his son. In
fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their
offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him
up to a certain point, for the good of both. He therefore
opened the paper, expecting something worse than what he
had hitherto seen, despite its formal heading, and he was not
disappointed.

  The ``Legal Considerations'' related to the Case regarding
which Ripton had conceived it imperative upon him to
address a letter to the Editor of the ``Jurist,'' and was indeed
a great case, and an ancient; revived apparently for
the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities of the
Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr. Ripton Thompson,
whose assistance the Attorney-General, in his opening statement,
congratulated himself on securing; a rather unusual
thing, due probably to the eminence and renown of that
youthful gentleman at the Bar of his country. So much was
seen from the copy of a report purporting to be extracted
from a newspaper, and prefixed to the Junior Counsel's
remarks, or Legal Considerations, on the conduct of the
Case, the admissibility and non-admissibility of certain
evidence, and the ultimate decision of the judges.

  Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the
spirit of one prepared to do execution on the criminal, and
in the voice of a town-crier, varied by a bitter accentuation
and satiric sing-song tone, deliberately read:

		``=Vulcan= _v._ =Mars.=

  ``The Attorney-General, assisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson,
appeared on behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant
Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital Opportunity, for the Defendant.''

  ``Oh!'' snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at
the unfortunate Ripton over his spectacles, ``your notes are
on that issue, sir! Thus you employ your time, sir!''

  With another side-shot at the Confidential Clerk, who
retired immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs,
Mr. Thompson continued to read


  ``This Case is too well known to require more than a
partial summary of particulars'' . . . .


  ``Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial,''
said Mr. Thompson. `Ah! what do you mean here, sir,
by the `chief of the Olympic games,' which you eulogize?''

  ``Not I,'' answered Ripton, from under his head. ``It's
Mr. Cap--- Mr. Opp--- It's the Defendant's Counsel. I'm
against.''

  Outraged by hearing the culprit speak at all, his father
broke in, ``How dare you talk so unblushingly, sir!''

  Ripton dropped his head a degree lower.

  ``Enough!'' cried Mr. Thompson, appealing mutely to all
present, and elongating his syllables with a vehement sneer;
``I think we may be excused your Legal Considerations on
such a Case. This is how you employ your law-studies, sir!
You put them to this purpose? Mr. Beazley! you will
henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man under
my own eye. Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for
subjecting you to a scene so disagreeable. It was a father's
duty not to spare him.''

  Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutus might have
done after passing judgment on the scion of his house.

  ``These papers,'' he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious
lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, ``I shall retain. The
day will come when he will regard them with shame. And
it shall be his penance, his punishment, to do so! Stop!''
he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk, ``have
you more of them, sir; of a similar description? Rout them
out! Let us know you at your worst. What have you
there---in that corner?''

  Ripton was understood to say he devoted that corner to
old briefs on important cases.

  Mr. Thompson thrust his trembling fingers among the old
briefs, and turned over the volume Sir Austin had observed,
but without much remarking it, for his suspicions had not
risen to print.

  ``A Manual of Heraldry?'' the baronet politely inquired,
before it could well escape.

  ``I like it very much,'' says Ripton, clutching the book in
dreadful torment.

  ``Allow me to see that you have our arms and crest
correct.'' The baronet proffered a hand for the book.

  ``A Griffin between two Wheatsheaves,'' cries Ripton, still
clutching it nervously.

  Mr. Thompson, without any notion of what he was doing,
drew the book from Ripton's hold; whereupon the two seniors
laid their grey heads together over the title-page. It set
forth in attractive characters beside a coloured frontispiece,
which embodied the promise displayed there, the entrancing
adventures of Miss Random, a strange young lady.

  Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law
regions to consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod
handy to mortify his sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have
used them. As it was, he contented himself by looking Black
Holes and Iron Rods at the detected youth, who sat on his
perch insensible to what might happen next, collapsed.

  Mr. Thompson cast the wicked creature down with a
``Pah!'' He, however, took her up again, and strode away
with her. Sir Austin gave Ripton a forefinger, and kindly
touched his head, saying, ``Good-bye, boy! At some future
date Richard will be happy to see you at Raynham.''

  Undoubtedly this was a great triumph to the System!



	CHAPTER XVII.

	GOOD WINE AND GOOD BLOOD.

  The conversation between solicitor and client was resumed.

  ``Is it possible,'' quoth Mr. Thompson, the moment he had
ushered his client into his private room, ``that you will consent,
Sir Austin, to see him and receive him again?''

  ``Certainly,'' the baronet replied. ``Why not? This by
no means astonishes me. When there is no longer danger to
my son he will be welcome as he was before. He is a school-boy.
I knew it. I expected it. The results of your principle,
Thompson!''

  ``One of the very worst books of that abominable class!''
exclaimed the old lawyer, opening at the coloured frontispiece,
from which brazen Miss Random smiled bewitchingly
out, as if she had no doubt of captivating Time and all his
veterans on a fair field. ``Pah!'' he shut her to with the
energy he would have given to the office of publicly slapping
her face; ``from this day I diet him on bread and water---
rescind his pocket-money!---How he could have got hold of
such a book! How he---! And what ideas! Concealing
them from me as he has done so cunningly! He trifles with
vice! His mind is in a putrid state! I might have believed
---I did believe---I might have gone on believing---my son
Ripton to be a moral young man!'' The old lawyer interjected
on the delusion of fathers, and sat down in a lamentable
abstraction.

  ``The lad has come out!'' said Sir Austin. ``His adoption
of the legal form is amusing. He trifles with vice, true:
people newly initiated are as hardy as its intimates, and a
young sinner's amusements will resemble those of a confirmed
debauchee. The satiated, and the insatiate, appetite alike
appeal to extremes. You are astonished at this revelation
of your son's condition. I expected it; though assuredly,
believe me, not this sudden and indisputable proof of it.
But I knew that the seed was in him, and therefore I have
not latterly invited him to Raynham. School, and the corruption
there, will bear its fruits sooner or later. I could
advise you, Thompson, what to do with him: it would be my
plan.''

  Mr. Thompson murmured, like a true courtier, that he
should esteem it an honour to be favoured with Sir Austin
Feverel's advice: secretly resolute, like a true Briton, to
follow his own.

  ``Let him, then,'' continued the baronet, ``see vice in its
nakedness. While he has yet some innocence, nauseate him!
Vice, taken little by little, usurps gradually the whole creature.
My counsel to you, Thompson, would be, to drag him
through the sinks of town.''

  Mr. Thompson began to blink again.

  ``Oh, I shall punish him, Sir Austin! Do not fear me,
sir. I have no tenderness for vice.''

  ``That is not what is wanted, Thompson. You mistake
me. He should be dealt with gently. Heavens! do you
hope to make him hate vice by making him a martyr for its
sake? You must descend from the pedestal of age to
become his Mentor: cause him to see how certainly and
pitilessly vice itself punishes: accompany him into its
haunts''------

  ``Over town?'' broke forth Mr. Thompson.

  ``Over town,'' said the baronet.

  ``And depend upon it,'' he added, ``that, until fathers not
thoroughly up to their duty, we shall see the sights we see
in great cities, and hear the tales we hear in little villages,
with death and calamity in our homes, and a legacy of
sorrow and shame to the generations to come. I do aver,''
he exclaimed, becoming excited, ``that, if it were not for the
duty to my son, and the hope I cherish in him, I, seeing the
accumulation of misery we are handing down to an innocent
posterity---to whom, through our sin, the fresh breath of life
will be foul---I---yes! I would hide my name! For whither
are we tending? What home is pure absolutely? What
cannot our doctors and lawyers tell us?''

  Mr. Thompson acquiesced significantly.

  ``And what is to come of this?'' Sir Austin continued.
``When the sins of the fathers are multiplied by the sons, is
not perdition the final sum of things? And is not life, the
boon of heaven, growing to be the devil's game utterly? But
for my son, I would hide my name. I would not bequeath it
to be cursed by them that walk above my grave!''

  This was indeed a terrible view of existence. Mr. Thompson
felt uneasy. There was a dignity in his client, an impressiveness
in his speech, that silenced remonstrating reason
and the cry of long years of comfortable respectability. Mr.
Thompson went to church regularly; paid his rates and dues
without overmuch, or at least more than common, grumbling.
On the surface he was a good citizen, fond of his children,
faithful to his wife, devoutly marching to a fair seat in heaven
on a path paved by something better than a thousand a year.
But here was a man sighting him from below the surface,
and though it was an unfair, unaccustomed, not to say un-English,
method of regarding one's fellow-man, Mr. Thompson
was troubled by it. What though his client exaggerated?
Facts were at the bottom of what he said. And he was acute
---he had unmasked Ripton! Since Ripton's exposure he
winced at a personal application in the text his client
preached from. Possibly this was the secret source of part
of his anger against that peccant youth.

  Mr. Thompson shook his head, and, with dolefully puckered
visage and a pitiable contraction of his shoulders, rose slowly
up from his chair. Apparently he was about to speak, but
he straightway turned and went meditatively to a side-recess
in the room, whereof he opened a door, drew forth a tray
and a decanter labelled =Port,= filled a glass for his client,
deferentially invited him to partake of it; filled another
glass for himself, and drank.

  That was his reply.

  Sir Austin never took wine before dinner. Thompson had
looked as if he meant to speak: he waited for Thompson's
words.

  Mr. Thompson saw that, as his client did not join him in
his glass, the eloquence of that Porty reply was lost on his
client.

  Having slowly ingurgitated and meditated upon this
precious draught, and turned its flavour over and over with
an aspect of potent Judicial wisdom (one might have thought
that he was weighing mankind in the balance), the old
lawyer heaved, and said, sharpening his lips over the admirable
vintage, ``The world is in a very sad state, I fear,
Sir Austin!''

  His client gazed at him queerly.

  ``But that,'' Mr. Thompson added immediately, ill-concealing
by his gaze the glowing intestinal congratulations
going on within him, ``that is, I think you would say, Sir
Austin---if I could but prevail upon you---a tolerably good
character wine!''

  ``There's virtue somewhere, I see, Thompson!'' Sir
Austin murmured, without disturbing his legal adviser's
dimples.

  The old lawyer sat down to finish his glass, saying, that
such a wine was not to be had everywhere.

  They were then outwardly silent for a space. Inwardly
one of them was full of riot and jubilant uproar: as if the
solemn fields of law were suddenly to be invaded and
possessed by troops of Bacchanals: and to preserve a
decently wretched physiognomy over it, and keep on terms
with his companion, he had to grimace like a melancholy
clown in a pantomime.

  Mr. Thompson brushed back his hair. The baronet was
still expectant. Mr. Thompson sighed deeply, and emptied
his glass. He combated the change that had come over him.
He tried not to see Ruby. He tried to feel miserable, and it
was not in him. He spoke, drawing what appropriate
inspirations he could from his client's countenance, to show
that they had views in common: ``Degenerating sadly, I
fear!''

  The baronet nodded.

  ``According to what my wine-merchants say,'' continued
Mr. Thompson, ``there can be no doubt about it.''

  Sir Austin stared.

  ``It's the grape, or the ground, or something,'' Mr. Thompson
went on. ``All I can say is, our youngsters will have a
bad look-out! In my opinion Government should be compelled
to send out a Commission to inquire into the cause.
To Englishmen it would be a public calamity. It surprises
me---I hear men sit and talk despondently of this extraordinary
disease of the vine, and not one of them seems
to think it incumbent on him to act, and do his best to stop
it.'' He fronted his client like a man who accuses an enormous
public delinquency. ``Nobody makes a stir! The
apathy of Englishmen will become proverbial. Pray try it,
Sir Austin! Pray allow me. Such a wine cannot disagree
at any hour. Do! I am allowanced two glasses three hours
before dinner. Stomachic. I find it agree with me surprisingly:
quite a new man. I suppose it will last our time. It
must! What should we do? There's no Law possible without it.
Not a lawyer of us could live. Ours is an occupation
which dries the blood. We require---Ahem! have I
taken my second glass?''

  Mr. Thompson meditated; conceived that he had, and
again that he had not. The same luxury of indecision
occurred daily, and daily another glass solved the difficulty.

  ``Too much is decidedly bad,'' he continued, looking
firmly convinced. ``But just the quantum makes men of
us.''

  Launched on the theme, he determined to overbear his
client vinously.

  ``Now that very wine---Sir Austin---I think I do not err
in saying, that very wine your respected father, Sir Pylcher
Feverel, used to taste whenever he came to consult my
father, when I was a boy. And I remember one day being
called in, and Sir Pylcher himself poured me out a glass. I
wish I could call in Ripton now, and do the same. No!
Leniency in such a case as that!---The wine would not hurt
him---I doubt if there be much left for him to welcome his
guests with. Ha! ha! Now if I could persuade you, Sir
Austin, as you do not take wine before dinner, some day to
favour me with your company at my little country cottage---
I have a wine there---the fellow to that---I think you would,
I do think you would''---Mr. Thompson meant to say, he
thought his client would arrive at something of a similar
jocund contemplation of his fellows in their degeneracy that
inspirited lawyers after potation, but condensed the sensual
promise into ``highly approve.''

  Sir Austin speculated on his legal adviser with a sour
mouth comically compressed.

  It stood clear to him that Thompson before his Port, and
Thompson after, were two different men. To indoctrinate
him now was too late: it was perhaps the time to make the
positive use of him he wanted.

  Drawing forth the Note-book: and pencilling roughly:
``Two prongs of a fork; the World stuck between them---
Port and the Palate: 'Tis one which fails first---Down goes
World;'' and again the hieroglyph---``Port-spectacles.'' He
said, ``I shall gladly accompany you this evening, Thompson,''
words that transfigured the delighted lawyer, and
restored the skeleton of a great Aphorism to his pocket,
there to gather flesh and form, with numberless others in a
like condition.

  ``I came to visit my lawyer,'' he said to himself. ``I think
I have been dealing with The World in epitome!''


	CHAPTER XVIII.

	THE SYSTEM ENCOUNTERS THE WILD OATS SPECIAL PLEA.

  The rumour circulated that Sir Austin Feverel, the recluse
of Raynham, the rank misogynist, the rich baronet, was in
town, looking out a bride for his only son and uncorrupted
heir. Doctor Benjamin Bairam was the excellent authority.
Doctor Bairam had safely delivered Mrs. Deborah Gossip of
this interesting bantling, which was forthwith dandled in
dozens of feminine laps. Doctor Bairam could boast the
first interview with the famous recluse. He had it from
his own lips that the object of the baronet was to look out a
bride for his only son and uncorrupted heir; ``and,'' added
the doctor, ``she'll be lucky who gets him.'' Which was
interpreted to mean, that he would be a catch; the doctor
probably intending to allude to certain extraordinary difficulties
in the way of a choice.

  A demand was made on the publisher of =The Pilgrim's
Scrip= for all his outstanding copies. Conventionalities were
defied. A summer-shower of cards fell on the baronet's
table.

  He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests
of scandal. The cards he contemplated were mostly those
of the sex, with the husband, if there was a husband, evidently
dragged in for propriety's sake. He perused the
cards and smiled. He knew their purpose. What terrible
light Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them!
Heavens! in what a state was the blood of this Empire.
Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient
intimates, Lord Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley
Absworthy, both Members of Parliament, useful men, though
gouty, who had sown in their time a fine crop of wild oats,
and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that they
did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found one
with an imbecile son and the other with consumptive
daughters. ``So much,'' he wrote in the Note-book, ``for
the Wild Oats theory!''

  Darley was proud of his daughters' white and pink skins.
``Beautiful complexions,'' he called them. The eldest was
in the market, immensely admired. Sir Austin was introduced
to her. She talked fluently and sweetly. A youth
not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even a man,
might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and
fair. There was something poetic about her. And she was
quite well, she said, the baronet frequently questioning her
on that point. She intimated that she was robust; but
towards the close of their conversation her hand would now
and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully an
instant, saying, ``Isn't it odd? Dora, Adela, and myself,
we all feel the same queer sensation---about the heart, I
think it is---after talking much.''

  Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his
soul, ``Wild oats! wild oats!''

  He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.

  Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.

  ``It's all nonsense, Feverel,'' he said, ``about bringing up
a lad out of the common way. He's all the better for a little
racketing when he's green---feels his bone and muscle---
learns to know the world. He'll never be a man if he hasn't
played at the old game one time in his life, and the earlier
the better. I've always found the best fellows were wildish
once. I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn;
besides, he's got an excuse for it then. You can't expect to
have a man, if he doesn't take a man's food. You'll have a
milksop. And, depend upon it, when he does break out he'll
go to the devil, and nobody pities him. Look what those
fellows, the grocers, do when they get hold of a young---
what d'ye call 'em?---apprentice. They know the scoundrel
was born with a sweet tooth. Well! they give him the run
of the shop, and in a very short time he soberly deals out
the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract a morsel even
for the pleasure of stealing. I know you have contrary
theories. You hold that the young grocer should have a
soul above sugar. It won't do! Take my word for it,
Feverel, it's a dangerous experiment, that of bringing up
flesh and blood in harness. No colt will bear it, or he's a
tame beast. And look you: take it on medical grounds.
Early excesses the frame will recover from: late ones break
the constitution. There's the case in a nutshell. How's
your son?''

  ``Sound and well!'' replied Sir Austin. ``And yours?''

  ``Oh, Lipscombe's always the same!'' Lord Heddon sighed
peevishly. ``He's quiet---that's one good thing; but there's
no getting the country to take him, so I must give up hopes
of that.''

  Lord Lipscombe entering the room just then, Sir Austin
surveyed him, and was not astonished at the refusal of the
country to take him.

  ``Wild oats! wild oats!'' again thinks the baronet, as
he contemplates the headless, degenerate, weedy issue and
result.

  Both Darley Absworthy and Lord Heddon spoke of the
marriage of their offspring as a matter of course. ``And if
I were not a coward,'' Sir Austin confessed to himself, ``I
should stand forth and forbid the banns! This universal
ignorance of the inevitable consequence of sin is frightful!
The wild oats plea is a torpedo that seems to have struck the
world, and rendered it morally insensible.'' However, they
silenced him. He was obliged to spare their feelings on a
subject to him so deeply sacred. The healthful image of his
noble boy rose before him, a triumphant living rejoinder to
any hostile argument.

  He was content to remark to his doctor, that he thought
the third generation of wild oats would be a pretty thin
crop!

  Families against whom neither Thompson lawyer nor
Bairam physician could recollect a progenitorial blot, either
on the male or female side, were not numerous. ``Only,''
said the doctor, ``You really must not be too exacting in
these days, my dear Sir Austin. It is impossible to contest
your principle, and you are doing mankind incalculable service
in calling its attention to this the gravest of its duties:
but as the stream of civilization progresses we must be a
little taken in the lump, as it were. The world is, I can
assure you---and I do not look only above the surface, you can
believe---the world is awakening to the vital importance of
the question.''

  ``Doctor,'' replied Sir Austin, ``if you had a pure-blood
Arab barb would you cross him with a screw?''

  ``Decidedly not,'' said the doctor.

  ``Then permit me to say, I shall employ every care to
match my son according to his merits,'' Sir Austin returned.
``I trust the world is awakening, as you observe. I have
been to my publisher, since my arrival in town, with a
manuscript `Proposal for a New System of Education of our
British Youth,' which may come in opportunely. I think
I am entitled to speak on that subject.''

  ``Certainly,'' said the doctor. ``You will admit, Sir
Austin, that, compared with continental nations---our neighbours,
for instance---we shine to advantage, in morals, as in
everything else. I hope you admit that?''

  ``I find no consolation in shining by comparison with a
lower standard,'' said the baronet. ``If I compare the
enlightenment of your views---for you admit my principle---
with the obstinate incredulity of a country doctor's, who sees
nothing of the world, you are hardly flattered, I presume?''

  Doctor Bairam would hardly be flattered at such a comparison,
assuredly, he interjected.

  ``Besides,'' added the baronet, ``the French make no
pretences, and thereby escape one of the main penalties of
hypocrisy. Whereas we!---but I am not their advocate,
credit me. It is better, perhaps, to pay your homage to virtue.
At least it delays the spread of entire corruptness.''

  Doctor Bairam wished the baronet success, and diligently
endeavoured to assist his search for a mate worthy of the
pure-blood barb, by putting several mamas, whom he visited,
on the alert.


	CHAPTER XIX.

	A SHADOWY VIEW OF C<OE>LEBS PATER
	GOING ABOUT WITH A GLASS SLIPPER.

  One of these mamas favoured by Doctor Benjamin Bairam
was Mrs. Caroline Grandison, said to be a legitimate descendant
of the great Sir Charles: a lady who, in propriety of
demeanour and pious manners, was the petticoated image of
her admirable ancestor. The clean-linen of her morality was
spotless as his. As nearly she neighboured perfection, and
knew it as well. Let us hope that her history will some day
be written, and the balance restored in literature which it
was her pride to have established for her sex in life.

  Mrs. Caroline was a colourless lady of an unequivocal
character, living upon drugs, and governing her husband
and the world from her sofa. Woolly Negroes blest her
name, and whiskered John-Thomases deplored her weight.
The world was given to understand that sorrows and disappointments
had reduced her to the contemplative posture
which helped her to consider the urgent claims of her black
fellow-creatures and require the stalwart services of her
white. In her presence the elect had to feel how very much
virtue is its own reward; for, if they did not rightly esteem
the honour she did them, they had little farther encouragement
from Mrs. Caroline Grandison. On the other hand her
rigour toward vice was unsparing; especially in the person
of one of her own sex, whom she treated as heaven treats
fallen angels. A sinful man---why, Mrs. Caroline expected
nothing better: but a sinful woman---Oh! that was a
scandal, a shame! And you met no sinful woman at Mrs.
Caroline Grandison's parties. As a consequence, possibly,
though one hardly dares suppose it, her parties were the
dullest in London, and gradually fell into the hands of
popular preachers, specific doctors, raw missionaries with
their passage paid for, and a chance dean or so; a non-dancing,
stout-dining congregation, in the midst of which a
gay young guardsman was dismally out of his element, and
certainly would not have obtruded his unsodden spirit had
there been no fair daughters.

  The completeness of the lady's reputation was rounded by
the whispers of envious tongues; which, admitting the
inviolability of her character, remarked that indeed she was
a little too careful to appear different from others, and took
an ascetic delight in the contrast. There is no doubt that
she took a great deal of medicine. Dr. Bairam may have
contributed toward her asceticism somewhat. The worthy
doctor may even, perhaps, have contributed a trifle to her
perfection.

  In her sweet youth this lady fell violently in love with the
great Sir Charles, and married him in fancy. The time
coming, when maiden fancy must give way to woman fact,
she compromised her reverent passion for the hero by
declaring that she would never change the name he had
honoured her with, and must, if she espoused any mortal,
give her widowed hand to a Grandison. Accordingly two
cousins were proposed to her; but the moral reputation of
these Grandisons was so dreadful, and such a disgrace to the
noble name they bore, that she rejected them with horror.
Woman's mission, however, being her perpetual precept, she
felt at the age of twenty-three bound to put it in practice,
and, as she was handsome, and most handsomely-endowed,
a quite an objectionable gentleman was discovered, who, for
the honour of assisting her in her mission, agreed to disembody
himself in her great name, and be lost in the blaze
of Sir Charles. With his concurrence she rapidly produced
eight daughters. A son was denied to her. This was the
second generation of Grandisons denied a son. Her husband,
the quite unobjectionable gentleman, lost heart after the
arrival of the eighth, and surrendered his mind to more
frivolous pursuits. She also appeared to lose heart; it was
her saintly dream to have a Charles. So assured she was
that he was coming at last that she prepared male baby-linen
with her own hands for the disappointing eighth.
When, in that moment of creative suspense, Dr. Bairam's
soft voice, with sacred melancholy, pronounced, ``A daughter,
madam!'' Mrs. Caroline Grandison covered her face, and
wept. She afterwards did penance for her want of resignation,
and relapsed upon religion and little dogs.

  Mrs. Caroline Grandison appeared to lose heart. But
people said she was not really solaced by religion and little
dogs. People said, that her repeated consultations with Dr.
Bairam had one end in view, and that all those quantities of
medicine were consumed for a devout purpose. Eight is not
a number to stop at. Nine if you like, but not eight. No
one thinks of stopping at eight. People said that the pertinacity
of her spirit weakened her mind, and that she consulted
cards and fortune-tellers, and cast horoscopes, to
discover if there would be a ninth, and that ninth a Charles.
They might truly have said, that the potency of Dr. Bairam's
prescriptions weakened the constitution. Mrs. Caroline
Grandison grew fretful, and, reclined on an invalid couch,
while her name hunted foxes.

  The disappointing eighth was on the verge of her teens
when Sir Austin visited town. None of Mrs. Caroline Grandison's
daughters had married: owing, it was rumoured,
to the degeneracy of the males of our day. The elder ones
had, in their ignorance, wished to marry young gentlemen
of their choosing. Mrs. Caroline Grandison bade them wait
till she could find for them something like Sir Charles: she
was aware that such a man would hardly be found alive
again. If they rebelled, as model young ladies occasionally
will, Mrs. Caroline Grandison declared that they were ill,
and called in Dr. Bairam to prescribe, who soon reduced
them. Physic is an immense ally in bringing about filial
obedience.

  No lady living was better fitted to appreciate Sir Austin,
and understand his System, than Mrs. Caroline Grandison.
When she heard of it from Dr. Bairam, she rose from her
couch and called for her carriage, determined to follow him
up and come to terms with him. All that was told her of
the baronet conspired to make her believe he was Sir Charles
in person fallen upon evil times: the spirit of Sir Charles
revived to mix his blood with hers and produce a race of
moral Paladins after Sir Charles's pattern. She reviewed
her daughters. Any one of the three younger ones would be a
suitable match, and, if he wanted perfectly educated young
women, where else could he look for them? But he was
difficult to hunt down. He went abroad shyly. He was
never to be met in general society. The rumour of him was
everywhere, and an extremely unfavourable rumour it was,
from mothers who had daughters, and hopes for their
daughters, which a few questions of his had kindled, and a
discovery of his severe requisitions extinguished. It appeared
that he had seen numerous young ladies. He had
politely asked them to sit down and take off their shoes; but
such monstrous feet they had mostly that he declined the
attempt to try on the Glass Slipper, and politely departed;
or tried it on, and with a resigned sad look declared that it
would not, would not fit!

  Some of the young ladies had been to schools. Their feet
were all enormously too big, and there was no need for them
to take off their shoes. Some had been very properly educated
at home; and to such, if Bairam physician and
Thompson lawyer did not protest, the Slipper was applied;
but by occult arts of its own it seemed to find out that their
habits were somehow bad, and incapacitated them from
espousing the Fairy Prince. The Slipper would not fit
at all.

  Unsuspecting damsels were asked at what time they rose
in the morning, and would reply, at any hour. Some said,
they finished in the morning the romance they had relinquished
to sleep overnight, little considering how such a
practice made the feet swell. One of them thought it a fine
thing to tell him she took Metastasio to bed with her and
pencilled translations of him when she awoke.

			<*>

  There was a damsel closer home who did not take Metastasio
to bed with her, and who ate dewberries early in the
morning, whose foot, had Sir Austin but known it, would
have fitted into the intractable Slipper as easily and neatly
as if it had been a soft kid glove made to her measure.
Alas! the envious sisters were keeping poor Cinderella out
of sight. Dewberries still abounded by the banks of the
river; and thither she strolled, and there daily she was met
by one who had the test of her merits in his bosom: and
there, on the night the scientific humanist conceived he had
alighted on the identical house which held the foot to fit the
Slipper, there under consulting stars, holy for evermore
henceforth, the Fairy Prince, trembling and with tears, has
taken from her lips the first ripe fruit of love, and pledged
himself hers.

			<*>

  A night of happy augury to Father and Son. They were
looking out for the same thing; only one employed science,
the other instinct; and which hit upon the right it was for
time to decide. Sir Austin dined with Mrs. Caroline Grandison.
They had been introduced by Sir Miles Papworth.

  ``What!'' said Sir Miles, when Mrs. Caroline expressed
her wish for an introduction, ``you want to know Feverel?
Aha! Why, you are the very woman for him, ma'am. It's
one of the strong-minded he's after. So you shall, so you
shall. I'll give a dinner to-morrow. And let me tell you in
confidence that the value of his mines is increasing, ma'am.
You needn't be afraid about his crotchets. Feverel has his
eye on the main chance as well as the rest of us.''

  ``You do not believe, Sir Miles, that one may esteem him
for his principles and sympathize with his object?'' said
Mrs. Caroline.

  ``Well, ma'am,'' Sir Miles returned, ``I'm a plain man. I
said to my wife the other day---she was talking something
in that way---and I said to her, If Feverel had five hundred,
instead of fifty thousand, a-year---he's got that clear, ma'am,
and it'll double---how about his principles then? Aha! A
rich man can play the fool if he likes, and you women clap
your hands, and cheer him. Now, if I were to have a System
for all my rascals, you'd call me something like what I
should be---eh? You would, though! And I wish I had
sometimes, for they're every one of 'em in scrapes, and I've
got to pay the piper. But that's part of their education, to
my mind, so down goes the money.''

  ``Have you seen much of his son?'' Mrs. Caroline inquired,
restraining an appearance of particular interest.

  ``Not much, ma'am; not much. Aha! I expect it's the
mothers 'll be asking about _his_ son, and the daughters
about mine---eh?'' Sir Miles indulged in a stout laugh.

  ``He's a fine lad. I'll say that for him, ma'am. He'll go
a long way when he's once loose, that lad will. I came to
hear the other day that I was pretty near transporting him
the young villain!''

  Sir Miles told Mrs. Caroline certain facts that had gradually
become public intelligence about his neighbourhood
concerning the Bakewell Comedy.

  Mrs. Caroline threw her hands aloft.

  ``Have I frightened you a bit, ma'am?'' said twinkling
Sir Miles; but the perverse woman, with the downfall if
her hands, checked his exultation by exclaiming: ``Is it not
a proof of his father's wisdom to watch him so rigorously!''

  Next day, at Sir Miles Papworth's hastily-ordered dinner,
Mrs. Caroline Grandison, who had summoned her great
dormant energies successfully to stand upon her feet, was
handed down by Sir Austin. They sat together, and talked
together.

  Sir Austin and Mrs. Caroline discovered that they had in
common from an early period looked on life as a science:
and, having arrived at this joint understanding, they, with
the indifference of practised dissectors, laid out the world
and applied the knife to the people they knew. In other
words, they talked most frightful scandal. It is proverbial
what a cold torturer science can be. Malice is nothing to it.
They reviewed their friends. Pure blood was nowhere. Sir
Austin hinted his observations since his arrival in town, and
used a remark or two from Bairam and Thompson. Mrs.
Caroline cleverly guessed the families, and still further
opened his eyes. Together they quashed the wild-oats
special plea. Mrs. Caroline gave him a clearer idea of his
system than he had ever had before. She ran ahead of his
thoughts like nimble fire. She appeared to have forethought
them all, and taken a leap beyond. When he plodded and
hesitated on his conception, she, at a word, struck boldly
into black and white, making him fidget for his Note-book
to reverse a sentence or two on Woman. And she quoted
=The Pilgrim's Scrip.=

  ``How true are some of the things you say, Sir Austin!
And how false, permit me to add, are others!'' she deprecatingly
remarked. ``That, for instance, on Domestic
Differences. How could you be so cynical as to say, `_In a
dissension between man and wife that one is in the right who
has most friends._' It really angered me. Cannot one be
absolutely superior---notoriously the injured one?'' (Mrs.
Caroline was citing her own case against the fainthearted,
fox-hunting Unobjectionable.) ``But you amply revenge
it. You say, `_Great Hopes have lean offspring._' How true
that is! How I know it myself! How true every disappointed
woman must know it to be! And what you say
Of the Instincts and the Mind---something---that our Instincts
seek stability here below, and are always casting anchor---
something---without the Captain's consent---and that it is
at once the fruitful source of unhappiness and the proof of
immortality---I'm making nonsense of it, but I appreciated
the wisdom fully.''

  In this way she played with him. The theorist was
dazzled, delighted. Lady Blandish was too like a submissive
slave to the System. Mrs. Caroline wedded it on the
equal standing of an English wife, who gives her half and
more to the union.

  Her name appeared on his card-table the day after the
dinner. Six of her eight daughters, and a sprinkling of her
little dogs, were ready for his visit by the afternoon or
fashionable morning. Charlotte and Harriet were absent.
Clementina was the elder in attendance, and the rest presented
fairly decreasing heights down to the disappointing
last, Carola, called as near Charles as was permissible, a
right ruddy young woman out of the nursery.

  ``We receive you into the family,'' the fond mother leaned
on her elbows maternally smiling, to welcome her visitor.
``I wished my daughters to share with me the pleasure of
your acquaintance.''

  ``And knew well, madam, how to gratify me most.'' Sir
Austin bowed to the ceremony of introduction, and took a
hand of each, retaining Carola's.

  ``This is your youngest, madam?''

  ``Yes.'' Mrs. Caroline suppressed a sigh.

  ``And how old are you, my dear?''

  Carola twisted, and tried to read the frill of her trousers.
She was dressed very young.

  ``My child!'' her mother admonished her. Whereat
Carola screwed out a growl, ``Thirteen.''

  ``Thirteen this day,'' said her mother.

  ``Allow me to congratulate you, my dear.'' Sir Austin
bent forward, and put his lips to her forehead.

  Carola received the salute with the stolidity of a naughty
doll.

  ``She is not well to-day,'' said Mrs. Caroline. ``She is
usually full of life and gaiety---almost too much of an animal,
I sometimes think.''

  ``At her age she can scarcely be that,'' observed Sir
Austin.

  ``She's the maddest creature I ever knew.'' Mrs. Caroline
immediately went upon his tack with unction. ``To-day
she is shy. She is not herself. Possibly something has disagreed
with her.''

  ``That nasty medicine, it is, mama,'' mumbled wilful
Carola, swinging her frock.

  Sir Austin turned to Mrs. Caroline, and inquired anxiously
if the child took much medicine.

  ``The smallest occasional closes,'' Mrs. Caroline remarked,
to an accompaniment of interjectory eyebrows and chins
from all her younger daughters, and a reserved demure
aspect of the elder ones.

  ``I do not like much medicine for children,'' said the
baronet, a little snappishly.

  ``Only the smallest occasional doses!'' Mrs. Caroline
repeated, making her voice small and the doses sound
sweet.

  ``My son has had little, or nothing,'' said the baronet.
The young ladies looked on the father of that son with
interest.

  ``Will you come and see our gymnasium?'' Mrs. Caroline
asked quickly.

  ``It is,'' she added, rising with heroic effort, ``not to be
compared to our country one. But it is of excellent use,
and all my girls exercise in it, when in town, once a day,
without intermission. My principle is, that girls require a
development of their frames as well as boys; and the more
muscle they have the better women they make. I used it
constantly till disappointment and sorrow broke the habit.''

  ``On my honour, madam,'' said the enraptured baronet,
``you are the only sensible woman I have met,'' and he
offered his arm to conduct the strenuous invalid.

  Daughters and little dogs trooped to the gymnasium, which
was fitted up in the court below, and contained swing-poles,
and stride-poles, and newly invented instruments for bringing
out special virtues: an instrument for the lungs: an instrument
for the liver; one for the arms and thighs; one for the
wrists; the whole for the promotion of the Christian accomplishments.

  Owing, probably, to the exhaustion consequent on their
previous exercises of the morning, the young ladies, excepting
Carola, looked fatigued and pale, and anything but well-braced;
and for the same reason, doubtless, when the younger
ones were requested by their mother to exhibit the use of
the several instruments, each of them wearily took hold of
the depending strap of leather, and wearily pulled it, like
mariners oaring in the deep sea; oaring to a haven they have
no faith in.

  ``I sometimes hear them,'' said their mama, ``while I am
reclining above, singing in chorus. `Row, brothers, row,' is
one of their songs. It sounds pretty and cheerful.''

  The baronet was too much wrapped up in the enlightenment
of her principle to notice the despondency of their
countenances.

  ``We have a professor of gymnastics, who comes twice a
week to superintend,'' said Mrs. Caroline.

  ``How old did you say your daughter is, madam?'' the
baronet abruptly interrogated her.

  ``Which?---Oh!'' she followed his eye and saw it resting
on ruddy Carola, ``thirteen. She this day completes her
thirteenth year. That will do, dears; much of it is not good
after your dinners.''

  The baronet placidly nodded approval of all her directions,
and bestowed a second paternal kiss upon Carola.

  ``They talk of the Future Man, madam,'' he said. ``I
seem to be in the house of the Future Woman.''

  ``Happy you that have a son!'' exclaimed Mrs. Caroline,
and, returning to the drawing-room, they exchanged Systems
anew, as a preparatory betrothal of the subjects of the
Systems.


	CHAPTER XX.

	A DIVERSION PLAYED ON A PENNY-WHISTLE.

  Away with Systems! Away with a corrupt World! Let
us breathe the air of the Enchanted Island.

  Golden lie the meadows: golden run the streams; red
gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming down to earth,
and walks the fields and the waters.

  The sun is coming down to earth, and the fields and the
waters shout to him golden shouts. He comes, and his
heralds run before him, and touch the leaves of oaks and
planes and beeches lucid green, and the pine-stems redder
gold; leaving brightest footprints upon thickly-weeded banks,
where the foxglove's last upper-bells incline, and bramble-shoots
wander amid moist rich herbage. The plumes of the
woodland are alight; and beyond them, over the open, 'tis a
race with the long-thrown shadows; a race across the heaths
and up the hills, till, at the farthest bourne of mounted
eastern cloud, the heralds of the sun lay rosy fingers, and
rest.

  Sweet are the shy recesses of the woodland. The ray
treads softly there. A film athwart the pathway quivers
many-hued against purple shade fragrant with warm pines,
deep moss-beds, feathery ferns. The little brown squirrel
drops tail, and leaps; the inmost bird is startled to a chance
tuneless note. From silence into silence things move.

  Peeps of the revelling splendour above and around enliven
the conscious full heart within. The flaming West, the crimson
heights, shower their glories through voluminous leafage.
But these are bowers where deep bliss dwells, imperial joy,
that owes no fealty to yonder glories, in which the young
lamb gambols and the spirits of men are glad. Descend,
great Radiance! embrace creation with beneficent fire, and
pass from us! You and the vice-regal light that succeeds to
you, and all heavenly pageants, are the ministers and the
slaves of the throbbing content within.

  For this is the home of the enchantment. Here, secluded
from vexed shores, the prince and princess of the island
meet: here like darkling nightingales they sit, and into eyes
and ears and hands pour endless ever-fresh treasures of their
souls.

  Roll on, grinding wheels of the world: cries of ships
going down in a calm, groans of a System which will not
know its rightful hour of exultation, complain to the
universe. You are not heard here.

  He calls her by her name, Lucy: and she, blushing at her
great boldness, has called him by his, Richard. Those two
names are the key-notes of the wonderful harmonies the
angels sing aloft.

  ``Lucy! my beloved!''

  ``O Richard!''

  Out in the world there, on the skirts of the woodland, a
sheep-boy pipes to meditative eve on a penny-whistle.

  Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor: it has
but two stops; and yet, you see, the cunning musician does
thus much with it!

  Other speech they have little; light foam playing upon
waves of feeling, and of feeling compact, that bursts only
when the sweeping volume is too wild, and is no more than
their sigh of tenderness spoken.

  Perhaps love played his tune so well because their natures
had unblunted edges, and were keen for bliss, confiding in it
as natural food. To gentlemen and ladies he fine-draws
upon the viol, ravishingly; or blows into the mellow
bassoon; or rouses the heroic ardours of the trumpet; or, it
may be, commands the whole Orchestra for them. And they
are pleased. He is still the cunning musician. They
languish, and taste ecstasy: but it is, however sonorous, an
earthly concert. For them the spheres move not to two
notes. They have lost, or forfeited and never known, the
first supersensual spring of the ripe senses into passion;
when they carry the soul with them, and have the privileges
of spirits to walk disembodied, boundlessly to feel. Or one
has it, and the other is a dead body. Ambrosia let them
eat, and drink the nectar: here sit a couple to whom Love's
simple bread and water is a finer feast.

  Pipe, happy sheep-boy, Love! Irradiated angels, unfold
your wings and lift your voices!

  They have outflown philosophy. Their instinct has shot
beyond the ken of science. They were made for their Eden.

  ``And this divine gift was in store for me!''

  So runs the internal outcry of each, clasping each: it is
their recurring refrain to the harmonies. How it illumined
the years gone by and suffused the living Future!

  ``You for me: I for you!''

  ``We are born for each other!''

  They believe that the angels have been busy about them
from their cradles. The celestial hosts have worthily
striven to bring them together. And, O victory! O wonder!
after toil and pain, and difficulties exceeding, the celestial
hosts have succeeded!

  ``Here we two sit who are written above as one!''

  Pipe, happy Love! pipe on to these dear innocents!

  The tide of colour has ebbed from the upper sky. In the
West the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap
forth, and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon,
who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and,
with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven.

  ``Lucy, did you never dream of meeting me?''

  ``O Richard! yes; for I remembered you.''

  ``Lucy! and did you pray that we might meet?''

  ``I did!''

  Young as when she looked upon the lovers in Paradise,
the fair Immortal journeys onward. Fronting her, it is not
night but veiled day. Full half the sky is flushed. Not
darkness: not day; but the nuptials of the two.

  ``My own! my own for ever! You are pledged to me?
Whisper!''

  He hears the delicious music.

  ``And you are mine?''

  A soft beam travels to the fern-covert under the pine-wood
where they sit, and for answer he has her eyes: turned to
him an instant, timidly fluttering over the depths of his, and
then downcast; for through her eyes her soul is naked
to him.

  ``Lucy! my bride! my life!''

  The night-jar spins his dark monotony on the branch of
the pine. The soft beam travels round them, and listens to
their hearts. Their lips are locked.

  Pipe no more, Love, for a time! Pipe as you will you
cannot express their first kiss; nothing of its sweetness, and
of the sacredness of it nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before
the silver organ-pipes of Paradise, pressing fingers upon
all the notes of which Love is but one, from her you may
hear it.

  So Love is silent. Out in the world there, on the skirts of
the woodland, the self-satisfied sheep-boy delivers a last complacent
squint down the length of his penny-whistle, and,
with a flourish correspondingly awry, he also marches into
silence, hailed by supper. The woods are still. There is
heard but the night-jar spinning on the pine-branch, circled
by moonlight.


	CHAPTER XXI.

	CELEBRATES THE TIME-HONOURED TREATMENT OF A DRAGON BY
	THE HERO.

  Enchanted Islands have not yet rooted out their old brood
of dragons. Wherever there is romance, these monsters
come by inimical attraction. Because the heavens are certainly
propitious to true lovers, the beasts of the abysses are
banded to destroy them, stimulated by innumerable sad
victories; and every love-tale is an Epic War of the upper
and lower powers. I wish good fairies were a little more
active. They seem to be cajoled into security by the happiness
of their favourities; whereas the wicked are always
alert, and circumspect. They let the little ones shut their
eyes to fancy they are not seen, and then commence.

  These appointments and meetings, involving a start from
the dinner-table at the hour of contemplative digestion and
prime claret; the hour when the wise youth Adrian delighted
to talk at his ease---to recline in dreamy consciousness that a
work of good was going on inside him; these abstractions
from his studies, excesses of gaiety, and glumness, heavings
of the chest, and other odd signs, but mainly the disgusting
behaviour of his pupil at the dinner-table, taught Adrian to
understand, though the young gentleman was clever in
excuses, that he had somehow learnt there was another half
to the divided Apple of Creation, and had embarked upon
the great voyage of discovery of the difference between the
two halves. With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether
he might be in the philosophic or the practical stage of the
voyage. For himself, as a man and a philosopher, Adrian
had no objection to its being either; and he had only to
consider which was temporarily most threatening to the
ridiculous System he had to support. Richard's absence
annoyed him. The youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm
good fun; and besides, when he left table, Adrian had to sit
alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth Century, from both
of whom he extracted all the amusement that could be got,
and he saw his digestion menaced by the contagious society
of two ruined stomachs, who bored him just when he loved
profoundly to calculate whether a particular dish, or an
extra-glass of wine, would have a bitter effect on him and be
felt through the remainder of his years. He was in the habit
of uttering his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic
doubts of experience, and the succulent insinuations of appetite,
contended hotly. It was horrible to hear him, so let us
pardon Adrian for tempting him to a decision in favour of
the moment.

  ``Happy to take wine with you,'' Adrian would say, and
Hippias would regard the decanter with a pained forehead,
and put up the doctor.

  ``Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!''
the Eighteenth Century cheerily ruffles her cap
at him, and recommends her own practice.

  ``It's this literary work!'' interjects Hippias, handling his
glass of remorse. ``I don't know what else it can be. You
have no idea how anxious I feel. I have frightful dreams.
I'm perpetually anxious.''

  ``No wonder,'' says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity
to which an absorbed study of his sensational existence
has brought poor Hippias. ``No wonder. Ten years of
Fairy Mythology! Could any one hope to sleep in peace
after that? As to your digestion, no one has a digestion
who is in the doctor's hands. They prescribe from dogmas,
and don't count on the system. They have cut you down
from two bottles to two glasses. It's absurd. You can't
sleep, because your system is crying out for what it's accustomed to.''

  Hippias sips his Madeira with a niggardly confidence, but
assures Adrian that he really should not like to venture on
a bottle now: it would be rank madness to venture on a
bottle now, he thinks. Last night only, after partaking,
under protest, of that rich French dish, or was it the duck?
---Adrian advised him to throw the blame on that vulgar
bird.---Say the duck, then. Last night, he was no sooner
stretched in bed, than he seemed to be of an enormous size:
all his limbs---his nose, his mouth, his toes---were elephantine!
An elephant was a pigmy to him. And his hugeousness
seemed to increase the instant he shut his eyes. He
turned on this side; he turned on that. He lay on his back;
he tried putting his face to the pillow; and he continued to
swell. He wondered the room could hold him---he thought
he must burst it---and absolutely lit a candle, and went to
the looking-glass to see whether he was bearable.

  By this time Adrian and Richard were laughing uncontrollably.
He had, however, a genial auditor in the Eighteenth
Century, who declared it to be a new disease, not
known in her day, and deserving investigation. She was
happy to compare sensations with him, but hers were not of
the complex order, and a potion soon righted her. In fact,
her system appeared to be a debatable ground for aliment
and medicine, on which the battle was fought, and, when
over, she was none the worse, as she joyfully told Hippias.
Never looked ploughman on prince, or village belle on Court
Beauty, with half the envy poor nineteenth-century Hippias
expended in his gaze on the Eighteenth. He was too serious
to note much the laughter of the young men.

  ``I fancy, uncle, you have swallowed a fairy,'' says
Richard. ``You know what malicious things they are. Is
there a case in the mythology of anybody swallowing a
fairy?''

  Hippias grimly considered, and thought there was not.

  ``Upon my honour,'' Adrian composes his features to
remark, ``I think Ricky has hit the right nail. You have
not only swallowed one, you have swallowed the whole
mythology! I'm not astonished you suffer so. I never
could, I confess, so they don't trouble me; but, if I had, I
should pour a bottle of the best on them every night. I
should indeed.''

  ``Can my uncle,'' Richard meditates, his eyes on Hippias's
wizened face, ``ever have been, as my father says, happy,
and like other men? Was he ever in love?''

  Alas, and alack-a-day! Yes! Love had once piped even
to Hippias in dewy shade. He was once an ardent youth,
the genius of the family, master of his functions. ``Which,
when one ceases to be,'' says the =Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``one is no
longer man:'' and appends that ``it is the tendency of very
fast people to grow organically _downward._'' Pity the sorrows
of a poor dyspepsy! Like the Actinia, poor Hippias had
grown to be all stomach---though not so pretty to look at.

  ``You will drink a bottle and drown the fairy on the day
Ricky's married,'' says Adrian, eyeing the traitor blush he
calls up on the ingenuous cheeks.

  Hippias realizes distant consequences immediately, and
contracts his jaw to stipulate for it at night, then: not in
the morning at the breakfast. He is capable of nothing but
very weak tea and dry toast, or gruel, in the morning. He
adds that, how people can drink wine at that early hour,
amazes him. ``I should,'' he exclaims energetically, ``I
should be afraid to go to bed that night, if I did such a
thing!''

  Adrian leans to Richard, and bids the blush-mantled youth
mind he does not swallow his fairy, or he may have a similar
unbewitching fear upon him on the awful occasion. Richard
cocks his ear. His hour has struck. His heaven awaits him
in the wood, and he is off.

  This `Tragedy of a Cooking-Apparatus,' as Adrian
designated the malady of Hippias, was repeated regularly
every evening. It was natural for any youth to escape as
quick as he could from such a table of stomachs.

  Adrian bore with his conduct considerately, until a letter
from the baronet, describing the house and maternal System
of Mrs. Caroline Grandison, and the rough grain of hopefulness
in her youngest daughter, spurred him to think of
his duties, and see what was going on. He gave Richard
half an hour's start, and then put on his hat to follow his
own keen scent, leaving Hippias and the Eighteenth Century
to piquet.

  In the lane near Belthorpe he met a maid of the farm not
unknown to him, one Molly Davenport by name, a buxom
lass, who, on seeing him, invoked her Good Gracious, the
generic maid's familiar, and was instructed by reminiscences
vivid, if ancient, to giggle.

  ``Are you looking for your young gentleman?'' Molly
presently asked.

  Adrian glanced about the lane like a cool brigand, to see
if the coast was clear, and replied to her, ``I am, miss. I
want you to tell me about him.''

  ``Dear!'' said the buxom lass, ``was you coming for me
to-night to know?''

  Adrian rebuked her: for her bad grammar, apparently.

  ``Cause I can't stop out long to-night,'' Molly explained,
taking the rebuke to refer altogether to her bad grammar.

  ``You may go in when you please, miss. Is that any one
coming? Come here in the shade.''

  ``Now, get along!'' said Miss Molly.

  It was hard upon the wise youth, and he felt it so, that
she would not accept his impeccability. He said austerely:
``I desire you to know, miss, that, notwithstanding your unprotected
situation and the favouring darkness, a British
female, in all places and at all seasons, may confidently
repose the precious jewel''------

  The buxom lass interrupted the harangue by an explosion
of giggles. ``I declare,'' she cried, ``I used for to believe
you at fust; and when you begin you looks like it now.
You're al'ays as good as a play. I say---don't you remember''------

  Adrian spoke with resolution. ``Will you listen to me,
Miss Davenport!'' He put a coin in her hand, which had a
medical effect in calming her to attention. ``I want to know
whether you have seen him at all?''

  ``Who? Your young gentleman? I sh'd think I did. I
seen him to-night only. Ain't he growed handsome. He's
al'ays about Beltharp now. It ain't to fire no more ricks.
He's afire 'unself. Ain't you seen 'em together? He's after
the missis''-----

  Adrian requested Miss Davenport to be respectful, and
confine herself to particulars. The buxom lass then told
him that her young missis and Adrian's young gentleman
were a pretty couple, and met one another every night.
The girl swore for their innocence.

  ``As for Miss Lucy, she haven't a bit of art in her, nor
have he.''

  ``They're all nature, I suppose,'' said Adrian. ``How is it
I don't see her at church?''

  ``She's Catholic, or somethink,'' said Molly. ``Her feyther
was, and a leftenant. She've a Cross in her bedroom. She
don't go to church. I see you there last Sunday a-lookin' so
solemn,'' and Molly stroked her hand down her chin to give
it length.

  Adrian insisted on her keeping to facts. It was dark, and
in the dark he was indifferent to the striking contrasts suggested
by the buxom lass, but he wanted to hear facts, and
he again bribed her to distil nothing but facts. Upon which
she told him further, that her young lady was an innocent
artless creature who had been to school upwards of three
years with the nuns, and had a little money of her own, and
was beautiful enough to be a lord's lady, and had been in
love with Master Richard ever since she was a little girl.
Molly had got from a friend of hers up at the Abbey, Mary
Garner, the housemaid who cleaned Master Richard's room,
a bit of paper once with the young gentleman's handwriting,
and had given it to her Miss Lucy, and Miss Lucy had given
her a gold sovereign for it---just for his handwriting! Miss
Lucy did not seem happy at the farm, because of that young
Tom, who was always leering at her, and to be sure she was
quite a lady, and could play, and sing, and dress with the
best.

  ``She looks like a angel in her nightgown!'' Molly
wound up.

  The next moment she ran up close, and speaking for the
first time as if there were a distinction of position between
them, petitioned: ``Mr. Harley! you won't go for a-doin' any
harm to 'em 'cause of what I said, will you now? Do say
you won't now, Mr. Harley! She is good, though she's a
Catholic. She was kind to me when I was ill, and I
wouldn't have her crossed---I'd rather be showed up myself,
I would!''

  The wise youth gave no positive promise to the buxom
lass, and she had to read his consent in a relaxation of his
austerity. The noise of a lumbering foot plodding down the
lane caused her to be abruptly dismissed. Molly took to flight,
the lumbering foot accelerated its pace, and the pastoral
appeal to her flying skirts was heard---``Moll! yau, theyre!
It be I---Bantam!'' But the sprightly Silvia would not
stop to his wooing, and Adrian turned away laughing at
these Arcadians.

  Adrian was a lazy dragon. All he did for the present was
to hint and tease. ``It's the Inevitable!'' he said, and asked
himself why he should seek to arrest it. He had no faith in
the System. Heavy Benson had. Benson of the slow thick-lidded
antediluvian eye and loose-crumpled skin; Benson, the
Saurian, the woman-hater. Benson was wide awake. A sort
of rivalry existed between the wise youth and Heavy Benson.
The fidelity of the latter dependant had moved the baronet to
commit to him a portion of the management of the Raynham
estate, and this Adrian did not like. No one who aspires to
the honourable office of leading another by the nose can
tolerate a party in his ambition, Benson's surly instinct told
him he was in the wise youth's way, and he resolved to give
his master a striking proof of his superior faithfulness. For
some weeks the Saurian eye had been on the two secret
creatures. Heavy Benson saw letters come and go in the
day, and now the young gentleman was off and out every
night, and seemed to be on wings. Benson knew whither he
went, and the object he went for. It was a woman---that
was enough. The Saurian eye had actually seen the sinful
thing lure the hope of Raynham into the shades. He composed
several epistles of warning to the baronet of the work
that was going on; but before sending one he wished to
record a little of their guilty conversation; and for this purpose
the faithful fellow nightly trotted over the dews to eavesdrop,
and thereby aroused the good fairy, in the person of
Tom Bakewell, the sole confidant of Richard's state.

  Tom said to his young master, ``Do you know what, sir?
You be watched!''

  Richard, in a fury, bade him name the wretch, and Tom
hung his arms, and aped the respectable protrusion of the
butler's head.

  ``It's he, is it?'' cried Richard. ``He shall rue it, Tom!
If I find him near me when we're together he shall never
forget it.''

  ``Don't hit too hard, sir,'' Tom suggested. ``You hit
mortal hard when you're in earnest, you know.''

  Richard averred he would forgive anything but that, and
told Tom to be within hail to-morrow night---he knew where.
By the hour of the appointment it was out of the lover's
mind.

  Heavy Benson's epistle of warning, addressed to Sir Austin
Absworthy Bearne Feverel, Bart., and containing an extraordinary
travesty of the mutual converse of two love-sick
beings, specially calculated to alarm a moral parent, was
posted and travelling to town. His work was done. Unluckily
for his bones, he had, in the process, acquired a
prurient taste for the service of spy upon Cupid; and, after
doing duty at table, he was again out over the dews, hoping
to behold the extreme wickedness of the celestial culprit.

  Lady Blandish dined that evening at Raynham, by Adrian's
pointed invitation. According to custom, Richard started up
and off, with few excuses. The lady exhibited no surprise.
She and Adrian likewise strolled forth to enjoy the air of the
Summer night. They had no intention of spying. Still they
may have thought, by meeting Richard and his innamorata,
there was a chance of laying a foundation of ridicule to sap
the passion. They may have thought so---they were on no
spoken understanding.

  ``I have seen the little girl,'' said Lady Blandish. ``She is
pretty---she would be telling if she were well set up. She
speaks well. How absurd it is of that class to educate their
women above their station! The child is really too good for
a farmer. I noticed her before I know of this; she has
enviable hair. I suppose she doesn't paint her eyelids. Just
the sort of person to take a young man. I thought there was
something wrong. I received, the day before yesterday, an
impassioned poem evidently not intended for me. My hair
was gold. My meeting him was foretold. My eyes were
homes of light fringed with night. I sent it back, correcting
the colours.''

  ``Which was death to the rhymes,'' said Adrian. `` I saw
her this morning. The boy hasn't bad taste. As you say,
she is too good for a farmer. Such a spark would explode
any System. She slightly affected mine. The Huron is
stark mad about her.''

  ``But we must positively write and tell his father,'' said
Lady Blandish.

  The wise youth did not see why they should exaggerate a
trifle. The lady said she would have an interview with
Richard, and then write, as it was her duty to do. Adrian
shrugged, and was for going into the scientific explanation
of Richard's conduct, in which the lady had to discourage
him.

  ``Poor boy!'' she sighed. ``I am really sorry for him. I
hope he will not feel it too strongly. They feel strongly,
father and son.''

  ``And select wisely?'' Adrian slyly appended.

  ``That's another thing,'' said Lady Blandish. ``You have
heard about the Grandisons, I presume?''

  ``Yes. A perfect woman, mirrored in her progeny.''

  ``I detest a perfect woman,'' said Lady Blandish.

  ``I should like her better than her progeny.''

  ``I pity her husband,'' said Lady Blandish.

  ``As the =Pilgrim's Scrip= would remark---`There's his
recompense.' ''

  ``I'm afraid some one is easily hoodwinked,'' said Lady
Blandish.

  The wise youth smiled.

  Their talk was then of the dulness of neighbouring county
people, about whom, it seemed, there was little or no scandal
afloat: of the lady's loss of the season in town, which she
professed not to regret, though she complained of her general
weariness: of whether Mr. Morton of Poer Hall would propose
to Mrs. Doria, and of the probable despair of the
hapless curate of Lobourne; and other gossip, partly in
French.

  They rounded the lake, and got upon the road through
the park to Lobourne. The moon had risen. The atmosphere
was warm and pleasant.

  ``Quite a lover's night,'' said Lady Blandish.

  ``And I, who have none to love---pity me!'' The wise
youth attempted a sigh.

  ``And never will have,'' said Lady Blandish, curtly.
``You _buy_ your loves.''

  ``Good heavens, madam!'' Adrian protested. This was
science with a vengeance. However, he did not plead
verbally against the impeachment, though the lady's decisive
insight astonished him. He began to respect her, scarce
relishing her exquisite contempt and reflected that widows
were terrible creatures.

  He had hoped to be a little sentimental with Lady
Blandish, knowing her romantic. This mixture of the
harshest common sense and an air of ``_I_ know you men,''
with romance and refined temperament, subdued the wise
youth more than a positive accusation supported by witnesses
would have done. He looked at the lady. Her face was
raised to the moon. She knew nothing--- she had simply
spoken from the fulness of her human knowledge, and had
forgotten her words. Perhaps, after all, her admiration, or
whatever feeling it was, for the baronet, was sincere, and
really the longing for a virtuous man. Perhaps she had
tried the opposite set pretty much. Adrian shrugged.
Whenever the wise youth encountered a mental difficulty he
instinctively lifted his shoulders to equal altitudes, to show
that he had no doubt there was a balance in the case---
plenty to be said on both sides, which was the same to him
as a definite solution.

  At their tryst in the wood, abutting on Raynham Park,
wrapped in themselves, piped to by tireless Love, Richard
and Lucy sat, toying with eternal moments. How they seem
as if they would never end! What mere sparks they are
when they have died out! And how in the distance of time
they revive, and extend, and glow, and make us think them
full the half, and the best of the fire, of our lives!

  With the onward flow of intimacy, the two happy lovers
ceased to be so shy of common themes, and their speech did
not reject all as dross that was not pure gold of emotion.
Lucy was very inquisitive about everything and everybody
at Raynham. Whoever had been about Richard since his
birth, she must know the history of, and he for a kiss will do
her bidding.

  Thus goes the tender duet---

  ``You should know my cousin Austin, Lucy.---Darling!
Beloved!''

  `` My own! Richard!''

  ``You should know my cousin Austin. You shall know
him. He would take to you best of them all, and you to
him. He is in the tropics now, looking out a place---it's a
secret---for poor English working-men to emigrate to and
found a colony in that part of the world---my white angel!''

  ``Dear love!''

  ``He is such a noble fellow! Nobody here understands
him but me. Isn't it strange? Since I met you I love him
better! That's because I love all that's good and noble
better now---Beautiful! I love---I love you!''

  ``My Richard!''

  ``What do you think I've determined, Lucy? If my father
---but no! my father does love me.---No! he will not; and
we will be happy together here. And I will win my way
with you. And whatever I win will be yours; for it will be
owing to you. I feel as if I had no strength but yours---
none! and you make me---O Lucy!''

  His voice ebbs. Presently Lucy murmurs---

  ``Your father, Richard.''

  ``Yes, my father?''

  ``Dearest Richard! I feel so afraid of him.''

  ``He loves me, and will love you, Lucy.''

  ``But I am so poor and humble, Richard.''

  ``No one I have ever seen is like you, Lucy.''

  ``You think so: because you''------

  ``What?''

  ``Love me,'' comes the blushing whisper, and the duet
gives place to dumb variations, performed equally in concert.

  It is resumed.

  ``You are fond of the knights, Lucy. Austin is as brave
as any of them.---My own bride! Oh, how I adore you!
When you are gone, I could fall upon the grass you tread
and kiss it. My breast feels empty of my heart---
Lucy! if we lived in those days, I should have been a knight,
and have won honour and glory for you. Oh! one can do
nothing now. My lady-love! My lady-love!---A tear?---
Lucy?''

  ``Dearest! Ah, Richard! I am not a lady.''

  ``Who dares say that? Not a lady---the angel I love!''

  ``Think, Richard, who I am.''

  ``My beautiful! I think that God made you, and has
given you to me.''

  Her eyes fill with tears, and, as she lifts them heavenward
to thank her God, the light of heaven strikes on them, and
she is so radiant in her pure beauty that the limbs of the
young man tremble.

  ``Lucy! O heavenly spirit! Lucy!''

  Tenderly her lips part---``I do not weep for sorrow.''

  The big bright drops lighten, and roll down, imaged in his
soul.

  They lean together---shadows of ineffable tenderness playing
on their thrilled cheeks and brows.

  He dares not touch her lips. He lifts his hand, and presses
his mouth to it. She has seen little of mankind, but her
soul tells her this one is different from others, and at the
thought, in her great joy, tears must come fast, or her heart
will break---tears of boundless thanksgiving. And he, gazing
on those soft, ray-illumined, dark-edged eyes, and the grace
of her loose falling tresses, feels a scarce-sufferable holy fire
streaming through his members.

  It is long ere they speak in open tones.

  ``O happy day when we met!''

  What says the voice of one, the soul of the other echoes.

  ``O glorious heaven looking down on us!''

  Their souls are joined, are made one for evermore beneath
that bending benediction.

  ``O eternity of bliss!''

  Then the diviner mood passes, and they drop to earth.

  ``Lucy! come with me to-night, and look at the place
where you are some day to live. Come, and I will row you
on the lake. You remember what you said in your letter
that you dreamt?---that we were floating over the shadow of
the Abbey to the nuns at work by torchlight felling the
cypress, and they handed us each a sprig. Why, darling,
it was the best omen in the world, their felling the old trees.
And you write such lovely letters. So pure and sweet they
are. I love the nuns for having taught you.''

  ``Ah, Richard! See! we forget! Ah!'' she lifts up her
face pleadingly, as to plead against herself, ``even if your
father forgives my birth, he will not my religion. And,
dearest, though I would die for you I cannot change it. It
would seem that I was denying God; and---oh! it would
make me ashamed of my love.''

  ``Fear nothing!'' He winds her about with his arm.
``Come! He will love us both, and love you the more for
being faithful to your father's creed. You don't know him,
Lucy. He seems harsh and stern---he is full of kindness and
love. He isn't at all a bigot. And besides, when he hears
what the nuns have done for you, won't he thank them, as
I do? And---oh! I must speak to him soon, and you must
be prepared to see him soon, for I cannot bear your remaining
at Belthorpe, like a jewel in a sty. Mind! I'm not
saying a word against your uncle. I declare I love everybody
and everything that sees you and touches you. Stay!
it is a wonder how you could have grown there. But you
were not born there, and your father had good blood. Desborough!
---there was a Colonel Desborough---never mind!
Come!''

  She dreads to. She begs not to. She is drawn away.
The woods are silent, and then---

  ``What think you of that for a pretty pastoral?'' says a
very different voice.

  Adrian reclined against a pine overlooking the fern-covert.
Lady Blandish was recumbent upon the brown pine-droppings
gazing through a vista of the lower greenwood which
opened out upon the moon-lighted valley, her hands clasped
round one knee, her features almost stern in their set hard
expression.

  She did not answer. A movement among the ferns attracted
Adrian, and he stepped down the decline across the
pine-roots to behold Heavy Benson below, shaking fern-seed
and spidery substances off his crumpled skin.

  ``Is that you, Mr. Hadrian?'' called Benson, starting, as
he puffed, and exercised his handkerchief.

  ``Is it _you,_ Benson, who have had the audacity to spy upon
the Mysteries, and are not struck blind?'' Adrian called
back, and coming close to him, added, ``You look as if you
had just been well thrashed.''

  ``Isn't it dreadful, sir?'' snuffled Benson. ``And his father
in ignorance, Mr. Hadrian!''

  ``He shall know, Benson! He shall know how you have
endangered your valuable skin in his service. If Mr. Richard
had found you there just now I wouldn't answer for the
consequences.''

  ``Ha!'' Benson spitefully retorted. ``This won't go on,
Mr. Hadrian. It shan't, sir. It will be put a stop to to-morrow,
sir. I call it corruption of a young gentleman like
him, and harlotry, sir, I call it. I'd have every jade flogged
that made a young innocent gentleman go on like that,
sir.''

  ``Then why didn't you stop it yourself, Benson? Ah, I
see! you waited---eh? Hm!---or what, Benson? This is
not the first time you have been attendant on Mr. Apollo
and Miss Dryope? You have written to headquarters, have
you? Nothing like zeal, Benson!''

  ``I did my duty, Mr. Hadrian.''

  ``Don't let it rob you of your breath, Benson.''

  The wise youth returned to Lady Blandish, and informed
her of Benson's zeal. The lady's eyes flashed. ``I hope
Richard will treat him as he deserves,'' she said.

  ``Shall we home?'' Adrian inquired.

  ``Do me a favour,'' the lady replied. `` Get my carriage
sent round to meet me at the park-gates.''

  ``Won't you?''------

  ``I want to be alone.''

  Adrian bowed and left her. She was still sitting with her
hands clasped round one knee, gazing towards the dim ray-strewn
valley.

  ``An odd creature!'' muttered the wise youth. ``She's as
odd as any of them. She ought to be a Feverel. I suppose
she's graduating for it. Hang that confounded old ass of a
Benson! He has had the impudence to steal a march on
me! Not a bad suggestion of the Blandish. We'll see
about it.''

  The shadow of the cypress was lessening on the lake. The
moon was climbing high. As Richard rowed the boat, Lucy
sang to him softly. She sang first a fresh little French
song, reminding him of a day when she had been asked to
sing to him before, and he did not care to hear. ``Did I
live?'' he thinks. Then she sang to him a bit of one of
those majestic old Gregorian chants, that, wherever you may
hear them, seem to build up cathedral walls about you. The
young man dropped the sculls. The strange solemn notes
gave a religious tone to his love, and wafted him into the
knightly ages and the reverential heart of chivalry.

  Hanging between two heavens on the lake: floating to her
voice: the moon stepping over and through white shoals of
soft high clouds above and below: floating to her voice---no
other breath abroad! His soul went out of his body as he
listened.

  They must part. He rows her gently shoreward.

  ``I never was so happy as to-night,'' she murmurs.

  ``Look, my Lucy. The lights of the old place are on the
lake. Look where you are to live.''

  ``Which is your room, Richard?''

  He points it out to her.

  ``O Richard! that I were one of the women who wait on
you! I should ask nothing more. How happy she must
be!''

  ``My darling angel-love. You shall be happy; but all
shall wait on you, and I foremost, Lucy.''

  ``Dearest! may I hope for a letter?''

  ``By eleven to-morrow. And I?''

  ``Oh! you will have mine, Richard.''

  ``Tom shall wait for it. A long one, mind! Did you like
my last song?''

  She puts her hand quietly against her bosom, and he
knows where it rests. O love! O heaven!

  They are aroused by the harsh grating of the bow of
the boat against the shingle. He jumps out, and lifts her
ashore.

  ``See!'' she says, as the blush of his embrace subsides---
``See!'' and prettily she mimics awe and feels it a little,
``the cypress does point towards us. O Richard! it does!''

  And he, looking at her rather than at the cypress, delighting
in her arch grave ways---

  `` Why, there's hardly any shadow at all, Lucy. She
mustn't dream, my darling! or dream only of me.''

  ``Dearest! but I do.''

  ``To-morrow, Lucy! The letter in the morning, and you
at night. O happy to-morrow!''

  ``You will be sure to be there, Richard?''

  ``If I am not dead, Lucy.''

  ``O Richard! pray, pray do not speak of that. I shall not
survive you.''

  ``Let us pray, Lucy, to die together, when we are to die.
Death or life, with you! Who is it yonder? I see some
one---is it Tom? It's Adrian!''

  ``Is it Mr. Harley?'' The fair girl shivered.

  ``How dares he come here!'' cried Richard.

  The figure of Adrian, instead of advancing, discreetly
circled the lake. They were stealing away when he called.
His call was repeated. Lucy entreated Richard to go to
him; but the young man preferred to summon his attendant,
Tom, from within hail, and send him to know what was
wanted.

  ``Will he have seen me? Will he have known me?''
whispered Lucy tremulously.

  ``And if he does, love?'' said Richard.

  ``Oh! if he does, dearest---I don't know, but I feel such a
presentiment. You have not spoken of him to-night, Richard.
Is he good?''

  ``Good?'' Richard clutched her hand for the innocent
maiden phrase. ``He's very fond of eating; that's all I
know of Adrian.''

  Her hand was at his lips when Tom returned.

  ``Well, Tom?''

  ``Mr. Adrian wishes particular to speak to you, sir,'' said
Tom, emphasizing his achievement of a four-syllable word.

  ``Do go to him, dearest! Do go!'' Lucy begs him.

  ``Oh, how I hate Adrian!'' The young man grinds his
teeth.

  ``Do go!'' Lucy re-urges him. ``Tom---good Tom---will
see me home. To-morrow, dear love! To-morrow!''

  ``You wish to part from me?''

  ``Oh, unkind! but you must not come with me now. It
may be news of importance, dearest. Think, Richard!''

  ``Tom! go back!''

  At the imperious command the well-drilled Tom strides off
a dozen paces, and sees nothing. Then the precious charge
is confided to him. A heart is cut in twain.

  Richard made his way to Adrian. ``What is it you want
with me, Adrian?''

  ``Are we seconds, or principals, O fiery one?'' was
Adrian's answer. ``I want nothing with you, except to
know whether you have seen Benson.''

  ``Where should I see Benson? What do I know of Benson's
doings?''

  ``Of course not---such a secret old fist as he is! I want
some one to tell him to order Lady Blandish's carriage to be
sent round to the park-gates. I thought he might be round
your way over there---I came upon him accidentally just now
in Abbey-wood---Hey! what's the matter, boy?''

  ``You saw him _there?_''

  ``Hunting Diana, I suppose. He thinks she's not so chaste
as they say,'' continued Adrian. ``Are you going to knock
down that tree?''

  Richard had turned to the cypress, and was tugging at the
tough wood. He left it and went to an ash.

  ``You'll spoil that weeper,'' Adrian cried. ``Down she
comes!---all! But Good-night, Ricky. If you see Benson,
mind you tell him.''

  Doomed Benson following his burly shadow hove in sight
on the white road while Adrian spoke. The wise youth
chuckled and strolled round the lake, glancing over his
shoulder every now and then.

  It was not long before he heard a bellow for help---the
roar of a dragon in his throes. Adrian placidly sat down on
the grass, and fixed his eyes on the water. There, as the
roar was being repeated amid horrid resounding echoes, the
wise youth mused in this wise---

  `` `The Fates are Jews with us when they delay a punishment,'
says the =Pilgrim's Scrip= or words to that effect. Not
a bad idea, that of the Fates being Jews---Jewesses more
classically speaking. The heavens evidently love Benson,
seeing that he gets his punishment on the spot. What a
lovely night! Those two young ones do it well. Master
Ricky is a peppery young man. Love and war come as
natural to him as bread and butter. He gets it from the ap
Gruffudh. I rather believe in race. What a noise that old
ruffian makes! He'll require poulticing with the =Pilgrim's
Scrip.= We shall have a message to-morrow, and a hubbub,
and perhaps all go to town, which won't be bad for one who's
been a prey to all the desires born of dulness for a decade.
Benson howls: there's life in the old dog yet! He bays the
moon. Look at her. She doesn't care. It's the same to her
whether we coo like turtle-doves or roar like twenty lions.
Most beauteous moon! How complacent she looks! How
admirably equable! And yet she has just as much sympathy
for Benson as for Cupid. She would smile on if both were
being birched. She is Perfect Justice. Was that a raven or
Benson? He howls no more. It sounds guttural: frog-like
---something between the brek-kek-kek and the hoarse raven's
croak. The fellow'll be killing him. It's time to go to the
rescue. A deliverer gets more honour by coming in at the
last gasp than if he forestalled catastrophe.---Ho, there,
what's the matter?''

  So saying, the wise youth rose, and leisurely trotted to the
scene of battle, where stood St. George puffing over the
prostrate Dragon.

  ``Holloa, Ricky! is it you?'' said Adrian. ``What's this?
Whom have we here?---Benson, as I live!''

  ``Make this beast get up,'' Richard returned, breathing
hard, and shaking his great ash-branch. ``Make him get
up.''

  ``He seems incapable, my dear boy. What have you been
up to?---Benson! Benson!---I say, Ricky, this looks bad.''

  ``He's shamming!'' Richard clamoured like a savage.
``Spy upon me, will he? I tell you, he's shamming. He
hasn't had half enough. Nothing's too bad for a spy. Let
him get up! Let him get up!''

  ``Insatiate youth! do throw away that enormous weapon.''

  ``He has written to my father,'' Richard shouted. ``The
miserable spy! Let him get up! Let him get up!''

  ``Ooogh! I won't!'' huskily groaned Benson. ``Mr.
Hadrian, you're a witness he's murdered---my back!''---
Cavernous noises took up the tale of his maltreatment.

  ``I daresay you love your back better than any part of
your body now,'' Adrian muttered. ``Come, Benson! be a
man. Mr. Richard has thrown away the stick. Come, and
get off home, and let's see the extent of the damage.''

  ``Ooogh he's a devil! Mr. Hadrian, sir, he's a devil!''
groaned Benson, turning half over in the road to ease his
aches.

  Adrian caught hold of Benson's collar and lifted him to a
sitting posture. He then had a glimpse of what his hopeful
pupil's hand could do in wrath. The wretched butler's coat
was slit and welted; his hat knocked in; the stain of a tremendous
blow across his nose, which made one of his eyes
seem gone; his flabby spirit so broken that he started and
trembled if his pitiless executioner stirred a foot. Richard
stood over him with folded arms, grasping his great stick;
no dawn of mercy for Benson in any corner of his features.

  Benson screwed his neck round to look up at him, and
immediately gasped, ``I won't get up! I won't get up! He's
ready to murder me again!---Mr. Hadrian! if you stand by
and see it, you're liable to the law, sir---I won't get up while
he's near.'' No persuasion could induce Benson to try his
legs while his executioner stood by.

  Adrian took Richard aside: ``You've almost killed the
poor devil, Ricky. You must be satisfied with that. Look
at his face.''

  ``The coward bobbed while I struck,'' said Richard. ``I
marked his back. He ducked. I told him he was getting it
worse.''

  At this civilized piece of savagery, Adrian opened his
mouth to shake out a coil of laughter.

  ``Did you really? I admire that. You told him he was
getting it worse? I thought you were in a passion. Beautifully
cool! Bravo!---You are politely informed that if you
take that posture, in the nature of things and by reasonable
calculation, you will get it worse.''

  Adrian opened his mouth again to shake another roll of
laughter out.

  ``Come,'' he said, ``Excalibur has done his work. Pitch
him into the lake. And see---here comes the Blandish. You
can't be at it again before a woman. Go and meet her, and
tell her the noise was an ox being slaughtered. Or say
Argus.''

  With a whirr that made all Benson's bruises moan and
quiver, the great ash-branch shot aloft, and Richard swung
off to intercept Lady Blandish.

  Adrian got Benson on his feet. The heavy butler was disposed
to summon all the commiseration he could feel for his
bruised flesh. Every half-step he attempted was like a dislocation.
His groans and grunts were frightful.

  ``How much did that hat cost, Benson?'' said Adrian, as
he put it on his head.

  ``A five-and-twenty shilling beaver, Mr. Hadrian!''
Benson caressed its injuries.

  ``The cheapest policy of insurance I remember to have
heard of!'' said Adrian. ``Never part with that hat,
Benson. Love it as you love yourself.''

  Benson staggered, moaning at intervals to his cruel comforter---

  ``He's a devil, Mr. Hadrian! He's a devil, sir, I do
believe, sir. Ooogh! he's a devil!---I can't move, Mr.
Hadrian. I must be fetched. And Dr. Clifford must be
sent for, sir. I shall never be fit for work again. I haven't
a sound bone in my body, Mr. Hadrian.''

  ``You see, Benson, this comes of your declaring war upon
Venus. 'Twas Venus, Venus struck the deadly blow! I
hope the maids will nurse you properly. Let me see: you
are friends with the housekeeper, aren't you? All depends
upon that.''

  ``I'm only a faithful servant, Mr. Hadrian,'' the miserable
butler snarled.

  ``So you've got no friend but your bed. Get to it as quick
as possible, Benson.''

  ``I can't move.'' Benson made a resolute halt. ``I must
be fetched,'' he whinnied. ``It's a shame to ask me to move,
Mr. Hadrian.''

  ``You will admit that you are heavy, Benson,'' said
Adrian, ``so I can't carry you. However, I see Mr. Richard
is very kindly returning to help me.''

  At these words heavy Benson instantly found his legs, and
shambled on.

  Lady Blandish met Richard in dismay.

  ``I have been horribly frightened,'' she said. ``Tell me,
what was the meaning of those cries I heard?''

  ``Only some one doing justice on a spy,'' said Richard, and
the lady smiled, and looked on him fondly, and put her hand
through his hair.

  ``Was that all? I should have done it myself if I had
been a man. Kiss me.''


	CHAPTER XXII.

	RICHARD IS SUMMONED TO TOWN TO HEAR A SERMON.


  By twelve o'clock at noon next day the inhabitants of
Raynham Abbey knew that Berry, the baronet's man, had
arrived post-haste from town, with orders to conduct Mr.
Richard thither, and that Mr. Richard had refused to go, had
sworn he would not, defied his father, and despatched Berry
to the Shades. Berry was all that Benson was not. Whereas
Benson hated woman, Berry admired her warmly. Second
to his own stately person, woman occupied his reflections,
and commanded his homage. Berry was of majestic port,
and used dictionary words. Among the maids of Raynham
his conscious calves produced all the discord and the frenzy
those adornments seem destined to create in tender bosoms.
He had, moreover, the reputation of having suffered terribly
for the sex; which assisted his object in inducing the sex to
suffer terribly for him. What with his calves, and his dictionary
words, and the attractive halo of the mysterious
vindictiveness of Venus surrounding him, this Adonis of the
lower household was a mighty man below, and he moved as
one.

  On hearing the tumult that followed Berry's arrival,
Adrian sent for him, and was informed of the nature of his
mission, and its result.

  ``You should come to me first,'' said Adrian. ``I should
have imagined you were shrewd enough for that, Berry?''

  ``Pardon me, Mr. Adrian,'' Berry doubled his elbow to
explain. ``Pardon, me, sir. Acting recipient of special
injunctions I was not a free agent.''

  Adrian tacitly acknowledged the choiceness of the phraseology,
and asked if he had seen Benson.

  ``I have enjoyed an interview with Mr. Benson, sir.''

  ``I daresay you did enjoy it, Berry!''

  Berry protested: ``On my honour, sir! From the plenitude
of health and spirits I regarded Mr. Benson with profound---
a---profound''------a word fine enough for his emotion
seemed wanting.

  ``Mr. Richard have shattered his ganglions, sir.''

  ``His what?'' Adrian asked.

  Berry corrected the casual error: ``I should say, his idioshincrazy,
sir.''

  ``Accentuate the fourth, not the fifth syllable, Berry.''

  ``Exactly, sir.''

  ``And now go to Mr. Richard again, Berry. There will be
a little confusion if he holds back. Just go to him, and perhaps
you had better throw out a hint or so of apoplexy. A
slight hint will do. And here---Berry! when you return to
town, you had better not mention anything---to quote Johnson---
of Benson's spiflication.''

  ``Certainly not, sir.''

  Berry retired, saying to himself, ``What I like, is to confabulate
with educated people. You always learn something
new from them.'' And he drew forth his pocket-Johnson that
he might commit the new words he had learnt to memory.

  The wise youth's hint had the desired effect on Richard.

  He dashed off a hasty letter by Tom to Belthorpe, and,
mounting his horse, galloped to the Bellingham station.

  Sir Austin was sitting down to a quiet early dinner at his
hotel, when the Hope of Raynham burst into his room.

  The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary,
for he was singularly just and self-accusing while pride was
not up in arms, he had been thinking all day after the receipt
of Benson's letter that he was deficient in cordiality, and did
not, by reason of his excessive anxiety, make himself sufficiently
his son's companion: was not enough, as he strove to
be, mother and father to him; preceptor and friend; previsor
and associate. He had not to ask his conscience where he had
lately been to blame towards the System. He had slunk
away from Raynham in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age,
and this young woman of the parish (as Benson had termed
sweet Lucy in his letter) was the consequence.

  Yes! pride and sensitiveness wore his chief foes, and he
would trample on them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard
upon an Englishman at any time---doubly so to one so shame-faced
at emotion in cool blood, as it were. It gave him a
strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth seemed to
answer to it; he was excited. Was his love, then, commencing
to correspond with his father's as in those intimate days
before the Blossoming Season?

  But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried
out, ``My dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared---You
are better, sir? Thank God!'' Sir Austin stood away from
him.

  ``Safe?'' he said. ``What has alarmed you?''

  Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and
seized his hand and kissed it, murmuring again that he
thanked God.

  Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.

  ``Those doctors are such fools!'' Richard broke out. ``I
was sure they were wrong. They don't know headache from
apoplexy. It's worth the ride, sir, to see you. You left
Raynham so suddenly---But you are well! It was not an
attack of real apoplexy?''

  His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not.
Richard pursued:

  ``If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if
coroner's inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be
found guilty of mare-slaughter. Cassandra'll be knocked
up. I was too early for the train at Bellingham, and I
wouldn't wait. She did the distance in four hours and
three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?''

  ``It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope,'' said the
baronet, not so well pleased to find that it was not simple
obedience that had brought the youth to him in such haste.

  ``I'm ready,'' replied Richard. ``I shall be in time to
return by the last train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in
your charge for a rest.''

  His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced
gobbling with an eagerness that might pass for
appetite.

  ``All well at Raynham?'' said the baronet.

  ``Quite, sir.''

  ``Nothing new?''

  ``Nothing, sir.''

  ``The same as when I left?''

  ``No change whatever!''

  ``I shall be glad to get back to the old place,'' said the
baronet. ``My stay in town has certainly been profitable.
I have made some pleasant acquaintances who may probably
favour us with a visit there in the late autumn---people you
may be pleased to know. They are very anxious to see
Raynham.''

  ``I love the old place,'' cried Richard. ``I never wish to
leave it.''

  ``Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to
see town.''

  ``Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don't want to remain
here. I've seen enough of it.''

  ``How did you find your way to me?''

  Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the
miles of brick, and the noise, and the troops of people, concluding,
``There's no place like home!''

  The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and
favoured him with a double-dealing sentence---

  ``To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed
the world, is youth's foolishness, my son. Reverence
time! A better maxim that than your Horatian.''

  ``He knows all!'' thought Richard, and instantly drew
away leagues from his father, and throw up fortifications
round his love and himself.

  Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and
said, with much briskness, ``I shall just be in time, sir, if
we walk. Will you come with me to the station?''

  The baronet did not answer.

  Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his
father's eyes fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered,
and played with his empty glass.

  ``I think we will have a little more claret,'' said the
baronet.

  Claret was brought, and they were left alone.

  The baronet then drew within arm's-reach of his son, and
began:

  ``I am not aware what you may have thought of me,
Richard, during the years we have lived together; and indeed
I have never been in a hurry to be known to you; and,
if I had died before my work was done, I should not have
complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank
me. Perhaps, as it is, I never may. Everything, save
selfishness, has its recompense. I shall be content if you
prosper.''

  He fetched a breath and continued: ``You had in your
infancy a great loss.'' Father and son coloured simultaneously.
``To make that good to you I chose to isolate myself
from the world, and devote myself entirely to your welfare;
and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the son I
have reared is one of the most hopeful of God's creatures.
But for that very reason you are open to be tempted the
most, and to sink the deepest. It was the first of the angels
who made the road to hell.''

  He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.

  ``In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go
to wreck very easily. It sounds like superstition; I cannot
but think we are tried as most men are not. I see it in us
all. And you, my son, are compounded of two races. Your
passions are violent. You have had a taste of revenge. You
have seen, in a small way, that the pound of flesh draws
rivers of blood. But there is now in you another power.
You are mounting to the table-land of life, where mimic
battles are changed to real ones. And you come upon it
laden equally with force to create and to destroy.'' He deliberated
to announce the intelligence, with deep meaning:
``There are women in the world, my son!''

  The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.

  The baronet gravely repeated his last sentence.

  ``It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly
on trial. It is when you know them that life is either a
mockery to you, or, as some find it, a gift of blessedness.
They are our ordeal. Love of any human object is the
soul's ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not.''

  The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw
the moon-lighted wood, and the vision of his beloved. He
could barely hold himself down and listen.

  ``I believe,'' the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness
of belief, ``good women exist.''

  Oh, if he knew Lucy!

  ``But,'' and the baronet gazed on Richard intently, ``it is
given to very few to meet them on the threshold---I may say,
to none. We find them after hard buffeting, and usually,
when we find the one fitted for us, our madness has misshaped
our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are not the
end, but the means, of life. In youth we think them the
former, and thousands, who have not even the excuse of
youth, select a mate---or worse---with that sole view. I
believe women punish us for so perverting their uses. They
punish Society.''

  The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled
into consequences.

  `Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest
teacher,' says the =Pilgrim's Scrip;= and Sir Austin, in
schooling himself to speak with moderation of women, was
beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the case.

  Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.

  Cold Blood said, ``It is a passion coming in the order of
nature, the ripe fruit of our animal being.''

  Hot Blood felt: ``It is a divinity! All that is worth
living for in the world.''

  Cold Blood said: ``It is a fever which tests our strength,
and too often leads to perdition.''

  Hot Blood felt: ``Lead whither it will, I follow it.''

  Cold Blood said: ``It is a name men and women are much
in the habit of employing to sanctify their appetites.''

  Hot Blood felt: ``It is worship; religion; life!''

  And so the two parallel lines ran on.

  The baronet became more personal:

  ``You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you
cannot know; but you must know that it is something very
deep, and---I do not wish to speak of it---but a father must
sometimes petition for gratitude, since the only true expression
of it is his son's moral good. If you care for my love,
or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep
you what I have made you, and guard you from the snares
besetting you. It was in my hands once. It is ceasing to
be so. Remember, my son, what my love is. It is different,
I fear, with most fathers: but I am bound up in your welfare:
what you do affects me vitally. You will take no
step that is not intimate with my happiness, or my misery.
And I have had great disappointments, my son.''

  So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in
his frenzied state he could not without emotion hear him
thus speak.

  Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could
see when he was winning the battle, thought proper in his
wisdom to water the dryness of his sermon with a little
jocoseness, on the subject of young men fancying themselves
in love, and, when they were raw and green, absolutely
wanting to be---that most awful thing, which the wisest and
strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification
and penance-married! He sketched the
Foolish Young Fellow---the object of general ridicule and
covert contempt. He sketched the Woman---the strange
thing made in our image, and with all our faculties---passing
to the rule of one who in taking her proved that he could not
rule himself, and had no knowledge of her save as a choice
morsel which he would burn the whole world, and himself in
the bargain, to possess. He harped upon the Foolish Young
Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin tingle and
was half suffocated with shame and rage.

  After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he
had quite undone his work. He might analyze Love and
anatomize Woman. He might accord to her her due position,
and paint her fair: he might be shrewd, jocose, gentle,
pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.

  Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered:
``Have you anything to tell me, Richard?'' and hoping for
a confession, and a thorough re-establishment of confidence,
the callous answer struck him cold: ``I have not.''

  The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of
his fingers.

  Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to
the window. In the section of sky over the street twinkled
two or three stars; shining faintly, feeling the moon. The
moon was rising: the woods were lifting up to her: his star
of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set about
flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the
woodland keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.

  A succession of great sighs brought his father's hand on
his shoulder.

  ``You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell
me, Richard! Remember, there is no home for the soul
where dwells a shadow of untruth!''

  ``Nothing at all, sir,'' the young man replied, meeting him
with the full orbs of his eyes.

  The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.

  At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his
impatience, and he said: ``Do you intend me to stay here,
sir? Am I not to return to Raynham at all to-night?''

  The baronet was again falsely jocular:

  ``What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes'
start?''

  ``Cassandra will take me,'' said the young man earnestly.
``I needn't ride her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend
me your Winkelried? I should be down with him in little
better than three hours.''

  ``Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked.''

  ``Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows
the horse, and would treat him properly. May I have him,
sir?''

  The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked. At least,
if he missed his love that night he would be near her,
breathing the same air, marking what star was above her
bed-chamber, hearing the hushed night-talk of the trees
about her dwelling: looking on the distances that were like
hope half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as Hesper,
since he knew her. There were two swallows under the
eaves shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows: two swallows,
mates in one nest, blissful birds, who twittered and cheep-cheeped
to the sole-lying beauty in her bed. Around these
birds the lover's heart revolved, he knew not why. He associated
them with all his close-veiled dreams of happiness.
Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave
the nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness
of dawn. It seemed to him now that if he could be at Raynham
to see them in to-morrow's dawn he would be compensated
for his incalculable loss of to-night: he would forgive
and love his father, London, the life, the world. Just to see
those purple backs and white breasts flash out into the quiet
morning air! He wanted no more.

  The baronet's trifling had placed this enormous boon
within the young man's visionary grasp.

  He still went on trying the temper of poor Tantalus---

  ``You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham.
It is unfair to disturb the maids.''

  Richard overrode every objection.

  ``Well, then, my son,'' said the baronet, preserving his
half-jocular air, ``I must tell you that it is my wish to have
you in town.''

  ``Then you have not been ill at all, sir!'' cried Richard,
as in his despair he seized the whole plot.

  ``I have been as well as you could have desired me to be,''
said his father.

  ``Why did they lie to me?'' the young man wrathfully
exclaimed.

  ``I think, Richard, you can best answer that,'' rejoined
Sir Austin, kindly severe.

  Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow
prevented Richard from expostulating further. Sir Austin
saw him grinding his passion into powder for future
explosion, and thought it best to leave him for awhile.


	CHAPTER XXIII.

	INDICATES THE APPROACHES OF FEVER.

  For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and
endure the teachings of the System in a new atmosphere.
He had to sit and listen to men of science who came to
renew their intimacy with his father, and whom of all men
his father wished him to respect and study; practically
scientific men being, in the baronet's estimation, the only
minds thoroughly mated and enviable. He had to endure
an introduction to the Grandisons, and meet the eyes of
his kind, haunted as he was by the Foolish Young Fellow.
The idea that he might by any chance be identified with
him held the poor youth in silent subjection. And it was
horrible. For it was a continued outrage on the fair image
he had in his heart. The notion of the world laughing at
him because he loved sweet Lucy stung him to momentary
frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in his spirit.
Also the System desired to show him whither young women
of the parish lead us, and he was dragged about at night-time
to see the sons and daughters of darkness, after the
fashion prescribed to Mr. Thompson; how they danced and
ogled down the high road of perdition. But from this sight
possibly the teacher learnt more than his pupil, since we find
him seriously asking his meditative hours, in the Note-book:
``Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one gender?'' a question
certainly not suggested to him at Raynham; and again---
``Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an importance?
. . .'' to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for
he gives it no other in the Note-book. But, as I apprehend,
he had come to plead in behalf of women here, and had
deducted something from positive observation. To Richard
the scenes he witnessed were strange wild pictures, likely if
anything to have increased his misanthropy, but for his
love.

  Mrs. Grandison appeared to be in raptures with the son of
a System. What her daughters thought of a young gentleman
who did nothing but frown and bite his lips in their
company may be imagined. With Carola, however, he got
on better.

  Riding in the park one morning, Carola beheld her
intended galloping furiously down the Row, and left her
sister Clementina's side to waylay him. He pulled up
smartly, and this young person's frank accost was---

  ``I say! are you afraid of girls?''

  He stared at her and did his salute laughing, upon which
she said---

  ``No, I see you're not. My sisters all say you are. I
should think you were not afraid of anything. A man
afraid of girls! I never heard the like!''

  ``Well!'' said Richard, ``at all events I'm not afraid of
you. Are you a girl?''

  Carola immediately became pensive.

  ``Yes,'' she sighed, striping her pony's ears with her whip,
``I'm afraid I am! I used to keep hoping once that I wasn't.
I'm afraid it's no use.'' She seriously shook her curls, and
looked up at him. Richard shouted with laughter.

  ``But what do you want to be?'' he asked, scrutinizing
the comical young person.

  ``A boy, to be sure!'' said Carola, and pouted proudly, as
if the wish had raised her out of her sex. At this Richard
laughed again and took to the young woman. They trotted
on in company. Within five minutes he had all the secrets
of the family.

  ``When I like anybody,'' said Carola, ``I always speak out
everything I know.''

  ``And you like me?''

  ``Yes, I do. What do you think they call your father?---
The Griffin! That's what they call him. I don't know why.
I like him. Do you know who gave me this pony? He did,
to be sure! He bought it the day after my birthday. He's
fonder of me than you are. I like fathers better than
mothers. My pa and ma don't agree. I say! what may I
call you?''

  Richard gave her permission to call him what she
pleased.

  ``Well, then, Richard---if you don't really mind. What a
nice fellow you are, and we all thought you so nasty! I
was going to say, I wish they'd let us ride our ponies stride-ways?''

  Richard, with all the muscles of his face in play, lamented
the severe restriction.

  ``It's so much handier,'' Carola continued. ``Look at
this! all one side!---I used to when I was little, though.
Not here, you know,---in the country. And ma knew of it.
She didn't interfere. She wanted me to be a boy. If I call
you Richard, you'll call me Carl, won't you? That's the
German for Charles. In the country the boys call me
Charley. Can't I ride slapping?''

  ``Capital!'' said Richard. ``Let's have a gallop.''

  After a short heat, Carola slackened her pace to recommence:

  ``Do you know why none of my sisters'll have you?
Because they've all got lovers themselves---all but me.
And they have letters from them, too, and write back. I
shouldn't know what to say. Ma would let us have you,
but she wouldn't let us have anybody else.''

  ``Really?'' said Richard.

  ``Yes,'' Carola nodded. ``Ma says you are going to be a
hero. One of us is to be married to you. Do you call me
good-looking?''

  Richard complimented her by saying he thought she
would grow to be a very handsome chap.

  Carola assured him she could not think it. ``My nose
turns up, and my cheeks are so red. Pa calls them cabbage-roses.
I don't mind the `roses,' but I can't bear the `cabbage'!
Why is it you laugh so?''

  ``Because you're such a funny fellow, Carl.''

  ``Am I? Do you like funny fellows?''

  ``Of course I do. The funny fellows are always my best
friends.''

  ``Why, now, that's just like me,'' exclaimed Carola.
``We're just alike. I hate people who mope. I thought
you moped at first. I suppose you were only a little put
out---weren't you?''

  ``Only a little,'' sighed poor Richard.

  ``I declare if you don't talk exactly like my sister Clem!
---She's moping in love you know,---Richard!''

  ``Well, old friend?''

  ``You don't hear me. Why are you so sad in a minute?
Why do you call me `old friend'?''

  ``Because''---he bent down and put his hand on her neck
---``because, because---well! why?---I suppose it's because I
like you better than any of my new friends.''

  ``Do you?'' cried the joyful Carola, clapping her hands.
``That's right! I'm so glad. Mind you always do,
Richard!---won't you? And I will you. Are you fond of
theatres?''

  Richard informed her he had never been to one in his
life, which caused lively astonishment to Miss Carl.

  ``Then you don't know what a beautiful lady is if you've
never been to a theatre,'' she said authoritatively.

  ``I'm afraid I do!'' replied the lover.

  ``There you are again---just like Clem!---Are you in love,
too? Oh, I hope it isn't with Clem! She'll never have
you. I heard her say she'd die first. I did indeed!---It's a
secret---his name's Walter. I've seen her letters: Lieutenant
Papworth, in the Hussars. She begins them---`Dearest,
dearest Walter!'---and they take her hours to write---I
shouldn't write like that. I should say, `Dear Richard! I
love you. I hope we shall be married soon. Your faithful
Carl.' That would do---wouldn't it?''

  Richard looked down upon her with something like veritable
affection. Almost every turn in the artless little maid's
prattle touched a new mood in him, and beguiled away his
melancholy.

  ``That would just do,'' he said. ``All we want is to be
married soon!''

  Carola flushed up and was quiet. Clementina cantered to
join them, bowing distantly to Richard, as if anything like
familiarity involved the fate of her adored hussar.

  After this conversation with the daughter of a System,
Richard informed his father that he thought girls were very
like boys.

  ``I think they are,'' said his father. ``I am beginning to
think that the subsequent immense distinction is less one
of sex than of education. They are drilled into hypocrites.''

  ``When they much prefer riding strideways,'' said Richard,
and repeated some of his young friend's remarks, which his
father evidently thought charming, and chuckled over frequently.
A girl so like a boy was quite his ideal of a girl.

  Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover
during the first two weeks of exile. Suddenly they ceased;
and now Richard fell into such despondency that his father
in alarm had to take measures to hasten their return to
Raynham. At the close of the third week Berry laid a pair
of letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the breakfast-table,
and, after reading one attentively, the baronet
asked his son if he was inclined to quit the metropolis.

  ``For Raynham, sir?'' cried Richard, and relapsed, saying,
``As you will!'' aware that he had given a glimpse of
the Foolish Young Fellow.

  Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements
for their instant return to Raynham.

  The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his
son's wishes was a composition of the wise youth Adrian's,
and ran thus:


  ``Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities.
Happy when a faithful fool is the main sufferer
in a household! I quite agree with you that a faithful fool
is the best servant of great schemes. Benson is now a piece
of history. I tell him that this is indemnity enough, and
that the sweet Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being
half-flayed before she will condescend to notice them; but
Benson, I regret to say, ignobly rejects the comfort so fine a
reflection should offer, and had rather keep his skin and live
opaque. Heroism seems partly a matter of training. Faithful
folly is Benson's nature: the rest has been thrust upon
him.

  ``The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I
had an interview with the fair Papist myself, and also with
the man Blaize. They were both very sensible, though one
swore and the other sighed. She is pretty. I hope she
does not paint. As to her appearance she would affect
Adam more than me; but, as I did not see her as Eve was
seen, I cannot tell how the likeness may be. I can affirm
that her legs are strong, for she walks to Bellingham twice
a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having confessed and
been made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back
the brisker, of which my Protestant muscular system is yet
aware. It was on the road to Bellingham I engaged her.
She is well in the matter of hair. Madam Godiva might
challenge her, it would be a fair match. Has it never struck
you that Woman is nearer the _vegetable_ than Man?---
Mr. Blaize intends her for his son---a junction that every
lover of fairy mythology must desire to see consummated.
Young Tom is heir to all the _agr<e'>mens_ of the Beast. The
maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very Proculus
among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the
maids. Beauty does not speak bad grammar---and altogether
she is better out of the way. Allow me to congratulate
you on having found Richard's unripe half in good condition,
and rosy. I shall be glad to see the original man
again, to whom his Tutor's salute and benediction.''


  The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady's letter,
and said:


  ``I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability,
and heartily sad it has made me. She is indeed very much
above her station---pity that it is so! She is almost beautiful
---_quite_ beautiful at times, and not in _any way_ what you
have been led to fancy. The poor child had no story to tell.
I have again seen her, and talked with her for an hour as
kindly as I could. I could gather nothing more than we
know. It is just a woman's history as it invariably commences
(not with _all_---Is it fortunate for us, or the reverse?)
Richard is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce him,
and sacrifice herself for his sake. Are we so bad? She
asked me what she was to do. She would do whatever was
imposed upon her---all but pretend to love another, and that
she never would, and, I believe, _never will._ You know I am
sentimental, and I confess we dropped a _few tears_ together.
Her uncle has sent her for the winter to the institution
---where it appears she was educated, and where they are very
fond of her and want to keep her, which it would be a good
thing if they were to do. The man is a good sort of man.
She was entrusted to him by her father, and he never interferes
with her religion, and is very scrupulous about all that
pertains to it, though, as he says, he is a Christian himself.
In the Spring (but the poor child does not know this) she is
to come back, and be married to his lout of a son. I am
_determined_ to prevent that. May I not reckon on your promise
to aid me? When you see her, I am sure you will.
It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing.
You know, they are _cousins._ She asked me, where in the
world was there one like Richard? What could I answer?
They were your own words, and spoken with a depth of
conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to think
of him when he comes, and discovers what I have been
doing. I hope I have been really doing right! A good
deed, you say, never dies; but we cannot always know---I
must rely on you. Yes, it is, I should think, easy to suffer
martyrdom when one is sure of one's cause! but then one
_must_ be sure of it. I have done nothing lately but to repeat
to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C. 7, P.S.; and it has
consoled me, I cannot say why, except that all wisdom consoles,
whether it applies directly or not:

  `` `_For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained
to Him; that they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with
their Strength._'

  ``I like to know of what you were thinking when you
composed this or that saying---what _suggested_ it. May not
one be admitted to inspect the machinery of wisdom? I
feel curious to know how thoughts---_real_ thoughts---are born.
Not that I hope to win the secret. Here is the beginning
of one (but we poor women can never put together even two
of the three ideas which you say go to form a thought):
`When a wise man makes a false step, will he not go farther
than a fool?' It has just flitted through me.

  ``I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to
recommence the readings. I dislike the _sneering essence_ of
his writings. I keep referring to his face, until the dislike
seems to become personal. How different is it with Wordsworth!
And yet I cannot escape from the thought that he
is always solemnly thinking of himself (but I _do_ reverence
him). But this is curious; Byron was a greater egoist, and
yet I do not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a
beast of the desert, savage and beautiful; and the former is
what one would imagine a superior donkey reclaimed from
the heathen to be---a _very_ superior donkey, I mean, with
great power of speech and great natural complacency, and
whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission.
The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in
a superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it
not strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has
the greater power over me. How is that?''

(``Because,'' Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil,
``women are cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion,
rather than yield their hearts to Excellence and Nature's
Inspiration.'')

  The letter pursued:

  ``I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The
latter offends me. I suppose we women do not really care for
humour. You are right in saying we have none ourselves, and
`cackle' instead of laugh. It is true (of me, at least) that
`Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat man.' I want to
know what he _illustrates._ And Don Quixote---what end can
be served in making a noble mind ridiculous?---I hear you
say---practical! So it is. We are very narrow, I know.
But we like wit---practical again! Or in your words (when
I really _think_ they generally come to my aid---perhaps it is
that it is often all _your thought_); we `prefer the rapier
thrust, to the broad embrace, of Intelligence.' By the way,
is there a characteristic in Mrs. Grandison? Or is she only
_good?_ If so, how tired you must be! I hope Richard really is
beginning to take an interest in the child. I sincerely trust
that this young creature _is not so good as her mother._ I wish
indeed the experiment were well `launched through the
surf,' as you do us the honour to term it.

  ``Heigho! I have given up a season to you. What is to
be my reward?''

  Something, no doubt, the baronet had in store for her, and
possibly the lady's instinct made her meditate on the day
when Richard should be ``launched through the surf'' in
earnest.

  He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen
passages as he walked about the room, and considering he
scarce knew what. There are ideas language is too gross
for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to us and have
a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the
filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves,
much less to others. Why did he twice throw a look into
the glass in the act of passing it? Why did he for a
moment stand with erect head facing it? His eyes for the
nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey-gathered
brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had
traced over the circles half up his high straight forehead;
the iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell away
in the fashion of Richard's plume. His general appearance
showed the tints of years; but none of their weight, and
nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far
satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his
essential self through the mask we wear. Perhaps he was
speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he presented
to the lady's discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had
not a suspicion. But he knew with what extraordinary
lucidity women can, when it pleases them, and when their
feelings are not quite boiling under the noonday sun, seize
all the sides of a character, and put their fingers on its weak
point. He was cognizant of the total absence of the humorous
in himself (the want that most shut him out from his
fellows), and perhaps the clear-thoughted intensely self-examining
gentleman filmily conceived, Me also, in common
with the poet, she gazes on as one of the superior---grey
beasts!

  He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that
great-mindedness, and could at times snatch very luminous
glances at the broad reflector which the world of fact lying
outside our narrow compass holds up for us to see ourselves
in when we will. Unhappily, the faculty of laughter, which
is due to this gift, was denied him; and having once seen,
he, like the companion of friend Balaam, could go no farther.
For a good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the
blight of self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had
given a healthier view of our atmosphere of life; but he had
it not.

  Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the
heated brain and brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir
Austin tried hard to feel infallible, as a man with a System
should feel; and because he could not do so, after much
mental conflict, he descended to entertain a personal antagonism
to the young woman who had stepped in between his
experiment and success. He did not think kindly of her.
Lady Blandish's encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty
annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in a measure forfeited
his rights to it, he took the common ground of fathers, and
demanded, ``Why he was not justified in doing all that lay
in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away
upon the first creature with a pretty face he encountered?''
Deliberating thus, he lost the tenderness he should have had
for his experiment---the living, burning youth at his elbow,
and his excessive love for him took a rigorous tone. It
appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that the uncle
of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent
scheme of marrying her to his son, should not only not be
thwarted in his object but encouraged and even assisted.
At least, not thwarted. Sir Austin had no glass before him
while these ideas hardened in his mind, and he had rather
forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.

  Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both
were too pre-occupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham,
the dark was filling the hollows of the country. Over the
pine-hills beyond the station a last rosy streak lingered
across a green sky. Richard eyed it while they flew along.
It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his
love, and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids.
The sad beauty of that one spot in the heavens seemed to
call out to his soul to swear to his Lucy's truth to him: was
like the sorrowful visage of his fleur-de-luce, as he called her,
appealing to him for faith. That tremulous tender way she
had of half-closing and catching light on the nether-lids,
when sometimes she looked up in her lover's face---a look so
mystic-sweet it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams:
he saw it yonder, and his blood thrilled.

  Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what,
before which our grosser being melts, and we, much as we
hope to be in the Awaking, stand etherealized, trembling
with new joy? They come but rarely; rarely even in love,
when we fondly think them revelations. Mere sensations
they are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the
spiritual scale than so many translucent glorious _polypi_ that
quiver on the shores, the hues of heaven running through
them. Yet in the harvest of our days it is something for
the animal to have had such mere fleshly polypian experiences
to look back upon, and they give him an horizon-pale
seas of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they
do not bound him) may find the Isles of Bliss sooner than
another. Sensual faith in the upper glories is something.
``Let us remember,'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``that Nature,
though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of the
Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the
spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting
that through Nature only can we _ascend._ Cherished,
trained, and purified, she is then partly worthy the divine
mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon saw the
Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog.''

  It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled
the young man, he knew not how it was, for his sadness and
his forebodings vanished. The soft wand touched him. At
that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly, Richard might
have fallen upon his heart. He could not. He chose to feel
injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue his
System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy
of the creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is
unreflecting and vindictive as jealousy of woman.

  Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn
evening about the Bellingham station. Richard stood a
moment as he stepped from the train, and drew the country
air into his lungs with large heaves of the chest. Leaving
his father to the felicitations of the station-master, he went
into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had
received private orders through Berry to be in attendance
with his young master's mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in
a plantation of firs uninclosed on the borders of the road,
where Richard, knowing his retainer's zest for conspiracy
too well to seek him anywhere but in the part most favoured
with shelter and concealment, found him furtively whiffing
tobacco.

  ``What news, Tom?---Is she well? Is she ill? Is she
safe?''

  Tom smuggled his pipe into his pocket. He sent his undress
cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old agriculural
habit to which he was still a slave in moments of
abstract thought or sudden difficulty.

  ``No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard,'' he whinnied
with a deprecating false grin, as he beheld his master's eye
vacantly following the action. ``You're looking uncommon
well, sir.''

  ``D'you hear, Tom?'' cried Richard imperatively. ``I
haven't had a letter for a week! How is she? Where is
she?''

  Tom stepped back to Cassandra's hind-quarters, and round
to her fore-feet, pretending to be spying after furze-thorns.
Between anger and alarm at Tom's hesitation to answer
honestly, a quality that served for patience restrained his
master; but Tom saw that this trifling would not do, and he
got up from the mare's loins, and said, holding forth both
hands open, ``There, sir! I don't mind saying it. I know I
ought for to have powsted a letter, tell'n you all of it as much
as I'd come to hear---but there, Mr. Richard, I do writ so
shocken bad, and that's the truth, I wasn't the man for't.
Well, sir,'' Tom warmed to speak out now he had began, ``I
should a' stopped her. I know that, sir. I know'd how it'd
knock you down. But I ain't a scholar! I ain't what you
thinks or hopes for---bain't a bit of a hero. I never can do
anything 'less it's in company. I can't do't by myself. _I'm_
no hero. I know very well Lord Nelson 'd a done it,'' continued
Tom, remembering, doubtless, many a lecture on the
darling hero of Britain. ``_He'd_ 'a done it. So'd the Duke o'
Wellington, or any o' them Peninsular War chaps. But I
hadn't the spirit to step in and say---You shan't take her
away. I thought about 't, but there---I couldn't! There's
no more mistakes between us now, Mr. Richard. You see, I
ain't a bit better than any other chap.''

  Thus Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising
outward calm, only getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck,
and looking very hard at Tom without seeing a speck of him,
which had the effect on Tom of making him sincerely wish
his master would punch his head at once rather than fix him
in that owl-like way.

  ``Go on, Tom!'' said Richard huskily. ``Yes? She's
gone! Well?''

  Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of
trifles, and recited how he had heard from a female domestic
at Belthorpe of the name of Davenport, formerly known to
him, that the young lady never slept a wink from the hour
she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till morning
crying most pitifully, though she never complained. Hereat
the tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks.
Tom said he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him
at work, ciphering at a terrible sum---that and nothing else
all day! saying, it was to please his young master on his
return. ``Likewise something in Lat'n,'' added Tom.
``Nom'tive Mouser!---'nough to make ye mad, sir!'' he
exclaimed with pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire
a Latin declension.

  Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she
was very sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as
she passed in the fly along with young Tom Blaize. ``She
have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,'' said Tom, ``and cryin'
don't spoil them.'' For which his hand was violently
wrenched.

  Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road,
the young lady had hung out her hand, and seemed to move
it forward and back, as much as to say, Good-bye, Tom!

  ``And though she couldn't see me,'' said Tom, ``I took off my
hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like me.''

  Tom was at high-pressure sentiment---what with his education
for a hero and his master's love-stricken state.

  ``You saw no more of her, Tom?''

  ``No, sir. That was the last!'' said Tom, imitating the
forlornness of his master's voice.

  ``That was the last you saw of her, Tom?''

  ``Well, sir, I saw nothin' more.''

  ``You didn't go to the corner of the road to see------?''

  ``Dash'd if I thought o' doing that, sir!''

  ``And so she went out of sight, Torn?''

  ``Clean gone, that she were, sir!''

  ``Why did they take her away? what have they done with
her? where have they taken her to?''

  These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal
heaven rather than to Tom.

  ``Why didn't she write?'' they were resumed. ``Why did
she leave? She's mine. She belongs to me! Who dared
take her way? Why did she leave without writing?------
Tom!''

  ``Yes, sir,'' said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself
up to the word of command. He expected a variation of the
theme from the change of tone with which his name had been
pronounced, but it was again, ``Where have they taken her
to?'' and this was even more perplexing to Tom than his
hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down
the corners of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.

  ``She _had_ been crying---you saw that, Tom?''

  ``No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin' all night
and all day, I sh'd say.''

  ``And she was crying when you saw her?''

  ``She look'd as if she'd just done for a moment, sir,'' Tom
insinuated.

  ``But her face was white?''

  ``White as a sheet.''

  Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had
caught a new view from these facts. He was in a cage,
always knocking against the same bars, fly as he might.

  Her tears were the stars in his black night. He clung to
them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were
at least pledges of love. She could not have been too
miserable to please him.

  ``Tom!'' he said, ``I'll follow her at once.''

  ``Better wait,'' Tom advised, ``till I search out where the
young lady is---hadn't you, sir?''

  The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was
there but the steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was
drawn: thither he must go. He had not listened to Tom's
sound sense, but it appeared to guide him, for he mounted
Cassandra, saying: ``Tell them something, Tom. I shan't be
home to dinner,'' and rode off toward the forsaken home of
light over Belthorpe, wherein he saw the wan hand of his
Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he advanced. His jewel
was stolen,---he must gaze upon the empty box.


	CHAPTER XXIV.

	CRISIS IN THE APPLE-DISEASE.

  Night had come on as Richard entered the old elm-shaded,
grass-bordered lane leading down from Raynham to
Belthorpe. The pale eye of twilight was shut. The wind
had tossed up the bank of Western cloud, which was now
flying broad and unlighted across the sky, broad and balmy
---the charioted South-west at full charge behind his panting
coursers. As he neared the farm his heart fluttered and
leapt up. He was sure she must be there. She must have
returned. Why should she have left for good without
writing? He caught suspicion by the throat, making it
voiceless, if it lived: he silenced reason. Her not writing
was now a proof she had returned. He listened to nothing
but his imperious passion, and murmured sweet words for
her, as if she were by: tender cherishing epithets of love in
the nest. She was there---she moved somewhere about like
a silver flame in the dear old house doing her sweet household
duties. His blood began to sing: O happy those
within, to see her, and be about her! By some extraordinary
process he contrived to cast a sort of glory round
the burly person of Farmer Blaize himself. And oh! to
have companionship with a seraph one must know a seraph's
bliss, and was not young Tom to be envied? The smell of
late clematis brought on the wind enwrapped him, and went
to his brain, and threw a light over the old red-brick house,
for he remembered where it grew, and the winter rose-tree,
and the jessamine, and the passion-flower: the garden in
front with the standard roses tended by her hands; the long
wall to the left striped by the branches of the cherry, the
peep of a further garden through the wall, and then the
orchard, and the fields beyond---the happy circle of her
dwelling! it flashed before his eyes while he looked on the
darkness. And yet it was the reverse of hope which kindled
this light and inspired the momentary calm he experienced:
it was despair exaggerating delusion, wilfully building up
on a groundless basis. ``For the tenacity of true passion is
terrible,'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip:= ``it will stand against
the hosts of heaven, God's great array of Facts, rather than
surrender its aim, and must be crushed before it will succumb
---sent to the lowest pit!'' He knew she was not
there; she was gone. But the power of a will strained
to madness fought at it, kept it down, conjured forth her
ghost, and would have it as he dictated. Poor youth! the
great array of facts was in due order of march.

  He had breathed her name many times, and once over-loud;
almost a cry for her escaped him. He had not noticed
the opening of a door and the noise of a foot along the
gravel walk. He was leaning over Cassandra's uneasy neck
watching the one window intently, when a voice addressed
him out of the darkness.

  ``Be that you, young gentleman?---Mr. Fev'rel?''

  Richard's trance was broken. ``Mr. Blaize!'' he said,
recognizing the farmer's voice.

  ``Good even'n t' you, sir,'' returned the farmer. ``I knew
the mare though I didn't know you. Rather bluff to-night
it be. Will ye step in, Mr. Fev'rel? it's beginnin' to spit---
going to be a wildish night, I reckon.''

  Richard dismounted. The farmer called one of his men
to hold the mare, and ushered the young man in. Once there
Richard's conjurations ceased. There was a deadness about
the rooms and passages that told of her absence. The walls
he touched---these were the vacant shell of his divinity. He
had never been in the house since he knew her, and now what
strange sweetness, and what pangs!

  Young Tom Blaize was in the parlour, squared over the
table in open-mouthed examination of an ancient book of the
fashions for a summer month which had elapsed during his
mother's minority. Young Tom was respectfully studying
the aspects of the radiant beauties of the polite work. He
also was a thrall of woman, newly enrolled, and full of
wonder.

  ``What, Tom!'' the farmer sang out as soon as he had
opened the door; ``there ye 'be! at yer Folly agin, are ye?
What good'll them fashens do to you, I'd like t' know?
Come, shut up, and go and see to Mr. Fev'rel's mare. He's
al'ays at that ther' Folly now. I say there never were a
better name for a book than that ther Folly! Talk about
attitudes!''

  The farmer laughed his fat sides into a chair, and motioned
his visitor to do likewise.

  ``It's a comfort they're most on'em females,'' he pursued,
sounding a thwack on his knee as he settled himself agreeably
in his seat. ``It don't matter much---what they does,
except pinchin' in---waspin' it---at the waist. Give me
nature, I say---woman as she's made! eh, young gentleman?''

 A blush went over Richard; he was thinking, ``Is this the
chair she sat in?'' She seemed to put her arms about him,
and say, ``Suppose I have gone? Shall I not soon be back
to you? Why are you so downcast?''

  ``It seems Folly's a new name for them fashens. So they
tells me,'' said the farmer, ``not a bad 'un, I think! Hope
yer father's well, Mr. Fev'rel? Ah! if he'd been the man
he bid fair to be---though we was opp'site politics---well!
it's a loss anyhow! Not the first time you've bin in this
apartment, young gentleman?''

  ``No, Mr Blaize! it is not,'' Richard now spoke. ``I think
I ought to have---you see, that was my book of Folly, and
I shall be glad to think it's closed.''

  To this proper speech, the farmer replied drily, ``Well!
so long as that sort of Folly don't grow to be the fashen!
Howsomever that's over and past---no more said about 't!''

  A rather embarrassing silence ensued, broken by a movement
of legs changing places, like evolutions of infantry
before the dread artillery opens.

  ``You seem very lonely here,'' said Richard, glancing
round, and at the ceiling.

  ``Lonely?'' quoth the farmer. ``Well, for the matter o'
that, we be!---jest now, so 't happens; I've got my pipe,
and Tom 've got his Folly. He's on one side the taable,
and I'm on t'other. He gaapes, and I gazes. We are a bit
lonesome. But there---it's _for_ the best!''

  Richard resumed, ``I hardly expected to see you to-night,
Mr. Blaize.''

  ``Y' acted like a man in coming, young gentleman, and I
does ye honour for it!'' said Farmer Blaize with sudden
energy and directness.

  The thing implied by the farmer's words caused Richard
to take a quick breath. They looked at each other, and
then looked away, the farmer thrumming on the arm of his
chair.

  Above the mantel-piece, surrounded by tarnished indifferent
miniatures of high-collared, well-to-do yeomen of the
anterior generation, trying their best not to grin, and high-waisted
old ladies smiling an encouraging smile through
plentiful cap-puckers, there hung a passably executed half-figure
of a naval officer in uniform, grasping a telescope
under his left arm, who stood forth clearly as not of their
kith and kin. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his bearing
that of a man who knows how to carry his head and shoulders.
The artist, while giving him an epaulette to indicate his
rank, had also recorded the juvenility which a lieutenant in
the naval service can retain after arriving at that position,
by painting him with smooth cheeks and fresh ruddy lips.
To this portrait Richard's eyes were directed. Farmer
Blaize observed it, and said---

  ``Her father, sir!''

  Richard moderated his voice to praise the likeness.

  ``Yes,'' said the farmer,  ``pretty well. Next best to havin'
_her,_ though it's a long way off that!''

  ``An old family, Mr. Blaize---is it not?'' Richard asked in
as careless a tone as he could assume.

  ``Gentlefolks---what's left of 'em,'' replied the farmer with
an equally affected indifference.

  ``And that's her father?'' said Richard, growing bolder
to speak of her.

  ``That's her father, young gentleman!''

  ``Mr. Blaize,'' Richard turned to face him, and burst out,
``where is she?''

  ``Gone, sir! packed off!---Can't have her here now.'' The
farmer thrummed a step brisker, and eyed the young man's
wild face resolutely.

  ``Mr. Blaize,'' Richard leaned forward to get closer to him.
He was stunned, and hardly aware of what he was saying or
doing: ``Where has she gone? Why did she leave?''

  ``You needn't to ask, sir---ye know,'' said the farmer, with
a side shot of his head.

  ``But she did not---it was not her wish to go?''

  ``No! I think she likes the place. Mayhap she likes 't
too well?''

  ``Why did you send her away to make her unhappy, Mr.
Blaize?''

  The farmer bluntly denied it was he was the party who
made her unhappy. ``Nobody can't accuse me. Tell ye
what, sir. I wunt have the busybodies set to work about
her, and there's all the matter. So let you and I come to an
understandin'.''

  A blind inclination to take offence made Richard sit upright.
He forgot it the next minute, and said humbly: ``Am
I the cause of her going?''

  ``Well!'' returned the farmer, ``to speak straight---ye
be!''

  ``What can I do, Mr. Blaize, that she may come back
again?'' the young hypocrite asked.

  ``Now,'' said the farmer, ``you're coming to business. Glad
to hear ye talk in that sensible way Mr. Fev'rel. You may
guess I wants her bad enough. The house ain't itself now
she's away, and I ain't myself. Well, sir! This ye can do.
If you gives me your promise not meddle with her at all---
I can't mak' out how you come to be acquainted; not to try
to get her to be meetin' you---and if you'd 'a seen her when
she left, you would---when did ye meet?---last grass, wasn't
it?---your word as a gentleman not to be writing letters, and
spyin' after her---I'll have her back at once. Back she shall
come!''

  ``Give her up!'' cried Richard.

  ``Ay, that's it!'' said the farmer, ``Give her up.''

  The young man checked the annihilation of time that was
on his mouth.

  ``You sent her away to protect her from me, then?'' he
said savagely.

  ``That's not quite it, but that'll do,'' rejoined the farmer.

  ``Do you think I shall harm her, sir?''

  ``People seem to think she'll harm you, young gentleman,''
the farmer said with some irony.

  ``Harm _me_---she? What people?''

  ``People pretty intimate with you, sir.''

  ``What people? Who spoke of us?'' Richard began to
scent a plot, and would not be baulked.

  ``Well, sir, look here,'' said the farmer. ``It ain't no
secret, and if it be, I don't see why I'm to keep it. It
appears your education's peculiar!'' The farmer drawled
out the word as if he were describing the figure of a snake.
``You ain't to be as other young gentlemen. All the better!
You're a fine bold young gentleman, and your father's a right
to be proud of ye. Well, sir---I'm sure I thank him for't---
he comes to hear of you and Luce, and of course he don't
want nothin' o' that---more do I. I meets him there!
What's more I won't have nothin' of it. She be my gal.
She were left to my protection. And she's a lady, sir. Let
me tell ye,---ye won't find many on 'em so well looked to as
she be---my Luce! Well, Mr. Fev'rel, it's you, or it's her---
one of ye must be out o' the way. So we're told. And Luce
---I do believe she's just as anxious about yer education as
yer father---she says she'll go, and wouldn't write, and 'd
brake it off for the sake o' your education. And she've kep
her word, haven't she?---And she's a true 'n. What she
says she'll do!---True blue she be, my Luce! So now, sir,
you do the same, and I'll thank ye.''

  Any one who has tossed a sheet of paper into the fire, and
seen it gradually brown with heat, and strike to flame, may
conceive the mind of the lover as he listened to this speech.

  His anger did not evaporate in words, but condensed and
sank deep. ``Mr. Blaize,'' he said between his set teeth,
``this is very kind of the people you allude to, but I am of an
age now to think and act for myself---I love her, sir!'' His
whole countenance changed, and the muscles of his face
quivered.

  ``Well!'' said the farmer appeasingly, ``we all do at your
age---somebody or other. It's natural!''

  ``I love her!'' the young man thundered afresh, too much
possessed by his passion to have a sense of shame in the confession.
``Farmer!'' his voice fell to supplication, ``will
you bring her back?''

  Farmer Blaize made a queer face. He asked---what for?
and where was the promise required? But was not the
lover's argument conclusive? He said he loved her! and
he could not see why her uncle should not in consequence
immediately send for her, that they might be together. All
very well, quoth the farmer, but what's to come of it?---
What was to come of it? Why, love, and more love! And
a bit too much! the farmer added grimly.

  ``Then you refuse me, farmer,'' said Richard. ``I must
look to you for keeping her away from me, not to---to---these
people. You will not have her back, though I tell you I
love her better than my life?''

  Farmer Blaize now had to answer him plainly, he had a
reason and an objection of his own. And it was, that her
character was at stake, and God knew whether she herself
might not be in danger. He spoke with a kindly candour,
not without dignity. He complimented Richard personally,
but young people were young people; baronets' sons were not
in the habit of marrying farmers' nieces.

  At first the son of a System did not comprehend him.
When he did, he said: ``Farmer! if I give you my word of
honour, as I hope for heaven, to marry her when I am of
age, will you have her back?''

  He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook
his head doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest
fall slowly. Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse
of encouragement in these signs, and observed: ``It's not
because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?''

  The farmer signified it was not that.

  ``It's because my father is against me,'' Richard went on,
and undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that
no father could entirely and for ever resist his son's inclinations.
Argument being a cool field where the farmer could
meet and match him, the young man got on the tramroad of
his passion, and went ahead, He drew pictures of Lucy, of
her truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death,
from death to life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a
torrent. Perhaps he did move the stolid old Englishman a
little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of
his pride.

  Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His
jewel he must have.

  The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that
allayeth botheration. ``May smoke heer now,'' he said.
``Not when---somebody's present. Smoke in the kitchen
then. Don't mind smell?''

  Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the
farmer filled, and lighted and began to puff, as if his fate
hung on them.

  ``Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of it's
comin' to this?'' ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and
reflection from tobacco. ``You didn't think much of her
that day, young gentleman! I introduced ye. Well! things
comes about. Can't you wait till she returns in due course,
now?''

  This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on
him another torrent.

  ``It's queer,'' said the farmer, putting the mouth of the
pipe to his wrinkled-up temples.

  Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe
altogether, as no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his
arm on the table and staring at Richard an instant:

  ``Look, young gentleman! My word's gone. I've spoke
it. I've given 'em the 'surance she shan't be back till the
Spring, and then I'll have her, and then---well! I do hope,
for more reasons than one, ye'll both on ye be wiser---I've
got my own notions about her. But I an't the man to force
a gal to marry 'gainst her inclines. Depend upon it I'm not
your enemy, Mr. Fev'rel. You're jest the one to mak' a
young gal proud. So wait,---and see. That's my 'dvice.
Jest tak' and wait. I've no more to say.''

  Richard's impetuosity had made him really afraid of
speaking his notions concerning the projected felicity of
young Tom, if indeed they were serious.

  The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and
Richard, with ``Wait till the Spring! Wait till the Spring!''
dinning despair in his ears, stood up to depart. Farmer
Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly way, and called out
at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions to his
Folly, did not appear. A maid rushed by Richard in the
passage, and slipped something into his grasp, which fixed
on it without further consciousness than that of touch. The
mare was led forth by the Bantam. A light rain was falling
down strong warm gusts, and the trees were noisy in the
night. Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give
him his hand, and say all was well. He liked the young
man for his earnestness and honest outspeaking. Richard
could not say all was well, but he gave his hand, and knitted it
to the farmer's in a sharp squeeze, when he got upon Cassandra,
and rode into the tumult.

  A calm, clear dawn succeeded the roaring West, and threw
its glowing grey image on the waters of the Abbey-lake.
Before sunrise Tom Bakewell was abroad, and met the
missing youth, his master, jogging Cassandra leisurely along
the Lobourne park-road, a sorry couple to look at. Cassandra's
flanks were caked with mud, her head drooped: all
that was in her had been taken out by that wild night. On
what heaths and heavy fallows had she not spent her noble
strength, recklessly fretting through the darkness!

  ``Take the mare,'' said Richard, dismounting and patting
her between the eyes. ``She's done up, poor old gal! Look
to her, Tom, and then come to me in my room.''

  Tom asked no questions. He saw that he was in for the
first act of the new comedy.

  Three days would bring the anniversary of Richard's
birth, and though Tom was close, the condition of the mare,
and the young gentleman's strange freak in riding her out
all night becoming known, prepared everybody at Raynham
for the usual bad-luck birthday, the prophets of which were
full of sad gratification. Sir Austin had an unpleasant office
to require of his son; no other than that of humbly begging
Benson's pardon, and washing out the undue blood he had
spilt in taking his Pound of Flesh. Heavy Benson was told
to anticipate the demand for pardon, and practised in his
mind the most melancholy Christian deportment he could
assume on the occasion. But while his son was in this state,
Sir Austin considered that he would hardly be brought to
see the virtues of the act, and did not make the requisition
of him, and heavy Benson remained drawn up solemnly
expectant at doorways, and at the foot of the staircase, a
Saurian Caryatid, wherever he could get a step in advance
of the young man, while Richard heedlessly passed him, as
he passed everybody else, his head bent to the ground, and
his legs bearing him like random instruments of whose
service he was unconscious. It was a shock to Benson's
implicit belief in his patron; and he was not consoled by the
philosophic explanation, ``That Good in a strong many-compounded
nature is of slower growth than any other mortal
thing, and must not be forced.'' Damnatory doctrines
best pleased Benson. Benson was ready to pardon, as a
Christian should, but he did want his enemy before him on
his knees. And now, though the Saurian Eye saw more than
all the other eyes in the house, and saw that there was
matter in hand between Tom and his master to breed exceeding
discomposure to the System, Benson, as he had not
received his indemnity, and did not wish to encounter fresh
perils for nothing, held his peace.

  Sir Austin partly divined what was going on in the breast
of his son, without conceiving the depths of distrust his son
cherished towards him, and all, or quite measuring the intensity
of the passion that consumed him. He was very
kind and tender with him. Like a cunning physician who
has, nevertheless, overlooked the change in the disease superinduced
by one false dose, he meditated his prescriptions
carefully and confidently, sure that he knew the case, and
was a match for it. He decreed that Richard's erratic
behaviour should pass unnoticed. Two days before the
birthday, he asked him whether he would object to the
Grandisons coming, and having company? To which
Richard said: ``Have whom you will, sir.'' The preparation
for festivity commenced accordingly.

  On the birthday eve he dined with the rest. Lady Blandish
was there, and sat penitently at his right. Hippias prognosticated
certain indigestion for himself on the morrow. The
Eighteenth Century wondered whether she should live to see
another birthday. Adrian drank the two-years' distant term
of his tutorship, and Algernon went over the list of the
Lobourne men who would cope with Bursley on the morrow.
Sir Austin gave ear and a word to all, keeping his mental
eye for his son. To please Lady Blandish also, Adrian ventured
to make trifling jokes about Mrs. Grandison; jokes
delicately not decent, but so delicately so, that it was not
decent to perceive it. He desired to know whether Berry
was in sufficient muscular condition to transport the lady
upstairs and down; and being told that no doubt Berry
would be, were the service required of him, Adrian appeared
to reflect profoundly, and thought that on no account must
the precious freight be consigned to the inflammable Berry;
in support of which Adrian mildly cited certain grievous instances
in the Pagan mythology of breach of trust even when
the offenders were Gods, which Berry had no pretence to be,
after animal man that he was.

  ``Then you must do it,'' said Richard, just waking up, and
for want of something to say.

  ``Even I dare not! Such an ordeal as that!''---Adrian
gravely replied, shaking a meek sinner's head, and it was
impossible to help laughing at his solemn manner. Algernon,
knowing him better than the others, laughed aloud,

  ``I suppose I must be the man!'' he said.

  ``Remember,'' said Adrian, ``that you have already had
your ordeal.''

  ``Well, then, Hip!'' Algernon turned to his melancholy
brother, ``Hip will do for it exactly.''

  ``Happy one!'' Adrian apostrophized Hippias reverently,
``behold in his arms the fruit of a thousand indigestions!''

  And at this picture of the virtuous lady borne as a prize
by the dyspepsy, there was laughter all round the board, Sir
Austin himself reticently joining in.

  After dinner Richard left them. Nothing more than commonly
peculiar was observed about him, beyond the excessive
glitter of his eyes' but the baronet said, ``Yes, yes! that
will pass.'' He and Adrian, and Lady Blandish, took tea in
the library, and sat till a late hour discussing casuistries
relating mostly to the Apple-disease. Converse very amusing
to the wise youth, who could suggest to the two chaste
minds situations of the shadiest character, with the air of a
seeker after truth, and lead them, unsuspecting, where they
dare not look about them. The Aphorist had elated the
heart of his constant fair worshipper with a newly rounded,
if not newly-conceived sentence, when they became aware
that they were four. Heavy Benson stood among them.
He said he had knocked, but received no answer. There 
was however, a vestige of surprise and dissatisfaction on his
face beholding Adrian of the company, which had not quite
worn away, and gave place, when it did vanish, to an aspect
of flabby severity.

  ``Well, Benson? well?'' said the baronet, not understanding
the interruption, and impatient at Benson's presence.
Benson persisted in the flabby-severe without speaking,
and the appearance of this strange owl presiding stupidly
over them, was so astonishing as to keep them all looking
at him. They had disconcerted Benson, who was of slow
wit, by being three instead of two, and he was troubled what
to say for himself. At last he said the thing he would have
said had they been but two.

  ``If you please, Sir Austin! it's very late.''

  Benson regarded the impression he had made. It was not
a very distinct one. Lady Blandish laughed and said: ``I
see. Benson wishes to have us up early in the morning.
Hasn't my maid gone to bed?''

  ``She has gone, my lady.''

  ``Are you sure?'' said Adrian.

  ``To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Hadrian, she has gone
to her bed.'' Benson's tone defied misconstruction or imputation.

  ``Then I will follow soon to mine, Benson,'' said Lady
Blandish.

  This should have satisfied Benson, but still he did not go.

  ``Well, Benson? well?'' said the baronet.

  The unmoving man replied: ``If you please, Sir Austin---
Mr. Richard!''

  ``Well!''

  ``He's out!''

  ``Well?''

  ``With Bakewell!''

  ``Well?''

  ``And a carpet-bag!''

  Benson had judged his climax properly. And a carpet-bag!
The baronet looked blank. Adrian raised his brows.
Lady Blandish glanced at one, and at the other.

  Out he was, and with a carpet-bag, which Tom Bakewell
carried. He was on the road to Bellingham, under heavy
rain, hasting like an escaped captive, wild with joy, while
Tom shook his skin, and grunted at his discomforts. The
mail train was to be caught at Bellingham. He knew where
to find her now, through the intervention of Miss Davenport,
and thither he was flying, an arrow loosed from the bow:
thither, in spite of fathers and friends and plotters, to claim
her, and take her, and stand with her against the world.

  They were both thoroughly wet when they entered Bellingham,
and Tom's visions were of hot drinks. He hinted
the necessity for inward consolation to his master, who could
answer nothing but ``Tom! Tom! I shall see her to-morrow!''
It was bad---travelling in the wet, Tom hinted again, to provoke
the same insane outcry, and have his arm seized and
furiously shaken into the bargain. Passing the principal inn
of the place, Tom spoke plainly for brandy.

  ``No!'' cried Richard, ``there's not a moment to be lost!''
and as he said it, he reeled, and fell against Tom, muttering
indistinctly of faintness, and that there was no time to lose.
Tom lifted him in his arms, and got admission to the inn.
Brandy, the country's specific, was advised by host and
hostess, and forced into his mouth, reviving him sufficiently
to cry out, ``Tom! the bell's ringing: we shall be late,'' after
which he fell back insensible on the sofa where they had
stretched him. Excitement of blood and brain had done its
work upon him. The poor youth suffered them to undress
him and put him to bed, and there he lay, forgetful even of
love; a drowned weed born onward by the tide of the hours.
There his father found him.

  Was the Scientific Humanist remorseful? He had looked
forward to such a crisis as that point in the disease his son
was the victim of, when the body would fail and give the
spirit calm to conquer the malady, knowing very well that
the seeds of the evil were not of the spirit. Moreover, to see
him and have him was a repose after the alarm Benson had
sounded. Anxious he was, and prayerful; but with faith in
the physical energy he attributed to his System. This providential
stroke had saved the youth from heaven knew
what! ``Mark!'' said the baronet to Lady Blandish,
``when he recovers he will not care for her.''

  The lady had accompanied him to the Bellingham inn on
first hearing of Richard's seizure.

  ``Oh! what an iron man you can be,'' she exclaimed,
smothering her intuitions. She was for giving the boy his
bauble; promising it him, at least, if he would only get well
and be the bright flower of promise he once was.

  ``Can you look on him,'' she pleaded, ``can you look on
him, and persevere?''

  It was a hard sight for this man who loved his son so
deeply. The youth lay in his strange bed, straight and
motionless, with fever on his cheeks and altered eyes.

  ``See what you do to us!'' said the baronet, sorrowfully
eyeing the bed.

  ``But if you lose him?'' Lady Blandish whispered.

  Sir Austin walked away from her, and probed the depths
of his love. ``The stroke will not be dealt by me,'' he said.

  His patient serenity was a wonder to all who knew him.
Indeed, to have doubted and faltered now was to have subverted
the glorious fabric just on the verge of completion.
He believed that his son's pure strength was fitted to cope
with any natural evil: that such was God's law. To him
Richard's passion was an ill incident to the ripeness of his
years and his perfect innocence; and this crisis the struggle
of the poison passing out of him---not to be deplored. He
was so confident that he did not even send for Dr. Bairam.
Old Dr. Clifford of Lobourne was the medical attendant,
who, with head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences
of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech
could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that
Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his
prescriptions like a piano to the musician. ``But,'' he
said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him
how it stood with the young man, ``drugs are not much in
cases of this sort. Change! That's what's wanted, and as
soon as may be. Distraction! He ought to see the world,
and know what he is made of. It's no use my talking, I
know,'' added the doctor.

  ``On the contrary,'' said Sir Austin, ``I am quite of your
persuasion. And the world he shall see---now.''

  `` We have dipped him in Styx, you know, doctor,'' Adrian
remarked.

  ``But, doctor,'' said Lady Blandish, ``have you known a
case of this sort before?''

  ``Never, my lady,'' said the doctor, ``they're not common
in these parts. Country people are tolerably healthy-minded.''

  ``But people---and country people---have died for love,
doctor?''

  The doctor had not met any of them.

  ``Men, or women?'' inquired the baronet.

  Lady Blandish believed mostly women.

  ``Ask the doctor whether they were healthy-minded
women,'' said the baronet. ``No! you are both looking at the
wrong end. Between a highly-cultured being, and an emotionless
animal, there is all the difference in the world. But
of the two, the doctor is nearer the truth. The healthy
nature is pretty safe. If he allowed for organization he
would be right altogether. To feel, but not to feel to excess,
that is the problem.''

	``If I can't have the one I chose,
	To some fresh maid I will propose.''

Adrian hummed a country ballad.

  ``That couplet,'' said Sir Austin, ``exactly typifies the doctor's
hero. I think he must admire Agamemnon---eh, doctor?
Chryse<i:>s taken from us, let us seize Bryse<i:>s!---Children cry,
but don't die, for their lumps of sugar. When they grow
older, they---''

  ``Simply have a stronger appreciation of the sugar, and
make a greater noise to obtain it,'' Adrian took him up, and
elicited the smile which usually terminated any dispute he
joined.


	CHAPTER XXV.

	OF THE SPRING PRIMROSE AND THE AUTUMNAL.

  When the young Experiment again knew the hours that
rolled him onward, he was in his own room at Raynham.
Nothing had changed: only a strong fist had knocked him
down and stunned him, and he opened his eyes to a grey
world: he had forgotten what he lived for. He was weak
and thin, and with a pale memory of things. His functions
were the same, everything surrounding him was the same:
he looked upon the old blue hills, the far-lying fallows, the
river, and the woods: he knew them, and they seemed to have
lost recollection of him. Nor could he find in familiar human
faces the secret of intimacy of heretofore. They were the same
faces: they nodded and smiled to him. What was lost he
could not tell. Something had been knocked out of him!
He was sensible of his father's sweetness of manner, and he
was grieved that he could not reply to it, for every sense of
shame and reproach had strangely gone. He felt very useless.
In place of the fiery love for one, he now bore about a
cold charity to all.

  Thus in the heart of the young man died the Spring Primrose,
and while it died another heart was pushing forth the
Primrose of Autumn.

  The wonderful change in Richard, and the wisdom of her
admirer, now positively proved, were exciting matters to
Lady Blandish. She was rebuked for certain little rebellious
fancies concerning him that had come across her enslaved
mind from time to time. For was he not almost a prophet? 
It distressed the sentimental lady that a love like Richard's
could pass off in mere smoke, and words such as she had
heard him speak in Abbey-wood resolve to emptiness. Nay,
it humiliated her personally, and the baronet's shrewd prognostication
humilitated her. For how should he know, and
dare to say, that love was a thing of the dust that could be
trodden out under the heel of science? But he had said so,
and he had proved himself right. She heard with wonderment
that Richard of his own accord had spoken to his
father of the folly he had been guilty of, and had begged his
pardon. The baronet told her this, adding that the youth
had done it in a cold unwavering way, without a movement
of his features: had evidently done it to throw off the
burden of the duty he had conceived. He had thought himself
bound to acknowledge that he had been the Foolish
Young Fellow, wishing, possibly, to abjure the fact by an
act of penance. He had also given satisfaction to Benson,
and was become a renovated peaceful spirit, whose main
object appeared to be to get up his physical strength by exercise
and no expenditure of speech. In her company he was composed
and courteous; even when they were alone together,
he did not exhibit a trace of melancholy. Sober he seemed,
as one who has recovered from a drunkenness and has
determined to drink no more. The idea struck her that he
might be playing a part, but Tom Bakewell, in a private conversation
they had, informed her that he had received an
order from his young master, one day while boxing with
him, not to mention the young lady's name to him so long as
he lived; and Tom could only suppose that she had offended
him. Theoretically wise Lady Blandish had always thought
the baronet; she was unprepared to find him thus practically
sagacious. She fell many degrees; she wanted something
to cling to; so she clung to the man who struck her
low. Love, then, was earthly; its depth could be probed
by science! A man lived who could measure it from end to
end; foretell its term; handle the young cherub as were he
a shot owl! We who have flown into cousinship with the
empyrean, and disported among immortal hosts, our base
birth as a child of Time is made bare to us!---our wings are
cut! Oh, then, if science is this victorious enemy of love,
let us love science! was the logic of the lady's heart; and
secretly cherishing the assurance that she should confute
him yet, and prove him utterly wrong, she gave him the
fruits of present success, as it is a habit of women to do;
involuntarily partly. The fires took hold of her. She felt
soft emotions such as a girl feels, and they flattered her. It
was like youth coming back. Pure women have a second
youth. The Autumn primrose flourished.

  We are advised by =The Pilgrim's Scrip= that---

  ``The ways of women, which are Involution, and their
practices, which are Opposition, are generally best hit upon
by guess work, and a bold word;''---it being impossible to
track them and hunt them down in the ordinary style.

  So that we may not ourselves become involved and opposed,
let us each of us venture a guess and say a bold word as to
how it came that the lady, who trusted love to be eternal,
grovelled to him that shattered her tender faith, and loved
him.

  Hitherto it had been simply a sentimental dalliance, and
gossips had maligned the lady. Just when the gossips grew
tired of their slander, and inclined to look upon her charitably,
she set about to deserve every word they had said of her;
which may instruct us, if you please, that gossips have only
to persist in lying to be crowned with verity, or that one has
only to endure evil mouths for a period to gain impunity.
She was always at the Abbey now. She was much closeted
with the baronet. It seemed to be understood that she had
taken Mrs. Doria's place. Benson in his misogynic soul perceived
that she was taking Lady Feverel's: but any report
circulated by Benson was sure to meet discredit, and drew
the gossips upon himself; which made his meditations tragic.
No sooner was one woman defeated than another took the
field! The object of the System was no sooner safe than its
great author was in danger!

  ``I can't think what has come to Benson,'' he said to
Adrian.

  ``He seems to have received a fresh legacy of several
pounds of lead,'' returned the wise youth, and imitating Dr.
Clifford's manner. ``Change is what he wants! distraction!
send him to Wales, sir, for a month, and let Richard go with
him. The two victims of woman may do each other good.''

  ``Unfortunately I can't do without him,'' said the baronet.

  ``Then we must continue to have him on our shoulders all
day, and on our chests all night!'' Adrian ejaculated.

  ``I think while he preserves this aspect we won't have
him at the dinner-table,'' said the baronet.

  Adrian thought that would be a relief to their digestions;
and added: ``You know, sir, what he says?''

  Receiving a negative, Adrian delicately explained to him
that Benson's excessive ponderosity of demeanour was caused
by anxiety for the safety of his master.

  ``You must pardon a faithful fool, sir,'' he continued, for
the baronet became red, and exclaimed:

  ``His stupidity is past belief! I have absolutely to bolt
my study-door against him.''

  ``Have you, indeed, sir!'' said Adrian, and at once beheld
a charming scene in the interior of the study, not unlike one
that Benson had visually witnessed. For, like a wary
prophet, Benson, that he might have warrant for what he
foretold of the future, had a care to spy upon the present:
warned haply by =The Pilgrim's Scrip= of which he was a
diligent reader, and which says, rather emphatically:
``Could we see Time's full face, we were wise of him.'' Now
to see Time's full face, it is sometimes necessary to look
through keyholes, the veteran having a trick of smiling
peace to you on one cheek and grimacing confusion on the
other behind the curtain. Decency and a sense of honour
restrain most of us from being thus wise and miserable for
ever. Benson's excuse was that he believed in his master,
who was menaced. And moreover, notwithstanding his
previous tribulation, to spy upon Cupid was sweet to him. So
he peeped, and he saw a sight. He saw Time's full face; or,
in other words, he saw the wiles of woman and the weakness
of man: which is our history, as Benson would have written
it, and a great many poets and philosophers have written it.

  Yet it was but the plucking of the Autumn primrose that
Benson had seen: a somewhat different operation from the
plucking of the Spring one: very innocent! Our staid
elderly sister has paler blood, and has, or thinks she has, a
reason or two about the roots. She is not all instinct. ``For
this high cause, and for that I know men, and know him to
be the flower of men, I give myself to him!'' She makes
that lofty inward exclamation while the hand is detaching
her from the roots. Even so strong a self-justification she
requires. She has not that blind glory in excess which her
younger sister can gild the longest leap with. And if, moth-like,
she desires the star, she is nervously cautious of candles.
Hence her circles about the dangerous human flame are wide
and shy. She must be drawn nearer and nearer by a fresh
_reason._ She loves to sentimentalize. Lady Blandish had
been sentimentalizing for ten years. She would have preferred
to pursue the game. The dark-eyed dame was pleased
with her smooth life and the soft excitement that did not
ruffle it. Not willingly did she let herself be won.

  ``Sentimentalists,'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``are they
who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship
for a thing done.''

  ``It is,'' the writer says of Sentimentalism elsewhere, ``a
happy pastime and an important science to the timid, the
idle and the heartless; but a damning one to them who
have anything to forfeit.''

  However, one who could set down the dying for love, as
a sentimentalism, can hardly be accepted as a clear authority.
Assuredly he was not one to avoid the incurring of the
immense debtorship in any way: but he was a bondman
still to the woman who had forsaken him, and a spoken
word would have made it seem his duty to face that
public scandal which was the last evil to him. What had
so horrified the virtuous Benson, Richard had already beheld
in Daphne's Bower; a simple kissing of the fair white hand!
Doubtless the keyhole somehow added to Benson's horror.
The two similar performances, so very innocent, had wondrous
opposite consequences. The first kindled Richard to
adore Woman; the second destroyed Benson's faith in Man.
But Lady Blandish knew the difference between the two.
She understood why the baronet did not speak; excused,
and respected him for it. She was content, since she must
love, to love humbly, and she had, besides, her pity for his
sorrows to comfort her. A hundred fresh reasons for
loving him arose and multiplied every day. He read to her
the secret book in his own handwriting, composed for
Richard's Marriage Guide: containing Advice and Directions
to a Young Husband, full of the most tender wisdom and
delicacy;  so she thought; nay, not wanting in poetry,
though neither rhymed nor measured. He expounded to her
the distinctive character of the divers ages of love, giving
the palm to the flower she put forth, over that of Spring, or
the Summer rose. And while they sat and talked, ``My
wound was healed,'' he said. ``How?'' she asked. ``At
the fountain of your eyes,'' he replied, and drew the joy of
new life from her blushes, without incurring further debtorship
for a thing done.


	CHAPTER XXVI.

	IN WHICH THE HERO TAKES A STEP.

  Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the
careering hero, and a consolation to the quiet wretches,
dragged along with him at his chariot-wheels, that he is
generally the last to know when he has made an actual start;
such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us, albeit the head
of our fates. By this you perceive the true hero, whether
he be a prince or a potboy, that he does not plot; Fortune
does all for him. He may be compared to one to whom, in an
electric circle, it is given to carry the _battery._ We caper and
grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the power.
'Tis all Fortune's, whose puppet he is. She deals her dispensations
through him. Yea, though our capers be never
so comical, he laughs not. Intent upon his own business, the
true hero asks little services of us here and there; thinks it
quite natural that they should be acceded to, and sees
nothing ridiculous in the lamentable contortions we must go
through to fulfil them. Probably he is the elect of Fortune,
because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own
business: ``Which is,'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``with men
to be valued equal to that force which in water _makes a
stream._'' This prelude was necessary to the present chapter
of Richard's history.

			<*>

  It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old
earth was busy with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the
little bird sang, and Hippias Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed,
felt the Spring move within him. He communicated his
delightful new sensations to the baronet, his brother, whose
constant exclamation with regard to him, was: ``Poor Hippias!
All his machinery is bare!'' and had no hope that he
would ever be in a condition to defend it from view. Nevertheless
Hippias had that hope, and so he told his brother,
making great exposure of his machinery to effect the explanation.
He spoke of all his physical experiences exultingly,
and with wonder. The achievement of common efforts, not
usually blazoned, he celebrated as mighty triumphs, and,
of course, had Adrian on his back very quickly. But he
could bear him, or anything, now. It was such ineffable
relief to find himself looking out upon the world of mortals
instead of into the black phantasmal abysses of his own complicated
frightful structure. ``My mind doesn't so much
seem to haunt itself, now,'' said Hippias, nodding shortly
and peering out of intense puckers to convey a glimpse of
what hellish sufferings his had been: ``I feel as if I had
come aboveground.''

  A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one
who never gets sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it
is he whose groaning petitions for charity do at last rout
that Christian virtue. Lady Blandish, a charitable soul,
could not listen to Hippias, though she had a heart for little
mice and flies, and Sir Austin had also small patience with
his brother's gleam of health, which was just enough to make
his disease visible. He remembered his early follies and
excesses, and bent his ear to him as one man does, to another
who complains of having to pay a debt legally incurred.

  ``I think,'' said Adrian, seeing how the communications
of Hippias were received, ``that when our Nemesis takes
lodgings in the stomach, it's best to act the Spartan, smile
hard, and be silent.''

  ``Exactly,'' replied the baronet. ``Mankind has an
instinctive disgust for the victims of those appetites. We
pity any other functional derangement than that.''

  Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether
from opposition, or real affection, could not be said, as the
young man was mysterious. He advised his uncle to take
exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful impressions
in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made Hippias
visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village,
who bewailed the loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and
did his best to waken him up, and give the outer world a
stronger hold on him. He succeeded in nothing but in winning
his uncle's gratitude. The season bloomed scarce longer
than a week for Hippias, and then began to languish. The
poor Dyspepsy's eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he
went underground again. He announced that he felt ``spongy
things''---one of the more constant miseries of his malady.
His bitter face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid hallucinations.
He told Richard he must give up going about with
him: people telling of their ailments made him so uncomfortable---
the birds were so noisy, pairing---the rude bare
soil sickened him.

  ``Besides,'' said Hippias, ``it's singular, but at this time of
the year, Richard, I always have the same idea. I can't go
out and see a garden without thinking I ought to be upside
down, and have the bulbous part underneath me, like those
---what do you call those flowers?---yes, like those crocuses.
And you cant imagine how distressing it really is when you
think those things in earnest.''

  Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father's.
He asked what the doctors said.

  ``Oh! the doctors!'' cried Hippias with vehement scepticism.
``No man of sense believes in medicine for chronic
disorder. Do you happen to have heard of any new remedy
then, Richard? No? They advertise a great many cures
for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder
whether one can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures?
I see no reason why there should be no cure for
such a disease?---Eh? And it's just one of the things a
quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one
who is in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear
boy, I've often thought that if we could by any means appropriate
to our use some of the extraordinary digestive power
that a boa constrictor has in his gastric juices, there is really
no manner of reason why we should not comfortably dispose
of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and one
might eat French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking
what's to follow. And this makes me think that those
fellows _may,_ after all, have got some truth in them: some
prodigious secret that, of course, they require to be paid for.
We distrust each other in this world too much, Richard.
I've felt inclined once or twice---but it's absurd!---If it only
alleviated a few of my sufferings _I_ should be satisfied. I've
no hesitation in saying that I should be quite satisfied if it
only did away with one or two, and left me free to eat and
drink as other people do. Not that I mean to try them. It's
only a fancy---Eh? What a thing health is, dear boy!
Ah! if I were like you! I was in love once!''

  ``Were you!'' said Richard, coolly regarding him.

  ``I've forgotten what I felt!'' Hippias sighed. ``You've
very much improved, my dear boy.''

  ``So people say,'' quoth Richard.

  Hippias looked at him anxiously: ``If I go to town and
get the doctor's opinion about trying a new course---Eh,
Richard? will you come with me? I should like your company.
We could see London together, you know. Enjoy
ourselves,'' and Hippias rubbed his hands.

  Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised
by his uncle's eyes, and said he thought it better they
should stay where they were---an answer that might mean
anything. Hippias immediately became possessed by the
beguiling project. He went to the baronet, and put the matter
before him, instancing doctors as the object of his journey,
not quacks, of course: and requesting leave to take Richard.
Sir Austin was getting uneasy about his son's manner. It
was not natural. His heart seemed to be frozen: he had no
confidences: he appeared to have no ambition---to have lost
the virtues of youth with the poison that had passed out of
him. He was disposed to try what effect a little travelling
might have on him, and had himself once or twice hinted to
Richard that it would be good for him to move about, the
young man quietly replying that he did not wish to quit
Raynham at all, which was too strict a fulfilment of his
father's original views in educating him there entirely. On
the day that Hippias made his proposal, Adrian, seconded by
Lady Blandish, also made one. The sweet Spring season
stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not to pastoral measures:
to the joys of the operatic world and bravura glories.
He also suggested that it would be adviseable to carry Richard
to town for a term, and let him know his position, and some
freedom. Sir Austin weighed the two proposals. He was
pretty certain that Richard's passion was consumed, and that
he was now only under the burden of its ashes. He had
found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn, a great lock
of golden hair. He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling
about for it with faint hands, never asked for it. This precious
lock (Miss Davenport had thrust it into his hand at
Belthorpe as Lucy's last gift), what sighs and tears it had
weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard's sight one day,
and beheld him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down
again calmly, as if he were handling any common curiosity.
It pacified him on that score. The young man's love was
dead. Dr. Clifford said rightly: he wanted distractions.
The baronet determined that Richard should go. Hippias
and Adrian then pressed their several suits as to which
should have him. Hippias, when he could forget himself,
did not lack sense. He observed that Adrian was not at
present a proper companion for Richard, and would teach
him to look on life from the false point.

  ``You don't understand a young philosopher,'' said the
baronet.

  ``A young philosopher's an old fool!'' returned Hippias,
not thinking that his growl had begotten a phrase.

  His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him
loudly: ``Excellent! worthy of your best days! That is as
good a thing as I have heard, Hippias. You're wrong,
though, in applying it to Adrian. He has never been precocious.
All he has done has been to bring sound common
sense to bear upon what he hears and sees. I think, however,''
the baronet added, ``he may want faith in the better
qualities of men.'' And this reflection inclined him not to
let his son be alone with Adrian. He gave Richard his
choice, who saw which way his father's wishes tended, and
decided so to please him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian extremely.
He said to his chief:

  ``I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't
see that we derive any advantage from the family name
being made notorious for twenty years of obscene suffering,
and becoming a byword for our constitutional tendency
to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered
Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I
would rather society were not intimate with them under their
several headings.'' Adrian enumerated some of the most
abhorrent. ``You know him, sir. If he conceives a duty, he
will do it in the face of every decency---all the more
obstinate because the conception is rare. If he feels a little
brisk the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that
makes us famous! We go down to posterity with heightened
characteristics, to say nothing of a contemporary
celebrity nothing less than our being turned inside-out to
the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery
made bare to them.''

  Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had
arranged to go to Dr. Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin
by telling him that in about two weeks they would follow to
London: hinting also at a prospective Summer campaign.
The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came.
Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber
and put into his hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution
toward his pocket-expenses. He did not want it, he said,
but she told him he was a young man, and would soon make
that fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady did
not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she gave
her grand-nephew to understand that, should he require
more, he knew where to apply, and secrets would be kept.
His father presented him with a hundred pounds---which
also Richard said he did not want---he did not care for
money. ``Spend it or not,'' said the baronet, perfectly secure
in him. All he desired of him was to go and see the Grandisons,
and give his love to little Carola.

  ``I wonder how my cabbage-rose is looking,'' Richard
remarked. ``She was disappointed at not seeing me when
she came, wasn't she, sir?''

  ``Well, she cried about you,'' said the baronet, content to
hear his son add: ``Poor little thing!'' however coldly.

  Hippias had few injunctions to observe, beyond that of
going to the Grandisons. They were to take up quarters at
the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the house
not being altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly
forewarned Hippias of the imprudence of attempting to
restrict the young man's movements, and letting him imagine
he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as it were,
pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and
bloom again, in complete independence, as far as he could
feel. So did the sage decree; and we may pause a moment
to reflect how wise were his provisions, and how successful
they must have been, had not Fortune, the great foe to human
cleverness, turned against him.

  The departure took place on a fine March morning. The
bird of Winter sang from the budding tree; in the blue sky
sang the bird of Summer. Adrian rode between Richard and
Hippias to the Bellingham station, and vented his disgust
on them after his own humorous fashion, because it did not
rain and damp their ardour. In the rear came Lady Blandish
and the baronet, conversing on the calm summit of success.

  ``You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself,'' she
said, pointing with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure
of the young man.

  ``Outwardly, perhaps,'' he answered, and led to a discussion
on Purity and Strength, the lady saying that she preferred
Purity.

  ``But you do not,'' said the baronet. ``And there I admire
the always true instinct of woman, that they _all_ worship
Strength in whatever form, and seem to know it to be the
child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a characteristic, a
garment, and can be spotted---how soon! For there are
questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost,
and when, hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness,
the clearest soul becomes a cunning fox, if it have
not courage to stand and do battle. Strength indicates a
boundless nature---like the Maker. Strength is a God to
you---Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be
fond of playing with it,'' he added, with unaccustomed
slyness.

  The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which
showed that the constraint on his mind had left him. It was
for women to fight their fight now; she only took part in it
for amusement. This is how the ranks of our enemies are
thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a champion in
their midst than she betrays them.

  ``I see,'' she said archly, ``we are the lovelier vessels; you
claim the more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women
---slips! Nay, you have said so,'' she cried out at his
gestured protestation, laughing.

  ``But I never printed it.''

  ``Oh! what you speak answers for print with me.''

  Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love
her.

  ``Tell me what are your plans?'' she asked. ``May a
woman know?''

  He replied, ``I have none or you would share them. I
shall study him in the world. This indifference must wear
off. I shall mark his inclinations now, and he shall be what
he inclines to. Occupation will be his prime safety. That,
and the feeling of guardianship to this child. His cousin
Austin's plan of life appears most to his taste, and he can
serve the people that way as well as in Parliament, should
he have no stronger ambition. The clear duty of a man of
any wealth is to serve the people as he best can. He shall
go among Austin's set, if he wishes it, though personally I
find no pleasure in rash imaginations, and undigested schemes
built upon the mere instinct of principles.''

  ``Look at him now,'' said the lady. ``He seems to care
for nothing; not even for the beauty of the day.''

  ``Or Adrian's jokes,'' added the baronet.

  Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a
laugh, or a confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching
out his chin to one, and to the other, with audible asides.
Richard he treated as a new instrument of destruction about
to be let loose on the slumbering metropolis; Hippias as one
in an interesting condition; and he got so much fun out of
the notion of these two journeying together, and the mishaps
that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal
insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's
dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities
of the professional joker.

  ``Oh! the Spring! the Spring!'' he cried, as in scorn of
his sallies they exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the
sweet weather across him. ``You seem both to be uncommonly
excited by the operations of turtles, rooks, and daws.
Why can't you let them alone?

	`Wind bloweth,
	Cock croweth,
		Doodle-doo;
	Hippy verteth,
	Ricky sterteth,
		Sing Cuckoo!'

There's an old native pastoral!---Why don't you write a
Spring sonnet, Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise,
I hear, and eke the strawberry. No lack of inspiration
for you. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for.
What kind of berry was that I saw some verses of yours
about once?---amatory verses to some kind of berry---yewberry,
blueberry, glueberry! I can't remember rightly.
Pretty verses, though decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom,
legs---legs? I don't think you gave her any legs. No legs
and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste of the day.
It shall be admitted that you create she very beauties for a
chaste people.

	`O might I lie where leans her lute!'

and offend no moral community. I say, that's not a bad
image of yours, my dear boy:

	`Her shape is like an antelope
	Upon the Eastern hills.'

But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can
be considered correct when she has no legs? You will see
at the ballet that you are quite in error about women at
present, Richard. That admirable institution which our
venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction
of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you. I
assure you I used, from reading =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= to
imagine all sorts of things about them, till I was taken
there, and learnt that they are very like us after all, and
then they ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the great danger
to youth, my son! Mystery is woman's redoubtable weapon,
O Richard of the Ordeal! I'm aware that you've had your
lessons in anatomy, but nothing will persuade you that an
anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You can't realize
the fact. Do you intend to publish when you're in town?
It'll be better not to put your name. Having one's name
to a volume of poems is as bad as to an advertising pill.
My uncle, I dread, is madly bent upon returning thanks
publicly for the pill, so you must be content to let Ignotus
wear your laurels, or the critics will confound you together.
`Notwithstanding the deplorable state of this gentleman's
stomach,' they will say, `the Muse and Cupid have taken so
strong a hold on him, that he is evidently one of those who,
to avoid more punishable transgressions, must commit verse,
and we prefer to attribute any shortcomings which it may
be our duty to indicate, rather to the utter distraction of his
internal economy than to a want of natural propensity.' ''

  ``I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish,''
quoth Richard. ``Hark at that old blackbird, uncle.''

  ``Yes!'' Hippias quavered, looking up from the usual subject
of his contemplation, and trying to take an interest in
him, ``fine old fellow!''

  ``What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike
July nightingales. You know that bird I told you of---the
blackbird that had its mate shot, and used to come to sing to
old dame Bakewell's bird from the tree opposite. A rascal
knocked it over the day before yesterday, and the dame says
her bird hasn't sung a note since.''

  ``Extraordinary!'' Hippias muttered abstractedly. ``I
remember the verses.''

  ``But where's your moral?'' interposed the wrathful
Adrian. ``Where's constancy rewarded?

	`The ouzel-cock so black of hue,
	  With orange-tawny bill;
	The rascal with his aim so true;
	  The Poet's little quill!'

Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the
poet! Certainly we have a noble example of the devotedness
of the female, who for three entire days refuses to make
herself heard, on account of a defunct male. I suppose
that's what Ricky dwells on.''

  ``As you please, my dear Adrian,'' says Richard, and
points out larch-buds to his uncle, as they ride by the young
green wood.

  The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse
from his pupil's heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness,
Adrian could not believe in. ``Hark at this old blackbird!''
he cried, in his turn, and pretending to interpret his
fits of song:

  ``O what a pretty comedy!---Don't we wear the mask well,
my Fiesco?---Genoa will be our own to-morrow!---Only wait
until the train has started---jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be
winners yet!
  ``Not a bad verse---eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!''

  ``You do the blackbird well,'' said Richard, and looked at
him in a manner mildly affable.

  Adrian shrugged. ``You're a young man of wonderful
powers,'' he emphatically observed; meaning to say that
Richard quite beat him; for which opinion Richard gravely
thanked him, and with this they rode into Bellingham.

  There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday
beaver and gala waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord
over Tom Bakewell, who had preceded his master in charge
of the baggage. He likewise was bound for London.
Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the
baronet: ``The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch
Beauty;'' but he paid no heed to the words. Whether
young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look took the lord
out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the
nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham
could supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he
was not unaccountably stiffened by the eyes of the superiors
whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady Blandish, and
Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's adieux
across the palings. He shook hands with each of them in
the same kindly cold way, eliciting from Adrian a marked
encomium on his style of doing it. The train came up, and
Richard stepped after his uncle into one of the carriages.

  Now surely there will come an age when the presentation
of science at war with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed
the true epic of modern life; and the aspect of a scientific
humanist who, by dint of incessant watchfulness, has maintained
a System against those active forces, cannot be
reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he
but sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this,
and smile wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System
incarnate, wave a serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager
nor morbidly unwilling to try his luck alone for a term of
two weeks. At present, I am aware, an audience impatient
for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on incidents
so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience
will come to whom it will be given to see the elementary
machinery at work: who, as it were, from some slight hint
of the straws, will feel the winds of March when they do not
blow. To them will nothing be trivial, seeing that they will
have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around us,
whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually
changes. And they will perceive, moreover, that in real life
all hangs together: the train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow,
that bursts upon the field of thousands. They will see
the links of things as they pass, and wonder not, as foolish
people now do, that this great matter came out of that small
one.

			<*>

  Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet's
gratification at his son's demeanour, wherein he noted the
calm bearing of experience not gained in the usual wanton
way: and will not be without some excited apprehension at
his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went
sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed
young man throw himself back in the carriage
violently laughing. Science was at a loss to account for that,
Sir Austin checked his mind from inquiring, that he might
keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it odd, and the
jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight,
remained with him as he rode home.

  Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say:
``You see it was the very thing he wanted. He has got his
natural spirits already.''

  ``It was,'' Adrian put in his word, ``the exact thing he
wanted. His spirits have returned miraculously.''

  ``Something amused him,'' said the baronet, with an eye
on the puffing train.

  ``Probably something his uncle said or did,'' Lady Blandish
suggested, and led off at a gallop.

  Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for
Richard's laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding
the carriage-door closed on him, became all at once aware of
the bright-haired hope which dwells in Change, for one who
does not woo her too frequently; and to express his sudden
relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the
Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his
legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,

	``Hippy verteth,
		Sing cuckoo!''

in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of
laughter seized him.

	``Hippy verteth!''

Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and
he laughed so immoderately that it looked like madness
come upon him.

  ``Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear
boy,'' said Hippias, and was provoked by the contagious
exercise to a modest ``ha! ha!''

  ``Why, what are _you_ laughing at, uncle?'' cried Richard.

  ``I really don't know,'' Hippias chuckled.

  ``Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!''

  They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood
imaginable. Hippias not only came aboveground, he flew
about in the very skies, _verting_ like any blithe creature of
the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and anecdotes
of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at
him---he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently
joyful at his own transformation, while a lurking doubt in
the bottom of his eyes, now and then, that it might not last,
and that he must go underground again, lent him a look of
pathos and humour which tickled his youthful companion
irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.

  ``I tell you what, uncle,'' said Richard, ``I think travelling's
a capital thing.''

  ``The best thing in the world, my dear boy,'' Hippias
returned. ``It makes me wish I had given up that Work of
mine, and tried it before, instead of chaining myself to a
task. We're quite different beings in a minute. I am.
Hem! what shall we have for dinner?''

  ``Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You
know, I intend to make you well. How gloriously we go
along! I should like to ride on a railway every day.''

  Hippias assumed a mysterious sadness, and remarked---

  ``They say, I've heard, Richard, that it rather injures the
digestion.''

  ``Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow.''

  ``Perhaps I shall do something yet,'' sighed Hippias,
alluding to the vast literary fame he had aforetime dreamed
of. ``I hope I shall have a good night to-night.''

  ``Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?''

  ``Ugh!'' Hippias grunted, ``I dare say, Richard, you sleep
the moment you get into bed!''

  ``The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment
I wake. Health's everything!''

  ``Health's everything!'' echoed Hippias, from an immense
distance.

  ``And if you'll put yourself in my hands,'' Richard continued,
``you shall do just as I do. You shall be well and
strong, and sing `Jolly!' like Adrian's blackbird. You
shall, upon my honour, uncle! ''

  He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery
---no less than twelve a day---that he intended to expend,
and his cheery robustness almost won his uncle to leap up
recklessly and clutch health as his own.

  ``Mind,'' quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, ``mind
your dishes are not too savoury!''

  ``Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement!
Lend your heart to all, but give it to none!'' exclaims young
Wisdom, and Hippias mutters, ``Yes! yes!'' and intimates
that the origin of his malady lay in his not following that
maxim earlier.

  ``Love ruins us, my dear boy,'' he said, thinking to preach
Richard a lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out---

	``The love of Monsieur Francatelli,
	It was the ruin of---_et c<ae>tera._''

  Hippias blinked, exclaiming, ``Really, my dear boy! I
never saw you so excited.''

  ``It's the railway! It's the fun, uncle!''

  ``Ah!'' Hippias wagged a melancholy head, ``you've got
the Golden Bride! Keep her if you can. That's a pretty
fable of your father's. I gave him the idea, though. Austin
filches a great many of my ideas!''

  ``Here's the idea in verse, uncle---

	`O sunless walkers by the tide!
	O have you seen the Golden Bride!
	They say that she is fair beyond
	All women; faithful, and more fond!'

You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent
sinners by the brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:

	`Faithful she is, but she forsakes:
	And fond, yet endless woe she makes:
	And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd;
	To know her not till she is lost!'

Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and
the fabulist pursues---

	`She hath a palace in the West
	Bright Hesper lights her to her rest
	And him the Morning Star awakes
	Whom to her charmed arms she takes.

	`So lives he till he sees, alas!
	The maids of baser metal pass.'

And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to
share it with one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and
the Copper, and the Brassy Maid, and others of them. First,
you know, he tries Argentine, and finds her only twenty to
the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina, till
he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less
obscure become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all
her radiance shines forth, my uncle!''

  ``Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now
you've got her,'' says Hippias.

  ``We will, uncle! Look how the farms fly past! Look
at the cattle in the fields! And how the lines duck, and
swim up!

	`She claims the whole, and not the part---
	The coin of an unused heart!
	To gain his Golden Bride again,
	He hunts with melancholy men,'

---and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!''

  ``Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!''
Hippias interjected. ``You don't rhyme badly. But stick
to prose. Poetry's a Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that
any writing's good for the digestion. I'm almost afraid it
has spoilt mine.'' Hippias did look doubtful.

  ``Fear nothing, uncle!'' laughed Richard. ``You shall
ride in the park with me every day to get an appetite. You,
and I, and little Carola---a splendid little girl. I shall call
her my Golden Bride. You know that little poem of
Sandoe's?

	`She rides in the park on a prancing bay,
	  She and her squires together;
	Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of gray,
	  And toss with the tossing feather.

	`Too calmly proud for a glance of pride
	  Is the beautiful face as it passes;
	The cockneys nod to each other aside,
	  The coxcombs lift their glasses.

	`And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach
	  The ice-wall that guards her securely;
	You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,
	  As the heart that can image her purely.'

Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they
quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make
his `Humble Lover' say?

	`True, Madam, you may think to part
	  Conditions by a glacier-ridge,
	But Beauty's for the largest heart,
	  And all abysses Love can bridge!' ''

  Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.

  ``Largest heart!'' he sneered. ``What's a `glacier-ridge?'
I've never seen one. I can't deny it rhymes with `bridge.'
But don't go parading your admiration of that person,
Richard. Your father will speak to you on the subject when
he thinks fit.''

  ``I thought they had quarelled,'' said Richard. ``What
a pity!'' and he murmured to a pleased ear:

	``Beauty's for the largest heart!''

  The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the
entrance of passengers at a station. Richard examined their
faces with pleasure. All faces pleased him. Human nature
sat tributary at the feet of him and his Golden Bride. As
he could not well talk his thoughts before them, he looked
out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape,
projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and
little Carola, and musing hazily on the wondrous things he
was to do in the world; of the great service he was to be to
his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his reveries he was
landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage
door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something
curious on his mind, and he gave Tom the word to speak out.
Tom edged his master out of hearing, and began sputtering
a laugh.

  ``Dash'd if I can help it, sir!'' he said. ``That young
Tom! He've come to town dressed that spicy! and he don't
know his way about no more than a stag. He's come to
fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know how to
get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis. Look at
him, Mr. Richard! There he goes.''

  Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on
his beaver.

  ``Who has he come for?'' Richard asked.

  ``Don't you know, sir? You don't like me to mention the
name,'' mumbled Tom bursting to be perfectly intelligible.

  ``Is it for her, Tom?''

  ``Miss Lucy, sir.''

  Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who
begged him to get out of the noise and pother, and caught
hold of his slack arm to bear him into a conveyance; but
Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got
his face round to the point where young Tom was man<oe>uvring
to appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in
the conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to drive off.
He made the excuse that he did not wish to start till there
was a clear road. At last young Tom cast anchor by a
policeman, and, doubtless at the official's suggestion, bashfully
took seat in a cab, and was shot into the whirlpool of
London. Richard then angrily asked his driver what he was
waiting for.

  ``Are you ill, my boy?'' said Hippias. ``Where's your
colour.''

  He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he
hoped the fellow would drive fast.

  ``I hate slow motion after being in the railway,'' he said.
Hippias assured him there was something the matter with
him.

  ``Nothing, uncle! nothing!'' said Richard, looking fiercely
candid.

  They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a
drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering
spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its
way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves,
and the sullen heart---the struggle of life and death in him
---grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out
no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths
of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct,
and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he
rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten
sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old sweet
music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his passion
fixing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one woman
to Richard. He had forbidden her name but from an instinct
of self-defence. Must the maids of baser metal dominate him
anew, it is in Lucy's shape. Thinking of her now so near
him---his darling! all her graces, her sweetness, her truth;
for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her true---swam
in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic, and
full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated it.
As well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young
man the violent emotion that began to rage in his breast.
``I shall not see her!'' he said to himself exultingly, and at
the same instant thought, how black was every corner of the
earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless
the place he was going to! Then he determined to bear
it; to live in darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a
voluntary martyrdom. ``For if I chose I could see her---
this day within an hour!---I could see her, and touch her
hand, and, oh, heaven!---But I do not choose.'' And a great
wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only to
swell again more stormily.

  Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him, that young
Tom Blaize was uncertain where to go for her, and that she
might be thrown on this Babylon alone. And flying from
point to point, it struck him that they had known at Raynham
of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of the
way---they had been miserably plotting against him once
more. ``They shall see what right they have to fear me.
I'll shame them!'' was the first turn taken by his wrathful
feelings, as he resolved to go, and see her safe, and calmly
return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not to be one
of the conspirators. Nevertheless, after forming that resolve,
he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the wheels
that bore him away from it---perhaps because he knew, as
some do when passion is lord, that his intelligence juggled
with him; though none the less keenly did he feel his wrongs
and suspicions. His Golden Bride was waning fast. But
when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: ``We shall soon be
there!'' the spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying
he wanted to speak to Tom, and would ride with him the
rest of the journey. He knew well enough which line of
railway his Lucy must come by. He had studied every
town and station on the line. Before his uncle could express
more than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed
Tom Bakewell, who came behind with the boxes and baggage
in a companion cab, his head a yard beyond the window to
make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle preceding.

  ``What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is,'' said
Hippias. ``We're in the very street!''

  Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the
baronet to arrange everything for their comfort, had opened
the door, and made his bow.

  ``Mr. Richard, sir?---evaporated?'' was Berry's modulated
inquiry.

  ``Behind---among the boxes, fool!'' Hippias growled, as
he received Berry's muscular assistance to alight. ``Lunch
ready---eh!''

  ``Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir---been
in attendance one quarter of an hour. Heah!'' Berry sang
out to the second cab, which, with its pyramid of luggage,
remained stationary some thirty paces distant. At his voice
the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on them, and
went off in a contrary direction.


	CHAPTER XXVII.

	RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO.


  On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was
accustomed to consult his gold watch for practical purposes,
and sniff freedom and the forthcoming dinner, a burglarious
foot entered the clerk's office where he sat, and a man of a
scowling countenance, who looked a villain, and whom he
was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his hands, nodding
that it would be prudent for him to read, and be silent.
Ripton obeyed in alarm. Apparently the contents of the
letter relieved his conscience; for he reached down his hat,
and told Mr. Beazley to inform his father that he had business
of pressing importance in the West, and should meet
him at the station. Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the
paternal Thompson without delay, and together making their
observations from the window, they beheld a cab of many
boxes, into which Ripton darted and was followed by one in
groom's dress. It was Saturday, the day when Ripton gave
up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself upon
his family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son's arm as
he walked down to the station; but that third glass of Port
which always stood for his second, and the groom's suggestion
of aristocratic acquaintances, prevented Mr. Thompson
from interfering: so Ripton was permitted to depart.

  In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It
had the preciseness of an imperial mandate.

  ``=Dear Ripton,=---You are to get lodgings for a lady immediately.
Not a word to a soul. Then come along with Tom.
                              ``R. D. F.''

  ``Lodgings for a lady!'' Ripton meditated aloud: ``What
sort of lodgings? Where am I to get lodgings? Who's the
lady?---I say!'' he addressed the mysterious messenger.
``So you're Tom Bakewell, are you, Tom?''

  Tom grinned his identity.

  ``Do you remember the rick, Tom? Ha! ha! We got
out of that neatly, didn't we, Tom? We might all have been
transported, though. I could have convicted you, Tom!
safe! It's no use coming across a practiced lawyer. Now
tell me.'' Ripton having flourished his powers, commenced
his examination: ``Who's this lady?''

  ``Better wait till you see Mr. Richard, sir,'' Tom resumed
his scowl to reply

  ``Ah!'' Ripton acquiesced. ``Is she young, Tom?''

  Tom said she was not old.

  ``Handsome, Tom?''

  ``Some might think one thing, some another,'' Tom said.

  ``And where does she come from now?'' asked Ripton,
with the friendly cheerfulness of a baffled counsellor.

  ``Comes from the country, sir.''

  ``A friend of the family, I suppose? a relation?''
Ripton left this insinuating query to be answered by a
look. Tom's face was a dead blank.

  ``Ah!'' Ripton took a breath, and eyed the mask opposite
him. ``Why, you're quite a scholar, Tom! Mr. Richard is
quite well? Father's quite well? All right at home?---eh,
Tom?''

  ``Come to town this mornin' with his uncle,'' said Tom.
``All quite well, thank ye, sir.''

  ``Ha!'' cried Ripton, more than ever puzzled, ``now I see.
You all came to town to-day, and these are your boxes outside.
So, so! But Mr. Richard writes for me to get lodgings
for a lady. There must be some mistake---he wrote in a
hurry. He wants lodgings for you all---eh?''

  ``'M sure _I_ d'n know what he wants,'' said Tom. ``You'd
better go by the letter, sir.''

  Ripton re-consulted that document. `` `Lodgings for a lady,
and then come along with Tom. Not a word to a soul.' I
say! that looks like---but he never cared for them. You
don't mean to say, Tom, he's been running away with anybody?''

  Tom fell back upon his first reply: ``Better wait till ye
see Mr. Richard, sir,'' and Ripton exclaimed: ``Hanged if
you ain't the tightest witness I ever saw! I shouldn't like
to have you in a box. Some of you country fellows beat any
number of cockneys. You do!''

  Tom received the compliment stubbornly on his guard, and
Ripton, as nothing was to be got out of him, set about considering
how to perform his friend's injunctions; deciding
firstly, that a lady fresh from the country ought to lodge
near the parks, in which direction he told the cabman to
drive. Thus, unaware of his high destiny, Ripton joined
the hero, and accepted his character in the New Comedy.

  It is, nevertheless, true that certain favoured people do
have beneficent omens to prepare them for their parts when
the hero is in full career, so that they really may be nerved
to meet him; ay, and to check him in his course, had they
that signal courage. For instance, Mrs. Elizabeth Berry, a
ripe and wholesome landlady of advertised lodgings, on the
borders of Kensington, noted, as she sat rocking her contemplative
person before the parlour fire this very March afternoon,
a supernatural tendency in that fire to burn _all on one
side:_ which signifies that a wedding approaches the house.
Why---who shall say? Omens are as impassable as heroes.
It may be because in these affairs the fire is thought to be
all on one side. Enough that the omen exists, and spoke its
solemn warning to the devout woman. Mrs. Berry, in her
circle, was known as a certificated lecturer against the snares
of matrimony. Still that was no reason why she should not
like a wedding. Expectant, therefore, she watched the one
glowing cheek of Hymen, and with pleasing tremours beheld
a cab of many boxes draw up by her bit of garden, and a
gentleman emerge from it in the act of consulting an advertizement
paper. The gentleman required lodgings for a lady.
Lodgings for a lady Mrs. Berry could produce, and a very
roseate smile for a gentleman; so much so that Ripton forgot
to ask about the terms, which made the landlady in Mrs.
Berry leap up to embrace him as the happy man. But her
experienced woman's eye checked her enthusiasm. He had
not the air of a bridegroom: he did not seem to have a
weight on his chest, or an itch to twiddle everything with
his fingers. At any rate, he was not the bridegroom for
whom omens fly abroad. Promising to have all ready for
the lady within an hour, Mrs. Berry fortified him with her
card, curtsied him back to his cab, and floated him off on her
smiles.

  The remarkable vehicle which had woven this thread of
intrigue through London streets, now proceeded sedately to
finish its operations. Ripton was landed at an hotel in
Westminster. Ere he was halfway up the stairs, a door
opened, and his old comrade in adventure rushed down.
Richard allowed no time for salutations. ``Have you done
it?'' was all he asked. For answer Ripton handed him Mrs.
Berry's card. Richard took it, and left him standing there.
Five minutes elapsed, and then Ripton heard the gracious
rustle of feminine garments above. Richard came a little
in advance, leading and half-supporting a figure in a black-silk
mantle and small black straw bonnet; young---that was
certain, though she held her veil so close he could hardly
catch the outlines of her face; girlishly slender, and sweet
and simple in appearance. The hush that came with her,
and her soft manner of moving, stirred the silly youth to
some of those ardours that awake the Knight of Dames in
our bosoms. He felt that he would have given considerable
sums for her to lift her veil. He could see that she was
trembling---perhaps weeping. It was the master of her
fate she clung too. They passed him without speaking. As
she went by, her head passively bent, Ripton had a glimpse
of noble tresses and a lovely neck; great golden curls hung
loosely behind, pouring from under her bonnet. She looked
a captive borne to the sacrifice. What Ripton, after a sight
of those curls, would have given for her just to lift her veil
an instant and strike him blind with beauty, was, fortunately
for his exchequer, never demanded of him. And he had
absolutely been composing speeches as he came along in the
cab! gallant speeches for the lady, and sly congratulatory
ones for his friend, to be delivered as occasion should serve,
that both might know him a man of the world, and be at
their ease. He forgot the smirking immoralities he had
revelled in. This was clearly serious. Ripton did not require
to be told that his friend was in love, and meant that life
and death business called marriage, parents and guardians
consenting or not.

  Presently Richard returned to him, and said hurriedly,
``I want you now to go to my uncle at our hotel. Keep him
quiet till I come. Say I had to see you---say anything. I
shall be there by the dinner hour. Rip! I must talk to
you alone after dinner.''

  Ripton feebly attempted to reply that he was due at home.
He was very curious to hear the plot of the New Comedy;
and besides, there was Richard's face questioning him sternly
and confidently for signs of unhesitating obedience. He
finished his grimaces by asking the name and direction of
the hotel. Richard pressed his hand. It is much to obtain
even that recognition of our devotion from the hero.

  Tom Bakewell also received his priming, and, to judge by
his chuckles and grins, rather appeared to enjoy the work
cut out for him. In a few minutes they had driven to their
separate destinations; Ripton was left to the unusual exercise
of his fancy. Such is the nature of youth and its thirst
for romance, that only to act as a subordinate is pleasant.
When one unfurls the standard of defiance to parents and
guardians, he may be sure of raising a lawless troop of
adolescent ruffians, born rebels, to any amount. The beardless
crew know that they have not a chance of pay; but what
of that when the rosy prospect of thwarting their elders is
in view? Though it is to see another eat the Forbidden
Fruit, they will run all his risks with him. Gaily Ripton
took rank as lieutenant in the enterprise, and the moment
his heart had sworn the oaths, he was rewarded by an exquisite
sense of the charms of existence. London streets
wore a sly laugh to him. He walked with a dandified heel.
The generous youth ogled aristocratic carriages, and glanced
intimately at the ladies, overflowingly happy. The crossing-sweepers
blessed him. He hummed lively tunes, he turned
over old jokes in his mouth unctuously, he hugged himself, he
had a mind to dance down Piccadilly, and all because a friend
of his was running away with a pretty girl, and he was in the
secret.

  It was only when he stood on the doorstep of Richard's
hotel, that his jocund mood was a little dashed by remembering
that he had then to commence the duties of his office, and
must fabricate a plausible story to account for what he knew
nothing about---a part that the greatest of sages would find
it difficult to perform. The young, however, whom sages
well may envy, seldom fail in lifting their inventive faculties
to the level of their spirits, and two minutes of Hippias's
angry complaints against the friend he serenely inquired for,
gave Ripton his cue.

  ``We're in the very street---within a stone's-throw of the
house, and he jumps like a harlequin out of my cab into
another; he must be mad---that boy's got madness in him!
---and carries off all the boxes---my dinner-pills, too! and
keeps away the whole of the day, though he promised to go
to the doctor, and had a dozen engagements with me,'' said
Hippias, venting an enraged snarl to sum up his grievances,

  Ripton at once told him that the doctor was not at home.

  ``Why, you don't mean to say he's been to the doctor?''
Hippias cried out.

  ``He has called on him twice, sir,'' said Ripton expressively.
``On leaving me he was going a third time. I
shouldn't wonder that's what detains him---he's so determined.''

  By fine degrees, beyond the reach of art, Ripton ventured
to grow circumstantial, saying that Richard's case was urgent
and required immediate medical advice; and that both he
and his father were of opinion Richard should not lose an
hour in obtaining it.

  ``He's dreadfully alarmed about himself,'' said Ripton, and
tapped his chest, and threw up his lips and brows.

  Hippias protested he had never heard a word from his
nephew of any physical affliction.

  ``No,'' groaned Ripton, ``he was afraid of making you
anxious.''

  Algernon Feverel and Richard came in while he was hammering
at the alphabet to recollect the first letter of the
doctor's name. They had met in the hall below, and were
laughing heartily as they entered the room. Ripton jumped
up to get the initiative.

  ``Have you seen the doctor?'' he asked, significantly
plucking at Richard's fingers.

  Richard was all abroad at the question.

  ``Why, the doctor you were going to for the third time
when you left me,'' said Ripton, in a manner not to be mistaken,
``What does he say?''

  Richard sought in turn the countenances of all present, and
settled upon Ripton's with a ludicrous stare.

  Algernon clapped him on the back. ``What the deuce do
you want with doctors, boy?''

  The solid thump awakened him to see matters as they
were. ``Oh, ay! the doctor!'' he said, smiling frankly at
his lieutenant. ``Why, he tells me he'd back me to do Milo's
trick in a week from the present day.---Uncle,'' he came forward
to Hippias, ``I hope you'll excuse me for running off as
I did. I was in a hurry. I left something at the railway.
This stupid Rip thinks I went to the doctor about myself.
The fact was, I wanted to fetch the doctor to see you here
---so that you might have no trouble, you know. You can't
bear the sight of his instruments and skeletons---I've heard
you say so. You said it set all your marrow in revolt---
`fried your marrow,' I think were the words, and made you
see twenty thousand different ways of sliding down to the
chambers of the Grim King. Don't you remember?

  Hippias emphatically did not remember, and he did not
believe the story. Irritation at the mad ravishment of his
pill-box rendered him incredulous. As he had no means of
confuting his nephew, all he could do safely to express his
disbelief in him, was to utter petulant remarks on his powerlessness
to appear at the dinner-table that day: upon which
Berry just then trumpeting dinner---Algernon seized one
arm of the Dyspepsy, and Richard another, and the laughing
couple bore him into the room where dinner was laid, Ripton
sniggering in the rear, the really happy man of the party.

  They had fun at the dinner-table. Richard would have
it; and his gaiety, his by-play, his princely superiority to
truth and heroic promise of overriding all our laws, his
handsome face, the lord and possessor of beauty that he
looked, as it were a star shining on his forehead, gained the
old complete mastery over Ripton, who had been, mentally
at least, half patronizing him till then, because he knew
more of London and life, and was aware that his friend now
depended upon him almost entirely.

  After a second circle of the claret, the hero caught his
lieutenant's eye across the table, and said:

  ``We must go out and talk over that law-business, Rip,
before you go. Do you think the old lady has any chance?''

  ``Not a bit!'' said Ripton authoritatively.

  ``But it's worth fighting---eh, Rip?''

  ``Oh, certainly!'' was Ripton's mature opinion.

  Richard observed that Ripton's father seemed doubtful.
Ripton cited his father's habitual caution. Richard made a
playful remark on the necessity of sometimes acting in opposition
to fathers. Ripton agreed to it---in certain cases.

  ``Yes, yes! in certain cases,'' said Richard.

  ``Pretty legal morality, gentlemen!'' Algernon interjected;
Hippias adding: ``And lay, too!''

  The pair of uncles listened further to the fictitious
dialogue, well kept up on both sides, and in the end desired
a statement of the old lady's garrulous case; Hippias offering
to decide what her chances were in law, and Algernon to
give a common-sense judgement.

  ``Rip will tell you,'' said Richard, deferentially signalling
the lawyer. ``I'm a bad hand at these matters. Tell them
how it stands, Rip.''

  Ripton disguised his excessive uneasiness under endeavours
to right his position on his chair, and, inwardly praying
speed to the claret jug to come and strengthen his wits,
began with a careless-aspect: ``Oh, nothing! She---very
curious old character! She---a---wears a wig, She---a---
very curious old character indeed! She---a---quite the old
style. There's no doing anything with her!'' and Ripton
took a long breath to relieve himself after his elaborate
fiction.

  ``So it appears,'' Hippias commented, and Algernon
asked: ``Well? and about her wig? Somebody stole it?''
while Richard, whose features were grim with suppressed
laughter, bade the narrator continue.

  Ripton lunged for the claret jug. He had got an old lady
like an oppressive bundle on his brain, and he was as helpless
as she was. In the pangs of ineffectual authorship his
ideas shot at her wig, and then at her one characteristic of
extreme obstinacy, and tore back again at her wig, but she
would not be animated. The obstinate old thing would
remain a bundle. Law studies seemed light in comparison
with this tremendous task of changeing an old lady from a
doll to a human creature. He flung off some claret,
perspired freely, and, with a mental tribute to the cleverness
of those author fellows, recommenced: ``Oh, nothing! She
---a---wore a wig for a long time. She---Richard knows her
better than I do---an old lady---somewhere down in Suffolk.
I think we had better advise her not to proceed. The
expenses of litigation are enormous! She---I think we had
better advise her to stop short, and not make any scandal.''

  ``And not make any scandal!'' Algernon took him up.
``Come, come! there's something more than a wig, then?''

  Ripton was commanded to proceed, whether she did or no.
The luckless fictionist looked straight at his pitiless leader,
and blurted out dubiously, ``She---there's a daughter.''

  ``Born with effort!'' ejaculated Hippias. ``Must give her
pause after that! and I'll take the opportunity to stretch my
length on the sofa. Heigho! that's true what Austin says:
`The general prayer should be for a full stomach, and the
individual for one that works well; for on that basis only
are we a match for temporal matters, and able to contemplate
eternal.' Sententious, but true. I gave him the
idea, though! Take care of your stomachs, boys! and if
ever you hear of a monument proposed to a scientific cook or
gastronomic doctor, send in your subscriptions. Or say to
him while he lives, Go forth, and be a Knight! Ha! They
have a good cook at this house. He suits me better than
ours at Raynham. I almost wish I had brought my manuscript
to town, I feel so much better. Aha! I didn't expect
to digest at all without my regular incentive. I think I
shall give it up.---What do you say to the theatre to-night,
boys?''

  Richard shouted, ``Bravo, uncle!''

  ``Let Mr. Thompson finish first,'' said Algernon. ``I want
to hear the conclusion of the story. The old girl has a wig
and a daughter. I'll swear somebody runs away with one of
the two! Fill your glass, Mr. Thompson, and forward!''

  ``So somebody does,'' Ripton received his impetus. ``And
they're found in town together,'' he made a fresh jerk. ``She
---a---that is, the old lady---found them in company.''

  ``She finds him with her wig on in company!'' said Algernon.
``Capital! Here's matter for the lawyers!''

  ``And you advise her not to proceed, under such circumstances
of aggravation?'' Hippias observed, humorously
twinkling stomachic contentment.

  ``It's the daughter,'' Ripton sighed, and surrendering to
pressure, hurried on recklessly, ``A runaway match---beautiful
girl!---the only son of a baronet---married by special
license. A---the point is,'' he now brightened and spoke from
his own element, ``the point is whether the marriage can be
annulled, as she's of the Catholic persuasion and he's a
Protestant, and they're both married under age. That's the
point.''

  Having come to the point he breathed extreme relief, and
saw things more distinctly; not a little amazed at his leader's
horrified face.

  The two elders were making various absurd inquiries, when
Richard sent his chair to the floor, crying, ``What a muddle
you're in, Rip! You're mixing half-a-dozen stories together.
The old lady I told you about was old Dame Bakewell, and
the dispute was concerning a neighbour of hers who encroached
on her garden, and I said l'd pay the money to see
her righted!''

  ``Ah, to be sure!'' said Ripton humbly, ``I was thinking
of the other. Oh, of course! Yes---she---a---her cabbages''------

  ``Here, come along,'' Richard beckoned to him savagely.
``I'll be back in five minutes, uncle,'' he nodded coolly to
either.

  The young men left the room, and put on their hats. In
the hall-passage they met Berry, dressed to return to Raynham.
Richard dropped a helper to the intelligence into his
hand, and warned him not to gossip much of London. Berry
bowed perfect discreetness.

  ``What on earth induced you to talk about Protestants and
Catholics marrying, Rip?'' said Richard, as soon as they
were in the street.

  ``Why,'' Ripton answered, ``I was so hard pushed for it,
'pon my honour, I didn't know what to say. I ain't an
author, you know; I can't make a story. I was trying to
invent a point, you know, and I couldn't think of any other,
and I thought that was just the point likely to make a jolly
good dispute. Capital dinners they give at those crack
hotels. Why did you throw it all upon me? I didn't begin
on the old lady.' ''

  The hero mused, ``It's odd! It's impossible you could
have known! I'll tell you why, Rip! I wanted to try you.
You fib well at long range, but you don't do at close quarters
and single combat. You're good behind walls, but not worth
a shot in the open. I just see what you're fit for. You're
staunch---that I am certain of. You always were. Lead the
way to one of the Parks---down in that direction. You know
---where she is!''

  Ripton led the way. His dinner had prepared this young
Englishman to defy the whole artillery of established morals.
With the muffled roar of London around them, alone in a
dark slope of green, the hero, leaning on his henchman, and
speaking in a harsh clear under-tone, delivered his explanations.
Doubtless the true heroic insignia and point of view
will be discerned, albeit in common private's uniform.

  ``They've been plotting against me for a year, Rip! When
you see her, you'll know what it was to have such a creature
taken away from you. It nearly killed me. Never mind
what she is. She's the most perfect and noble creature God
ever made! It's not only her beauty---I don't care so much
about that!---but when you've once seen her, she seems to
draw music from all the nerves of your body; but she's such
an angel. I worship her. And her mind's like her face.
She's pure gold. There, you'll see her to-night.

  ``Well,'' he pursued, after inflating Ripton with this rapturous
prospect, ``they got her away, and I recovered. It
was Mister Adrian's work. What's my father's objection to
her? Because of her birth? She's educated; her manners
are beautiful---full of refinement---quick and soft! Can they
show me one of their ladies like her?---she's the daughter
of a naval lieutenant! Because she's a Catholic? What
has religion to do with''---he pronounced ``Love!'' a little
modestly---as it were a blush in his voice.

  ``Well, when I recovered I thought I did not care for her.
It shows how we know ourselves! And I cared for nothing.
I felt as if I had no blood. I tried to imitate my dear Austin.
I wish to God he were here. I love Austin. He would
understand her. He's coming back this year, and then---but
it'll be too late then.---Well, my father's always scheming to
make me perfect---he has never spoken to me a word about
her, but I can see her in his eyes---he wanted to give me a
change, he said, and asked me to come to town with my uncle
Hippy, and I consented. It was another plot to get me out
of the way! As I live, I had no more idea of meeting her
than of flying to heaven!''

  He lifted his face. ``Look at those old elm branches!
How they seem to mix among the stars!---glittering fruits of
Winter!''

  Ripton tipped his comical nose upward, and was in duty
bound to say, Yes! though he observed no connection
between them and the narrative.

  ``Well,'' the hero went on, ``I came to town. There I
heard she was coming, too---coming home. It must have
been fate, Ripton! Heaven forgive me! I was angry with
her, and I thought I should like to see her once only once
---and reproach her for being false---for she never wrote to
me. And, oh, the dear angel! what she must have suffered!
---I gave my uncle the slip, and got to the railway she was
coming by. There was a fellow going to meet her---a farmer's
son---and, good God! they were going to try and make her
marry him! I remembered it all then. A servant of the
farm had told me. That fellow went to the wrong station,
I suppose, for we saw nothing of him. There she was---not
changed a bit!---looking lovelier than ever! And when she
saw me, I knew in a minute that she must love me till
death!---You don't know what it is yet, Rip!---Will you
believe it?---Though I was as sure she loved me and had
been true as steel, as that I shall see her to-night, I spoke
bitterly to her. And she bore it meekly---she looked like a
saint. I told her there was but one hope of life for me---she
must prove she was true, and as I give up all, so must she.
I don't know what I said. The thought of losing her made
me mad. She tried to plead with me to wait---it was for my
sake, I know. I pretended, like a miserable hypocrite, that
she did not love me at all. I think I said shameful things.
Oh what noble creatures women are! She hardly had
strength to move. I took her to that place where you found
us.---Rip! she went down on her knees to me. I never
dreamed of anything in life so lovely as she looked then.
Her eyes were thrown up, bright with a crowd of tears---her
dark brows bent together, like Pain and Beauty meeting in
one; and her glorious golden hair swept off her shoulders as
she hung forward to my hands.---Could I lose such a prize?
---If anything could have persuaded me, would not that?---I
thought of Dante's Madonna---Guido's Magdalen.---Is there
sin in it? I see none! And if there is, it's all mine! I
swear she's spotless of a thought of sin. I see her very soul!
Cease to love her? Who dares ask me? Cease to love her?
Why I live on her!---To see her little chin straining up from
her throat, as she knelt to me!---there was one curl that fell
across her throat . . . . .''

  Ripton listened for more. Richard had gone off in a muse
at the picture.

  ``Well?'' said Ripton, ``and how about that young farmer
fellow?''

  The here's head was again contemplating the starry
branches. His lieutenant's question came to him after an
interval.

  ``Young Tom? Why, it's young Tom Blaize---son of our
old enemy, Rip! I like the old man now. Oh! I saw
nothing of the fellow.''

  ``Lord!'' cried Ripton, ``are we going to get into a mess
with Blaizes again? I don't like that!''

  His commander quietly passed his likes or dislikes.

  ``But when he goes to the train, and finds she's not there?''
Ripton suggested.

  ``I've provided for that. The fool went to the South-east
instead of the South-west. All warmth, all sweetness, comes
with the South-west!---I've provided for that, friend Rip.
My trusty Tom awaits him there, as if by accident. He tells
him he has not seen her, and advises him to remain in town,
and go for her there to-morrow, and the day following. Tom
has money for the work. Young Tom ought to see London,
you know, Rip!---like you. We shall gain some good clear
days. And when old Blaize hears of it---what then? I have
her! she's mine!---Besides, he won't hear for a week. This
Tom beats that Tom in cunning, I'll wager. Ha! ha!''
the hero burst out at a recollection. ``What do you think,
Rip? My father has some sort of System with me, it
appears, and when I came to town the time before, he took
me to some people---the Grandisons---and what do you
think? one of the daughters is a little girl---a nice little
thing enough---very funny---and he wants me to wait for
her! He hasn't said so, but I know it. I know what he
means. Nobody understands him but me. I know he loves
me, and is one of the best of men---but just consider!---a
_little girl_ who just comes up to my elbow. Isn't it ridiculous?
Did you ever hear such nonsense?''

  Ripton emphasized his opinion that it certainly was
foolish.

  ``No, no! The die's cast!'' said Richard. ``They've been
plotting for a year up to this day, and this is what comes of
it! If my father loves me, he will love her. And if he
loves me, he'll forgive my acting against his wishes, and see
it was the only thing to be done. Come! step out! what a
time we've been!'' and away he went, compelling Ripton to
the sort of strides a drummer-boy has to take beside a
column of grenadiers.

  Ripton began to wish himself in love, seeing that it
endowed a man with wind so that he could breathe great
sighs, while going at a tremendous pace, and experience no
sensation of fatigue. The hero was communing with the
elements, his familiars, and allowed him to pant as he
pleased. Some keen-eyed Kensington urchins, noticing the
discrepancy between the pedestrian powers of the two, aimed
their wit at Mr. Thompson junior's expense. The pace, and
nothing but the pace, induced Ripton to proclaim that they
had gone too far, when they discovered that they had overshot
the mark by half a mile. In the street over which
stood love's star, the hero thundered his presence at a door,
and evoked a flying housemaid, who knew not Mrs. Berry.
The hero attached significance to the fact that his instincts
should have betrayed him, for he could have sworn to that
house. The door being shut he stood in dead silence.

  ``Haven't you got her card?'' Ripton inquired, and heard
that it was in the custody of the cabman. Neither of them
could positively bring to mind the number of the house.

  ``You ought to have chalked it, like that fellow in the
Forty Thieves,'' Ripton hazarded a pleasantry which met
with no response.

  Betrayed by his instincts, the magic slaves of Love! The
hero heavily descended the steps.

  Ripton murmured that they were done for. His commander
turned on him, and said: ``Take all the houses on
the opposite side, one after another. I'll take these.'' With
a wry face Ripton crossed the road, altogether subdued by
Richard's native superiority to adverse circumstances.

  Then were families aroused. Then did mortals dimly
guess that, something portentous was abroad. Then were
labourers all day in the vineyard, harshly wakened from
their evening's nap. Hope and Fear stalked the street,
as again and again the loud companion summonses
resounded. Finally Ripton sang out cheerfully. He had
Mrs. Berry before him, profuse of mellow curtsies.
Richard ran to her and caught her hands: ``She's well?---
upstairs?''

  ``Oh, quite well! only a trifle tired with her journey, and
fluttering-like,'' Mrs. Berry replied to Ripton alone. The
lover had flown aloft.

  The wise woman sagely ushered Ripton into her own
private parlour, there to wait till he was wanted.


	CHAPTER XXVIII.

	CONTAINS AN INTERCESSION FOR THE HEROINE.

  ``In all cases where two have joined to commit an offence,
punish one of the two lightly,'' is the dictum of =The
Pilgrim's Scrip.=

			<*>

  It is possible for young heads to conceive proper plans of
action, and occasionally, by sheer force of will, to check the
wild horses that are ever fretting to gallop off with them.
But when they have given the reins and the whip to another,
what are they to do? They may go down on their knees,
and beg and pray the furious charioteer to stop, or moderate
his pace. Alas! each fresh thing they do redoubles his
ardour. There is a power in their troubled beauty women
learn the use of, and what wonder? They have seen it
kindle Ilium to flames so often! But ere they grow matronly
in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore, and
do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of
loveliness. They resign themselves to an incomprehensible
frenzy; pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive
love. And so the very sensible things which they can
and do say, are vain.

  I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest. Are
not those their own horses in yonder team? Certainly, if
they were quite in earnest, they might soon have my gentleman
as sober as a carter. A hundred different ways of disenchanting
him exist, and Adrian will point you out one
or two that shall be instantly efficacious. For Love, the
charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love keeps
his legs to the end. Granted dear women are not quite in
earnest, still the mere words they utter should be put to
their good account. They do mean them, though their
hearts are set the wrong way. 'Tis a despairing, pathetic
homage to the judgement of the majority, in whose faces
they are flying. Punish Helen, very young, lightly. After
a certain age you may select her for special chastisement.
An innocent with Theseus, with Paris she is an advanced
incendiary.

  The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her.
trying to recall her stunned senses. Her bonnet was unremoved,
her hands clasped on her knees; dry tears in her
eyes. Like a dutiful slave, she rose to him. And first he
claimed her mouth. There was a speech, made up of all the
pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love could gather,
awaiting him there; but his kiss scattered it to fragments.
She dropped to her seat weeping, and hiding her shamed
cheeks.

  By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand
and drew it to her lips.

  He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.

  ``Keep your eyes so.''

  She could not.

  ``Do you fear me, Lucy?''

  A throbbing pressure answered him.

  ``Do you love me, darling?''

  She trembled from head to foot.

  ``Then why do you turn from me?''

  She wept: ``O Richard, take me home! take me home!''

  ``Look at me, Lucy!''

  Her head shrank timidly round.

  ``Keep your eyes on me, darling! Now speak!''

  But she could not look and speak too. The lover knew his
mastery when he had her eyes.

  ``You wish me to take you home?''

  She faltered: ``O Richard? it is not too late.''

  ``You regret what you have done for me?''

  ``Dearest! it is ruin.''

  ``You weep because you have consented to be mine?''

  ``Not for me! O Richard!''

  ``For me you weep? Look at me! For me?''

  ``How will it end! O Richard!''

  ``You weep for me?''

  ``Dearest! I would die for you!''

  ``Would you see me indifferent to everything in the
world? Would you have me lost? Do you think I will
live another day in England without you? I have staked
all I have on you, Lucy. You have nearly killed me once.
A second time, and the earth will not be troubled by me.
You ask me to wait, when they are plotting against us on all
sides? Darling Lucy! look on me. Fix your fond eyes on
me. You ask me to wait when here you are given to me---
when you have proved my faith---when we know we love as
none have loved. Give me your eyes! Let them tell me I
have your heart!''

  Where was her wise little speech? How could she match
such mighty eloquence? She sought to collect a few more
of the scattered fragments.

  ``Dearest! your father may be brought to consent by and
by, and then--- Oh! if you take me home now''------

  The lover stood up! ``He who has been arrangeing that
fine scheme to disgrace and martyrize you? True, as I live!
that's the reason of their having you back. Your old servant
heard him and your uncle discussing it. He!---Lucy! he's
a good man, but he must not step in between you and me.
I say God has given you to me.''

  He was down by her side again, his arms enfolding her.
She had hoped to fight a better battle than in the morning
and she was weaker and softer.

  Ah! why should she doubt that his great love was the first
law to her? Why should she not believe that she would
wreck him by resisting? And if she suffered, oh sweet to
think it was for his sake! Sweet to shut out wisdom; accept
total blindness, and be led by him!

  The hag Wisdom annoyed them little further. She rustled
her garments ominously, and vanished.

  ``Oh, my own Richard!'' the fair girl just breathed.

  He whispered, ``Call me that name.''

  She blushed deeply.

  ``Call me that name,'' he repeated. ``You said it once to-day.''

  ``Dearest!''

  ``Not that.''

  ``O darling!''

  ``Not that.''

  ``Husband!''

  She was won. The rosy gate from which the word had
issued was closed with a seal.

  Ripton did not enjoy his introduction to the caged bird of
beauty that night. He received a lesson in the art of pumping
from the worthy landlady below, up to an hour when she
yawned, and he blinked, and their common candle wore with
dignity the brigand's hat of midnight, and cocked a drunken
eye at them from under it.


	CHAPTER XXIX.

	RELATES HOW PREPARATIONS FOR ACTION WERE CONDUCTED
	UNDER THE APRIL OF LOVERS.

  Beauty, of course, is for the hero. Nevertheless, it is not
always he on whom beauty works its most conquering influence.
It is the dull commonplace man into whose slow
brain she drops like a celestial light, and burns lastingly.
The poet, for instance, is a connoisseur of beauty: to the artist
she is a model. These gentlemen by much contemplation of
her charms wax critical. The days when they had hearts
being gone, they are haply divided between the blonde and
the brunette;, the aquiline nose and the Proserpine; this
shaped eye and that. But go about among simple unprofessional
fellows, boors, dunderheads, and here and there you
shall find some barbarous intelligence which has had just
strength enough to conceive, and has taken Beauty as its
Goddess, and knows but one form to worship, in its poor
stupid fashion, and would perish for her. Nay, more: the
man would devote all his days to her, though he is dumb as
a dog. And, indeed, he is Beauty's Dog. Almost every
Beauty has her Dog. The hero possesses her; the poet proclaims
her; the painter puts her upon canvas; and the
faithful old Dog follows her: and the end of it is that the
faithful old Dog is her single attendant. Sir Hero is revelling
in the wars, or in Armida's bowers; Mr. Poet has spied
a wrinkle; the brush is for the rose in its season. She turns
to her old Dog then. She hugs him; and he, who has subsisted
on a bone and a pat till there he squats decrepid, he
turns his grateful old eyes up to her, and has not a notion
that she is hugging sad memories in him: Hero, Poet,
Painter, in one scrubby one! Then is she buried, and the
village hears languid howls, and there is a paragraph in the
newspapers concerning the extraordinary fidelity of an Old
Dog.

  Excited by suggestive recollections of Nooredeen and the
Fair Persian, and the change in the obscure monotony of
his life by his having quarters in a crack hotel, and living
familiarly with West-End people---living on the fat of the
land (which forms a stout portion of an honest youth's
romance), Ripton Thompson breakfasted next morning with
his chief at half-past eight. The meal had been fixed overnight
for seven, but Ripton slept a great deal more than the
nightingale, and (to chronicle his exact state) even half-past
eight rather afflicted his new aristocratic senses, and reminded
him too keenly of law and bondage. He had preferred to
breakfast at Algernon's hour, who had left word for eleven.
Him, however, it was Richard's object to avoid, so they fell
to, and Ripton no longer envied Hippias in bed. Breakfast
done, they bequeathed the consoling information for Algernon
that they were off to hear a popular preacher, and
departed.

  ``How happy everybody looks!'' said Richard, in the
quiet Sunday streets.

  ``Yes---jolly!'' said Ripton.

  ``When I'm---when this is over, I'll see that they are,
too---as many as I can make happy,'' said the hero: adding
softly: ``Her blind was down at a quarter to six. I think
she slept well!''

  ``You don't mean to say you've been there this morning?''
Ripton exclaimed. ``Really?'' and an idea of what love
was dawned upon his dull brain.

  ``Will she see me, Ricky?''

  ``Yes. She'll see you to-day. She was tired last night.''

  ``Positively?''     

  Richard assured him that the privilege would be his.

  ``Here,'' he said, coming under some trees in the park,
``here's where I talked to you last night. What a time it
seems! How I hate the night!''

  ``You'll''---Ripton darkly winked; but his chief looked
uninstructed, and he branched into the converse of daylight.

  On the way, that Richard might have an exalted opinion
of him, he hinted decorously at a somewhat intimate and
mysterious acquaintance with the sex. Ripton Thompson
had seen pretty girls, and pretty girls had seen Ripton
Thompson. Ahem!---Headings of certain random adventures
he gave.

  ``Well!'' said his chief, ``why don't you marry her?''

  Then was Ripton shocked, and cried, ``Oh, dear!'' and
had a taste of the feeling of superiority, destined that day
to be crushed utterly.

  He was again deposited in Mrs. Berry's charge for a term
that caused him dismal fears that the Fair Persian still
refused to show her face, but Richard called out to him,
and up Ripton went, unaware of the transformation he was
to undergo. Hero and Beauty stood together to receive him.
From the bottom of the stairs he had his vivaciously agreeable
smile ready for them, and by the time he entered the
room his cheeks were painfully stiff, and his eyes strained
beyond their exact meaning. Lucy, with one hand anchored
to her lover, welcomed him kindly. He relieved her shyness
by looking so extremely silly. They sat down, and
tried to commence a conversation, but Ripton was as little
master of his tongue as he was of his eyes. After an interval,
the Fair Persian having done duty by showing herself,
was glad to quit the room. Her lord and possessor then
turned inquiringly to Ripton.

  ``You don't wonder now, Rip?'' he said.

  ``No, Richard!'' Ripton waited to reply with sufficient
solemnity, ``indeed I don't!''

  He spoke differently; he looked differently. He had the
Old Dog's eyes in his head. They watched the door she had
passed through; they listened for her, as dogs' eyes do.
When she came in, bonneted for a walk, his agitation was
dog-like. When she hung on her lover timidly, and went
forth, he followed without an idea of envy, or anything save
the secret raptures the sight of her gave him, which are the
Old Dog's own. For beneficent Nature requites him. His
sensations cannot be heroic, but they have a fulness, and a
wagging delight, as good in their way. And this capacity
for humble unaspiring worship has its peculiar guerdon.
When Ripton comes to think of Miss Random now, what
will he think of himself? Let no one despise the Old Dog.
Through him doth Beauty vindicate her sex.

  It did not please Ripton that others should have the bliss
of beholding her, and as, to his perceptions, everybody did,
and observed her offensively, and stared, and turned their
heads back, and interchanged comments on her, and became
in a minute madly in love with her, he had to smother low
growls. They strolled about the pleasant gardens of Kensington
all the morning, under the young chestnut buds, and
round the windless waters, talking, and soothing the
wild excitement of their hearts. If Lucy spoke, Ripton
pricked up his ears. She, too, made the remark that everybody
seemed to look happy, and he heard it with thrills of
joy. ``So everybody is, where you are!'' he would have
wished to say, if he dared, but was restrained by fears that
his burning eloquence would commit him. Ripton knew the
people he met twice. It would have been difficult to persuade
him they were the creatures of accident.

  From the Gardens, in contempt of Ripton's frowned protest,
Richard boldly struck into the Park, where solitary
carriages were beginning to perform the circuit. Here
Ripton had some justification for his jealous pangs. The
young girl's golden locks of hair; her sweet, now dreamily
sad, face; her gentle graceful figure in the black straight
dress she wore; a sort of half-conventual air she had---a
mark of something not of class, that was partly beauty's,
partly maiden innocence growing conscious, partly remorse
at her weakness and dim fear of the future it was sowing---
did attract the eye-glasses. Ripton had to learn that eyes
are bearable, but eye-glasses an abomination. They fixed a
spell upon his courage; for somehow the youth had always
ranked them as emblems of our nobility, and hearing two
exquisite eye-glasses, who had been to front and rear several
times, drawl in gibberish generally imputed to lords, that
his heroine was a charming little creature, just the size, but
had no style,---he was abashed; he did not fly at them and
tear them. He became dejected. Beauty's dog is affected
by the eye-glass in a manner not unlike the common animal's
terror of the human eye.

  Richard appeared to hear nothing, or it was homage that
he heard. He repeated to Lucy Diaper Sandoe's verses---

	``The cockneys nod to each other aside,
	  The coxcombs lift their glasses,''

and projected hiring a horse for her to ride every day in the
park, and shine among the highest.

  They had turned to the West, against the sky glittering
through the bare trees across the water, and the bright-edged
rack. The lover, his imagination just then occupied
in clothing earthly glories in celestial, felt where his senses
were sharpest the hand of his darling falter, and instinctively
looked ahead. His uncle Algernon was leisurely jolting
towards them on his one sound leg. The dismembered
Guardsman talked to a friend whose arm supported him,
and speculated from time to time on the fair ladies driving
by. The two white faces passed him unobserved. Unfortunately
Ripton, coming behind, went plump upon the
Captain's live toe---or so he pretended---crying, ``Confound
it, Mr. Thompson! you might have chosen the other.''

  The horrible apparition did confound Ripton, who stammered
that it was extraordinary.

  ``Not at all,'' said Algernon. ``Everybody makes up to
that fellow. Instinct, I suppose!''

  He had not to ask for his nephew. Richard turned to
face the matter.

  ``Sorry I couldn't wait for you this morning, uncle,'' he
said, with the coolness of relationship. ``I thought you
never walked so far.''

  His voice was in perfect tone---the heroic mask admirable.
Algernon examined the downcast visage at his side, and
contrived to allude to the popular preacher. He was
instantly introduced to Ripton's sister, Miss Thompson.

  The Captain bowed, smiling melancholy approval of his
nephew's choice of a minister. After a few stray remarks,
and an affable salute to Miss Thompson, he hobbled away,
and then the three sealed volcanoes breathed, and Lucy's
arm ceased to be squeezed quite so much up to the heroic
pitch.

  This incident quickened their steps homeward to the
sheltering wings of Mrs. Berry. All that passed between
them on the subject comprised a stammered excuse from
Ripton for his conduct, and a good-humoured rejoinder from
Richard, that he had gained a sister by it: at which Ripton
ventured to wish aloud Miss Desborough would only think
so, and a faint smile switched poor Lucy's lips to please him.
She hardly had strength to reach her cage. She had none
to eat of Mrs. Berry's nice little dinner. To be alone, that
she might cry and ease her heart of its accusing weight of
tears, was all she prayed for. Kind Mrs. Berry, slipping
into her bedroom to take off her things, found the fair body
in a fevered shudder, and finished by undressing her completely
and putting her to bed.

  ``Just an hour's sleep, or so,'' the mellifluous woman explained
the case to the two anxious gentlemen. ``A quiet
sleep and a cup of warm tea goes for more than twenty
doctors, it do---when there's the flutters,'' she pursued. ``I
know it by myself. And a good cry beforehand's better than
the best of medicine.''

  She nursed them into a make-believe of eating, and retired
to her softer charge and sweeter babe, reflecting, ``Lord!
Lord! the three of 'em don't make fifty! I'm as old as two
and a half of 'em, to say the least.''   Mrs. Berry used her
apron, and by virtue of their tender years took them all three
into her heart.

  Left alone, neither of the young men could swallow a
morsel.

  ``Did you see the change come over her?'' Richard
whispered.

  Ripton fiercely accused his prodigious stupidity.

  The lover flung down his knife and fork: ``What could
I do? If I had said nothing, we should have been suspected.
I was obliged to speak. And she hates a lie! See! it has
struck her down. God forgive me!''

  Ripton affected a serene mind: ``It was a fright, Richard,''
he said. ``That's what Mrs. Berry means by flutters.
Those old women talk in that way. You heard  what she
said. And these old women know. I'll tell you what it is.
It's this, Richard!---it's because you've got a fool for your
friend!''

  ``She regrets it,'' muttered the lover. ``Good God! I
think she fears me.'' He dropped his face in his hands.

  Ripton went to the window, repeating energetically for his
comfort: ``It's because you've got a fool for your friend!''

  Sombre grew the street they had last night aroused. The
sun was buried alive in cloud. Ripton saw himself no more
in the opposite window. He watched the deplorable objects
passing on the pavement. His aristocratic visions had gone
like his breakfast. Beauty had been struck down by his
egregious folly, and there he stood---a wretch!

  Richard came to him: ``Don't mumble on like that, Rip!''
he said. ``Nobody blames you.''

  ``Ah! you're very kind, Richard,'' interposed the wretch,
moved at the face of misery he beheld.

  ``Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night.
Yes! If she's happier away from me!---do you think me a
brute, Ripton? Rather than have her shed a tear, I'd!---
I'll take her home to-night!''

  Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his
larger experience, people perhaps might talk.

  The lover could not understand what they should talk
about, but he said: ``If I give him who came for her yesterday
the clue? If no one sees or hears of me, what can they
say? O Rip! I'll give her up. I'm wrecked for ever! what
of that? Yes---let them take her! The world in arms
should never have torn her from me, but when she cries---
Yes! all's over. I'll find him at once.''

  He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of
resolve. Ripton looked on, wretcheder than ever.

  ``Suppose,'' the idea struck him, ``suppose, Richard, she
doesn't want to go?''

  The lover sternly continued his hunt. He found the propelling
machine at last, and put it on, saying under its
shadow: ``I'm ready! Now!''

  Here was sadness and gloom come upon them! Ripton
likewise commenced the search for his doleful casque, and
toppled it moodily on the back of his head in sign of glorious
enterprise abandoned, and surrender to the enemy.

  It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with
parents and guardians and the old wise world, might have
inclined them to pursue their righteous wretched course, and
have given small Cupid a smack and sent him home to
his naughty Mother. Alas! (it is =The Pilgrim's Scrip= interjecting)
women are the born accomplices of mischief! In
bustles Mrs. Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the
two knights helmed, and sees, though 'tis dusk, that they
wear doubtful brows, and guesses bad things for her dear
God Hymen in a twinkling.

  ``Dear! dear!'' she exclaimed, ``and neither of you eaten
a scrap! And there's my dear young lady off into the prettiest
sleep you ever see!''

  ``Ha!'' cried the lover, illuminated.

  ``Soft as a baby!'' Mrs. Berry averred. ``I went to look
at her this very moment, and there's not a bit of trouble in
her breath. It come and it go like the sweetest regular
instrument ever made. The Black Ox haven't trod on _her_
foot yet! Most like it was the air of London. But only
fancy, if you had called in a doctor! Why, I shouldn't have
let her take any of his quackery. Now, there!''

  Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff
his hat with a curious caution, and peer into its recess, from
which, during Mrs. Berry's speech, he drew forth a little
gloves---dropped there by some freak of chance.

  ``Keep me, keep me, now you have me!'' sang the little
glove, and amused the lover with a thousand conceits.

  ``When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?'' he
asked.

  ``Oh! we mustn't go for disturbing her,'' said the guileful
good creature. ``Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you
young gentlemen was to take my advice, and go and take a
walk for to get a appetite---everybody should eat! it's their
sacred duty, no matter what their feelings be! and I say it
who 'm no chicken!---I'll frickashee this---which is a chicken
---against your return. I'm a cook, I can assure ye!''

  The lover seized her two hands. ``You're the best old
soul in the world!'' he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing
to kiss him. ``We won't disturb her. Let her sleep. Keep
her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you? And we'll call to
inquire after her this evening, and come and see her to-morrow.
I'm sure you'll be kind to her. There! there!'' Mrs.
Berry was preparing to whimper. ``I trust her to you, you
see. Good-bye, you dear old soul.''

  He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went
to dine with his uncles, happy and hungry.

  Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw
Mrs. Berry into their confidence, telling her (with embellishments)
all save their names, so that they might enjoy the
counsel and assistance of that trump of a woman, and yet
have nothing to fear from her. Lucy was to receive the
name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and best-looking sister.
The heartless fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old
weakness of hers.

  ``Letitia!'' mused Richard. ``I like the name. Both
begin with L. There's something soft---womanlike---in the
L.'s''

  Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on
paper. The lover roamed through his golden groves. ``Lucy
Feverel! that sounds better! I wonder where Ralph is. I
should like to help him. He's in love with my cousin Clare.
He'll never do anything till he marries. No man can. I'm
going to do a hundred things when it's over. We shall
travel first. I want to see the Alps. One doesn't know
what the earth is till one has seen the Alps. What a delight
it will be to her! I fancy I see her eyes gazing up at them.

	`` `And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
	With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
	Past weeping for mortality's distress---
	Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.
		And fills, but does not fall;
		Softly I hear it call
	At heaven's gate, till Sister Seraphs press
	To look on you their old love from the skies:
	Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!'

Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who
was once a friend of my father's. I intend to find him and
make them friends again. You don't care for poetry. It's
no use your trying to swallow it, Rip!''

  ``It sounds very nice,'' said Ripton, modestly shutting his
mouth.

  ``The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the
East,'' the hero continued. ``She's ready to go anywhere
with me, the dear brave heart! Oh, the glorious golden
East! I dream of the desert. I dream I'm chief of an
Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our
mares, and hurry to the rescue of my darling! And we
push the spears, and we scatter them, and I come to the tent
where she crouches, and catch her to my saddle, and away!
---Rip! what a life!''

  Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it. ``And then
we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin's life, with her
to help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your
country heart and soul. A wise man told me that. I think
I shall do something.''

  Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the
lover. Now life was a narrow ring; now the distances
extended. An hour ago and food was hateful. Now he
manfully refreshed his nature, and joined in Algernon's
encomiums on Miss Letitia Thompson.

  Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer
of the hero's band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed
reality, to the reality which was a dream. She awoke calling
for some friend, ``Margaret!'' and heard one say, ``My
name is Bessy Berry, my love! not Margaret.'' Then she
asked piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her
dear friend, and Mrs. Berry whispered, ``Sure you've got a
dearer!''

  ``Ah!'' sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed
by the strangeness of her state.

  Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted
the bedclothes quietly.

  Her name was breathed.

  ``Yes, my love?'' she said.

  ``Is he here?''

  ``He's gone, my dear.''

  ``Gone?---Oh, where?'' The young girl started up in disorder.

  ``Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!''
Mrs. Berry chanted: ``Not a morsel have he eat;
not a drop have he drunk!''

  ``O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?'' Lucy
wept for the famine-struck hero who was just then feeding
mightily.

  Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought
the darling of his heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility
for the cleverest of women; and on this deep truth Lucy
reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle. She wanted one
to pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand from under
the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's, and kissed it. The
good creature required no further avowal of her secret, but
forthwith leaned her consummate bosom to the pillow, and
petitioned Heaven to bless them both!---Then the little bride
was alarmed, and wondered how Mrs. Berry could have
guessed it.

  ``Why,'' said Mrs. Berry, ``your love is out of your eyes,
and out of everything ye do.'' And the little bride wondered
more. She thought she had been so very cautious not to
betray it. The common woman in them made cheer together
after their own April fashion. Following which Mrs. Berry
probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match;
but the little bride's lips were locked. She only said her
lover was above her in station.

  ``And you're a Catholic, my dear!''

  ``Yes, Mrs. Berry!''

  ``And him a Protestant.''

  ``Yes, Mrs. Berry!''

  ``Dear, dear!---And why shouldn't ye be?'' she ejaculated,
seeing sadness return to the bridal babe. ``So as you was
born, so shall ye be! But you'll have to make your arrangements
about the children. The girls to worship with you.
the boys with him. It's the same God, my dear! You
mustn't blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If my
young gentleman could see you now!''

  ``Please, Mrs. Berry!'' Lucy murmured.

  ``Why, he will, you know, my dear!''

  ``Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!''

   ``And you that can't bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do
wish there was fathers and mothers on both sides and dockments
signed, and bridesmaids, and a breakfast! but love is
love, and ever will be, in spite of them.''

  She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but
though she drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she
searched for. The one fact that hung as a fruit upon her
tree of Love, Lucy had given her; she would not, in fealty to
her lover, reveal its growth and history, however sadly she
yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother Confessor.
Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the
autumnal view of matrimony, generally heralded by the
announcement that it is a lottery.

  ``And when you see your ticket,'' said Mrs. Berry, ``you
sha'n't know whether it's a prize or a blank. And, Lord
knows! some go on thinking it's a prize when it turns on 'em
and tears 'em. I'm one of the blanks, my dear! I drew a
blank in Berry. He was a black Berry to me, my dear!
Smile away! he truly was, and I a prizin' him as proud as
you can conceive! My dear!'' Mrs. Berry pressed her
hands flat on her apron. ``We hadn't been a three months
man and wife, when that man---it wasn't the honeymoon,
which some can't say---that man---Yes! he kicked me. His
wedded wife he kicked! Ah!'' she sighed to Lucy's large
eyes, ``I could have borne that. A blow don't touch the
heart,'' the poor creature tapped her sensitive side. ``I went
on loving of him, for I'm a soft one. Tall as a Grenadier he
is, and when out of service grows his moustache. I used to
call him my body guardsman---like a Queen! I flattered him
like the fools we women are. For, take my word for it, my
dear, there's nothing here below so vain as a man! That I
know. But I didn't deserve it . . . . I'm a superior cook
. . . . I did not deserve that noways.'' Mrs. Berry thumped
her knee, and accentuated up to her climax: ``I mended
his linen. I saw to his adornments---he called his clothes,
the bad man! I was a servant to him, my dear! and there---
it was nine months---nine months from the day he swear to
protect and cherish and that---nine calendar months, and my
gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!
---pish!'' exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over
vividly. ``Here's my ring. A pretty ornament! What do
it mean? I'm for tearin' it off my finger a dozen times in
the day. It's a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive
to wear it, that's a widow and not a widow, and haven't
got a name for what she is in any Dixonary. I've looked,
my dear, and''---she spread out her arms---``Johnson haven't
got a name for me!''

  At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into
sobs. Lucy spoke gentle words to the poor outcast from
Johnson. The sorrows of Autumn have no warning for
April. The little bride, for all her tender pity, felt happier
when she had heard her landlady's moving tale of the wickedness
of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that
one hero who was hers. Then from a short flight of inconceivable
bliss, she fell, shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed
fears.

  ``O Mrs. Berry! I'm so young! Think of me---only just
seventeen!''

  Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance.
``Young, my dear! Nonsense! There's no so much harm in
being young, here and there. I knew an Irish lady was
married at fourteen. Her daughter married close on fourteen.
She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man
began, she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers
wore. They'd stare! Bless you! the grandmother could
have married over and over again. It was her daughter's
fault, not hers, you know.''

  ``She was three years younger,'' mused Lucy.

  ``She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her
father's bailiff's son. `Ah, Berry!' she'd say, `if I hadn't
been foolish, I should be my lady now---not Granny!' Her
father never forgave her---left all his estates out of the
family.''

  ``Did her husband always love her?'' Lucy preferred to
know,

  ``In his way, my dear, he did,'' said Mrs. Berry, coming
upon her matrimonial wisdom. ``He couldn't help himself.
If he left off, he began again. She was so clever, and did
make him so comfortable. Cook! there wasn't such another
cook out of a Alderman's kitchen; no, indeed! And she a
born lady! That tells ye it's the duty of all women! She
had her saying---`When the parlour fire gets low, put coals
on the ketchen fire!' and a good saying it is to treasure.
Such is man! no use in havin' their hearts if ye don't have
their stomachs.''

  Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added
briskly: ``You know nothing about that yet, my dear. Only
mind me and mark me: don't neglect your cookery. Kissing
don't last: cookery do!''

  Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in =The Pilgrim's
Scrip,= she broke off to go posseting for her dear invalid.
Lucy was quite well; very eager to be allowed to rise and
be ready when the knock should come. Mrs. Berry, in her
loving considerateness for the little bride, positively commanded
her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be
nursed and cherished. For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten
minutes alone with the hero could only be had while the little
bride was in that unattainable position.

  Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was
gained. The night did not pass before she learnt, from the
hero's own mouth, that Mr. Richards, the father of the hero,
and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his union with this young
lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress to an immense
property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and because
his darling Letitia was a Catholic---Letitia, the sole daughter
of a brave naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a
savage uncle, who wanted to sacrifice this beauty to a brute
of a son. Mrs. Berry listened credulously to the emphatic
narrative, and spoke to the effect that the wickedness of old
people formed the excuse for the wildness of young ones.
The ceremonious administration of oaths of secresy and
devotion over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which
now numbered three, and entered upon the duties with
feminine energy, for there are no conspirators like women.
Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank merely
titular. He had never been married---he knew nothing
about licenses, except that they must be obtained, and were
not difficult---he had not an idea that so many days' warning
must be given to the clergyman of the parish where one of
the parties was resident. How should he? All his forethought
was comprised in the ring, and whenever the discussion
of arrangements for the great event grew particularly
hot and important, he would say, with a shrewd nod: ``We
mustn't forget the ring, you know, Mrs. Berry!'' and the
new member was only prevented by natural complacence
from shouting: ``Oh, drat ye! and your ring too.'' Mrs.
Berry had acted conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns,
and by licenses, and to have such an obvious requisite dinned
in her ears was exasperating. They could not have contracted
alliance with an auxiliary more invaluable, an
authority so profound; and they acknowledged it to themselves.
The hero marched like an automaton at her bidding;
Lieutenant Thompson was rejoiced to perform services as
errand-boy in the enterprise.

  ``It's in hopes you'll be happier than me, I do it,'' said the
devout and charitable Berry. ``Marriages is made in
heaven, they say; and if that's the case, I say they don't
take much account of us below!''

  Her own woful experiences had been given to the hero in
exchange for his story of cruel parents.

  Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a
duty to hunt out the wanderer from wedded bonds, and
bring him back bound and suppliant.

  ``Oh, he'll come!'' said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic
wrinkles: ``he'll come of his own accord. Never anywheres
will he meet such a cook as Bessy Berry! And he know her
value in his heart of hearts. And I do believe, when he do
come, I shall be opening these arms to him again, and not
slapping his impidence in the face---I'm that soft! I always
was---in matrimony, Mr. Richards!''

  As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks
and arsenals hammer night and day, and busy contractors
measure time by inches, and the air hums around for leagues
as it were myriads of bees, so the house and neighbourhood
of the matrimonial soft one resounded in the heroic style, and
knew little of the changes of light decreed by Creation. Mrs.
Berry was the general of the hour. Down to Doctors' Commons
she expedited the hero, instructing him how boldly to
face the Law, and fib: for that the Law never could resist a
fib and a bold face. Down the hero went, and proclaimed
his presence. And lo! the Law danced to him its sedatest
lovely bear's-dance. Think ye the Law less susceptible to him
than flesh and blood? With a beautiful confidence it put
the few familiar questions to him, and nodded to his replies:
then stamped the bond, and took the fee. It must be an old
vagabond at heart that can permit the irrevocable to go so
cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is petitioned
by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so
easily! That small archway of Doctors' Commons seems
the eye of a needle, through which the lean purse has a way,
somehow, of slipping more readily than the portly; but once
through, all are camels alike, the lean purse an especially
big camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage as it does, the
Law can have no conscience.

  ``I hadn't the slightest difficulty,'' said the exulting hero.

  ``Of course not!'' returns Mrs. Berry. ``It's as easy, if
ye're in earnest, as buying a plum bun.''

  Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the
promise of the Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on
a certain day, and there hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird
him about with all its forces: which the Church, receiving a
wink from the Law, obsequiously engaged to do, for less
than the price of a plum-cake.

  Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed
by Mrs. Berry, were toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham
and Belthorpe slept,---the former soundly; and one day
was as another to them. Regularly every morning a letter
arrived from Richard to his father, containing observations
on the phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on
the speeches and acts of Parliament; and reasons for not
having yet been able to call on the Grandisons. They were
certainly rather monotonous and spiritless. The baronet did
not complain. That cold dutiful tone assured him there was
no internal trouble or distraction. ``The letters of a healthful
physique!'' he said to Lady Blandish, with sure insight.
Complacently he sat and smiled, little witting that his son's
ordeal was imminent, and that his son's ordeal was
to be his own. Hippias wrote that his nephew was
killing him by making appointments which he never kept,
and altogether neglecting him in the most shameless way,
so that his ganglionic centre was in a ten times worse
state than when he left Raynham. He wrote very bitterly,
but it was hard to feel compassion for his offended stomach.

  On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming,
and had despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer
Blaize smoked his pipe evening after evening, vastly disturbed.
London was a large place---young Tom might be
lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses.
A wolf at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London,
as yokels have proved. But what had become of Lucy?
This consideration almost sent Farmer Blaize off to London
direct, and he would have gone had not his pipe enlightened
him. A young fellow might play truant and get into a
scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to
be heard of, unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of
course, young Tom had behaved like a man, the rascal! and
married her outright there, while he had the chance. It was
a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable way of
accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the
farmer held to it that he had done the deed. He argued as
modern men do who think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary
calculations, is gone from us. So, after despatching a letter
to a friend in town to be on the lookout for son Tom, he
continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated than not,
and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when
Master Honeymoon did appear.

  Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's
absence, Tom Bakewell came to Raynham for Cassandra,
and privately handed a letter to the Eighteenth Century,
containing a request for money, and a round sum. The
Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom
a letter in return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply
providing to keep the heroic engine in motion at a moderate
pace. Tom went back, and Raynham and Lobourne slept
and dreamed not of the morrow. The System, wedded to
Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged---anticipated
by seven pregnant seasons. For Time had heard
the hero swear to that legalizing instrument, and had also
registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew Time! he is
unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world
comes of this vendetta he declares against the hapless
innocents who have once done him a wrong. They cannot
escape him. They will never outlive it. The father of jokes,
he is himself no joke; which it seems the business of men to
discover.

  The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs.
Berry has a new satin gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold
brooch, and sweet gloves, presented to her by the hero,
wherein to stand by his bride at the altar to-morrow; and,
instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much a chicken as
any of the party, such has been the magic of these articles.
Fathers she sees accepting the facts produced for them by
their children; a world content to be carved out as it pleases
the hero.

  At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor.
The final arrangements are made; the bridegroom
does depart; and Mrs. Berry lights the little bride to her
bed. Lucy stops on the landing where there is an old clock
eccentrically correct that night. 'Tis the palpitating pause
before the gates of her transfiguration. Mrs. Berry sees her
put her rosy finger on the =One= about to strike, and touch all
the hours successively till she comes to the =Twelve= that
shall sound ``Wife'' in her ears on the morrow, moving her
lips the while, and looking round archly solemn when she
has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs. Berry's heart
that, not guessing Time to be the poor child's enemy, she
endangers her candle by folding Lucy warmly in her arms,
whimpering, ``Bless you for a darling! you innocent lamb!
You shall be happy! You shall!''

  Old Time gazes grimly ahead.


	CHAPTER XXX.

	IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF A COMEDY TAKES THE PLACE
	OF THE FIRST.

  Although it blew hard when C<ae>sar crossed the Rubicon,
the passage of that river is commonly calm; calm as
Acheron. So long as he gets his fare, the ferryman does not
need to be told whom he carries: he pulls with a will, and
heroes may be over in half an hour. Only when they stand
on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have
taken. The shores they have relinquished shrink to an
infinite remoteness. There they have dreamed: here they
must act. There lie youth and irresolution: here manhood
and purpose. They are veritably in another land: a moral
Acheron divides their life. Their memories scarce seem
their own! The =Philosophical Geography= (about to be
published) observes that each man has, one time or other, a
little Rubicon---a clear, or a foul, water to cross. It is asked
him: ``Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind
thee?'' And ``I will,'' firmly pronounced, speeds him over.
The above-named manuscript authority informs us that by
far the greater number of carcases rolled by this heroic flood
to its sister stream below, are those of fellows who have repented
their pledge, and have tried to swim back to the bank
they have blotted out. For though every man of us may be
a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's
march even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant,
and wears the features of the terrible Universal Fate
to him? Fail before her, either in heart, or in act, and lo,
how the alluring loves in her visage wither and sicken to
what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon big or small,
clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return. On---or
to Acheron!---I subscribe to that saying of =The Pilgrim's
Scrip:=

  ``The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable:
_but beware the little knowledge of one's self!_''

  Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal.
Already the mists were stealing over the land he had left:
his life was cut in two, and he breathed but the air that met
his nostrils. His father, his father's love, his boyhood and
ambition, were shadowy. His poetic dreams had taken a
living attainable shape. He had a distincter impression of
the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at
Raynham. And yet the young man loved his father, loved
his home: and I dare say C<ae>sar loved Rome: but whether
he did or no, C<ae>sar when he killed the Republic was quite
bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning
to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was
made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion
has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom.
He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying from the bow.
His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike
him as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that
the winning and securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously
approved of, and in that case were not the means
justified? Not that he took trouble to argue thus, as older
heroes and self-convicting villains are in the habit of doing,
to deduce a clear conscience. Conscience and Lucy went
together.

  It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the
morning sun. One of those days when London embraces
the prospect of summer, and troops forth all its babies. The
pavement, the squares, the parks, wore early alive with the
cries of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and organ
boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined
in tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and
crowned the blazing procession of omnibuses, freighted with
business men, cityward, where a column of reddish brown
smoke,---blown aloft by the South-west, marked the scene of
conflict to which these persistent warriors repaired. Richard
had seen much of early London that morning. His plans
were laid. He had taken care to ensure his personal liberty
against accidents, by leaving his hotel and his injured uncle
Hippias at sunrise. To-day or to-morrow his father was to
arrive. Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell reported to him, was
raging in town. Another day and she might be torn from
him: but to-day this miracle of creation would be his, and
then from those glittering banks yonder, let them summon
him to surrender her who dared! The position of things
looked so propitious that he naturally thought the powers
waiting on love conspired in his behalf. And she, too---
since she must cross this river, she had sworn to him to be
brave, and do him honour, and wear the true gladness of her
heart in her face. Without a suspicion of folly in his acts,
or fear of results, Richard strolled into Kensington Gardens,
breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great joy, now with a
vision of his bride, now of the new life opening to him.
Mountain masses of clouds, rounded in sunlight, swung up
the blue. The flowering chestnut pavilions overhead rustled
and hummed. A sound in his ears as of a banner unfolding
in the joyful distance lulled him.

  He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past
eleven. His watch said a quarter to ten. He strolled on
beneath the long stemmed trees toward the well dedicated to
a saint obscure. Some people were drinking at the well.
A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had a little silver
mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised dislike
to the liquor of the salutary saint.

  ``Drink, child!'' said the maturer lady. ``That is only
your second mug. I insist upon your drinking three full ones
every morning we're in town. Your constitution positively
requires iron!''

  ``But, mama,'' the other expostulated, ``it's so nasty. I
shall be sick.''

  ``Drink!'' was the harsh injunction. ``Nothing to the
German waters, my dear. Here, let me taste.'' She took
the mug and gave it a flying kiss. ``I declare I think it
almost nice---not at all objectionable. Pray taste it,'' she
said to a gentleman standing below them to act as cup-bearer.

  An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: ``Certainly,
if it's good fellowship; though I confess I don't think
mutual sickness a very engaging ceremony.''

  Can one never escape from one's relatives? Richard ejaculated
inwardly.

  Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and
Adrian. He had them under his eyes.

  Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make
sure no man was near to see the possible consequence of it,
was the first to perceive him. Her hand dropped.

  ``Now pray drink, and do not fuss!'' said Mrs. Doria.

  ``Mama!'' Clare gasped.

  Richard came forward, and capitulated honourably, since
retreat was out of the question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet
him: ``My own boy! My dear Richard!'' profuse of exclamations.
Clare shyly greeted him. Adrian kept in the
background.

  ``Why, we were coming for you to-day, Richard,'' said
Mrs. Doria, smiling effusion; and rattled on, ``We want
another cavalier. This is delightful! My dear nephew!
You have grown from a boy to a man. And there's down on
his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in the
morning? Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child.---
Clare! finish that mug and thank your cousin for sparing
you the third. I always bring her, when we are by a
chalybeate, to take the waters before breakfast. We have
to get up at unearthly hours. Think, my dear boy! Mothers
are sacrifices! And so you've been alone a fortnight with
your agreeable uncle! A charming time of it you must have
had! Poor Hippias! what may be his last nostrum?''

  ``Nephew!'' Adrian stretched his head round to the
couple. ``Doses of nephew taken morning and night fourteen
days! And he guarantees that it shall destroy an iron
constitution in a month.''

  Richard mechanically shook Adrian's hand as he spoke.

  ``Quite well, Ricky?''

  ``Yes: well enough,'' Richard answered.

  ``Well?'' resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him,
while Clare and Adrian followed. ``I really never saw you
looking so handsome. There's something about your face---
look at me---you needn't blush. You've grown to an Apollo.
That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes you admirably---
and those gloves, and that easy neck-tie. Your style is
irreproachable, quite a style of your own! And nothing
eccentric. You have the instinct of dress. Dress shows
blood, my dear boy, as much as anything else. Boy!---you
see, I can't forget old habits. You were a boy when I left,
and now!---Do you see any change in him, Clare?'' she
turned half round to her daughter.

  ``Richard is looking very well, mama,'' said Clare, glancing
at him under her eyelids.

  ``I wish I could say the same of you, my dear.---Take my
arm, Richard. Are you afraid of your aunt? I want to get
used to you. Won't it be pleasant, our being all in town
together in the season? How fresh the Opera will be to
you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come to the
Forey's box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys
close by here. I think it's a little too far out, you know;
but they like the neighbourhood. This is what I have
always said: Give him more liberty! Austin has seen it at
last. How do you think Clare looking?''

  The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his
cousin hastily, and praised her looks.

  ``Pale!'' Mrs. Doria sighed.

  ``Rather pale, aunt.''

  ``Grown very much---don't you think, Richard?''

  ``Very tall girl indeed, aunt,''

  ``If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard!
I'm sure I give her all the iron she can swallow, but that
pallor still continues. I think she does not prosper away
from her old companion. She was accustomed to look up to
you, Richard''------

  ``Did you get Ralph's letter, aunt?'' Richard interrupted
her.

  ``Absurd!'' Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. ``The nonsense
of a boy! Why did you undertake to forward such stuff?''

  ``I'm certain he loves her,'' said Richard, in a serious way.
The maternal eyes narrowed on him. ``Life, my dear
Richard, is a game of cross-purposes,'' she observed, dropping
her fluency, and was rather angered to hear him laugh.
He excused himself by saying that she spoke so like his
father.

  ``You breakfast with us,'' she freshened off again. ``The
Foreys wish to see you; the girls are dying to know you.
Do you know, you have a reputation on account of that''---
she crushed an intruding adjective---``System you were
brought up on. You mustn't mind it. For my part, I think
you look a credit to it. Don't be bashful with young women,
mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You
know how to behave among men. There you have your
Drawing-room Guide! I'm sure I shall be proud of you.
Am I not?''

  Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.

  A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ
the minutes to spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph;
and, as he was drawn along, he pulled out his watch to note
the precise number of minutes he could dedicate to this
charitable office.

  ``Pardon me,'' said Mrs. Doria. ``You want manners, my
dear boy. I think it never happened to me before that a man
consulted his watch in my presence.''

  Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a
particular hour, up to which he was her servant.

  ``Fiddlededee!'' the vivacious lady sang. ``Now I've got
you, I mean to keep you. Oh! I've heard all about you.
This ridiculous indifference that your father makes so much
of! Why, of course, you wanted to see the world! A
strong healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely
house---no friends, no society, no amusements but those of
rustics! Of course you were indifferent! Your intelligence
and superior mind alone saved you from becoming a dissipated
country boor.---Where are the others?''

  Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.

  ``My damozel dropped something,'' Adrian explained.

  Her mother asked what it was.

  ``Nothing, mama,'' said Clara demurely, and they proceeded
as before.

  Overborne by his aunt's fluency of tongue, and occupied in
acute calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many
pass before he edged in a word for Ralph. When he did,
Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.

  ``I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank
idiotcy.''

  ``It's nothing of the kind, aunt.''

  ``The fancy of a boy.''

  ``He's not a boy. He's half a year older than I am!''

  ``You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all
think yourselves men.''

  ``On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly.''

  ``Did he tell you so, child?''

  ``Men don't speak openly of those things,'' said Richard.

  ``Boys do,'' said Mrs. Doria.

  ``But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind
to Ralph. Don't drive him to---You may be sorry for it. Let
him---do let him write to her, and see her. I believe women
are as cruel as men in these things.''

  ``I never encourage absurdity, Richard.''

  ``What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?''

  ``Oh, they're both good families. It's not that absurdity,
Richard. It will be to his credit to remember that his first
fancy wasn't a dairymaid.'' Mrs. Doria pitched her accent
tellingly. It did not touch her nephew.

  ``Don't you want Clare ever to marry?'' He put the last
point of reason to her.

  Mrs. Doria laughed. ``I hope so, child. We must find
some comfortable old gentleman for her.''

  ``What infamy!'' mutters Richard.

  ``And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding,
or eat a hearty breakfast---We don't dance at weddings
now, and very properly. It's a horrid sad business,
not to be treated with levity.---Is that his regiment?'' she
said, as they passed out of the hussar-sentinelled gardens.
``Tush, tush, child! Master Ralph will recover, as---hem!
others have done. A little headache---you call it heartache
---and up you rise again, looking better than ever. No
doubt, to have a grain of sense forced into your brains, you
poor dear children! must be painful. Girls suffer as much
as boys, I assure you. More, for their heads are weaker,
and their appetites less constant. Do I talk like your father
now? Whatever makes the boy fidget at his watch so?''

  Richard stopped short. Time spoke urgently.

  ``I must go,'' he said.

  His face did not seem good for trifling. Mrs. Doria would
trifle in spite.

  ``Listen, Clare! Richard is going. He says he has an
engagement. What possible engagement can a young man
have at eleven o'clock in the morning?---unless he's going to
be married? Eh? Then of course!'' Mrs. Doria laughed
at the ingenuity of her suggestion.

  ``Is the church handy, Ricky!'' sad Adrian. ``You can
still give us half an hour if it is. The celibate hours strike
at Twelve.'' And he also laughed in his fashion.

  ``Won't you stay with us, Richard?'' Clare asked. She
blushed timidly, and her voice shook.

  Something indefinite---a sharp-edged thrill in the tones
made the burning bridegroom speak gently to her.

  ``Indeed, I would, Care; I should like to please you, but
I have a most imperative appointment---that is, I promised
---I must go. I shall see you again''------

  Mrs. Doria took forcible possession Of him. ``Now do
come, and don't waste words. I insist upon your having
some breakfast first, and then, if you really must go, you
shall. Look! there's the house. At least you will accompany
your aunt to the door.''

  Richard conceded this. She little imagined what she
required of him. Two of his golden minutes melted into
nothingness. They were growing to be jewels of price, one by
one more and more precious as they ran, and now so costly-rare
---rich as his blood! not to kindest relations, clearest
friends, could he give another. The die is cast! Ferryman!
push off.

  ``Good-bye!'' he cried, nodding bluffly at the three as one,
and fled.

  They watched his abrupt muscular stride through the
grounds of the house. He looked like resolution on the
march. Mrs. Doria, as usual with her out of her brother's
hearing, began rating the System.

  ``See what becomes of that nonsensical education! The
boy really does not know how to behave like a common
mortal. He has some paltry appointment, or is mad after
some ridiculous idea of his own, and everything must be
sacrificed to it! That's what Austin calls concentration of
the faculties. I think it's more likely to lead to downright
insanity than to greatness of any kind. And so I shall tell
Austin. It's time he should be spoken to seriously about
him.''

  ``He's an engine, my dear aunt,'' said Adrian. ``He isn't
a boy, or a man, but an engine. And he appears to have
been at high pressure since he came to town---out all day
and half the night.''

  ``He's mad!'' Mrs. Doria interjected.

  ``Not at all. Extremely shrewd is Master Ricky, and
carries as open an eye ahead of him as the ships before Troy.
He's more than a match for any of us. He is for me, I
confess.''

  ``Then,'' said Mrs. Doria, ``he does astonish me!''

  Adrian begged her to retain her astonishment till the right
season, which would not be long arriving.

  Their common wisdom counselled them not to tell the
Foreys of their hopeful relative's ungracious behaviour.
Clare had left them. When Mrs. Doria went to her room
her daughter was there, gazing down at something in her
hand, which she guiltily closed.

  In answer to an inquiry why she had not gone to take off
her things, Clare said she was not hungry. Mrs. Doria
lamented the obstinacy of a constitution that no quantity
of iron could affect, and eclipsed the looking-glass, saying:
``Take them off here, child, and learn to assist yourself.''

  She disentangled her bonnet from the array of her spreading
hair, talking of Richard, and his handsome appearance,
and extraordinary conduct. Clare kept opening and shutting
her hand, in an attitude half pensive, half listless. She did
not stir to undress. A joyless dimple hung in one pale cheek,
and she drew long even breaths.

  Mrs. Doria, assured by the glass that she was ready to
show, came to her daughter,

  ``Now really,'' she said, ``you are too helpless, my dear.
You cannot do a thing without a dozen women at your elbow.
What will become of you? You will have to marry a millionaire.
---What's the matter with you, child?''

  Clare undid her tight-shut fingers, as if to some attraction
of her eyes, and displayed a small gold hoop on the palm of
a green glove.

  ``A wedding-ring!'' exclaimed Mrs. Doria, inspecting the
curiosity most daintily.

  There on Clare's pale green glove lay a wedding-ring!

  Rapid questions as to where, when, how, it was found,
beset Clare, who replied: ``In the Gardens, mama. This
morning. When I was walking behind Richard.''

  ``Are you sure he did not give it you, Clare?''

  ``Oh no, mama! he did not give it me.''

  ``Of course not! only he does such absurd things! I
thought, perhaps---these boys are so exceedingly ridiculous!''
Mrs. Doria had an idea that it might have been concerted
between the two young gentlemen, Richard and Ralph, that
the former should present this token of hymen<ae>al devotion
from the latter to the young lady of his love; but a moment's
reflection exonerated boys even from such preposterous behaviour.

  ``Now, I wonder,'' she speculated on Clare's cold face,
``I do wonder whether it's lucky to find a wedding-ring?
What very quick eyes you have, my darling!'' Mrs. Doria
kissed her. She thought it must be lucky, and the circumstance
made her feel tender to her child. Her child did not
move to the kiss.

  ``Let's see whether it fits,'' said Mrs. Doria, almost infantine
with surprise and pleasure.

  Clare suffered her glove to be drawn off. The ring slid
down her long thin finger, and settled comfortably.

  ``It does!'' Mrs. Doria whispered. To find a wedding-ring
is open to any woman; but to find a wedding-ring that
fits may well cause superstitious emotions. Moreover, that
it should be found while walking in the neighbourhood of
the identical youth whom a mother has destined for her
daughter, gives significance to the gentle perturbation of
ideas consequent on such a hint from Fortune.

  ``It really fits!'' she pursued. ``Now I never pay any
attention to the nonsense of omens and that kind of thing
(had the ring been a horseshoe Mrs. Doria would have picked
it up and dragged it obediently home), ``but this, I must
say, is odd---to find a ring that fits!---singular! It never
happened to me. Sixpence is the most I ever discovered,
and I have it now. Mind you keep it, Clare---this ring.
And,'' she laughed, ``offer it to Richard when he comes; say,
you think he must have dropped it.''

  The dimple in Clare's cheek quivered.

  Mother and daughter had never spoken explicitly of
Richard. Mrs. Doria, by exquisite management, had contrived
to be sure that on one side there would be no obstacle
to her project of general happiness, without, as she thought,
compromising her daughter's feelings unnecessarily. It could
do no harm to an obedient young girl to hear that there was
no youth in the world like a certain youth. He the prince
of his generation, she might softly consent, when requested,
to be his princess; and if never requested (for Mrs. Doria
envisaged failure), she might easily transfer her softness to
squires of lower degree. Clare had always been blindly
obedient to her mother (Adrian called them Mrs. Doria
Battledoria and the fair Shuttlecockiana), and her mother
accepted in this blind obedience the text of her entire character.
It is difficult for those who think very earnestly for
their children to know when their children are thinking on
their own account. The exercise of their volition we construe
as revolt. Our love does not like to be invalided and
deposed from its command, and here I think yonder old
thrush on the lawn who has just kicked the last of her lank
offspring out of the nest to go shift for itself, much the
kinder of the two, though sentimental people do shrug their
shoulders at these unsentimental acts of the creatures who
never wander from nature. Now, excess of obedience is, to
one who manages most exquisitely, as bad as insurrection.
Happily Mrs. Doria saw nothing in her daughter's manner
save a want of iron. Her pallor, her lassitude, the tremulous
nerves in her face, exhibited an imperious requirement of the
mineral.

  ``The reason why men and women are mysterious to us,
and prove disappointing,'' we learn from =The Pilgrim's
Scrip,= ``is, that we will read them from our own book; just
as we are perplexed by reading ourselves from theirs.''

  Mrs. Doria read her daughter from her own book, and she
was gay;---she laughed with Adrian at the breakfast-table,
and mock seriously joined in his jocose assertion that Clare
was positively and by all hymen<ae>al auspices betrothed to the
owner of that ring, be he who he may, and must, whenever
he should choose to come and claim her, give her hand to
him (for everybody agreed the owner must be masculine, as
no woman would drop a wedding-ring), and follow him
whither he listed all the world over. Amiable giggling
Forey girls called Clare, The Betrothed. Dark man, or
fair? was mooted. Adrian threw off the first strophe of
Clare's fortune in burlesque rhymes, with an insinuating
gypsy twang. Her Aunt Forey warned her to have her
dresses in readiness. Her Grandpapa Forey pretended to
grumble at bridal presents being expected from grandpapas.
This one smelt orange-flower, another spoke solemnly of an
old shoe. The finding of a wedding-ring was celebrated
through all the palpitating accessories and rosy ceremonies
involved by that famous instrument. In the midst of the
general hilarity, Clare showed her deplorable want of iron
by bursting into tears.

  Did the poor mocked-at heart divine what might be then
enacting? Perhaps, dimly, as we say: that is, without
eyes.

  At an altar stand two fair young creatures, ready with
their oaths. They are asked to fix all time to the moment,
and they do so. If there is hesitation at the immense undertaking,
it is but maidenly. She conceives as little mental
doubt of the sanity of the act as he. Over them hangs a
cool young curate in his raiment of office. Behind are two
apparently lucid people, distinguished from each other by
sex and age: the foremost a bunch of simmering black
satin; under her shadow a cock-robin in the dress of a gentleman,
big joy swelling out his chest, and pert satisfaction
cocking his head. These be they who stand here in place of
parents to the young couple. All is well. The service
proceeds.

  Firmly the bridegroom tells forth his words. This hour
of the complacent giant at least is his, and that he means to
hold him bound through the eternities, men may hear.
Clearly, and with brave modesty, speaks she: no less firmly,
though her body trembles: her voice just vibrating while the
tone travels on, like a smitten vase,

  Time hears sentence pronounced on him: the frail hands
bind his huge limbs and lock the chains. He is used to it.
he lets them do as they will.

  Then comes that period when they are to give their troth
to each other. The Man with his right hand takes the
Woman by her right hand: the Woman with her right hand
takes the Man by his right hand.---Devils dare not laugh at
whom Angels crowd to contemplate.

  Their hands are joined: their blood flows as one stream.
Adam and fair Eve front the generations. Are they not
lovely? Purer fountains of life were never in two bosoms.

  And then they loose their hands, and the cool curate doth
bid the Man to put a ring on the Woman's fourth finger,
counting thumb. And the Man thrusts his hand into one
pocket, and into another, forward and back many times:
into all his pockets. He remembers that he felt for it, and
felt it in his waistcoat pocket, when in the Gardens. And
his hand comes forth empty. And the Man is ghastly to
look at!

  Yet, though Angels smile, shall not Devils laugh! The
curate deliberates. The black satin bunch ceases to simmer.
He in her shadow changes from a beaming cock-robin to an
inquisitive sparrow. Eyes multiply questions: lips have no
reply. Time ominously shakes his chain, and in the pause a
sound of mockery stings their ears.

  Think ye a hero one to be defeated in his first battle?
Look at the clock! there are but seven minutes to the stroke
of the celibate hours: the veteran is surely lifting his two
hands to deliver fire, and his shot will sunder them in twain
so nearly united. All the jewellers of London speeding down
with sacks full of the nuptual circlet cannot save them!

  The battle must be won on the field, and what does the
hero now? It is an inspiration! For who else would dream
of such a reserve in the rear? None see what he does; only
that the black-satin bunch is remonstratingly agitated,
stormily shaken, and subdued: and as though the menacing
cloud had opened, and dropped the dear token from the skies
at his demand, he produces the symbol of their consent, and
the service proceeds: ``With this ring I thee wed.''

  They are prayed over and blest. For good, or for ill, this
deed is done. The names are registered; fees fly right and
left: they thank, and salute, the curate, whose official coolness
melts into a smile of monastic gallantry: the beadle on the
steps waves off a gaping world as they issue forth: bridegroom
and bridesman recklessly scatter gold on him: carriage-doors
are banged to: the coachmen drive off, and the scene
closes, everybody happy.


	CHAPTER XXXI.

	CELEBRATES THE BREAKFAST.

  And the next moment the bride is weeping as if she would
dissolve to one of Dian's Virgin Fountains from the clasp of
the Sun-God. She has nobly preserved the mask imposed by
comedies, till the curtain has fallen, and now she weeps,
streams with tears. Have patience, O impetuous young man!
It is your profession to be a hero. This poor heart is new to
it, and her duties involve such wild acts, such brigandage,
such terrors and tasks, she is quite unnerved. She did you
honour till now. Bear with her now. She does not cry the
cry of ordinary maidens in like cases. While the struggle
went on her tender face was brave; but, alas! Omens are
against her: she holds an ever-present dreadful one on that
fatal fourth finger of hers, which has coiled itself round her
dream of delight, and takes her in its clutch like a horrid
serpent. And yet she must love it. She dares not part from
it. She must love and hug it, and feed on its strange honey,
and all the bliss it gives her casts all the deeper shadow on
what is to come.

  Say. Is it not enough to cause feminine apprehension for
a woman to be married in another woman's ring?

  You are amazons, ladies, at Saragossa, and a thousand
citadels---wherever there is strife, and Time is to be taken by
the throat. Then shall few men match your sublime fury.
But what if you see a vulture, visible only to yourselves,
hovering over the house you are gaily led by the torch to
inhabit? Will you not crouch and be cowards?

  As for the hero, in the hour of victory he pays no heed to
omens. He does his best to win his darling to confidence by
caresses. Is she not his? Is he not hers? And why, when
the battle is won, does she weep? Does she regret what she
has done?

  Oh, never! never! her soft blue eyes assure him, steadfast
love seen swimming on clear depths of faith in them, through
the shower.

  He is silenced by her exceeding beauty, and sits perplexed
waiting for the shower to pass.

  Alone with Mrs. Berry, in her bedroom, Lucy gave tongue
to her distress, and a second character in the comedy changed
her face.

  ``O Mrs. Berry! Mrs. Berry! what has happened! what
has happened!''

  ``My darlin' child!'' The bridal Berry gazed at the finger
of doleful joy. ``I'd forgot all about it! And that's what've
made me feel so queer ever since, then! I've been seemin'
as if I wasn't myself somehow, without my ring. Dear!
clear! what a wilful young gentleman! We ain't a match
for men in that state---Lord help us!''

  Mrs. Berry sat on the edge of a chair: Lucy on the edge
of the bed.

  ``What do you think of it, Mrs. Berry? Is it not terrible?''

  ``I can't say I should 'a liked it myself, my dear,'' Mrs.
Berry candidly responded.

  ``Oh! why, why, why did it happen!'' the young bride
bent to a flood of fresh tears, murmuring that she felt
already old---forsaken.

  ``Haven't you got a comfort in your religion for all accidents?''
Mrs. Berry inquired.

  ``None for this. I know it's wrong to cry when I am so
happy. I hope he will forgive me.''

  Mrs. Berry vowed her bride was the sweetest, softest,
beautifulest thing in life.

  ``I'll cry no more,'' said Lucy. ``Leave me, Mrs. Berry,
and come back when I ring.''

  She drew forth a little silver cross, and fell upon her knees
to the bed. Mrs. Berry left the room tiptoe.

  When she was called to return, Lucy was calm and tearless,
and smiled kindly to her.

  ``It's over now,'' she said.

  Mrs. Berry sedately looked for her ring to follow.

  ``He does not wish me to go in to the breakfast you have
prepared, Mrs. Berry. I begged to be excused. I cannot
eat.''

  Mrs. Berry very much deplored it, as she had laid out a
superior nuptial breakfast, but with her mind on her ring
she nodded assentingly.

  ``We shall not have much packing to do, Mrs. Berry.''

  ``No, my dear. It's pretty well all done.''

  ``We are going to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Berry.''

  ``And a very suitable spot ye've chose, my dear!''

  ``He loves the sea. He wishes to be near it.''

  ``Don't ye cross to-night, if it's anyways rough, my dear.
It isn't adviseable.'' Mrs. Berry sank her voice to say,
``Don't ye be soft and give way to him there, or you'll both
be repenting it.''

  Lucy had only been staving off the unpleasantness she had
to speak. She saw Mrs. Berry's eyes pursuing her ring, and
screwed up her courage at last.

  ``Mrs. Berry.''

  ``Yes, my dear.''

  ``Mrs. Berry, you shall have another ring.''

  ``Another, my dear?'' Berry did not comprehend.
``One's quite enough for the objeck,'' she remarked.

  ``I mean,'' Lucy touched her fourth finger, ``I cannot part
with this.'' She looked straight at Mrs. Berry.

  That bewildered creature gazed at her, and at the ring,
till she had thoroughly exhausted the meaning of the words,
and then exclaimed, horror-struck: ``Deary me, now! you
don't say that? You're to be married again in your own
religion.''

  The young wife repeated: ``I can never part with it.''

  ``But, my dear!'' the wretched Berry wrung her hands,
divided between compassion and a sense of injury. ``My
dear!'' she kept expostulating like a mate.

  ``I know all that you would say, Mrs. Berry. I am very
grieved to pain you. It is mine now, and must be mine. I
cannot give it back.''

  There she sat, suddenly developed to the most inflexible
little heroine in the three Kingdoms.

  From her first perception of the meaning of the young
bride's words, Mrs. Berry, a shrewd physiognomist, knew
that her case was hopeless, unless she treated her as she herself
had been treated, and seized the ring by force of arms;
and that she had not heart for.

  ``What!'' she gasped faintly, ``one's own lawful wedding-ring
you wouldn't give back to a body?''

  ``Because it is mine, Mrs. Berry. It was yours, but it is
mine now. You shall have whatever you ask for but that.
Pray forgive me! It must be so.''

  Mrs. Berry rocked on her chair, and sounded her hands
together. It amazed her that this soft little creature could
be thus firm. She tried argument.

  ``Don't ye know, my dear, it's the fatalest thing you're
inflictin' upon me, reelly! Don't ye know that bein' bereft
of one's own lawful wedding-ring's the fatalest thing in life,
and there's no prosperity after it! For what stands in
place o' that, when that's gone, my dear? And what _could_
ye give me to compensate a body for the loss o' that? Don't
ye know---Oh, deary me!'' The little bride's face was so set
that poor Berry wailed off in despair.

  ``I know it,'' said Lucy. ``I know it all. I know what I
do to you. Dear, dear Mrs. Berry! forgive me! If I parted
with my ring I know it would be fatal.''

  So this fair young freebooter took possession of her argument
as well as her ring.

  Berry racked her distracted wits for a further appeal.

  ``But, my child,'' she counterargued, ``you don't understand.
It ain't as you think. It ain't a hurt to you now.
Not a bit, it ain't. It makes no difference now! Any ring
does while the wearer's a maid. And your Mr. Richard'll
find the very ring he intended for ye. And, of course, that's
the one you'll wear as his wife. It's all the same now, my
dear. It's no shame to a maid. Now do---now do---there's
a darlin'!''

  Wheedling availed as little as argument.

  ``Mrs. Berry,'' said Lucy, ``you know what my---he spoke:
`With this ring I thee wed.' It was with _this_ ring. Then
how could it be with another?''

  Berry was constrained despondently to acknowledge that
was logic.

  She hit upon an artful conjecture.

  ``Won't it be unlucky you're wearin' of that ring which
served me so? Think o' that!''

  ``It may! it may! it may!'' cried Lucy.

  ``And arn't you rashin' into it, my dear?''

  ``Mrs. Berry,'' Lucy said again, ``it was this ring. It cannot---
it never can be another. It was this. What it brings
me I must bear. I shall wear it till I die!''

  ``Then what am _I_ to do?'' the ill-used woman groaned.
``What shall I tell my husband when he come back to me,
and see I've got a new ring waitin' for him? Won't that
be a welcome?''

  Quoth Lucy: ``How can he know it is not the same, in a
plain gold ring?''

  ``You never see so keen a eyed man in joolry as my
Berry!'' returned his solitary spouse. ``Not know, my dear?
Why, any one would know that 've got eyes in his head.
There's as much difference in wedding-rings as there's in
wedding people! Now, do pray be reasonable, my own
sweet!''

  ``Pray do not ask me,'' pleads Lucy.

  ``Pray do think better of it,'' urges Berry.

  ``Pray, pray, Mrs. Berry!'' pleads Lucy.

  ``---And not leave your old Berry all forlorn just when
you're so happy!''

  ``Indeed I would not, you dear, kind old creature!'' Lucy
faltered.

  Mrs. Berry thought she had her.

  ``Just when you're going to be the happiest wife on earth
---all you want yours!'' she pursued the tender strain. ``A
handsome young gentleman! Love and Fortune smilin' on
ye!''---

  Lucy rose up.

  ``Mrs. Berry,'' she said, ``I think we must not lose time in
getting ready, or he will be impatient.''

  Poor Berry surveyed her in abject wonder from the edge
of her chair. Dignity and resolve were in the ductile form
she had hitherto folded under her wing. In an hour the
heroine had risen to the measure of the hero. Without being
exactly aware what creature she was dealing with, Berry
acknowledged to herself it was not one of the common run,
and sighed, and submitted.

  ``It's like a divorce, that it is!'' she sobbed.

  After putting the corners of her apron to her eyes, Berry
bustled humbly about the packing. Then Lucy, whose heart
was full to her, came and kissed her, and Berry bumped
down and regularly cried. This over, she had recourse to
fatalism.

  ``I suppose it was to be, my dear! It's my punishment
for meddlin' wi' such matters. No, I'm not sorry. Bless ye
both. Who'd 'a thought you was so wilful?---you that any
one might have taken for one of the silly-softs! You're a
pair, my dear! indeed you are! You was made to meet!
But we mustn't show him we've been crying.---Men don't like
it when they're happy. Let's wash our faces and try to bear
our lot.''

  So saying the black-satin bunch careened to a renewed
deluge. She deserved some sympathy, for if it is sad to be
married in another person's ring, how much sadder to have
one's own old accustomed lawful ring violently torn off one's
finger and eternally severed from one! But where you have
heroes and heroines, these terrible complications ensue.

  They had now both fought their battle of the ring, and
with equal honour and success.

  In the chamber of banquet Richard was giving Ripton his
last directions. Though it was a private wedding, Mrs. Berry
had prepared a sumptuous breakfast. Chickens offered their
breasts: pies hinted savoury secrets: things mystic, in a
mash, with Gallic appellatives, jellies, creams, fruits, strewed
the table: as a tower in the midst, the cake colossal: the
priestly vesture of its nuptual white relieved by hymen<ae>al
splendours.

  Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry
had expended upon this breakfast, and why? There is one
who comes to all feasts that have their basis in Folly, whom
criminals of trained instinct are careful to provide against:
who will speak, and whose hateful voice must somehow be
silenced while the feast is going on. This personage is =The
Philosopher.= Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he
would come. She provided against him in the manner she
thought most efficacious: that is, by cheating her eyes and
intoxicating her conscience with the due and proper glories
incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers collapse,
and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the
family lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to
greet her on her return from the church, she would, and she
foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness,
and repented her work. The Philosopher would have laid
hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names. Entrenched
behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned,
Mrs. Berry defied him. In the presence of that cake he
dared not speak above a whisper. And there were wines to
drown him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines,
and cool: claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the
delectation of his friend.

  For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours
kept him dumb. Ripton was fortifying himself so as to
forget him altogether, and the world as well, till the next
morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with delight. He
had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly
flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had
nothing to do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would
not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts;
and as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence
was becoming a natural force in his bosom, the poor fellow
was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed
emotion. At times he half rose from his chair, and fell
vacuously into it again; or he chuckled in the face of
weighty, severely-worded instructions; tapped his chest,
stretched his arms, yawned, and in short behaved so singularly
that Richard observed it, and said: ``On my soul, I
don't think you know a word I'm saying.''

  ``Every word, Ricky!'' Ripton spirted through the opening.
``I'm going down to your governor, and tell him: Sir
Austin! Here's your only chance of being a happy father---
no, no!---Oh! don't you fear me, Ricky! I shall talk the
old gentleman over. I feel tremendous! I feel, upon my
honour, Ricky, I feel as if nobody _could_ resis' me!'' Ripton
stamped his might on the table. ``I shall tell him the whole
affair point-blank. I can tell you that if it comes to argument
'tween us, I can lay on the man who'll have the best of
it. I shall tell him I was a witness. And I hope, Sir
Austin, in a year's time, you'll have the best of all, sir!---
jolly 'ittle grandson!'' Ripton's head went roguishly to
right and left, and he emptied his glass at a draught.

  Richard arrested his resumption of speech, and he continued
slowly to fizz like an ill-corked effervescence, while
his chief said:

  ``Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go
down the first thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train.
Give him my letter. Listen to me---give him my letter, and
don't speak a word till he speaks. His eyebrows will go up
and down, he won't say much. I know him. If he asks you
about her, don't be a fool, but say what you think of her
sensibly''------

  No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to.
He shouted: ``She's an angel!''

  Richard checked him: ``Speak sensibly, I say---quietly.
You can say how gentle and good she is---my fleur-de-luce!
And say, this was not her doing. If any one's to blame,
it's I. I made her marry me. Then go to Lady Blandish, if
you don't find her at the house. You may say whatever you
please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want to
hear from her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know
what she thinks of her. You will then go to Farmer Blaize.
I told you Lucy happens to be his niece---she has not lived
long there. She lived with her Aunt Desborough in France
while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to
the farmer---there's not a point of likeness between them.
Poor darling! she never knew her mother. Go to Mr. Blaize,
and tell him. You will treat him just as you would treat
any other gentleman. If you are civil, he is sure to be.
And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will still
treat him with respect. You hear? And then write me a
full account of all that has been said and done. You will
have my address the day after to-morrow. By the way,
Tom will be here this afternoon. Write out for him where
to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case you have
heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know
at once, as Tom will join me that night. Don't mention to
anybody about my losing the ring, Ripton. I wouldn't have
Adrian get hold of that for a thousand pounds. How on
earth I came to lose it! How well she bore it, Rip! How
beautifully she behaved!''

  Ripton again shouted: ``She's an angel!'' He endeavoured
to get a leap beyond the angels, but being of tame
imagination, those commonplace hosts had to stand for
what he felt. Throwing up the heels of his second bottle,
he said---

  ``You may trust your friend, Richard. Your oldest
friend, Ricky!---Eh? A cool head and a heart in the right
place! A man who'd want to drink better wine than this
---he'd bet' not drink any 't all. I think I was, hem!---
marking that we know what wine is. Talking of old Blaize,
ain't it odd we should be drinking cleret 'gether, just
married? I mean, when you come to think of it, Ricky?
It strike me 's odd. But as for your thinking there 'll be
much fuss, you know, there you're wrong. Let's have
s'more cleret.''

  Richard hospitably opened another bottle for him, and sat
knocking his finger nails on his teeth, impatient for the
bride, while Ripton freely flowed forth. In spite of the
innocuousness of claret, his words were displaying an oily
tendency to run into one another, and his eyes were growing
vivaciously stupid.

  ``Strikes me, Richard, every fresh bottle's better than one
before. Well, I was saying, you know, I shall make all
right with your father. Oh! _he_ won't stand out after a little
talking. And mind you, Mr. Ricky, I _can_ talk! I ought to
have gone the Bar, you know. Cleret! cleret I keep saying:---
claret, sir! 'Minds me of Gravelkind. You may
drink as much as ever you like, and it never 'fects you.
Gentleman's wine! Though if you ask me point-blank
which I p'fer, why, I'd rather go the Bar. I'm an only son,
you know, and a mother and four sisters, and I must do as
I'm tole. Ha! ha! that Letty! what a face she'll make when
she hears of it! sil' 'ittle thing!---ha! ha!---I do think this
has been the jollies' day I ever knew! Behave, sir? She
did behave most beautiful! I hear her voice now---like that
glass. Tell you the truth, girls don't quite take to me---not
in that way, you know. I don't know how to talk to them
unless they begin, and look all right. It went as smooth,
Ricky!---but such a chap. You're sure to do it if you say
you will. Aha! when you pulled at old Mrs. Berry I didn't
know what was up. I do wish you'd let me drink her
health?''

  ``Here's to Penelope!'' said Richard, just wetting his
mouth. The carriage was at the door: a couple of dire
organs, each grinding the same tune, and a vulture-scented
itinerant band (from which not the secretest veiled wedding
can ever escape) worked harmoniously without in the production
of discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state
made him begin to fume and send in messages for his bride
by the maid.

  Ripton drank Penelope, and afterwards had an idea that
Penelope did not mean Lucy. He tried to tell Richard that
the health proposed was that of his lovely wife, but Richard
had no ear for him, and let him mumble on. By and by the
lovely wife presented herself dressed for her journey, and
smiling from stained eyes.

  Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton
poured out for her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to
measure his condition. Ripton's expressive bibulous invitation
was: ``Aha! Mrs. Berry!''

  Penelope bowed and bumped her duty to them all.
Richard and Lucy talked apart. Ripton balanced his body
against the back of his chair. A notion possessed his nodding
head that it devolved upon him to make a formal
speech, and that now was the time. If ever the old Dog
was to enunciate in human language his devoted appreciation
of Beauty, the occasion was present. But how was he
to fashion his phrases? Notwithstanding the state he was
in, his sincere homage caused him to be critical of his capabilities,
and then his brain whirled; innumerable phantom
forms of sentences with a promise of glowing periods, offered
their heads to him, and immediately cut themselves off from
all consequence, so that he was afraid to commence. Speaking,
moreover, he found to affect his balance. It became a
problem whether he should talk, or retain his perpendicular.
His latent sense of propriety counselled him not to risk it,
and he stood mute, looking like a mask of ancient comedy,
beneath which general embracing took place. The bride
kissed Mrs. Berry, Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom, on the
plea of her softness. Ripton's long tight smile elaborated as
the mad idea, engendered by these proceedings, of claiming
certain privileges due to him in his character of bridesman,
flashed across him. Some one noticed that the cake had not
been cut, and his attention was drawn to the cake, and he
fell upon it, literally, rising sufficiently ashamed not to dare
to look in the fair bride's face, much more to claim a privilege.
Lucy, however, gave him her hand, with a musical
``Good-bye, Mr. Ripton,'' and her extreme graciousness
made him just sensible enough to sit down before he murmured
his fervent hopes for her happiness.

  ``I shall take good care of him,'' said Mrs. Berry, focussing
her eyes to the comprehension of the company.

  ``Farewell, Penelope!'' cries Richard. ``I shall tell the
police everywhere to look out for your lord.''

  ``Oh! no fear, my dears! he'll return. Good-bye! and
Heaven bless ye both!''

  Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts
of approaching loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a
bow to his ears, brought up the rear to the carriage, receiving
a fair slap on the cheek from an old shoe precipitated by
Mrs. Berry's enthusiastic female domestic.

  White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to
signs: they were off. Then did a thought of such urgency
illumine Mrs. Berry, that she telegraphed, hand in air
awakening Ripton's lungs, for the coachman to stop, and ran
back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone, but at his
bride's intercession he consented to wait. Presently they
beheld the old black-satin bunch stream through the street-door,
down the bit of garden, and up the astonished street,
halting, panting, capless at the carriage door, a book in her
hand,---a much-used, dog-leaved, steamy, greasy book, which,
at the same time calling out in breathless jerks, ``There!
never ye mind looks! I ain't got a new one. Read it, and
don't ye forget it!'' she discharged into Lucy's lap, and
retreated to the railings, a signal for the coachman to drive
away for good.

  How Richard laughed at the Berry's bridal gift! Lucy,
too, lost the omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of
the volume. It was Dr. Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
Mrs. Berry's beloved private copy, with the wisdom contained
in which she trusted to allure back to home and its
duties the wandering Ulysses of Footmen.


	CHAPTER XXXII.

	THE PHILOSOPHER APPEARS IN PERSON.

  General withdrawing of heads from street-windows,
emigration of organs and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere
in the circle of Mrs. Berry's abode, proved that Dan Cupid had
veritably flown to suck the life of fresh regions. With a pensive
mind she grasped Ripton's arm to regulate his steps, and
returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In
the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the
cake, from which altitude he shook a dolorous head at the
guilty woman. She smoothed her excited apron, sighing.
Let no one imagine that she regretted her complicity. She
was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation
before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret;
and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more
---such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed,
and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton,
improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman!
said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing.
She enlightened him with the fatalist's reply. He sounded
a bogey's alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated
to the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make.
``It's done!'' she exclaimed. How could she regret what
she felt comfort to know was done? Convinced that events
alone could stamp a mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined
to wait for them, and crouched silent on the cake, with
one finger downwards at Ripton's incision there, showing a
crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.

  The eloquent indication was understood. ``Dear! dear!''
cried Mrs. Berry, ``what a heap o' cake, and no one to send
it to!''

  Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace
of the claret. Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and
resolved to a boiling geyser of indistinguishable transports.
He bubbled, and waggled, and nodded amicably to nothing,
and successfully, though not without effort, preserved his
uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph,
Gravitation, who was on the look-out for his whole length
shortly.

  ``Ha! ha!'' he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry
had spoken, and almost abandoned himself to the nymph on
the spot. Mrs. Berry's words had just reached his wits.

  ``Why do you laugh, young man?'' she inquired, familiar
and motherly on account of his condition.

  ``Ha! hah!'' Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest
on the edge of the table and his nose on a chicken. ``That's
goo'!'' he said, recovering, and rocking under Mrs. Berry's
eyes. ``No frien' send to? I like that!''

  Mrs. Berry searched him with a glance. Perhaps the inebriate
youth might let her into a few sweet particulars of
this interesting business, denied to her by the wary bridegroom
and his obedient bride, she thought. She wanted to
have the stern father and cruel uncle described to her; their
stature, complexion, and annual net incomes; also their places
of residence.

  ``I did not say, no friend,'' she remarked. ``I said, no
one; meanin', I know not where for to send it to.''

  Ripton's response to this was: ``You cut fair, Mizz Berry.
There won't be much for 'em, I sh...'sure you. Take glass
wine. Cleret's my wine, sh...herry's yours. Why 'n't you
put Richard's crez' on that cake? Mr. Richards---ha! ha!
---best fun the word!---why 'n't you put a Griffin on that
cake, Mizz Berry? Wheatsheaves each side. Plenty 't
means and plenty te-te-'tis! I'm very fond of heraldry,'' he
added with a reflective visage, and fell half asleep upon the
attachment.

  ``His crest?'' Mrs. Berry winningly waked him.

  ``Oldest bar'netcy 'n England!'' waved Ripton.

  ``Yes?'' Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.

  ``Oldest bar'netcy 'n England! If 'tisn't my name's not
Rip'm Thomps'---Es... quire. Gentleman, ma'm, though he
is arricled the law. Take glass wine, M...Mizz Berry.
Cleret's my wine, sh...herry's yours. This bom my third
bod'l. What's three to a gentleman, though he isn't a
bar'net's son with fifty th---thousand a-year.''

  ``Fifty thousand! My goodness gracious me!'' ejaculated
Mrs. Berry in flattering accents.

  ``Na a penny less, ma'm! And I'm his oldts friend. Very
near transp...orted once, drinking cleret 'gether. Nev' 'fects
you! Do take glass wine. Ha! ha! you think he's Richards.
Nor a bir of it! No bar'net Richards's I know. We're
'bliged be secret, Mizz Berry.'' Ripton looked profoundedly
secret. ``Anything if 't's your own dedriment. That's law,
Mizz Berry. And 't's not his own dedri-ment. It's his de-laight---
ha! hah!''

  Here gravitation gave Ripton a strong pull. He just saved
himself, and went on, with a hideous mimicry of the God of
Secrecy: ``We're oblige' be very close. And she's the most
lovely!---If I hear man say thing 'gainst her, I...I knock 'm
down! I...I...I knock 'm down! She is such a pretty creature!''
he sang in falsetto.

  ``You needn't for to cry over her, young man,'' said Mrs.
Berry, who was resolved to stop his claret the moment she
had the secret, and indulged him for that sole object.

  Ripton attempted the God of Secrecy again, but his lips
would not protrude enough, and his eyebrows were disaffected.
He laughed outright. ``Wha' 's it matter now?
They're married, sir. Wha' 've you be 'shamed of?---eh?
I can talk! Here, I say, Mizz Berry! come---bumper!
La'ies and gen'lemen!''

  Filling Mrs. Berry's glass, and his own, to overflowing,
and again splitting the solitary female who formed his
audience into two sexes, Ripton commanded silence, and pendulously
swayed over Mrs. Berry's lap in total forgetfulness
of what he had ventured on his legs to celebrate. Aware
that they did duty for some purpose, he shut his eyes to
meditate, but at this congenial action densest oblivion enwrapped
his senses, and he was in danger of coming into
Mrs. Berry's lap head foremost; a calamity she averted by
rising likewise, and shaking him roughly, which brought him
back to visionary consciousness, when he sank into his
chair, and mildly asked: ``Wha'm I 'bout? That you, Mizz
Berry?''

  A little asperity was in her voice as she replied. ``You
were going to propose a toast. And then, young man, you'd
better lie down a bit, and cool yourself. Do it sitting,'' she
gesticulated peremptorily. ``I'll open the bottle and fill the
glass for you. I declare you're drinking it out of tumblers.
It's shocking! You're never going to have another full
tumbler?''

  Ripton chivalrously insisted on a bumper. She filled it
for him, under mental protest, for conscience pricked her.
Ripton drained his bumper in emphatic silence.

  ``Young man,'' said Mrs. Berry, severely, ``I wanted for
to drink their right healths by their right names, and then
go about my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me.''

  As if by miracle, Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.

  ``You do?'' he said, and filling another bumper he with
cheerfully vinous articulation and glibness of tongue proposed
the health of Richard and Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey!
and that mankind should not require an expeditions example
of the way to accept the inspiring toast, he drained his
bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rush-light
of his reason leapt and expired. He staggered to the
sofa, and there stretched. Ripton was far from being in
practice.

  Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his
devotion to the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the
room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below after the
young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress
with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every
symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if
the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with
horrible exultation that she had been and done it, as her
disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable,
access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to
tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted
to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had
already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when
the maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would
hear her; upon which Mrs. Berry violently controlled her
bosom, and ordered that he should be shown upstairs instantly
to see her the wretch she was. She repeated the
injunction.

  ``I'll be seen as I am!'' screamed Mrs. Berry.

  The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing
first to see herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass
and tried to look a very little better. She dropped a
shawl on Ripton and was settled, smoothing her agitation
when her visitor was announced.

  The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with
Tom Bakewell had put him on the track, and now a momentary
survey of the table, and its white-vestured cake, made
him whistle.

  Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to
be seated.

  ``A fine morning, ma'am,'' said Adrian.

  ``It have been!'' Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her
shoulder at the window, and gulping as if to get her heart
down from her mouth.

  ``A very fine Spring,'' pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing
her countenance.

  Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to ``weather'' on a
deep sigh. Her wretchedness was palpable. In proportion
to it Adrian waxed cheerful and brisk. He divined enough
of the business to see that there was some strange intelligence
to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing
hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his element
than when he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate
abject sinner, in hand, his affable countenance might well
deceive poor Berry. 

  ``I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings?'' he
remarked, with a look at the table.

  Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him
that they were not Mr. Thompson's lodgings.

  ``No?'' said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye
about him. ``Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?''

  A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating
hands dropped on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply.

  ``Mr. Feverel's man,'' continued Adrian, ``told me I
should be certain to find him here. I thought he would
be with his friend, Mr. Thompson. I'm too late, I perceive.
Their entertainment is over. I fancy you have been having
a party of them here, ma'am?---a bachelor's breakfast!''

  In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to
mask an irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain
herself. She felt she must speak. Making her face as
deplorably propitiating as she could, she began:

  ``Sir, may I beg for to know your name?''

  Mr. Harley accorded her request.

  Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:

  ``And you are Mr. Harley that was---oh! and you've come
for Mr.?''------

  Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had
come for.

  ``Oh! and it's no mistake, and he's of Raynham Abbey?''
Mrs. Berry inquired.

  Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born
and bred there.

  ``His father's Sir Austin?'' wailed the black-satin bunch
from behind her handkerchief.

  Adrian verified Richard's descent.

  ``Oh, then, what have I been and done!'' she cried, and
stared blankly at her visitor. ``I been and married my
baby! I been and married the bread out of my own mouth!
O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you was a
boy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it's my
softness that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking.
Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!''

  Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. ``Wedding-cake,
ma'am!'' he said.

  ``Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!''

  ``Did you make it yourself, ma'am?''

  The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry,
and upset that train of symbolic representations by which
she was seeking to make him guess the catastrophe and
spare her the furnace of confession.

  ``I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley,'' she replied.
``It's a bought cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I
dreamed when I had him in my arms a baby that I should
some day be marrying him out of my own house! I little
dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don't you
remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that
went away so sudden, and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley!
The very mornin' after the night you got into Mr. Benson's
cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary---I remember it as
clear as yesterday!---and Mr. Benson was that angry he
threated to use the whip to you, and I helped put you to
bed. I'm that very woman.''

  Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless
youthful life.

  ``Well, ma'am! well?'' he said. He would bring her to
the furnace.

  ``Won't you see it all, kind sir?'' Mrs. Berry appealed to
him in pathetic dumb show.

  Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was
mentally cursing at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences,
but he looked uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile
was undisturbed, his comfortable full-bodied posture
was the same. ``Well, ma'am?'' he spurred her on.

  Mrs. Berry burst forth: ``It were done this mornin', Mr.
Harley, in the church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or
twenty to, by licence;'' adding from the bottom of her voice,
``and I've never a ring to show for it!''

  Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony.
``Oh!'' he said, like one who is as hard as facts,
and as little to be moved: ``Somebody was married this
morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?''

  Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawl
from him, saying: ``Do he look like a new married bridegroom,
Mr. Harley?''

  Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic
gravity.

  ``This young gentleman was at church this morning?''
he asked.

  ``Oh! he were quite reasonable and proper then,'' Mrs.
Berry begged him to understand.

  ``Of course, ma'am.'' Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid
inanimate limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth
queerly. ``You were all reasonable and proper, ma'am.
The principal male performer, then, is my cousin, Mr.
Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by license,
at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty
breakfast, and left intoxicated.''

  Mrs. Berry flew out. ``He never drink a drop, sir. A
more moderate young gentleman you never see. Oh! don't
ye think that now, Mr. Harley. He was as upright and
master of his mind as you be.''

  ``Ay!'' the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison,
``I mean the other form of intoxication.''

  Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.

  Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and
tell him circumstantially what had been done.

  She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed
demeanour.

  Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than
that identical woman who once in old days had dared to
behold the baronet behind his mask, and had ever since
lived in exile from the Raynham world on a little pension
regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She was that
woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse Providence
for the betraying excess of softness it had endowed
her with. How was she to recognize her baby grown a
man? He came in a feigned name; not a word of the
family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal,
though she felt something more than ordinary towards him
---she knew she did. He came bringing a beautiful young
lady, and on what grounds could she turn her back on them?
Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, why _should_ she
interfere to make them unhappy---so few the chances of happiness
in this world! Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her
ring.

  ``One wrench,'' said the sobbing culprit, ``one wrench,
and my ring went off like my Berry!''

  She had no suspicions, and she had therefore never
thought of looking at the signatures in the vestry-book.

  ``And it's fort'nate I didn't!'' she exclaimed, ``for out I
should 'a shrieked there and then, never mind where's the
spot, to think I been and married my own baby unbeknown.
Not till this Mr. Thompson proposed their healths tipsy by
their right names did I think---Feverel! Raynham Abbey!
Oh! then I had been and married my baby! and so you
found me, Mr. Harley, and I daresay I looked it.''

  ``You looked as if you were suffering from a premature
indigestion of bride-cake, ma'am,'' said Adrian. ``I dare
say you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done.''

  ``Indeed, sir,'' dolorously moaned Berry, ``I were, and
am.''

  ``And would do your best to rectify the mischief---eh,
ma'am?''

  ``Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would!'' she protested
solemnly.

  ``---As, of course, you should---knowing the family.
Where may these lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?''

  Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: ``To the Isle o' ------.
I don't know, indeed, sir!'' she snapped the indication short,
and jumped out of the pit she had fallen into. Repentant
as she might be, those dears should not be pursued and
cruelly barked of their young bliss! ``To-morrow, if you
please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!''
  ``A pleasant spot,'' Adrian observed, smiling at his easy
prey.

  By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom
had brought his bride to the house on the day he had
quitted Raynham, and this was enough to satisfy Adrian's
mind that there had been concoction and chicanery. Chance,
probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance certainly
had not brought him to the young one.

  ``Very well, ma'am,'' he said, in answer to her petitions
for his favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her
little pension, and the bridal pair, ``I will tell him you were
only a blind agent in the affair, being naturally soft, and
that you trust he will bless the consummation. He will be
in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two must see
him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will set our
friend here on his legs. A bath, and a clean shirt, and he
might go. I don't see why your name should appear at all.
Brush him up, and send him to Bellingham by the seven
o'clock train. He will find his way to Raynham; he knows
the neighbourhood in the dark. Let him go and state the
case. Remember, one of you must go.''

  With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition
between the couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and
lose all their virtues over, Adrian said, ``Good morning.''

  Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. ``You won't refuse
a piece of his cake, Mr. Harley?''

  ``Oh, dear, no, ma'am.'' Adrian turned to the cake with
alacrity. ``I shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a
great many friends who will rejoice to eat his wedding-cake.
Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry. Put it in paper, if you
please. I shall be delighted to carry it to them, and apportion
it equitably according to their several degrees of
relationship.''

  Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through
it, the sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented
to her, and she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and
clearly showed how little she regretted her conduct. She
vowed that they seemed made for each other; that both were
beautiful; both had spirit; both were innocent; and to part
them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs. Berry wrought
herself to cry aloud, oh, such a pity!

  Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact
opinion. He took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous
promises, and left Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.

  ``So dies the System!'' was Adrian's comment in the
street. ``And now let prophets roar! He dies respectably
in a marriage-bed, which is more than I should have foretold
of the monster. Meantime,'' he gave the cake a dramatic
tap, ``I'll go sow nightmares.''


	CHAPTER XXXIII.

	PROCESSION OF THE CAKE.

  Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable
disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything
beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has
attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees
all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make
what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them:
their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their
frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence
the wise youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it
from an early period. Astonishment never shook the foundations,
nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to relinquish
the security of his stronghold, for he saw none.
Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him,
and air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came
precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy of
the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid unambitious
ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience
to his morality, his comfort to his conscience. Not that
voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows: on the contrary,
his sole amusement was their society. Alone he was
rather dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally
be. Study of the animated varieties of that one thing
excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play; and
the faculties he had forfeited to hold his elevated position
he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others.
Thus:---wonder at Master Richard's madness: though he
himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect
on his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive
hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of
amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal
chagrin in the prospect. For his patron had projected a
journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps,
and lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to show Richard
the highways of History and tear him from the risk of
further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether
bathed in freshness and revived. This had been
planned during Richard's absence to surprise him.

  Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of
woman is to the race of young men. It supplanted that
foolishness. It was his Romance, as we say; that buoyant
anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which,
as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens
to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse,
and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian
had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was
earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one
potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would
hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in
the foreground: he must recline on Mammon's imperial
cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient
world. The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort,
as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the
shelter of a hut and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the
bitterness of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given
him in the pomp and splendour due to his superior emotions,
or not at all. Consequently the wise youth had long nursed
an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him
that, at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he
should look with such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous
composite fabric of Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities
crumbling into unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very
few even of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly
to meaner delights the moment after.

  Hippias received the first portion of the cake.

  He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He
had fought down his breakfast with more than usual success,
and was looking forward to his dinner at the Foreys with
less than usual timidity.

  ``Ah! glad you've come, Adrian,'' he said, and expanded
his chest. ``I was afraid I should have to ride down. This
is kind of you. We'll walk down together through the park.
It's absolutely dangerous to walk alone in these streets. My
opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the year now,
and will till legislation puts a stop to it. We were free
from that nuisance in the Summer---once; but now everybody's
stupid inconsiderateness has multiplied tenfold the
malignity of those boys who broke our necks in the Winter,
and there's positively no relapse. I give you my word I
slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in Piccadilly,
and I thought I was down---I thought I was down!
I saved myself by miracle.''

  Adrian animadverted on everybody very sympathetically.

  ``You have an appetite, I hope?'' he asked.

  ``I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk,'' chirped
Hippias, ``Yes. I think I feel hungry now.''

  ``Charmed to hear it,'' said Adrian, and began unpinning
his parcel on his knees. ``How should you define Folly?''
he checked the process to inquire.

  ``Hm!'' Hippias meditates; he always prided himself on
being oracular when such questions were addressed to him.

  ``I think I should define it to be a slide.''

  ``Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel;
once on it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you
are saved by a miracle. You must present that to the
=Pilgrim.= And the monument of folly, what would that
be?''

  Hippias meditated anew. ``All the human race on one
another's shoulders.'' He chuckled at the sweeping sourness
of the instance.

  ``Very good,'' Adrian applauded, ``or in default of that,
some symbol of the thing, say; such as this of which I have
here brought you a chip.''

  Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.

  ``This is the monument made portable eh?''

  ``Cake!'' cried Hippias, retreating his chair with intense
disgust. ``Well! you're right of them that eat it. If I---if
I don't mistake,'' he peered at it, ``the noxious composition
bedizened in that way is what they call wedding-cake. It's
arrant poison! It's destruction to the stomach! Ugh!
Who is it you want to kill? What are you carrying such
stuff about for?''

  Adrian rang the bell for a knife. ``To present you with
your due and proper portion.''

  ``Me?'' Hippias's face became venomous.

  ``Well,'' said Adrian, ``you will have friends and relatives,
and can't be saved from them, not even by miracle. It is a
habit which exhibits, perhaps, the unconscious inherent
cynicism of the human mind, for people who consider that
they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to distribute
this token of esteem to their friends, with the object probably''
(he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table
to slice the cake) ``of enabling those friends (these edifices
require very delicate incision---each particular currant and
subtle condiment hangs to its neighbour---a wedding-cake is
evidently the most highly civilized of cakes, and partakes of
the evils as well as the advantages of civilization!)---I was
saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt (we shall
have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair
share) that we may the better estimate (got to the bottom
at last!) their state of bliss, by passing some hours in purgatory.
This, as far as I can apportion it, without weights
and scales, is your share, my uncle!''

  He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards
Hippias.

  ``Get away!'' Hippias vehemently motioned, and started
from his chair. ``I'll have none of it, I tell you! It's death!
It's fifty times worse than that beastly compound Christmas
pudding! What fool has been doing this, then? Who dares
send me cake? Me! It's an insult.''

  ``You are not compelled to eat any before dinner,'' said
Adrian, pointing the corner of the table after him, ``but your
share you must take, and appear to consume. One who has
done so much to bring about the marriage cannot in conscience
refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I hear,
first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams
therefrom---said to be of a lighter class, taken that way.
It's a capital cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped
to make it---you have indeed! So here it is.''

  The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it,
and flung himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: ``There! . . .
My appetite's gone for to-day!''

  ``Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel
of his cake?'' said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the
table and looking at his uncle.

  ``Richard?''

  ``Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion
since you've been in town. He's married, you know. Married
this morning at Kensington parish church, by licence,
at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to. Married,
and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight: a
very delectable place for a month's residence. I have to
announce to you that, thanks to your assistance, the experiment
is launched, sir!''------

  ``Richard married!''

  There was something to think and to say in objection to it,
but the wits of poor Hippias were softened by the shock.
His hand travelled half-way to his forehead, spread out to
smooth the surface of that seat of reason, and then fell.

  ``Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to
have him in town under your charge.'' . . .

  ``Married?'' Hippias jumped up---he had it. ``Why,
he's under age! he's an infant.''

  ``So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib
like a man and pay your fee---what does it matter? Any
one who is breeched can obtain a licence in our noble country.
And the interests of morality demand that it should not be,
difficult. Is it true---can you persuade anybody that you
have known nothing about it?''

  ``Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your
pranks on somebody else,'' said Hippias sternly, as he sank
back on the sofa. ``You've done me up for the day, I can
assure you.''

  Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and
put an artistic finish to the work. He had the gratification
of passing his uncle through varied contortions, and at last
Hippias perspired in conviction, and exclaimed, ``This
accounts for his conduct to me. That be must have a cunning
nothing short of infernal! I feel . . . I feel it just 
here,'' he drew a hand along his midriff.

  ``I'm not equal to this world of fools,'' he added faintly.
and shut his eyes. ``No, I can't dine. Eat? ha! . . . no.
Go without me!''

  Shortly after, Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as
he undressed, ``See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor
Austin!'' and as the pillow swelled over his ears, ``I'm not
sure that a day's fast won't do me good.'' The Dyspepsy had
bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had a right to
use it.

  Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.

  He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an
appetite in the Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him
were also one-legged. The Captain did not pass without
querying the ungainly parcel.

  ``I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?'' said Adrian.
``Enclosed is wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land.
Now may the maids and wives of Merry England sleep
secure! I had half a mind to fix it on a pole, and engage a
band to parade it. This is our dear Richard's wedding-cake.
Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at the
Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he
employed the ring of his beautiful bride's lachrymose landlady,
she standing adjacent by the altar. His farewell to
you as a bachelor, and hers as a maid, you can claim on
the spot, if you think proper, and digest according to your
powers.''

  Algernon let off steam in a whistle. ``Thompson, the
solicitor's daughter!'' he said. ``I met them the other day,
somewhere about here. He introduced me to her. A pretty
little baggage.''

  ``No.'' Adrian set him right. ``'Tis a Miss Desborough,
a Roman Catholic dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England
in the time of the Plantagenets! He's quite equal to
introducing her as Thompson's daughter, and himself as
Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal is in Hymen's
chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?''

  ``Oh, by all means!---not now.'' Algernon had an unwonted
air of reflection.---``Father know it?''

  ``Not yet. He will to-night by nine o'clock.''

  ``Then I must see him by seven. Don't say you met me.''

  He nodded, and pricked his horse.

  ``Wants money!'' said Adrian, putting the combustible he
carried once more in motion.

  The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative
mind. He had reserved them for his final discharge. Dear
demonstrative creatures! Dyspepsia would not weaken their
poignant outcries, or self-interest cheek their fainting fits.
On the generic woman one could calculate. Well might =The
Pilgrim's Scrip= say of her that, ``She is always at Nature's
breast;'' not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is
Eve throughout the ages; whereas the =Pilgrim= would have
us believe that the Adam in men has become warier, if not
wiser; and weak as he is, has learnt a lesson from time.
Probably the Pilgrim's meaning may be taken to be, that
Man grows, and Woman does not.

  At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you
hear in the nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake
to Mrs. Doria's maternal predestinations, and guessed that
Clare stood ready with the best form of filial obedience.
They were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian
humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty, and
they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood
and womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding
Forey wills and other females of the family assembly were
expected to develop the finer shades and tapering edges of
an agitation to which no woman could be cold.

  All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake
unchallenged in a conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and
stepped gaily down to dinner. Much of the conversation
adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria asked him if he had seen
the youth, or heard of him.

  ``Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!'' said Adrian. ``I
have heard of him. I heard that he was sublimely happy,
and had eaten such a breakfast that dinner was impossible;
claret and cold chicken, cake and''------

  ``Cake at breakfast!'' they all interjected.

  ``That seems to be his fancy just now.''

  ``What an extraordinary taste!''

  ``You know, he is educated on a System.''

  One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake
in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him,
and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but
he said nothing and the young gentleman vanished from the
conversation in a blush, extinguished by his own spark.

  Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, ``Oh! fish-cake, I suppose!
I wish he understood a little better the obligations of
relationship.''

  ``Whether he understands them, I can't say,'' observed
Adrian, ``but I assure you he is very energetic in extending
them.''

  The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an
opportunity, that his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently
inflammable by and by at the aspect of the cake; but
he was not thought more than commonly mysterious and
deep.

  ``Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison
people?'' Mrs. Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, ``Do
they keep a beadle at the door?''

  Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat
this as a piece of satirical ingenuousness. ``I dare say they
do,'' she said.

  ``And a curate on hand?''

  ``Oh, I should think a dozen!''

  Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to
give that house a wide berth, where he might be disposed of
and dished-up at a moment's notice, and the scent ran off at
a jest.

  The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman
the excellent old fashion remained in permanence of trooping
off the ladies as soon as they had taken their sustenance and
just exchanged a smile with the flowers and the dessert,
when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord, and the
gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled
to the business of the table, sure that an hour was their own.
Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of
standing.

  ``I want to ask you,'' he said, ``whether an infant in law
can legally bind himself.''

  ``If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument,
I suppose he can,'' yawned Brandon.

  ``Is he responsible for his acts?''

  ``I've no doubt we could hang him.''

  ``Then what he could do for himself, you could do for
him?''

  ``Not quite so much; pretty near.''

  ``For instance, he can marry?''

  ``That's not a criminal case, you know.''

  ``And the marriage is valid?''

  ``You can dispute it.''

  ``Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds
then?''

  ``Both water and fire!''

  The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he
stopped the vigorous circulation of the claret.

  ``Dear me, sir!'' said Adrian, ``I beg pardon. The circumstances
must excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard
got married to a dairymaid this morning, and I wanted to
know whether it held in law.''

  It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which
the announcement was taken. Nothing was heard more
energetic than, ``Deuce he has!'' and, ``A dairymaid!''

  ``I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace,''
Adrian continued. ``I wanted to be able to console my
aunt''------

  ``Well, but---well, but,'' the old gentleman, much the most
excited, puffed---``eh, Brandon? He's a boy, this young
ass! Do you mean to tell me a boy can go and marry when
he pleases, and any trull he pleases, and the marriage is
good? If I thought that I'd turn every woman off my
premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid.
I'd have no woman near him till---till''------

  ``Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?'' suggested
Brandon.

  ``Till he knew what women are made of, sir!'' the old
gentleman finished his sentence vehemently. ``What, d'ye
think, will Feverel say to it, Mr. Adrian?''

  ``He has been trying the very System you have proposed,
sir---one that does not reckon on the powerful action of
curiosity on the juvenile intelligence. I'm afraid it's the
very worst way of solving the problem.''

  ``Of course it is,'' said Clarence. ``None but a fool''------

  ``At your age,'' Adrian relieved his embarrassment, ``it is
natural, my dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea
of an isolated or imprisoned manhood something monstrous,
and we do not expect you to see what amount of wisdom it
contains. You follow one extreme, and we the other. I
don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind
shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have
invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity,
acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty
little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself
from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his
foolishness, save himself from naughtiness?''

  A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the
laugh at Mr. Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and
the footman informed Adrian, in a low voice, that Mrs.
Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with him. Adrian
preferred not to go in alone. ``Very well,'' he said, and
sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of
law in Brandon Forey, and receiving nought but hollow
echoes from that profound cavity. He would not affirm that
the marriage was invalid: he would not affirm that it could
not be anulled, He thought not; still he thought it would
be worth trying. A consummated and a non-consummated
union were two different things. . . .

  ``Dear me!'' said Adrian, ``does the Law recognize that?
Why that's almost human!''

  Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria
Forey _very_ particularly wished to speak with him.

  ``What can be the matter?'' he exclaimed, pleased to have
his faith in woman strengthened. The cake had exploded,
no doubt.

  So it proved, when the gentleman joined the fair society.
All the younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the
cake stood displayed, gaps being left for those sitting to
feast their vision, and intrude the comments and speculations
continually arising from fresh shocks of wonder at the
unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty air
of men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere,
the gallant males also arranged themselves round the
common object of curiosity.

  ``Here! Adrian!'' Mrs. Doria cried. ``Where is Adrian?
Pray come here. Tell me! Where did this cake come
from? Whose is it? What does it do here? You know
all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring it into
the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct
answer. Now do not make me impatient, Adrian.''

  Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated
rapidity and volcanic complexion it was evident
that suspicion had kindled.

  ``I was really bound to bring it,'' Adrian protested.

  ``Answer me!''

  The wise youth bowed: ``Categorically. This cake came
from the house of a person, a female, of the name of Berry.
It belongs to you partly, partly to me, partly to Clare, and
to the rest of our family, on the principle of equal division:
for which purpose it is present. . . .''

  ``Yes! Speak!''

  ``It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually
does mean.''

  ``This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian!
where is Richard?''

  Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous
horror.

  But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her
struggling hope sank. ``The wretched boy has ruined himself!''
she said, and sat down trembling.

  Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle
ladies use instead of oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that
System. She hesitated not to say that her brother had got
what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice had
overtaken him. Now he would see! but at what a price! at
what a sacrifice!

  Mrs. Doria commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.

  Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry's words. ``He
was married this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or
twenty to, by licence, at the Kensington parish church.''

  ``Then that was his appointment!'' Mrs. Doria murmured.

  ``That was the cake for breakfast!'' breathed a second of
her sex.

  ``And it was his ring!'' exclaimed a third.

  The men were silent, and made long faces.

  Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided
each other's eyes.

  ``Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?''

  ``The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid,''
said Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.

  Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs.
Doria cried, ``Brandon!'' She was a woman of energy.
Her thoughts resolved to action spontaneously.

  ``Brandon,'' she drew the barrister a little aside, ``can they
not be followed, and separated? I want your advice?
Cannot we separate them? A boy! it is really shameful
if he should be allowed to fall into the toils of a designing
creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not, Brandon?''

  The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he
answered her entreaties: ``From what I hear of the young
groom I should imagine the office perilous.''

  ``I'm speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an
order from one of your Courts to pursue them and separate
them instantly?''

  ``This evening?''

  ``Yes!''

  Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.

  ``You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon.''

  Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked
race, and to a man slept heavily after dinner.

  ``Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning?
Will you promise me to do so, Brandon?---Or a magistrate!
A magistrate would send a policeman after them. My dear
Brandon! I beg---I beg you to assist us in this dreadful
extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I
believe he would forgive anything but this. You have no
idea what his notions are of blood.''

  Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and
aid.

  ``What is it, aunt?'' asked the wise youth. ``You want
them followed and torn asunder by wild policemen?''

  ``To-morrow!'' Brandon queerly interposed.

  ``Won't that be---just too late?'' Adrian suggested.

  Mrs. Doria sighed out her last spark of hope.

  ``You see,'' said Adrian. . . .

  ``Yes! yes!'' Mrs. Doria did not require any of his
elucidations. ``Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak.
Brandon! it cannot be! it's quite impossible! Can you stand
there and tell me that boy is legally married? I never will
believe it! The law cannot be so shamefully bad as to permit
a boy---a mere child---to do such absurd things. Grandpapa!''
she beckoned to the old gentleman. ``Grandpapa! pray do
make Brandon speak. These lawyers never will. He might
stop it, if he would. If I were a man, do you think I would
stand here?''

  ``Well, my dear,'' the old gentleman toddled to compose
her, ``I'm quite of your opinion. I believe he knows no more
than you or I. My belief is they none of them know anything
till they join issue and go into Court. I want to see
a few female lawyers.''

  ``To encourage the bankrupt perruqiuer, sir?'' said
Adrian. ``They would have to keep a large supply of wigs
on hand.''

  ``And you can jest, Adrian!'' his aunt reproached him.
``But I will not be beaten. I know---I am firmly convinced
that no law would ever allow a boy to disgrace his family
and ruin himself like that, and nothing shall persuade me
that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak in
answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealing
with a woman. _Can_ my nephew be rescued from the consequences
of his folly? _Is_ what he has done legitimate?
_Is_ he bound for life by what he has done while a boy?''

  ``Well---a,'' Brandon breathed through his teeth. ``A---hm!
the matter's so very delicate, you see, Helen.''

  ``You're to forget that,'' Adrian remarked.

  ``A---hm! well!'' pursued Brandon. ``Perhaps if you
could arrest and divide them before nightfall, and make
affidavit of certain facts'' . . .

  ``Yes?'' the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.

  ``Well . . . hm! a . . . in that case . . . a . . . Or if a
lunatic, you could prove him to have been of unsound
mind'' . . .

  ``Oh! there's no doubt of his madness on _my_ mind,
Brandon.''

  ``Yes! well! in that case . . . Or if of different religious
persuasions'' . . .

  ``She _is_ a Catholic!'' Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.

  ``Yes! well! in that case . . . objections might be taken
to the form of the marriage . . . Might be proved fictitious
. . .Or if he's under, say, eighteen years'' . . .

  ``He _can't_ be much more,'' cried Mrs. Doria. ``I think,''
she appeared to reflect, and then faltered imploringly to
Adrian, ``What is Richard's age?''

  The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike
away the phantom straw she caught at.

  ``Oh! about that, I should fancy,'' he muttered, and found
it necessary at the same time to duck and turn his head for
concealment. Mrs. Doria surpassed his expectations.

  ``Yes! well, then . . .'' Brandon was resuming with a
shrug, which was meant to say he still pledged himself to
nothing, when Clare's voice was heard from out the buzzing
circle of her cousins: ``Richard is nineteen years and six
months old to-day, mama.''

  ``Nonsense, child.''

  ``He is, mama.'' Clare's voice was very steadfast.

  ``Non_sense,_ I tell you. How _can_ you know?''

  ``Richard is one year and nine months older than me,
mama.''

  Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months,
Clare was too strong for her.

  ``Singular child!'' she mentally apostrophized the girl
who scornfully rejected straws while drowning,

  ``But there's the religion still!'' she comforted herself,
and sat down to cogitate.

  The men smiled, and looked vacuous.

  Music was proposed. There are times when soft music
hath not charms; when it is put to as base uses as Imperial
C<ae>sar's dust and is simply taken to fill horrid pauses.
Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: ``_I'm a
laughing Gitana, ha-ha! ha-ha!_'' Nobody believed her.
Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary Branksburne wedded
their voices, and songfully incited all young people to _Haste
to the bower that love has built,_ and defy the wise ones of the
world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority
there, and very few places of assembly will be found where
they are not; so the glowing appeal of the British balladmonger
passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed.
Clare was asked to entertain the company. The singular
child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the
exquisitely appropriate illustrations to the British balladmonger's
repertory.

  ``Sing this, dear,'' said Angelica. ``This is pretty: `_I
know I have not loved in vain!_' Eh? don't you like that?
or this: `_He knew not that I watched his ways._' What's this
correction in the lines. . .? `_I thought he knew not I wore---_'
It's that Clarence! Really it's a shame how he treats our
books. And here again: `_When I heard he was married._'
_Spliced!_ he has written in. One of his dreadful slang words!
I'll serve him out, though. Oh! he is too absurd. Look:
`_I dare not breathe his name._' He has written: `_For it is not
pretty---Tomkins!_' Clarence has no idea of sentiment.''

  But Clarence candidly revealed the estimation in which
the British balladmonger is held by the applausive sons of
Britain (not enamoured of the fair cantatrice), who murmur
``Beautiful! Charming song!'' and nightly receive drawing-room
lessons of disgust at hearts, and bosoms, and bowers,
that may partly account for their reticence and gaucherie
when hearts, and bosoms, and bowers, are things of earnest
with them.

  Clare rejected all pathetic anatomy, and sang a little Irish
air. Her duty done, she marched from the piano. Mothers
are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters; but
Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in
feeling an agony of pity for her child, that she might the
more warrantably pity herself---a not uncommon form of the
emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the balladmonger
puts in to our mouths so boldly. Remember that she
saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered
fruitless in a minute and by the System which had almost
reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She
had enough of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for
self-pity.

  Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic
nature prevented her from giving up. Straws were straws,
and the frailer they were the harder she clutched them.
She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to
Adrian to follow her.

  ``Adrian,'' she said, turning upon him in the passage,
``you mentioned a house where this horrible cake. . . . . where
he was this morning. I desire you to take me to that woman
immediately.''

  The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude.
He had hoped he should be in time for the last act of the
opera that night, after enjoying the comedy of real life.
``My dear aunt'' . . , . he was beginning to insinuate.

  ``Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat,'' said Mrs.
Doria.

  There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his
assent to the =Pilgrim='s dictum, that Women are practical
creatures, and now reflected on his own account that relationship
to a young fool may be a vexation and a nuisance.
However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.

  What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature
did not plainly know; but her energy positively demanded
to be used in some way or other, and her instinct directed
her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath. She
wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse.
She dared not abuse her brother to his face: him she would
have to console. Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System,
and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully
delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion if
the case. So she drove to Bessy Berry's simply to inquire
whither her nephew had flown.

  When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is
matched with a woman of energy, she does not show much
fight, and she meets no mercy. Bessy Berry's creditor came
to her in female form that night. She then behold it in all
its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male,
a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male
attributes, and the peculiar male characteristic of being
moved, and ultimately silenced, by tears. As female, her
creditor was terrible indeed. Still, had it not been a late
hour, Bessy Berry would have died rather than speak openly
that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of
Wight. They had a long start, they were out of the reach
of pursuers, they were safe, and she told what she had to
tell. She told more than was wise of her to tell. She made
mention of her early service in the family, and of her little
pension. Alas! her little pension! Her creditor had come
expecting no payment---come, as creditors are wont in such
moods, just to take it out of her, to employ the familiar
term. At once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension.

  ``That, of course, you know is at an end,'' she said in the
calmest manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of
bread to her. She only asked a little consideration for her
feelings.

  True admirers of women had better stand aside from the
scene. Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled
to witness it. Mrs. Doria was not generous. The
=Pilgrim= may be wrong about the sex not growing; but its
fashion of conducting warfare we must allow to be barbarous,
and according to what is deemed the pristine, or wild
cat, method. Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor
Berry to her bed that night, and her character bled till
morning on her pillow.

  The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her
home. Mice had been at the cake during her absence,
apparently. The ladies and gentlemen present put it on the
greedy mice, who were accused of having gorged and gone to
bed.

  ``I'm sure they're quite welcome,'' said Mrs. Doria. ``It's
a farce, this marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way
of thinking. I would not touch an atom of it. Why, they
were married in a married woman's ring! Can _that_ be
legal, as you call it? Oh, I'm convinced! Don't tell me.
Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is true to his
principles, he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son
from infamy. I want no legal advice. I go upon common
sense, common decency. This marriage is false.''

  Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her
life, that she could not give it up. She took Clare to her
bed, and caressed and wept over her, as she would not have
done had she known the singular child, saying, ``Poor
Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him, Clare! we
must save him!'' Of the two the mother showed the
greater want of iron on this occasion. Clare lay in her arms
rigid and emotionless, with one of her hands tight-locked.
All she said was: ``I knew it in the morning, mama.'' She
slept clasping Richard's nuptial ring.

  By this time all specially concerned in the System knew
it. The honeymoon was shining placidly above them. Is
not happiness like another circulating medium? When we
have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for
what is taken away from them. When we have gone out
and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are
sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or
later. Who knows the honeymoon that did not steal somebody's
sweetness? Richard Turpin went forth, singing:
``Money or life'' to the world: Richard Feverel has done
the same, substituting ``Happiness'' for ``Money,'' frequently
synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have, and
was just as much a highway robber as his fellow Dick, so
that those who have failed to recognize him as a hero before,
may now regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world
he has squeezed looks exceedingly patient and beautiful.
His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature, and the
order of things on earth, have no warmer admirer than a
jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the Jews.


	CHAPTER XXXIV.

	NURSING THE DEVIL.

  And now the author of the System was on trial under the
eyes of the lady who loved him. What so kind as they?
Yet are they very rigorous, those soft watchful woman's
eyes. If you fall below the measure they have made of you,
you will feel it in the fulness of time. She cannot but show
you that she took you for a giant, and has had to come down
a bit. You feel yourself strangely diminishing in those
sweet mirrors, till at last they drop on you complacently
level. But, oh beware, vain man, of ever waxing enamoured
of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected
in her adoring upcast orbs! Beware of assisting to
delude her! A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive
your being but a man, if you are surely that: she will haply
learn to acknowledge that no mortal tailor could have fitted
that figure she made of you respectably, and that practically
(though she sighs to think it) her ideal of you was on the
pattern of an overgrown charity-boy in the regulation jacket
and breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities
of the tailor, and then smiles at herself. But shouldst thou,
when the hour says plainly, Be thyself, and the woman is
willing to take thee as thou art, shouldst thou still aspire to
be that thing of shanks and wrists, wilt thou not seem contemptible
as well as ridiculous? And when the fall comes,
will it not be flat on thy face, instead of to the common
height of men? You may fall miles below her measure of
you, and be safe: nothing is damaged save an overgrown
charity-boy; but if you fall below the common height of
men, you must make up your mind to see her rustle her
gown, spy at the looking-glass, and transfer her allegiance.
The moral of which is, that if we pretend to be what we are
not, women, for whose amusement the farce is performed,
will find us out and punish us for it. And it is usually the
end of a sentimental dalliance.

  Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was
natural he should feel, he might have gone to unphilosophic
excesses, and, however much he lowered his reputation as a
sage, Lady Blandish would have excused him: she would not
have loved him less for seeing him closer. But the poor
gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his muscles to act
up to her conception of him. He, a man of science in life,
who was bound to be surprised by nothing in nature, it was
not for him to do more than lift his eyebrows and draw in
his lips at the news delivered by Ripton Thompson, that ill
bird at Raynham.

  All he said, after Ripton had handed the letters and
carried his penitential headache to bed, was: ``You see,
Emmeline, it is useless to base any system on a human
being.''

  A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily
at work building for nearly twenty years. Too philosophical
to seem genuine. It revealed where the blow struck
sharpest. Richard was no longer the Richard of his creation---
his pride and his joy---but simply a human being with
the rest. The bright star had sunk among the mass.
And yet, what had the young man done? And in what
had the System failed?

  The lady could not but ask herself this, while she condoled
with the offended father.

  ``My friend,'' she said, tenderly taking his hand before
she retired, ``I know how deeply you must be grieved. I
know what your disappointment must be. I do not beg of
you, to forgive him now. You cannot doubt his love for this
young person and according to his light, has he not behaved
honourably, and as you would have wished, rather than
bring her to shame? You will think of that. It has been
an accident---a misfortune---a terrible misfortune'' . . .

  ``The God of this world is in the machine---not out of it,''
Sir Austin interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the
good-night over.

  At any other time her mind would have been arrested to
admire the phrase; now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and
she was tempted to turn the meaning that was in it against
himself, much as she pitied him.

  ``You know, Emmeline,'' he added, ``I believe very little
in the fortune, or misfortune, to which men attribute their
successes and reverses. They are useful impersonations to
novelists; but my opinion is sufficiently high of flesh and
blood to believe that we make our own history without
intervention. Accidents?---Terrible misfortunes?---What
are they?---Good-night.''

  ``Good-night,'' she said, looking sad and troubled. ``When
I said, `misfortune,' I meant, of course, that he is to blame,
but---shall I leave you his letter to me?''

  ``I think I have enough to meditate upon,'' he replied,
coldly bowing.


  ``God bless you,'' she whispered. ``And---may I say it?
do not shut your heart.''

  He assured her that he hoped not to do so, and the moment
she was gone he set about shutting it as tight as he could.
If, instead of saying, Base no system on a human being,
he had said, Never experimentalize with one, he would have
been nearer the truth of his own case. He had experimented
on humanity in the person of the son he loved as his
life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to have failed,
all humanity's failings fell on the shoulders of his son.
Richard's parting laugh in the train---it was explicable now:
it sounded in his ears like the mockery of this base nature
of ours at every endeavour to exalt and chasten it. The
young man had plotted this. From step to step Sir Austin
traced the plot. The curious mask he had worn since his
illness; the selection of his incapable uncle Hippias for a
companion in preference to Adrian; it was an evident, well-perfected
plot. That hideous laugh would not be silenced.
Base, like the rest, treacherous, a creature of passions using
his abilities solely to gratify them---never surely had humanity
such chances as in him! A Manich<ae>an tendency, from which
the sententious eulogist of nature had been struggling for
years (and which was partly at the bottom of the System),
now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As
he sat alone in the forlorn dead-hush of his library, he saw
the devil.

  How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain
of the fates of them we love?

  There by the springs of Richard's future, his father sat.
and the devil said to him: ``Only be quiet: do nothing: resolutely
do nothing: your object now is to keep a brave face
to the world, so that all may know you superior to this human
nature that has deceived you. For it is the shameless deception,
not the marriage, that has wounded you.''

  ``Ay!'' answered the baronet, ``the shameless deception,
not the marriage! wicked and ruinous as it must be; a
destroyer of my tenderest hopes! my dearest schemes! Not
the marriage:---the shameless deception!'' and he crumpled
up his son's letter to him, and tossed it into the fire.

  How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manich<ae>ans
when he talks our own thoughts to us?

  Further he whispered, ``And your System:---if you would
be brave to the world, have courage to cast the dream of it
out of you: relinquish an impossible project; see it as it is
---dead: too good for men!''

  ``Ay!'' muttered the baronet: ``all who would save them
perish on the Cross!''

  And so he sat nursing the devil,

  By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and
cap, and went to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee
and youth without a destiny slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief
was bound about his forehead, and his helpless sunken
chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him
look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered how often
he had compared his boy with this one: his own bright boy!
And where was the difference between them?

  ``Mere outward gilding!'' said his familiar.

  ``Yes,'' he responded, ``I dare say this one never positively
plotted to deceive his father: he followed his appetites unchecked,
and is internally the sounder of the two.''

  Ripton, with his sunken chin and snoring nose under the
light of the lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however
abject.

  ``Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment!''
whispered the monitor.

  ``Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts
the whole?'' ejaculated Sir Austin. ``And is no angel of
avail till that is drawn off? And is that our conflict---to see
whether we can escape the contagion of its embrace, and
come uncorrupted out of that?''

  ``The world is wise in its way,'' said the voice.

  ``Though it look on itself through Port wine?'' he suggested,
remembering his lawyer Thompson.

  ``Wise in not seeking to be too wise,'' said the voice.

  ``And getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort!''

  ``Human nature is weak.''

  ``And Miss Random is an establishment, and Wild Oats an
institution!''

  ``It always has been so.''

  ``And always will be?''

  ``So I fear! in spite of your very noble efforts.''

  ``And leads---whither? And ends---where?''

  Richard's laugh, taken up by horrid reverberations, as it
were through the lengths of the Lower Halls, replied.

  This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by
Sir Austin asking again if there were no actual difference
between the flower of his hopes and yonder drunken weed,
and receiving for answer that there was a decided dissimilarity
in the smell of the couple; becoming cognizant of
which he retreated.

  Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him
into his bosom at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and
received his suggestions, and bowed to his dictates. Because
he suffered, and decreed that he would suffer silently, and be
the only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was great-minded
in his calamity. He had stood against the world. The world
had beaten him. What then? He must shut his heart and
mask his face; that was all. To be far in advance of the
mass, is as fruitless to mankind, he reflected, as straggling in
the rear. For how do we know that they move behind us at
all, or move in our track? What we win for them is lost;
and where we are overthrown we lie!

  It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds
of a nature not great, chose to colour his retrogression and
countenance his shortcoming; and it was thus that he set
about ruining the work he had done. He might well say, as
he once did, that there are hours when the clearest soul
becomes a cunning fox. For a grief that was private and
peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon humanity;
just as he had accused it in the period of what he termed his
own ordeal. How had he borne that? By masking his face.
And he prepared the ordeal for his son by doing the same.
This was by no means his idea of a man's duty in tribulation,
about which he could be strenuously eloquent. But it was his
instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures alone are
not at the mercy of their instincts. Moreover it would cost
him pain to mask his face; pain worse than that he endured
when there still remained an object for him to open his heart
to in proportion; and he always reposed upon the Spartan
comfort of bearing pain and being passive. ``Do nothing,''
said the devil he nursed; which meant in his case, ``Take
me into you and don't cast me out.'' Excellent and sane, I
think, is the outburst of wrath to men, when it stops short of
slaughter. For who that locks it up to eat in solitary, can
say that it is consumed? Sir Austin had as weak a digestion
for wrath, as poor Hippias for a green duckling. Instead of
eating it, it ate him. The wild beast in him was not the less
deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not the
less active because he resolved to do nothing.

  He sat at the springs of Richard's future, in the forlorn
dead-hush of his library there, hearing the cinders click in
the extinguished fire, and that humming stillness in which
one may fancy one hears the midnight Fates busily stirring
their embryos. The lamp glowed mildly on the bust of
Chatham.

  Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady
Blandish glided in. With hasty step she came straight to
him, and took both his hands.

  ``My friend,'' she said, speaking tearfully, and trembling,
``I feared I should find you here. I could not sleep. How
is it with you?''

  ``Well, Emmeline! well!'' he replied, torturing his brows
to fix the mask.

  He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He
had an extraordinary longing for Adrian's society. He knew
that the wise youth would divine how to treat him, and he
mentally confessed to just enough weakness to demand a
certain kind of management. Besides Adrian, he had not a
doubt, would accept him entirely as he seemed, and not
pester him in any way by trying to unlock his heart;
whereas, a woman, he feared, would be waxing too womanly,
and swelling from tears and supplications to a scene, of all
things abhorred by him the most. So he rapped the floor
with his foot, and gave the lady no very welcome face when
he said it was well with him.

  She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly,
and softly detaining the other.

  ``Oh, my friend! may I believe you? May I speak to
you?'' She leaned close to him. ``You know my heart. I
have no better ambition than to be your friend. Surely I
divide your grief, and may I not claim your confidence?
Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows?
I would not have come to you, but I do believe that sorrow
shared relieves the burden, and it is now that you may feel a
woman's aid, and something of what a woman could be to
you.'' . . .

  ``Be assured,'' he gravely said, ``I thank you, Emmeline,
for your intentions.''

  ``No, no! not for my intentions! And do not thank me.
Think of him . . . think of your dear boy . . . Our
Richard, as we have called him.---Oh! do not think it a
foolish superstition of mine, but I have had a thought this
night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak to you.
. . . Tell me first you have forgiven him.''

  ``A father bears no malice to his son, Emmeline.''

  ``Your heart has forgiven him?''

  ``My heart has taken what he gave.''

  ``And quite forgiven him?''

  ``You will hear no complaints of mine.''

  The lady paused despondingly, and looked at him in a
wistful manner, saying with a sigh, ``Yes! I know how
noble you are, and different from others!''

  He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold.

  ``You ought to be in bed, Emmeline.''

  ``I cannot sleep.''

  ``Go, and talk to me another time.''

  ``No, it must be now. You have helped me when I
struggled to rise into a clearer world, and I think, humble
as I am, I can help you now. I have had a thought this
night that if you do not pray for him and bless him . . . it
will end miserably. My friend, have you done so?''

  He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing
it in spite of his mask.

  ``Have you done so, Austin?''

  ``This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to
the follies of their sons, Emmeline!''

  ``No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless
him, before the day comes?''

  He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:---
``And I must do this, or it will end in misery? How else
can it end? Can I save him from the seed he has sown?
Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has repeated his
cousin's sin. You see the end of that . . .''

  ``Oh, so different! This young person is _not,_ is _not_ of the
class poor Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is
different. And he---be just and admit his nobleness. I
fancied you did. This young person has great beauty, she
has the elements of good breeding, she---indeed I think, had
she been in another position, you would not have looked
upon her unfavourably.''

  ``She may be too good for my son!'' The baronet spoke
with sublime bitterness.

  ``No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it.''

  ``Pass her.''

  ``Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal
accident. We thought his love dead, and so did he till he
saw her again. He met her, he thought we were plotting
against him, he thought he should lose her for ever, and in
the madness of an hour he did this.''

  ``My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches.''

  ``Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had
him act as young men in his position generally do to young
women beneath them?''

  Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very
severely.

  ``You mean,'' he said, ``that fathers must fold their arms,
and either submit to infamous marriages, or have these
creatures ruined.''

  ``I do _not_ mean that,'' exclaimed the lady, striving for
what she did mean, and how to express it. ``I mean that
. . . he loved her. Is it not a madness at his age? But
what I chiefly mean is---save him from the consequences.
No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride,
his sensitiveness, his great wild nature---wild when he is set
wrong: think, how intense it is, set upon love; think, my
friend, do not forget his love for you.''

  Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity.

  ``That I should save him, or any one, from consequences,
is asking more than the order of things will allow to you,
Emmeline, and is not in the disposition of this world. I
cannot. Consequences are the natural offspring of acts. My
child, you are talking sentiment, which is the distraction of
our modern age in everything---a phantasmal vapour distorting
the image of the life we live. You ask me to give
him a golden age in spite of himself. All that could be
done, by keeping him in the paths of virtue and truth, I did.
He is become a man, and as a man he must reap his own
sowing.''

  The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid: he spoke so
securely, as if wisdom were to him more than the love of his
son. And yet he did love his son. Feeling sure that he
loved his son while he spoke so loftily, she reverenced him
still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had been
quibbled with.

  ``All I ask of you is to open your heart to him,'' she
said.

  He was silent.

  ``Call him a man,---he is, and must ever be the child of
your education, my friend.''

  ``You would console me, Emmeline, with the prospect
that, if he ruins himself, he spares the world of young women.
Yes, that is something! that is something!''

  Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He
could meet her eyes, and respond to the pressure of her
hand, and smile, and not show what he felt. Nor did he
deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his elevation in her
soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over offended
love. Nor did he know that he had an angel with him
then: a blind angel, and a weak one, but one who struck
upon his chance.

  ``Am I pardoned for coming to you?'' she said, after a
pause.

  ``Surely I can read my Emmeline's intentions,'' he gently
replied.

  ``Very poor ones. I feel my weakness. I cannot utter
half I have been thinking. Oh, if I could!''

  ``You speak very well, Emmeline.''

  ``At least, I am pardoned!''

  ``Surely so.''

  ``And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven?
---may I beg it?---will you bless him?''

  He was again silent.

  ``Pray for him, Austin! pray for him ere the night is
over.''

  As she spoke she slid down to his feet and pressed his
hand to her bosom.

  The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit
that wooed him, he pushed back his chair, and rose, and
went to the window.

  ``It's day already!'' he said with assumed vivacity
throwing open the shutters, and displaying the young light
on the lawn.

  Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt, and then
joined him, and glanced up silently at Richard's moon
standing in wane toward the west. She hoped it was because
of her having been premature in pleading so earnestly,
that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself
more than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she
had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled
to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to
the hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face
might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that
moment she grew critical of him, and began to study her
idol---a process dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed
to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as
one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness, murmured:

  ``God's rarest blessing is, after all, a good woman! My
Emmeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not
shame the day.'' He gazed down on her with a fondling
tenderness.

  ``I could bear many, many!'' she replied, meeting his
eyes, ``and you would see me look better and better, if . . .
if only . . .'' but she had no encouragement to end the
sentence.

  Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation; perhaps
the handsome placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched
him: at any rate their Platonism was advanced by his putting
an arm about her. She felt the arm and talked of the
morning.

  Thus proximate, they by and by both heard something
very like a groan behind them, and looking round, beheld
the Saurian eve. Lady Blandish smiled, but the baronet's
discomposure was not to be concealed. By a strange fatality
every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have a
human beholder.

  ``Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon,'' Benson mumbled, arresting
his head in a melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out
of the room.

  ``And I think I shall follow him, and try to get forty
winks,'' said Lady Blandish. They parted with a quiet
squeeze of hands.

  The baronet then called in Benson.

  ``Get me my breakfast as soon as you can,'' he said, regardless
of the aspect of injured conscience Benson sombrely
presented to him. ``I am going to town early. And, Benson,''
he added, ``you will also go to town this afternoon, or
to-morrow, if it suits you, and take your book with you to
Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will
be made for you. You can go.''

  The heavy butler essayed to speak, but the tremendous
blow and the baronet's gesture choked him. At the door he
made another effort which shook the rolls of his loose skin
pitiably. An impatient signal sent him out dumb,---and
Raynham was quit of the one believer in the Great Shaddock
dogma.


	CHAPTER XXXV.

	CONQUEST OF AN EPICURE.

  It was the month of July. The Solent ran up green
waves before a full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts
bounded out like foam, and flashed their sails, light as sea-nymphs.
A crown of deep summer blue topped the flying
mountains of cloud.

  By an open window that looked on the brine through nodding
roses, our young bridal pair were at breakfast, regaling
worthily both of them. Had the Scientific Humanist observed
them, he could not have contested the fact that, as a
couple who had set up to be father and mother of Britons,
they were doing their duty. Files of egg-cups with disintegrated
shells, bore witness to it, and they were still at work,
hardly talking from rapidity of exercise. Both were dressed
for an expedition. She had her bonnet on, and he his yachting-hat.
His sleeves were turned over at the wrists, and her
gown showed its lining on her lap. At times a chance word
might spring a laugh, but eating was the business of the
hour, as I would have you to know it always will be where
Cupid is in earnest. Tribute flowed in to them from the
subject land. Neglected lies Love's penny-whistle on which
they played so prettily, and charmed the spheres to hear
them. What do they care for the spheres, who have one
another? Come, eggs! come, bread and butter! come, tea
with sugar in it and milk! and welcome, the jolly hours.
That is a fair interpretation of the music in them just now,
Yonder instrument was good only for the overture. After
all, what finer aspiration can lovers have, than to be free
man and woman in the heart of plenty? And is it not a
glorious level to have attained? Ah, wretched Scientific
Humanist! not to be by and mark the admirable sight of
these young creatures feeding. It would have been a spell
to exorcise the Manichee, methinks.

  The mighty performance came to an end, and then, with a
flourish of his table-napkin, husband stood over wife, who
met him on the confident budding of her mouth. The poetry
of mortals is their daily prose. Is it not a glorious level to
have attained? A short, quick-blooded kiss, radiant, fresh,
and honest as Aurora, and then Richard says without lack of
cheer, ``No letter to-day, my Lucy!'' whereat her sweet eyes
dwell on him a little seriously, but he cries, ``Never mind!
he'll be coming down himself some morning. He has only to
know her, and all's well! eh?'' and so saying he puts a hand
beneath her chin, and seems to frame her fair face in fancy,
she smiling up to be looked at.

  ``But one thing I do want to ask my darling,'' says Lucy,
and dropped into his bosom with hands of petition. ``Take
me on board his yacht with him to-day---not leave me with
those people! Will he? I'm a good sailor, he knows!''

  ``The best afloat!'' laughs Richard, hugging her, ``but,
you know, you darling bit of a sailor, they don't allow more
than a certain number on board for the race, and if they hear
you've been with me, there'll be cries of foul play! Besides,
there's Lady Judith to talk to you about Austin, and Lord
Mountfalcon's compliments for you to listen to, and Mr.
Morton to take care of you.''

  Lucy's eves fixed sideways an instant.

  ``I hope I don't frown and blush as I did?'' she said,
screwing her pliable brows up to him winningly, and he bent
his cheek against hers, and murmured something delicious.
``And we shall be separated for---how many hours? one,
two, three hours!'' she pouted to his flatteries.

  ``And then I shall come on board to receive my bride's
congratulations.''

  ``And then my husband will talk all the time to I lady
Judith.''

  ``And then I shall see my wife frowning and blushing at
Lord Mountfalcon.''

  ``Am I so foolish, Richard?'' she forgot her trifling to ask
in an earnest way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just
brushing the dew on her lips, for answer.

  After hiding a month in shyest shade, the pair of happy
sinners had wandered forth one day to look on men and
marvel at them, and had chanced to meet Mr. Morton of
Poer Hall, Austin Wentworth's friend, and Ralph's uncle.
Mr. Morton had once been intimate with the baronet, but had
given him up for many years as impracticable and hopeless,
for which reason he was the more inclined to regard
Richard's misdemeanour charitably, and to lay the faults of
the son on the father; and thinking society to be the one
thing requisite to the young man, he had introduced him to
the people he knew in the island; among others to the Lady
Judith Felle, a fair young dame, who introduced him to
Lord Mountfalcon, a puissant nobleman; who introduced
him to the yachtsmen beginning to congregate; so that in a
few weeks he found himself in the centre of a brilliant company,
and for the first time in his life tasted what it was to
have free intercourse with his fellow-creatures of both sexes.
The son of a System was, therefore, launched; not only
through the surf, but in deep waters.

  Now the baronet had so far compromised between the
recurrence of his softer feelings and the suggestions of his
new familiar, that he had determined to act toward Richard
with justness. The world called it magnanimity, and even
Lady Blandish had some thoughts of the same kind when
she heard that he had decreed to Richard a handsome allowance,
and had scouted Mrs. Doria's proposal for him to contest
the legality of the marriage; but Sir Austin knew well
he was simply just in not withholding money from a youth
so situated. And here again the world deceived him by
embellishing his conduct. For what it is to be just to whom
we love! He knew it was not magnanimous, but the cry of
the world somehow fortified him in the conceit that in dealing
perfect justice to his son he was doing all that was
possible, because so much more than common fathers would
have done. He had shut his heart.

  Consequently Richard did not want money. What he
wanted more, and did not get, was a word from his father,
and though he said nothing to sadden his young bride, she
felt how much it preyed upon him to be at variance with the
man whom, now that he had offended him and gone against
him, he would have fallen on his knees to; the man who was
as no other man to him. She heard him of nights when she
lay by his side, and the darkness, and the tears, and the
broken mutterings, of those nights clothed the figure of the
strange stern man in her mind. Not that it affected the
appetites of the pretty pair. We must not expect that of
Cupid enthroned, and in condition; under the influence of
sea-air, too. The files of egg-cups laugh at such an idea.
Still the worm did gnaw them. Judge, then, of their delight
when, on this pleasant morning, as they were issuing from
the garden of their cottage to go down to the sea, they
caught sight of Tom Bakewell rushing up the road with a
portmanteau on his shoulders, and, some distance behind
him, discerned Adrian.

  ``It's all right!'' shouted Richard, and ran off to meet
him, and never left his hand till he had hauled him up, firing
questions at him all the way, to where Lucy stood.

  ``Lucy! this is Adrian, my cousin.''---Isn't he an angel?
his eyes seemed to add; while Lucy's clearly answered,
``That he is!''

  The full-bodied angel ceremoniously bowed to her, and
acted with reserved unction the benefactor he saw in their
greetings. ``I think we are not strangers,'' he was good
enough to remark, and very quickly let them know he had
not breakfasted; on hearing which they hurried him into
the house, and Lucy put herself in motion to have him
served.

  ``Dear old Rady,'' said Richard, tugging at his hand
again, ``how glad I am you've come! I don't mind telling
you we've been horridly wretched.''

  ``Six, seven, eight, nine eggs,'' was Adrian's comment on
a survey of the breakfast-table.

  ``Why wouldn't he write? Why didn't he answer one of
my letters? But here you are, so I don't mind now. He
wants to see us, does he? We'll go up to-night. I've a
match on at eleven; my little yacht---I've called her the
`Blandish'---against Fred Currie's `Begum.' I shall beat,
but whether I do or not, we'll go up to-night. What's the
news? What are they all doing?''

  ``My dear boy!'' Adrian returned, sitting comfortably
down, ``let me put myself a little more on an equal footing
with you before I undertake to reply. Half that number of
eggs will be sufficient for an unmarried man, and then we'll
talk. They're all very well, as well as I can recollect after
the shaking my total vacuity has had this morning. I came
over by the first boat, and the sea, the sea has made me love
mother earth, and desire of her fruits.''

  Richard fretted restlessly opposite his cool relative.

  ``Adrian! what did he say when he heard of it? I want
to know exactly what words he said.''

  ``Well says the sage, my son! `Speech is the small
change of Silence.' He said less than I do.''

  ``That's how he took it!'' cried Richard, and plunged in
meditation.

  Soon the table was cleared, and laid out afresh, and Lucy
preceded the maid bearing eggs on the tray, and sat down
unbonneted, and like a thorough-bred housewife, to pour out
the tea for him.

  ``Now we'll commence,'' said Adrian, tapping his egg
with meditative cheerfulness; but his expression soon
changed to one of pain, all the more alarming for his
benevolent efforts to conceal it. Could it be possible the
egg was bad? oh, horror! Lucy watched him, and waited
in trepidation.

  ``This egg has boiled three minutes and three quarters,''
he observed, ceasing to contemplate it.

  ``Dear, dear!'' said Lucy, ``I boiled them myself exactly
that time. Richard likes them so. And you like them hard,
Mr. Harley?''

  ``On the contrary, I like them soft. Two minutes and a
half, or three-quarters at the outside. An egg should never
rashly verge upon hardness---never. Three minutes is the
excess of temerity.''

  ``If Richard had told me! If I had only known!'' the
lovely little hostess interjected ruefully, biting her lip.

  ``We mustn't expect him to pay attention to such matters,''
said Adrian, trying to smile.

  ``Hang it! there are more eggs in the house,'' cried
Richard, and pulled savagely at the bell.

  Lucy jumped up, saying, ``Oh, yes! I will go and boil
some exactly the time you like. Pray let me go, Mr.
Harley.''

  Adrian restrained her departure with a motion of his
hand. ``No,'' he said, ``I will be ruled by Richard's tastes,
and Heaven grant me his digestion!''

  Lucy threw a sad look at Richard, who stretched on a
sofa, and left the burden of the entertainment entirely to
her. The eggs were a melancholy beginning, but her ardour
to please Adrian would not be damped, and she deeply
admired his resignation. If she failed in pleasing this
glorious herald of peace, no matter by what small misadventure,
she apprehended calamity; so there sat this fair dove
with brows at work above her serious smiling blue eyes,
covertly studying every aspect of the plump-faced epicure,
that she might learn to propitiate him. ``He shall not think
me timid and stupid,'' thought this brave girl, and indeed
Adrian was astonished to find that she could both chat and
be useful, as well as look ornamental. When he had finished
one egg, behold, two fresh ones came in, boiled according to
his prescription. She had quietly given her orders to the
maid, and he had them without fuss. Possibly his look of
dismay at the offending eggs had not been altogether involuntary,
and her woman's instinct, inexperienced as she
was, may have told her that he had come prepared to be not
very well satisfied with anything in love's cottage. There
was mental faculty in those pliable brows to see through,
and combat, an unwitting wise youth.

  How much she had achieved already she partly divined
when Adrian said: ``I think now I'm in case to answer your
questions, my dear boy---thanks to Mrs. Richard,'' and he
bowed to her his first direct acknowledgment of her position.
Lucy thrilled with pleasure.

  ``Ah!'' went Richard, and settled easily on his back.

  ``To begin, the Pilgrim has lost his Note-book, and has
been persuaded to offer a reward which shall maintain the
happy finder thereof in an asylum for life. Benson---superlative
Benson---has turned his shoulders upon Raynham.
None know whither he has departed. It is believed that
the sole surviving member of the sect of the Shaddock-Dogmatists
is under a total eclipse of Woman.''

  ``Benson gone?'' Richard exclaimed. ``What a tremendous
time it seems since I left Raynham!''

  ``So it is, my dear boy. The honeymoon is Mahomet's
minute; or say, the Persian King's water-pail that you read
of in the story: You dip your head in it, and when you draw,
it out, you discover that you have lived a life. To resume:
your uncle Algernon still roams in pursuit of the lost one---I
should say, hops. Your uncle Hippias has a new and most
perplexing symptom; a determination of bride-cake to the
nose. Ever since your generous present to him, though he
declares he never consumed a morsel of it, he has been
under the distressing illusion that his nose is enormous, and
I assure you he exhibits quite a maidenly timidity in following
it---through a doorway, for instance. He complains of
its terrible weight. I have conceived that Benson invisible
might be sitting on it. His hand, and the doctor's, are in
hourly consultation with it, but I fear it will not grow
smaller. The Pilgrim has begotten upon it a new Aphorism:
that Size is a matter of opinion. It is the last in the Note-book,
and if they do with Note-books as it is the fashion
to treat novels---turn from the commencement to the conclusion---
the happy finder will have rapidly qualified himself
to appreciate the full meaning of the reward.''

  ``Poor uncle Hippy!'' said Richard, ``I wonder he doesn't
believe in magic. There's nothing supernatural to rival the
wonderful sensations he does believe in. Good God! fancy
coming to that!''

  ``I'm sure I'm very sorry,'' Lucy protested, ``but I can't
help laughing.''

  Charming to the wise youth her pretty laughter sounded.

  ``The Pilgrim has your notion, Richard. Whom does he
not forestall? `Confirmed dyspepsia is the apparatus of
illusions,' and he accuses the Ages that put faith in sorcery,
of universal indigestion, which may have been the case,
owing to their infamous cookery. He says again, if you
remember, that our own Age is travelling back to darkness
and ignorance through dyspepsia. He lays the seat of
wisdom in the centre of our system, Mrs. Richard: for which
reason you will understand how sensible I am of the vast
obligation I am under to you at the present moment, for
your especial care of mine.''

  Richard looked on at Lucy's little triumph, attributing
Adrian's subjugation to her beauty and sweetness. She had
latterly received a great many compliments on that score,
which she did not care to hear, and Adrian's homage to a
practical quality was far pleasanter to the young wife, who
shrewdly guessed that her beauty would not help her much
in the struggle she had now to maintain. Adrian continuing
to lecture on the excelling virtues of wise cookery, a
thought struck her: Where, where had she tossed Mrs.
Berry's book?

  ``So that's all, about the home-people?'' said Richard.

  ``All!'' replied Adrian. ``Or stay: you know Clare's
going to be married? Not? Your Aunt Helen''------

  ``Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had
the impertinence to write---but never mind! Is it to Ralph?''

  ``Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an
extraordinary woman. It was from her originally that the
Pilgrim first learnt to call the female the practical animal.
He studies us all, you know. =The Pilgrim's Scrip= is the
abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives. Well,
your Aunt Helen''------

  ``Mrs. Doria Battledoria!'' laughed Richard.

  ``------being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own---call
it a System if you like---of some ten or fifteen years' standing,
with regard to Miss Clare''------

  ``The fair Shuttlecockiana!''

  ``------instead of fretting like a man, and questioning Providence,
and turning herself and everybody else inside out,
and seeing the world upside down, what does the practical
animal do? She wanted to marry her to somebody she
couldn't marry her to, so she resolved instantly to marry her
to somebody she could marry her to: and as old gentlemen
enter into these transactions with the practical animal the
most readily, she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried
old gentleman, a rich old gentleman, and now a captive old
gentleman. The ceremony takes place in about a week
from the present time. No doubt you will receive your invitation
in a day or two.''

  ``And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to
marry an old man!'' groaned Richard. ``I'll put a stop to
that when I go to town.''

  ``Don't,'' said Adrian.

  Richard got up and strode about the room. Then he
bethought him it was time to go on board and make
preparations.

  ``I'm off,'' he said. ``Adrian, you'll take her. She goes
in the Empress, Mountfalcon's vessel. He starts us. A
little schooner-yacht---such a beauty! I'll have one like her
some day. Good-bye, darling!'' he whispered to Lucy, and
his hand and eyes lingered on her, and hers on him, seeking
to make up for the priceless kiss they were debarred from.
But she quickly looked away from him as he held her:---
Adrian was silent: his brows were up, and his mouth
dubiously contracted. He spoke at last.

  ``Go on the water?''

  ``Yes. It's only to St. Helen's. Short and sharp.''

  ``Do you grudge me the nourishment my poor system has
just received, my son?''

  ``Oh, bother your system! Put on your hat, and come
along. I'll put you on board in my boat.''

  ``Richard! I have already paid the penalty of them who
are condemned to come to an island. I will go with you to
the edge of the sea, and I will meet you there when you
return, and take up the Tale of the Tritons: but, though I
forfeit the pleasure of Mrs. Richard's company, I refuse to
quit the land.''

  ``Yes, oh, Mr. Harley!'' Lucy broke from her husband,
``and I will stay with you, if you please. I don't want to
go among those people, and we can see it all from the shore.
Dearest! I don't want to go. You don't mind? Of course,
I will go if you wish, but I would so much rather stay;'' and
she lengthened her plea in her attitude and look to melt the
discontent she saw gathering.

  Adrian protested that she had much better go; that he
could amuse himself very well till their return, and so forth;
but she had schemes in her pretty head, and held to it to be
allowed to stay in spite of Lord Mountfalcon's disappointment,
cited by Richard, and at the great risk of vexing her
darling, as she saw. Richard pished, and glanced contemptuously
at Adrian. He gave way ungraciously.

  ``There, do as you like. Get your things ready to leave
this evening. No, I'm not angry.''---Who could be? he
seemed as he looked up from her modest fondling to ask
Adrian, and seized the indemnity of a kiss on her forehead,
which, however, did not immediately disperse the shade of
annoyance he felt.

  ``Good heavens!'' he exclaimed. ``Such a day as this,
and a fellow refuses to come on the water! Well, come
along to the edge of the sea.'' Adrian's angelic quality had
quite worn off to him. He never thought of devoting himself
to make the most of the material there was: but somebody
else did, and that fair somebody succeeded wonderfully
in a few short hours. She induced Adrian to reflect that
the baronet had only to see her, and the family muddle
would be smoothed at once. He came to it by degrees; still
the gradations were rapid. Her manner he liked; she was
certainly a nice picture: best of all, she was sensible. He
forgot the farmer's niece in her, she was so very sensible.
She appeared really to understand that it was a woman's
duty to know how to cook.

  But the difficulty was, by what means the baronet could
be brought to consent to see her. He had not yet consented
to see his son, and Adrian, spurred by Lady Blandish, had
ventured something in coming down. He was not inclined
to venture more. The small debate in his mind ended by
his throwing the burden on time. Time would bring the
matter about. Christians as well as Pagans are in the habit
of phrasing this excuse for folding their arms; ``forgetful,''
says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``that the Devil's imps enter into
no such armistice.''

  As she loitered along the shore with her amusing companion,
Lucy had many things to think of. There was her
darling's match. The yachts were started by pistol-shot by
Lord Mountfalcon on board the Empress, and her little heart
beat after Richard's straining sails. Then there was the
strangeness of walking with a relative of Richard's, one who
had lived by his side so long. And the thought that perhaps
this night she would have to appear before the dreaded
father of her husband.

  ``O Mr. Harley!'' she said, ``is it true---are we to go to-night?
And me,'' she faltered, ``will he see me?''

  ``Ah! that is what I wanted to talk to you about,'' said
Adrian. ``I made some reply to our dear boy which he has
slightly misinterpreted. Our second person plural is liable
to misconstruction by an ardent mind. I said 'see you,'
and he supposed---now, Mrs. Richard, I am sure you will
understand me. Just at present perhaps it would be adviseable---
when the father and son have settled their accounts,
the daughter-in-law can't be a debtor.'' . . .

  Lucy threw up her blue eyes. A half-cowardly delight at
the chance of a respite from the awful interview made her
quickly apprehensive.

  ``O Mr. Harley! you think he should go alone first?''

  ``Well, that is my notion. But the fact is, he is such an
excellent husband that I fancy it will require more than a
man's power of persuasion to get him to go.''

  ``But I will persuade him, Mr. Harley.''

  ``Perhaps, if you would . . .''

  ``There is nothing I would not do for his happiness,''
murmured Lucy.

  The wise youth pressed her hand with lymphatic approbation.
They walked on till the yachts had rounded the
point.

  ``Is it to-night, Mr. Harley?'' she asked with some
trouble in her voice now that her darling was out of sight.

  ``I don't imagine your eloquence even will get him to leave
you to-night,'' Adrian replied gallantly. ``Besides, I must
speak for myself. To achieve the passage to an island is
enough for one day. No necessity exists for any hurry,
except in the brain of that impetuous boy. You must correct
it, Mrs. Richard. Men are made to be managed, and
women are born managers. Now, if you were to let him
know that you don't want to go to-night, and let him guess,
after a day or two, that you would very much rather . . .
you might affect a peculiar repugnance. By taking it on
yourself, you see, this wild young man will not require such
frightful efforts of persuasion. Both his father and he are
exceedingly delicate subjects, and his father unfortunately
is not in a position to be managed directly. It's a strange
office to propose to you, but it appears to devolve upon you
to manage the father through the son. Prodigal having
made his peace, you, who have done all the work from a distance,
naturally come into the circle of the paternal smile,
knowing it due to you. I see no other way. If Richard
suspects that his father objects for the present to welcome
his daughter-in-law, hostilities will be continued, the breach
will be widened, bad will grow to worse, and I see no end
to it.''

  Adrian looked in her face, as much as to say: Now are
you capable of this piece of heroism? And it did seem hard
to her that she should have to tell Richard she shrank from
any trial. But the proposition chimed in with her fears
and her wishes: she thought the wise youth very wise: the
poor child was not insensible to his flattery, and the subtler
flattery of making herself in some measure a sacrifice to the
home she had disturbed. She agreed to simulate as Adrian
had suggested.

  Victory is the commonest heritage of the hero, and when
Richard came on shore proclaiming that the Blandish had
beaten the Begum by seven minutes and three-quarters, he
was hastily kissed and congratulated by his bride with her
fingers among the leaves of Dr. Kitchener, and anxiously
questioned about wine.

  ``Dearest! Mr. Harley wants to stay with us a little, and
he thinks we ought not to go immediately---that is, before
he has had some letters, and I feel . . . I would so much
rather . . .''

  ``Ah! that's it, you coward!'' said Richard. ``Well, then,
to-morrow. We had a splendid race. Did you see us?''

  ``Oh, yes! I saw you and was sure my darling would
win.'' And again she threw on him the cold water of that
solicitude about wine. ``Mr. Harley must have the best,
you know, and we never drink it, and I'm so silly, I don't
know good wine, and if you would send Tom where he can
get _good_ wine. I have seen to the dinner.''

  ``So that's why you didn't come to meet me.''

  ``Pardon me, darling.''

  ``Well, I do, but Mountfalcon doesn't, and Lady Judith
thinks you ought to have been there.''

  ``Ah, but my heart was with you!''

  Richard put his hand to feel for the little heart: her
eyelids softened, and she ran away.

  It is to say much of the dinner that Adrian found no fault
with it, and was in perfect good humour at the conclusion of
the service. He did not abuse the wine they were able to
procure for him, which was also much. The coffee, too, had
the honour of passing without comment. These were sound
first steps toward the conquest of an epicure, and as yet
Cupid did not grumble.

  After coffee they strolled out to see the sun set from Lady
Judith's grounds. The wind had dropped, The clouds had
ruled from the zenith, and ranged in amphitheatre with
distant flushed bodies over sea and land: Titanic crimson
head and chest rising from the wave faced Hyperion falling.
There hung Briareus with deep-indented trunk and ravined
brown, stretching all his hands up to unattainable blue
summits. North-west the range had a rich white glow, as
if shining to the moon, and westward, streams of amber,
melting into upper rose, shot out from the dipping disk.

  ``What Sandoe calls the passion-flower of heaven,'' said
Richard under his breath to Adrian, who was serenely
chanting Greek hexameters, and answered, in the swing of
the c<ae>sura, ``He might as well have said cauliflower.''

  Lady Judith, with a black lace veil tied over her head, met
them in the walk. She was tall and dark; dark-haired,
dark-eyed, sweet and persuasive in her accent and manner.
``A second edition of the Blandish,'' thinks Adrian. She
welcomed him as one who had claims on her affability. She
kissed Lucy protestingly, and remarking on the wonders of
the evening, appropriated her husband. Adrian and Lucy
found themselves walking behind them.

  The sun was under. All the spaces of the sky were alight,
and Richard's fancy flamed.

  ``So you're not intoxicated with your immense triumph
this morning?'' said Lady Judith.

  ``Don't laugh at me. When it's over I feel ashamed of
the trouble I've taken. Look at that glory!---I'm sure you
despise me for it.''

  ``Was I not there to applaud you? I only think such
energies should be turned into some definitely useful channel.
But you must not go into the Army.''

  ``What else can I do?''

  ``You are fit for so mach that is better.''

  ``I never can be anything like Austin.''

  ``But I think you can do more.''

  ``Well I thank you for thinking it, Lady Judith. Something
I will do. A man must deserve to live, as you say.''

  ``Sauces,'' Adrian was heard to articulate distinctly in the
rear, ``Sauces are the top tree of this science. A woman
who has mastered sauces sits on the apex of civilization.''

  Briareus reddened duskily seaward. The west was all a
burning rose.

  ``How can men see such sights as those, and live idle?''
Richard resumed. ``I feel ashamed of asking my men to
work for me.---Or I feel so now.''

  ``Not when you're racing the Begum, I think. There's no
necessity for you to turn democrat like Austin. Do you
write now?''

  ``No. What is writing like mine? It doesn't deceive
me. I know it's only the excuse I'm making to myself for
remaining idle. I haven't written a line since---lately.''

  ``Because you are so happy.''

  ``No, not because of that. Of course I'm very happy . . .''
He did not finish.

  Vague, shapeless ambition had replaced love in yonder
skies. No Scientific Humanist was by to study the natural
development, and guide him. This lady would hardly be
deemed a very proper guide to the undirected energies of
the youth, yet they had established relations of that nature.
She was five years older than he, and a woman, which may
explain her serene presumption.

  The cloud-giants had broken up: a brawny shoulder
smouldered over the sea.

  ``We'll work together in town, at all events,'' said Richard,
``Why can't we go about together at night and find out
people who want help?''

  Lady Judith smiled, and only corrected his nonsense by
saying, ``I think we mustn't be too romantic. You will become
a knight-errant, I suppose. You have the characteristics
of one.''

  ``Especially at breakfast,'' Adrian's unnecessarily emphatic
gastronomical lessons to the young wife here came in.

  ``You must be our champion,'' continued Lady Judith:
the rescuer and succourer of distressed dames and damsels.
``We want one badly.''

  ``You do,'' said Richard earnestly: ``from what I hear:
from what I know!'' His thoughts flew off with him as
knight-errant hailed shrilly at exceeding critical moments
by distressed dames and damsels. Images of airy towers
hung around. His fancy performed miraculous feats. The
towers crumbled. The stars grew larger, seemed to throb
with lustre. His fancy crumbled with the towers of the
air, his heart gave a leap, he turned to Lucy.

  ``My darling! what have you been doing?'' And as if to
compensate her for his little knight-errant infidelity, he
pressed very tenderly to her.

  ``We have been engaged in a charming conversation on
domestic cookery,'' interposed Adrian.

  ``Cookery! such an evening as this?'' His face was a
handsome likeness of Hippias at the presentation of bride-cake.

  ``Dearest! you know it's very useful,'' Lucy mirthfully
pleaded.

  ``Indeed I quite agree with you, child,'' said Lady Judith,
``and I think you have the laugh of us. I certainly will
learn to cook some day.''

  ``Woman's mission, in so many words,'' ejaculated Adrian.

  ``And pray, what is man's?''

  ``To taste thereof, and pronounce thereupon,''

  ``Let us give it up to them,'' said Lady Judith to Richard.
``You and I never will make so delightful and beautifully
balanced a world of it.''

  Richard appeared to have grown perfectly willing to give
everything up to the fair face, his bridal Hesper.

  Next day Lucy had to act the coward anew, and as she
did so, her heart sank to see how painfully it affected him
that she should hesitate to go with him to his father. He
was patient, gentle; he sat down by her side to appeal to
her reason, and used all the arguments he could think of to
persuade her.

  ``If we go together and make him see us both: if he sees
he has nothing to be ashamed of in you---rather everything
to be proud of; if you are only near him, you will not have
to speak a word, and I'm certain---as certain as that I live---
that in a week we shall be settled happily at Raynham. I
know my father so well, Lucy. Nobody knows him but I.''

  Lucy asked whether Mr. Harley did not.

  ``Adrian? Not a bit. Adrian only knows a part of
people, Lucy; and not the best part.''

  Lucy was disposed to think more highly of the object of
her conquest.

  ``Is it he that has been frightening you, Lucy?''

  ``No, no, Richard; oh, dear no!'' she cried, and looked at
him more tenderly because she was not quite truthful.

  ``He doesn't know my father at all,'' said Richard. But
Lucy had another opinion of the wise youth, and secretly
maintained it. She could not be won to imagine the baronet
a man of human mould, generous, forgiving, full of passionate
love at heart, as Richard tried to picture him, and
thought him, now that he beheld him again through Adrian's
embassy. To her he was that awful figure, shrouded by the
midnight. ``Why are you so harsh?'' she had heard
Richard cry more than once. She was sure that Adrian
must be right.

  ``Well, I tell you I won't go without you,'' said Richard,
and Lucy begged for a little more time.

  Cupid now began to grumble, and with cause. Adrian
positively refused to go on the water unless that element
were smooth as a plate. The South-west still joked boisterously
at any comparison of the sort; the days were magnificent;
Richard had yachting engagements; and Lucy always
petitioned to stay to keep Adrian company, conceiving it her
duty as hostess. Arguing with Adrian was an absurd idea.
If Richard hinted at his retaining Lucy, the wise youth
would remark; ``It's a wholesome interlude to your extremely
Cupidinous behaviour, my dear boy.''

  Richard asked his wife what they could possibly find to
talk about.

  ``All manner of things,'' said Lucy; ``not only cookery.
He is so amusing, though he does make fun of =The Pilgrim's
Scrip,= and I think he ought not. And then, do you know,
darling---you won't think me vain?---I think he is beginning
to like me a little.''

  Richard laughed at the humble mind of his Beauty.

  ``Doesn't everybody like you, admire you? Doesn't Lord
Mountfalcon, and Mr. Morton, and Lady Judith?''

  ``But he is one of your family, Richard.''

  ``And they all will, if she isn't a coward.''

  ``Ah, no!'' she sighs, and is chidden.

  The conquest of an epicure, or any young wife's conquest
beyond her husband, however loyally devised for their mutual
happiness, may be costly to her. Richard in his hours of
excitement was thrown very much with Lady Judith. He
consulted her regarding what he termed Lucy's cowardice.
Lady Judith said: ``I think she'd wrong, but you must learn
humour little women.''

  ``Then would you advise me to go up alone?'' he asked,
with a cloudy forehead.

  ``What else can you do? Be reconciled yourself as
quickly as you can. You can't drag her like a captive, you
know?''

  It is not pleasant for a young husband, fancying his bride
the peerless flower of Creation, to learn that he must humour
a little woman in her. It was revolting to Richard,

  ``What I fear,'' he said, ``is that my father will make it
smooth with me, and not acknowledge her: so that whenever
I go to him, I shall have to leave her, and tit for tat---an
abominable existence, like a ball on a billiard-table. I won't
bear that ignominy. And this I know, I know! she might
prevent it at once, if she would only be brave, and face it.
You, you, Lady Judith, you wouldn't be a coward?''

  ``Where my old lord tells me to go, I go,'' the lady coldly
replied. ``There's not much merit in that. Pray don't cite
me. Women are born cowards, you know.''

  ``But I love the women who are not cowards.''

  ``The little thing---your wife has not refused to go?''

  ``No---but tears! Who can stand tears?''

  Lucy had come to drop them. Unaccustomed to have his
will thwarted, and urgent where he saw the thing to do so
clearly, the young husband had spoken strong words: and
she, who knew that she would have given her life by inches
for him; who knew that she was playing a part for his
happiness, and hiding for his sake the nature that was
worthy his esteem; the poor little martyr had been weak a
moment.

  She had Adrian's support. The wise youth was very
comfortable. He liked the air of the Island, and he liked
being petted. ``A nice little woman! a very nice little
woman!'' Tom Bakewell heard him murmur to himself
according to a habit he had; and his air of rather succulent
patronage as he walked or sat beside the innocent Beauty,
with his head thrown back and a smile that seemed always
to be in secret communion with his marked abdominal prominence,
showed that she was gaining part of what she
played for. Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling,
when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity
for nothing. Examinations of her hand, as for some
occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not
infrequent. Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his
compliments. Lucy would say: ``That's worse than Lord
Mountfalcon.''

  ``Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ---
allow that?'' quoth Adrian.

  ``He is very kind,'' said Lucy.

  ``To all, save to our noble vernacular,'' added Adrian.
``He seems to scent a rival to his dignity there.''

  It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic
emotions.

  ``We are at our ease here in excellent society,'' he wrote
to Lady Blandish. ``I am bound to confess that the Huron
has a happy fortune, or a superlative instinct. Blindfold he
has seized upon a suitable mate. She can look at a lord, and
cook for an epicure. Besides Dr. Kitchener, she reads and
comments on =The Pilgrim's Scrip.= The `Love' chapter, of
course, takes her fancy. That picture of Woman, `_Drawn
by Reverence and coloured by Love,_' she thinks beautiful, and
repeats it, tossing up pretty eyes. Also the lover's petition:
`_Give me purity to be worthy the good in her, and grant her
patience to reach the good in me._'  'Tis quite taking to hear
her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the petition! I
make her read me her choice passages. She has not a bad
voice.

  ``The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin's Miss Menteith
married to the incapable old Lord Fells, or Fellow, as the
wits here call him. Lord Mountfalcon is his cousin, and
her---what? She has been trying to find out, but they have
both got over their perplexity, and act respectively the bad
man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which
our young couple found them, and haply diverted its perils.
They have quite taken them in hand. Lady Judith undertakes
to cure the fair Papist of a pretty, modest trick of
frowning and blushing when addressed, and his lordship
directs the exuberant energies of the original man. 'Tis
thus we fulfil our destinies, and are content. Sometimes
they change pupils; my lord educates the little dame, and
my lady the hope of Raynham. Joy and blessings unto all!
as the German poet sings. Lady Judith accepted the hand
of her incapable lord that she might be of potent service to
her fellow-creatures. Austin, you know, had great hopes of
her.

  ``I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to
study. I think it is not without meaning that I am introduced
to it by a yeoman's niece. The language of the two
social extremes is similar. I find it to consist in an instinctively
lavish use of vowels and adjectives. My lord and
Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my lord's has
lost its backbone, and is limp, though fluent. Their pursuits
are identical; but that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim
terms it, _vantage,_ and the other has not. Their ideas seem
to have a special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping
where they have begun. Young Tom Blaize with _vantage_
would be Lord Mountfalcon. Even in the character of their
parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound to confess
that the Hon. Peter Brayder, who is my lord's parasite, is by
no means noxious.

  ``This sounds dreadfully democrat. Pray don't be alarmed.
The discovery of the affinity between the two extremes of the
Royal British Oak has made me thrice conservative. I see
now that the national love of a lord is less subservience than
a form of self-love; putting a gold-lace hat on one's image, as
it were, to bow to it. I see, too, the admirable wisdom of
our system:---could there be a finer balance of power than
in a community where men intellectually nil, have lawful
vantage and a gold-lace hat on? How soothing it is to
intellect---that noble rebel, as the Pilgrim has it---to stand,
and bow, and know itself superior! This exquisite compensation
maintains the balance: whereas that period anticipated
by the Pilgrim, when science shall have produced an
_intellectual aristocracy,_ is indeed horrible to contemplate.
For what despotism is so black as one the mind cannot
challenge? 'Twill be an iron age. Wherefore, madam, I
cry, and shall continue to cry. `_Vive_ Lord Mountfalcon! long
may he sip his Burgundy! long may the bacon-fed carry him
on their shoulders!'

  ``Mr. Morton (who does me the honour to call me Young
Mephisto, and Socrates missed) leaves to-morrow to get
Master Ralph out of a scrape. Our Richard has just been
elected member of a Club for the promotion of nausea. Is he
happy? you ask. As much so as one who has had the misfortune
to obtain what he wanted can be. Speed is his passion.
He races from point to point. In emulation of Leander
and Don Juan, he swam, I hear, to the opposite shores
the other day, or some world-shaking feat of the sort: himself
the Hero whom he went to meet: or, as they who pun
say, his Hero was a Bet. A pretty little domestic episode
occurred this morning. He finds her abstracted in the fire
of his caresses: she turns shy and seeks solitude: green
jealousy takes hold of him: he lies in wait, and discovers
her with his new rival---a veteran edition of the culinary
Doctor! Blind to the Doctor's great national services, deaf
to her wild music, he grasps the intruder, dismembers him,
and performs upon him the treatment he has recommended
for dressed cucumber. Tears and shrieks accompany the
descent of the gastronome. Down she rushes to secure the
cherished fragments: he follows: they find him, true to
his character, alighted and straggling over a bed of blooming
flowers. Yet ere a fairer flower can gather him, a heel
black as Pluto stamps him into earth, flowers and all:---
happy burial! Pathetic tribute to his merit is watering his
grave, when by saunters my Lord Mountfalcon. `What's
the mattah?' says his lordship, soothing his moustache.
They break apart, and 'tis left to me to explain from the
window. My lord looks shocked, Richard is angry with her
for having to be ashamed of himself, Beauty dries her eyes,
and after a pause of general foolishness, the business of life
is resumed. I may add that the Doctor has just been dug
up, and we are busy, in the enemy's absence, renewing old
<AE>son with enchanted threads. By the way, a Papist priest
has blest them.''

  A month had passed when Adrian wrote this letter. He
was very comfortable; so of course he thought Time was
doing his duty. Not a word did he say of Richard's return,
and for some reason or other neither Richard or Lucy spoke
of it now.

  Lady Blandish wrote back: ``His father thinks he has
refused to come to him. By your utter silence on the subject,
I fear that it must be so. Make him come. Bring him
by force. _Insist_ on his coming. Is he mad? He must
come _at once._''

  To this Adrian replied, after a contemplative, comfortable
lapse of a day or two, which might be laid to his efforts to
adopt the lady's advice, ``The point is that the half man
declines to come without the whole man. The terrible
question of sex is our obstruction.''

  Lady Blandish was in despair. She had no positive
assurance that the baronet would see his son; the mask put
them all in the dark; but she thought she saw in Sir Austin
irritation that the offender, at least when the opening to
come and make his peace seemed to be before him, should
let days and weeks go by. She saw through the mask sufficiently
not to have any hope of his consenting to receive the
couple at present; she was sure that his equanimity was fictitious;
but she pierced no farther, or she might have
started and asked herself, Is this the heart of a woman?
The lady at last wrote to Richard. She said: ``Come
instantly, and come alone.'' Then Richard, against his
judgement, gave way. ``My father is not the man I thought
him!'' he exclaimed sadly, and Lucy felt his eyes saying to
her: ``And you, too, are not the woman I thought you.''
Nothing could the poor little heart reply but strain to his
bosom and sleeplessly pray in his arms all the night.


	CHAPTER XXXVI.

	CLARE'S MARRIAGE.

  Three weeks after Richard arrived in town, his cousin
Clare was married, under the blessings of her energetic
mother, and with the approbation of her kinsfolk, to the
husband that had been expeditiously chosen for her. The
gentleman, though something more than twice the age of his
bride, had no idea of approaching senility for many long connubial
years to come. Backed by his tailor and his hairdresser,
he presented no such bad figure at the altar, and
none would have thought that he was an ancient admirer of
his bride's mama, as certainly none knew he had lately proposed
for Mrs. Doria before there was any question of her
daughter. These things were secrets; and the elastic and
happy appearance of Mr. John Todhunter did not betray
them at the altar. Perhaps he would rather have married
the mother. He was a man of property, well born, tolerably
well educated, and had, when Mrs. Doria rejected him for
the first time, the reputation of being a fool---which a
wealthy man may have in his youth; but as he lived on,
and did not squander his money---amassed it, on the contrary,
and did not seek to go into Parliament, and did other
negative wise things, the world's opinion, as usual, veered
completely round, and John Todhunter was esteemed a
shrewd, sensible man---only not brilliant; that he was brilliant
could not be said of him. In fact, the man could
hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu
deliveries were required of him in the marriage-service.

  Mrs. Doria had her own reasons for being in a hurry. She
had discovered something of the strange impassive nature of
her child; not from any confession of Clare's, but from signs
a mother can read when her eyes are not resolutely shut.
She saw with alarm and anguish Clare had fallen into the
pit she had been digging for her so laboriously. In vain she
entreated the baronet to break the disgraceful, and, as she
said, illegal alliance his son had contracted. Sir Austin
would not even stop the little pension to poor Berry. ``At
least you will do that, Austin,'' she begged pathetically.
``You will show your sense of that horrid woman's conduct?''
He refused to offer up any victim to console her.
Then Mrs. Doria told him her thoughts,---and when an outraged
energetic lady is finally brought to exhibit these painfully
hoarded treasures, she does not use half words as a
medium. His System, and his conduct generally, were
denounced to him, without analysis. She let him understand
that the world laughed at him; and he heard this
from her at a time when his mask was still soft and liable to
be acted on by his nerves. ``You are weak, Austin! weak,
I tell you!'' she said, and, like all angry and self-interested
people, prophecy came easy to her. In her heart she accused
him of her own fault, in imputing to him the wreck of her
project. The baronet allowed her to revel in the proclamation
of a dire future, and quietly counselled her to keep
apart from him, which his sister assured him she would do.
But to be passive in calamity is the province of no woman.
Mark the race at any hour. ``What revolution and hubbub
does not that little instrument, the needle, avert from us!''
says =The Pilgrim's Scrip.= Alas, that in calamity women
cannot stitch! Now that she saw Clare wanted other than
iron, it struck her she must have a husband, and be made
secure as a woman and a wife. This seemed the thing to do:
and, as she had forced the iron down Clare's throat, so she
forced the husband, and Clare gulped at the latter as she had
at the former. On the very day that Mrs. Doria had this
new track shaped out before her, John Todhunter called at
the Foreys. ``Old John!'' sang out Mrs. Doria, ``show him
up to me. I want to see him particularly.'' He sat with
her alone. He was a man multitudes of women would have
married---whom will they not?---and who would have married
any presentable woman: but women do want asking,
and John never had the word. The rape of such men is left
to the practical animal. So John sat alone with his old
flame. He had become resigned to her perpetual lamentation
and living Suttee for his defunct rival. But, ha! what
meant those soft glances now---addressed to him? His
tailor and his hairdresser gave youth to John, but they had
not the art to bestow upon him distinction, and an undistinguished
man what woman looks at? John was an indistinguishable
man. For that reason he was dry wood to a
soft glance. He was quickly incandescent. He proposed,
at the close of an hour's conflagration, thus: ``Aren't you
ever going to change your state, Helen?''

  ``Oh no! never, indeed!'' the fair widow replied.

  ``Then it's a shame,'' muttered John, thinking how many
children and cries of ``Papa'' this woman---to whom he fancied
he had been constant, utterly devoted---owed him.

  Ere he could fall back upon his accustomed resignation,
Mrs. Doria had assured the man that, she knew of no one who
would make so good a husband, no one she would like so
well to have related to her.

  ``And you ought to be married, John: you know you
ought.''

  ``But if I can't have her?'' returned John, staring stupidly
at her enigmatical forefinger.

  ``Well, well! might you not have something better?''

  Mr. Todhunter gallantly denied the possibility of that.

  ``Something younger is something better, John. No. I'm
not young, and I intend to remain what I am. Put me by.
You must marry a young woman, John. You are well preserved---
younger than most of the young men of our day.
You are eminently domestic, a good son, and will be a good
husband and good father. Some one you must marry.---
What do you think of Clare for a wife for you?''

  At first John Todhunter thought it would be very much
like his marrying a baby. However, he listened to it, and
that was enough for Mrs. Doria. ``I'll do the wooing for
you, John,'' she said.

  She did more. She went down to John's mother, and
consulted with her on the propriety of the scheme of wedding
her daughter to John in accordance with his proposition.
Mrs. Todhunter's jealousy of any disturbing force in the
influence she held over her son Mrs. Doria knew to be one of
the causes of John's remaining constant to the impression
she had aforetime produced on him. She spoke so kindly
of John, and laid so much stress on the ingrained obedience
and passive disposition of her daughter, that Mrs. Todhunter
was led to admit she did think it almost time John should
be seeking a mate, and that he---all things considered---
would hardly find a fitter one. And this, John Todhunter---
old John no more---heard to his amazement when, a day or
two subsequently, he instanced the probable disapproval of
his mother.

  The match was arranged. Mrs. Doria did the wooing. It
consisted in telling Clare that she had come to years when
marriage was desireable, and that she had fallen into habits
of moping, which might have the worse effect on her future
life, as it had on her present health and appearance, and
which a husband would cure. Richard was told by Mrs.
Doria that Clare had instantaneously consented to accept
Mr. John Todhunter as lord of her days, and with more than
obedience---with alacrity. At all events, when Richard spoke
to Clare, the strange passive creature did not admit constraint
on her inclinations. Mrs. Doria allowed Richard to
speak to her. She laughed at his futile endeavours to undo
her work, and the boyish sentiments he uttered on the subject.
``Let us see, child,'' she said, ``let us see which turns
out the best; a marriage of passion, or a marriage of common
sense.''

  Heroic efforts were not wanting to arrest the union.
Richard made repeated journeys to Hounslow, where Ralph
was quartered, and if Ralph could have been persuaded to
carry off a young lady who did not love him, from the bridegroom
her mother averred she did love, Mrs. Doria might
have been defeated. But Ralph in his cavalry quarters was
cooler than Ralph in the Bursley meadows. ``Women are
oddities, Dick,'' he remarked, running a finger right and left
along his upper lip. ``Best leave them to their own freaks.
She's a dear girl, though she don't talk: I like her for that.
If she cared for me I'd go the race. She don't, and never
did. It's no use asking a girl twice. _She_ knows whether
she cares a fig for a fellow. My belief, Mr. Dick, is, that
she's in love with you, if it's anybody.''

  The hero quitted him with some contempt, saying to himself,
``I believe he's nothing more than an embroidered
jacket now.'' But as Ralph Morton was a young man, and
he had determined that John Todhunter was an old man, he
sought another private interview with Clare, and getting
her alone, said: ``Clare, I've come to you for the last time.
Will you marry Ralph Morton?''

  To which Clare replied, ``I cannot marry two husbands,
Richard.''

  ``Will you refuse to marry this old man?''

  ``I must do as mama wishes.''

  ``Then you're going to marry an old man---a man you
don't love, and can't love! Oh, good God! do you know
what you're doing?'' He flung about in a fury. ``Do you
know what it is? Clare!'' he caught her two hands violently,
``have you any idea of the horror you're going to commit?''

  She shrank a little at his vehemence, but neither blushed
nor stammered: answering: ``I see nothing wrong in doing
what mama thinks right, Richard.''

  ``Your mother! I tell you it's an infamy, Clare! It's a
miserable sin! I tell you, if I had done such a thing I would
not live an hour after it. And coldly to prepare for it! to be
busy about your dresses! They told me when I came in that
you were with the milliner. To be smiling over the horrible
outrage! decorating yourself!'' . . . . He burst into tears.

  ``Dear Richard,'' said Clare, ``you will make me very unhappy.''

  ``That one of my blood should be so debased!'' he cried,
brushing angrily at his face. ``Unhappy! I beg you to
feel for yourself, Clare. But I suppose,'' and he said it
scornfully, ``girls don't feel this sort of shame.''

  She grew a trifle paler.

  ``Next to mama, I would wish to please you, dear
Richard.''

  ``Have you no will of your own?'' he exclaimed.

  She looked at him softly; a look he interpreted for the
meekness he detested in her.

  ``No, I believe you have none!'' he added. ``And what
can I do? I can't step forward and stop this accursed marriage.
If you would but say a word I would save you; but
you tie my hands. And they expect me to stand by and see
it done!''

  ``Will you not be there, Richard?'' said Clare, following
the question with her soft eyes. It was the same voice that
had so thrilled him on his marriage-morn.

  ``Oh, my darling Clare!'' he cried in the kindest way he
had ever used to her, ``if you knew how I feel this!'' and
now as he wept she wept, and came insensibly into his arms.
``My darling Clare!'' he repeated.

  She said nothing, but seemed to shudder, weeping.

  ``You _will_ do it, Clare? You will be sacrificed? So
lovely as you are, too! Oh! to think of that mouth being
given over to. . . . O curses of hell! to think. . . . .
Clare! you cannot be quite blind. If I dared speak to you,
and tell you all. . . . . Look up. Can you still consent?''

  ``I must not disobey mama,'' Clare murmured, without
looking up from the nest her cheek had made on his bosom.

  ``Then kiss me for the last time,'' said Richard. ``I'll
never kiss you after it, Clare.''

  He bent his head to meet her mouth, and she threw her
arms wildly round him, and kissed him convulsively, and
clung to his lips, shutting her eyes, her face suffused with a
burning red.

  Then he left her, unaware of the meaning of those passionate
kisses.

  Argument with Mrs. Doria was like firing paper-pellets
against a stone wall. To her indeed the young married
hero spoke almost indecorously, and that which his delicacy
withheld him from speaking to Clare. He could provoke
nothing more responsive from the practical animal than
``Pooh-pooh! Tush, tush! and Fiddlededee!''

  ``Really,'' Mrs. Doria said to her intimates, ``that boy's
education acts like a disease on him. He cannot regard anything
sensibly. He is for ever in some mad excess of his
fancy, and what he will come to at last heaven only knows!
I sincerely pray that Austin will be able to bear it.''

  Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity,
are not very well worth having. Mrs. Doria had embarked
in a practical controversy, as it were, with her brother.
Doubtless she did trust he would be able to bear his sorrows
to come, but one who has uttered prophecy can barely help
hoping to see it fulfilled: she had prophesied much grief to
the baronet.

  Poor John Todhunter, who would rather have married the
mother, and had none of your heroic notions about the
sacred necessity for love in marriage, moved as one guiltless
of offence, and that deserves his happiness. Mrs. Doria
shielded him from the hero. To see him smile at Clare's
obedient figure, and try not to look paternal, was touching.

  Meantime Clare's marriage served one purpose. It completely
occupied Richard's mind, and prevented him from
chafing at the vexation of not finding his father ready to
meet him when he came to town. A letter had awaited
Adrian at the hotel, which said, ``Detain him till you hear
further from me. Take him about with you into every form
of society.'' No more than that. Adrian had to extemporize
that the baronet had gone down to Wales on pressing business,
and would be back in a week or so. For ulterior
inventions and devices wherewith to keep the young gentleman
in town, he applied to Mrs. Doria. ``Leave him to me,''
said Mrs. Doria, ``I'll manage him.'' And she did.

  ``Who can say,'' asks =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``when he is
not walking a puppet to some woman?''

  Mrs. Doria would hear no good of Lucy. ``I believe,'' she
observed, as Adrian ventured a shrugging protest in her
behalf,---``it is my firm opinion that a scullery-maid would
turn any of you men round her little finger---only give her
time and opportunity.'' By dwelling on the arts of women,
she reconciled it to her conscience to do her best to divide
the young husband from his wife till it pleased his father
they should live their unhallowed union again. Without
compunction, or a sense of incongruity, she abused her
brother and assisted the fulfilment of his behests.

  So the puppets were marshalled by Mrs. Doria, happy, or
sad, or indifferent. Quite against his set resolve and the tide
of his feelings, Richard found himself standing behind Clare
in the church---the very edifice that had witnessed his own
marriage, and heard, ``I, Clare Doria, take thee John Pemberton,''
clearly pronounced. He stood with black brows dissecting
the arts of the tailor and hairdresser on unconscious
John. The back, and much of the middle, of Mr. Todhunter's
head was bald; the back shone like an egg-shell,
but across the middle the artist had drawn two long dabs of
hair from the sides, and plastered them cunningly, so that
all save wilful eyes would have acknowledged the head to be
covered. The man's only pretension was to a respectable
juvenility. He had a good chest, stout limbs, a face inclined
to be jolly. Mrs. Doria had no cause to be put out of countenance
at all by the exterior of her son-in-law: nor was she.
Her splendid hair and gratified smile made a light in the
church. Playing puppets must be an immense pleasure to
the practical animal. The Forey bridesmaids, five in number,
and one Miss Doria, their cousin, stood as girls do stand
at these sacrifices, whether happy, sad, or indifferent; a smile
on their lips and tears in attendance. Old Mrs. Todhunter,
an exceedingly small ancient woman, was also there. ``I
can't have my boy John married without seeing it done,'' she
said, and throughout the ceremony she was muttering audible
encomiums on her boy John's manly behaviour.

  The ring was affixed to Clare's finger; there was no ring
lost in this common-sense marriage. John had his disengaged
hand at his waistcoat-pocket, and the instant the
clergyman bade him employ it, he drew the ring out, and
dropped it on the finger of the cold passive hand in a business-like
way, as one who had studied the matter. Mrs.
Doria glanced aside at Richard. Richard observed Clare
spread out her fingers that the operations might be the more
easily effected.

  He did duty in the vestry a few minutes, and then said to
his aunt:

  ``Now I'll go.''

  ``You'll come to the breakfast, child? The Foreys''------

  He cut her short. ``I've stood for the family, and I'll
do no more. I won't pretend to eat and make merry over
it.''

  ``Richard!''

  ``Good-bye.''

  She had attained her object, and she wisely gave way.

  ``Well. Go and kiss Clare, and shake his hand. Pray,
pray be civil.''

  She turned to Adrian, and said: ``He is going. You
must go with him, and find some means of keeping him, or
he'll be running off to that woman. Now, no words---go!''

  Richard bade Clare farewell. She put up her mouth to
him humbly, but he kissed her on the forehead.

  ``Do not cease to love me,'' she said in a quavering whisper
in his ear.

  Mr. Todhunter stood beaming and endangering the art of
the hairdresser with his pocket-handkerchief. Now he positively
was married, he thought he would rather have the
daughter than the mother, which is a reverse of the order
of human thankfulness at a gift of the Gods.

  ``Richard, my boy!'' he said heartily, ``congratulate me.''

  ``I should be happy to, if I could,'' sedately replied the
hero, to the consternation of those around. Nodding to the
bridesmaids and bowing to the old lady, he passed out.

  Adrian, who had been behind him, deputed to watch for
a possible unpleasantness, just hinted to John: ``You know,
poor fellow, he has got into a mess with his marriage.''

  ``Oh! ah! yes!'' kindly said John, ``poor fellow!''

  All the puppets then rolled off to the breakfast.

  Adrian hurried after Richard in an extremely discontented
state of mind. Not to be at the breakfast and see the best of
the fun, disgusted him. However, he remembered that he
was a philosopher, and the strong disgust he felt was only
expressed in concentrated cynicism on every earthly matter
engendered by the conversation. They walked side by side
into Kensington Gardens. The hero was mouthing away to
himself, talking by fits.

  Presently he faced Adrian, crying: ``And I might have
stopped it! I see it now! I might have stopped it by going
straight to him, and asking him if he dared marry a girl
who did not love him, And I never thought of it. Good
heaven! I feel this miserable affair on my conscience.''

  ``Ah!'' went Adrian. ``An unpleasant cargo for the conscience,
that! I would rather carry anything on mine than
a married couple. Do you purpose going to him now?''

  The hero soliloquized: ``He's not a bad sort of man. . . .''

  ``Well, he's not a Cavalier,'' said Adrian, ``and that's
why you wonder your aunt selected him, no doubt? He's
decidedly of the Roundhead type, with the Puritan extracted,
or inoffensive, if latent.''

  ``There's the double infamy!'' cried Richard, ``that a man
you can't call bad, should do this damned thing!''

  ``Well, it's hard we can't find a villain.''

  ``He would have listened to me, I'm sure.''

  ``Go to him now, Richard, my son. Go to him now. It's
not yet too late. Who knows? If he really has a noble
elevated. superior mind---though not a Cavalier in person, he
may be one at heart---he might, to please you, and since you
put such stress upon it, abstain . . . perhaps with some
loss of dignity, but never mind. And the request might be
singular, or seem so, but everything has happened before in
this world, you know, my dear boy. And what an infinite
consolation it is for the eccentric, that reflection!''

  The hero was impervious to the wise youth. He stared at
him as if he were but a speck in the universe he visioned.

  It was provoking that Richard should be Adrian's best
subject for cynical pastime, in the extraordinary heterodoxies
he started, and his worst in the way he took it; and the wise
youth, against his will, had to feel as conscious of the young
man's imaginative mental armour, as he was of his muscular
physical.

  ``The same sort of day!'' mused Richard, looking up. ``I
suppose my father's right. We make our own fates, and
nature has nothing to do with it.''

  Adrian yawned.

  ``Some difference in the trees, though,'' Richard continued
abstractedly.

  ``Growing bald at the top,'' said Adrian. ``Do they
suggest the bridegroom to you?''

  ``Will you believe that my aunt Helen compared the
conduct of that wretched slave Clare to Lucy's, who, she
had the cruel insolence to say, entangled me into marriage?''
the hero broke out loudly and rapidly. ``You know---I told
you, Adrian---how I had to threaten and insist, and how she
pleaded, and implored me to wait.''

  ``Ah! hum!'' went Adrian.

  ``Don't you remember my telling you?'' Richard was
earnest to hear her exonerated.

  ``Pleaded and implored, my dear boy? Oh, no doubt she
did. Where's the lass that doesn't.''

  ``Call my wife by another name, if you please.''

  ``The generic title can't be cancelled because of your
having married one of the body, my son.''

  ``She did all she could to persuade me to wait!'' emphasized
Richard.

  Adrian shook his head with a deplorable smile.

  ``Come, come, my good Ricky; not all! not all!''

  Richard bellowed: ``What more could she have clone?''

  ``She could have shaved her head, for instance.''

  This happy shaft did stick. With a furious exclamation
Richard shot in front, Adrian following him; and asking him
(merely to have his assumption verified), whether he did not
think she might have shaved her head? and, presuming her
to have done so, whether, in candour, he did not think he
would have waited---at least till she looked less of a rank
lunatic?

  After a minute or so, the wise youth was but a fly buzzing
about Richard's head. Three weeks of separation from
Lucy, and an excitement deceased, caused him to have soft
yearnings for the dear lovely home-face. He told Adrian it
was his intention to go down that night. Adrian immediately
became serious. He was at a loss what to invent to
detain him, beyond the stale fiction that his father was
coming to-morrow. He rendered homage to the genius of
woman in these straits. ``My aunt,'' he thought, ``would
have the lie ready; and not only that, but she would take
care it did its work.''

  At this juncture the voice of a cavalier in the Row hailed
them, proving to be the Honourable Peter Brayder, Lord
Mountfalcon's parasite. He greeted them very cordially;
and Richard, remembering some fun they had in the Island,
asked him to dine with them; postponing his return till the
next day. Lucy was his. It was even sweet to dally with
the delight of seeing her.

  The Hon. Peter was one who did honour to the body he
belonged to. Though not so tall as a West of London footman,
he was as shapely; and he had a power of making his
voice insinuating, or arrogant, as it suited the exigencies of
his profession. He had not a rap of money in the world;
yet he rode a horse, lived high, expended largely. The
world said that the Hon. Peter was salaried by his Lordship,
and that, in common with that of Parasite, he exercised
the ancient companion profession. This the world said, and
still smiled at the Hon. Peter; for he was an engaging
fellow, and where he went not Lord Mountfalcon would
not go.

  They had a quiet little hotel dinner, ordered by Adrian,
and made a square at the table, Ripton Thompson being the
fourth. Richard sent down to his office to fetch him, and
the two friends shook hands for the first time since the great
deed had been executed. Deep was the Old Dog's delight to
hear the praises of his Beauty sounded by such aristocratic
lips the Hon. Peter Brayder's. All through the dinner
he was throwing out hints and small queries to get a fuller
account of her; and when the claret had circulated, he spoke
a word or two himself, and heard the Hon. Peter eulogize
his taste, and wish him a bride as beautiful; at which
Ripton blushed, and said, he had no hope of that, and
the Hon. Peter assured him marriage did not break the
mould.

  After the wine the Hon. Peter took his cigar on the
balcony, and found occasion to get some conversation with
Adrian alone.

  ``Our young friend here---made it all right with the
governor?'' he asked carelessly.

  ``Oh yes!'' said Adrian. But it struck him that Brayder
might be of assistance in showing Richard a little of the
`society in every form' required by his chief's prescript.
``That is,'' he continued, ``we are not yet permitted an
interview with the august author of our being and I have
rather a difficult post. 'Tis mine both to keep him here, and
also to find him the opportunity to measure himself with
his fellow-man. In other words, his father wants him to see
something of life before he enters upon housekeeping. Now
I am proud to confess that I'm hardly equal to the task.
The demi, or damnedmonde---if it's that he wants him to
observe---is one that I have not got the walk to.''

  ``Ha! ha!'' laughed Brayder. ``You do the keeping, I
offer to parade the demi. I must say, though, it's a queer
notion of the old gentleman.''

  ``It's the continuation of a philosophic plan,'' said
Adrian.

  Brayder followed the curvings of the whiff of his cigar
with his eyes, and ejaculated, ``Infahnally philosophic!''

  ``Has Lord Mountfalcon left the island?'' Adrian inquired.

  ``Mount? to tell the truth I don't know where he is,
Chasing some light craft, I suppose. That's poor Mount's
weakness. It's his ruin, poor fellow! He's so confoundedly
in earnest at the game.''

  ``He ought to know it by this time, if fame speaks true.''
remarked Adrian.

  ``He's a baby about women, and always will be,'' said
Brayder. ``He's been once or twice wanting to marry them.
Now there's a woman---you've heard of Mrs. Mount? All
the world knows her.---If that woman hadn't scandalized''------
The young man joined them, and checked the communication.
Brayder winked to Adrian, and pitifully indicated the
presence of an innocent.

  ``A married man, you know,'' said Adrian.

  ``Yes, yes!---but we won't shock him,'' Brayder observed,
patting Richard on the back. He appeared to study the
young man while they talked.

  Next morning Richard was surprised by a visit from his
aunt. Mrs. Doria took a seat by his side, and spoke as
follows:

  ``My dear nephew. Now you know I have always loved
you, and thought of your welfare as if you had been my own
child. More than that, I fear. Well, now, you are thinking
of returning to---to that place---are you not? Yes. It is as
I thought. Very well now, let me speak to you. You are in
a much more dangerous position than you imagine. I don't
deny your father's affection for you. It would be absurd to
deny it. But you are of an age now to appreciate his
character. Whatever you may do he will always give you
money. That you are sure of. That you know. Very well.
But you are one to want more than money: you want his
love. Richard, I am convinced you will never be happy,
whatever base pleasures you may be led into, if he should
withhold his love from you. Now, child, you know you have
grievously offended him. I wish not to animadvert on your
conduct.---You fancied yourself in love, and so on, and you
were rash. The less said of it the better now. But you
must now---it is your duty now to do something---to do
everything that lies in your power to show him you repent.
No interruptions! Listen to me. You must consider him.
Austin is not like other men. Austin requires the most
delicate management. You must---whether you feel it or no
---present an appearance of contrition. I counsel it for the
good of all. He is just like a woman, and where his feelings
are offended he wants utter subservience. He has you in
town, and he does not see you---now you know that he
and I are not in communication: we have likewise our differences:
---Well, he has you in town, and he holds aloof:---he
is trying you, my dear Richard. No: he is not at Raynham:
I do not know where he is, He is trying you, child, and you
must be patient. You must convince him that you do not
care utterly for your own gratification. If this person---I
wish to speak of her with respect, for your sake---well, if she
loves you _at all_---if, I say, she loves you _one atom,_ she will
repeat my solicitations for you to stay and patiently wait
here till he consents to see you. I tell you candidly, it's
your only chance of ever getting him to receive _her._
That you should know. And now, Richard, I may add that
there is something else you should know. You should know
that it depends entirely upon your conduct now, whether
you are to see your father's heart for ever divided from
you, and a new family at Raynham. You do not understand?
I will explain. Brothers and sisters are excellent things for
young people, but a new brood of them can hardly be acceptable
to a young man. In fact, they are, and must be,
aliens. I only tell you what I have heard on good authority.
Don't you understand now? Foolish boy! if you do not
humour him, he will marry Lady Blandish. Oh! I am sure
of it. I know it. And this you will drive him to. I do not
warn you on the score of your prospects, but of your feelings.
I should regard such a contingency, Richard, as a final
division between you. Think of the scandal! but alas, that
is the least of the evils.''

  It was Mrs. Doria's object to produce an impression, and
avoid an argument. She therefore left him as soon as she
had, as she supposed, made her mark on the young man.
Richard was very silent during the speech, and save for an
exclamation or so, had listened attentively. He pondered on
what his aunt said. He loved Lady Blandish, and yet he
did not wish to see her Lady Feverel. Mrs. Doria laid
painful stress on the scandal, and though he did not give his
mind to this, he thought of it. He thought of his mother.
Where was she? But most his thoughts recurred to his
father, and something akin to jealousy slowly awakened his
heart to him. He had given him up, and had not latterly
felt extremely filial; but he could not bear the idea of a
division in the love of which he had ever been the idol
and sole object. And such a man, too! so good! so generous!
If it was jealousy that roused the young man's heart
to his father, the better part of love was also revived in it.
He thought of old days: of his father's forbearance, his own
wilfulness. He looked on himself, and what he had done,
with the eyes of such a man. He determined to do all he
could to regain his favour.

  Mrs. Doria learnt from Adrian in the evening that her
nephew intended waiting in town another week.

  ``That will do,'' smiled Mrs. Doria. ``He will be more
patient at the end of a week.''

  ``Oh! does patience beget patience?'' said Adrian. ``I
was not aware it was a propagating virtue. I surrender him
to you. I sha'nt be able to hold him in after one week more.
assure you, my dear aunt, he's already . . .''

  ``Thank you, no explanation,'' Mrs. Doria begged.
When Richard saw her next, he was informed that she
had received a most satisfactory letter from Mrs. John Todhunter:
quite a glowing account of John's behaviour: but
on Richard's desiring to know the words Clare had written,
Mrs. Doria objected to be explicit, and shot into worldly
gossip.

  ``Clare seldom glows,'' said Richard.

  ``No, I mean _for her,_'' his aunt remarked. ``Don't look
like your father, child.''

  ``I should like to have seen the letter,'' said Richard.

  Mrs. Doria did not propose to show it.


	CHAPTER XXXVII.

	A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND.

  A lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in
his rides and walks. She passed him rather obviously and
often. She was very handsome; a bold beauty, with shining
black hair, red lips, and eyes not afraid of men. The hair
was brushed from her temples, leaving one of those fine reckless
outlines which the action of driving, and the pace, admirably
set off. She took his fancy. He liked the air of
petulant gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture,
rare to him, of a glorious dashing woman. He thought, too,
she looked at him. He was not at the time inclined to be
vain, or he might have been sure she did. Once it struck
him she nodded slightly.

  He asked Adrian one day in the park---who she was.

  ``I don't know her,'' said Adrian. ``Probably a superior
priestess of Paphos.''

  ``Now that's my idea of Bellona,'' Richard exclaimed.
``Not the fury they paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking
creature like that.''

  ``Bellona?'' returned the wise youth. ``I don't think her
hair was black. Red, wasn't it! I shouldn't compare her
to Bellona; though, no doubt, she's as ready to spill blood.
Look at her! She does seem to scent carnage. I see your
idea. No; I should liken her to Diana emerged from the
tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play among the
gods. Depend upon it---they tell us nothing of the matter
---Olympus shrouds the story---but you may be certain that
when she left the pretty shepherd she had greater vogue
than Venus up aloft.

  Brayder joined them.

  ``See Mrs. Mount go by?'' he said.

  ``Oh, that's Mrs. Mount!'' cried Adrian.

  ``Who's Mrs. Mount?'' Richard inquired.

  ``A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy.''

  ``Like to know her?'' drawled the Hon. Peter.
Richard replied indifferently, ``No,'' and Mrs. Mount
passed out of sight and out of the conversation.

  The young man wrote submissive letters to his father.
``I have remained here waiting to see you now five weeks,''
he wrote. ``I have written to you three letters, and you do
not reply to them. Let me tell you again how sincerely I
desire and pray that you will come, or permit me to come to
you and throw myself at your feet, and beg my forgiveness,
and hers. She as earnestly implores it. Indeed, I am very
wretched, sir. Believe me, there is nothing I would not do,
to regain your esteem and the love I fear I have unhappily
forfeited. I will remain another week in the hope of hearing
from you, or seeing you. I beg of you, sir, not to drive me
mad. Whatever you ask of me I will consent to.''

  ``Nothing he would not do!'' the baronet commented as
he read. ``There is nothing he would not do! He will
remain another week and give me that final chance! And
it is I who drive him mad! Already he is beginning to cast
his retribution on my shoulders.''

  Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of
the way. A Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune
without hearing of it, and the author of =The Pilgrim's Scrip=
in trouble found London too hot for him. He quitted London
to take refuge among the mountains; living there in solitary
commune with a virgin Note-book.

  Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment
of his son. Had he construed it, it would have looked ugly;
and it settled to a vague principle that the young man should
be tried and tested.

  ``Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live
with his equals for a term. If he loves me he will read my
wishes.'' Thus he explained his principle to Lady Blandish.

  The lady wrote: ``You speak of a term. Till when? May
I name one to him? It is the dreadful _uncertainty_ that
reduces him to despair. That, and nothing else. Pray be
explicit.''

  In return, he distantly indicated Richard's majority.

  How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to
wait a year away from his wife? Her instinct began to
open a wide eye on the idol she worshipped.

  When people do not themselves know what they mean,
they succeed in deceiving, and imposing upon others. Not
only was Lady Blandish mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced
into the recesses of everybody's mind, and had always been
in the habit of reading off her brother from infancy, and had
never known herself to be once wrong about him, she confessed
she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin's principle.
``For principle he has,'' said Mrs. Doria; ``he never
acts without one. But what it is I cannot at present perceive.
If he would write, and command the boy to await
his return, all would be clear. He allows us to go and fetch
him, and then leaves us all in a quandary. It must be some
woman's influence. That is the only way to account for it.''

  ``Singular!'' interjected Adrian, ``what pride women
have in their sex! Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt,
that the day after to-morrow I hand my charge over to your
keeping. I can't hold him in an hour longer. I've had to
leash him with lies till my invention's exhausted. I petition
to have them put down to the chief's account, but when the
stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I had
heard from him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom
ready for him on Tuesday proximate. `So!' says my son.
`I'll wait till then,' and from the gigantic effort he exhibited
in coming to it, I doubt any human power's getting him to
wait longer.''

  ``We must, we must detain him,'' said Mrs. Doria. ``If we
do not, I am convinced Austin will do something rash that he
will for ever repent. He will marry that woman, Adrian.
Mark my words. Now with any other young man . . . But
Richard's education! that ridiculous System! . . . Has he
no distraction? nothing to amuse him?''

  ``Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular play-fellow.''

  The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.

  ``I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman.''

  ``My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?''

  ``Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?---If
he had but a profession!''

  ``What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London,
and the profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure
you I have served a month's apprenticeship with him. We
sally forth on the tenth hour towards night. A female
passes. I hear him groan. `Is _she_ one of them, Adrian?'
I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the
portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be. Another
groan; an evident internal, `It cannot be---and yet!' . . .
that we hear on the stage. Rollings of eyes: impious questionings
of the Creator of the universe; savage mutterings
against brutal males; and then we meet a second young
person, and repeat the performance---of which I am rather
tired. It would be all very well, but he turns upon me,
and lectures me because I don't hire a house, and furnish it
for all the women one meets to live in in purity. Now that's
too much to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has
latterly relieved me, I'm happy to say.''

  Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.

  ``Has Austin written to you since you were in town?''

  ``Not an Aphorism!'' returned Adrian.

  ``I must see Richard to-morrow morning,'' Mrs. Doria
ended the colloquy by saying.

  The result of her interview with her nephew was, that
Richard made no allusion to a departure on the Tuesday;
and for many days afterward he appeared to have an absorbing
business on his hands: but what it was Adrian did not
then learn, and his admiration of Mrs. Doria's genius for
management rose to a very high pitch.

			<*>

  On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the
person of the Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week
or more.

  ``Gentlemen,'' he said, flourishing his cane in his most
affable manner, ``I've come to propose to you to join us in a
little dinner-party at Richmond. Nobody's in town, you
know. London's as dead as a stock-fish. Nothing but the
scrapings to offer you. But the weather's fine: I flatter
myself you'll find the company agreeable. What says my
friend Feverel?''

  Richard begged to be excused.

  ``No, no: positively you must come,'' said the Hon.
Peter. ``I've had some trouble to get them together to
relieve the dulness of your incarceration. Richmond's
within the rules of your prison. You can be back by night.
Moonlight on the water---lovely woman. We've engaged a
city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars---I'm not sure it isn't
sixteen. Come---the word!''

  Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment
with Ripton.

  ``You're in for another rick, you two,'' said Adrian.
``Arrange that we go. You haven't seen the cockney's
Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and taste of peace, my son.''

  After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got
up, and threw aside the care that was on him, saying, ``Very
well. Just as you like. We'll take old Rip with us.''

  Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this. The Hon. Peter
briskly declared he should be delighted to have Feverel's
friend, and offered to take them all down in his drag.

  ``If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide
---eh, Feverel, my boy?''

  Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing,
at which Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian,
and applauded the youth.

  Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant
landscape, bathed in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the
hill to a red horizon haze. The day was like none, that
Richard vividly remembered. It touched no link in the
chain of his recollection. It was quiet, and belonged to the
spirit of the season.

  Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they
were to meet. Brayder introduced them to one or two of
the men, hastily and in rather an undervoice, as a thing to
get over. They made their bow to the first knot of ladies
they encountered. Propriety was observed strictly, even to
severity. The general talk was of the weather. Here and
there a lady would seize a button-hole, or any little bit of
the habiliments, of the man she was addressing; and if it
came to her to chide him, she did it with more than a fore-finger.
This, however, was only here and there, and a
privilege of intimacy.

  Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the
assemblage may be known by her Court of males. The
Queen of the present gathering leaned against a corner of
the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in whom
a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton,
with a sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were
fine men, offering inanimate homage. The trim of their
whiskerage, the cut of their coats, the high-bred indolence
in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton's sense of self-esteem. But
they kindly looked over him. Occasionally one committed
a momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to
cry out in a voice of scathing scorn, ``Who's this?'' and
Ripton got closer to his hero to justify his humble pretensions
to existence and an identity in the shadow of him.
Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to
say or do; and the cold bath before dinner in strange company
is one of the instances. He had recognised his superb
Bellona in the lady by the garden window. For Brayder
the men had nods and jokes, the ladies a pretty playfulness.
He was very busy, passing between the groups, chatting,
laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and sometimes
returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down and
crossed his legs, looking amused and benignant.

  ``Whose dinner is it?'' Ripton heard a mignonne beauty
ask of a cavalier.

  ``Mount's, I suppose,'' was the answer.

  ``Where is he? Why don't he come?''

  ``An affaire, I fancy.''

  ``There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs.
Mount!''

  ``She don't seem to cry over it.''

  Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter
at one of her Court, who appeared to be Fool.

  Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant
appetites. Brayder posted his three friends. Ripton
found himself under the lee of a dame with a bosom. On
the other side of him was the mignonne. Adrian was at the
lower end of the table. Ladies were in profusion, and he
had his share. Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat.
A happy man had established himself next to Mrs. Mount.
Him Brayder hailed to take the head of the table. The
happy man objected, Brayder continued urgent, the lady
tenderly insisted, the happy man grimaced, dropped into
the post of honour, strove to look placable. Richard
usurped his chair, and was not badly welcomed by his
neighbour.

  Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of
the company, till the flying of the first champagne-cork gave
the signal, and a hum began to spread. Sparkling wine that
looseneth the tongue, and displayeth the verity, hath also
the quality of colouring it. The ladies laughed high;
Richard only thought them gay and natural. They flung
back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton thought
only of the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks
continued a regular file-firing.

  ``Where have you been lately? I haven't seen you in the
park,'' said Mrs. Mount to Richard.

  ``No,'' he replied, ``I've not been there.'' The question
seemed odd: she spoke so simply that it did not impress
him. He emptied his glass, and had it filled again.
The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which
related to horses, yachting, opera, and sport generally: who
was ruined; by what horse, or by what woman. He told
one or two of Richard's feats. Fair smiles rewarded the hero.

  ``Do you bet?'' said Mrs. Mount.

  ``Only on myself,'' returned Richard.

  ``Bravo!'' cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering
delirious sparkle across her brimming glass at him.

  ``I'm sure you're a safe one to back,'' she added, and
seemed to scan his points approvingly.

  Richard's cheeks mounted bloom.

  ``Don't you adore champagne?'' quoth the dame with a
bosom to Ripton.

  ``Oh, yes!'' answered Ripton, with more candour than
accuracy, ``I always drink it.''

  ``Do you indeed?'' said the enraptured bosom, ogling
him. ``You would be a friend, now! I hope you don't
object to a lady joining you now and then. Champagne's
my folly.''

  A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian
was the centre; first low, and as he continued some narration,
peals resounded, till those excluded from the fun demanded
the cue, and ladies leaned behind gentlemen to take
it up, and formed an electric chain of laughter. Each one,
as her ear received it, caught up her handkerchief, and
laughed, and looked shocked afterwards, or looked shocked
and then spouted laughter. The anecdote might have been
communicated to the bewildered cavaliers, but coming to a
lady of a demurer cast, she looked shocked without laughing,
and reproved the female table, in whose breasts it was
consigned to burial: but here and there a man's head was
seen bent, and a lady's mouth moved, though her face was
not turned toward him, and a man's broad laugh was presently
heard, while the lady gazed unconsciously before her,
and preserved her gravity if she could escape any other
lady's eyes; failing in which handkerchiefs were simultaneously
seized, and a second chime arose, till the tickling force
subsided to a few chance bursts.

  What nonsense it is that my father writes about women!
thought Richard. He says they can't laugh, and don't understand
humour. It comes, he reflected, of his shutting
himself from the world. And the idea that he was seeing
the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him. He talked
fluently to his dangerous Bellona. He gave her some reminiscences
of Adrian's whimsies.

  ``Oh!'' said she, ``that's your tutor, is it!'' She eyed the
young man as if she thought he must go far and fast.

  Ripton felt a push. ``Look at that,'' said the bosom,
fuming utter disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm
round the waist of the mignonne. ``Now that's what I
don't like in company,'' the bosom inflated to observe with
sufficient emphasis. ``She always will allow it with everybody.
Give her a nudge.''

  Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said,
``Then I will;'' and inclined her sumptuous bust across his
lap, breathing wine in his face, and gave the nudge. The
mignonne turned an inquiring eye on Ripton; a mischievous
spark shot from it. She laughed, and said; ``Aren't you
satisfied with the old girl?''

  ``Impudence!'' muttered the bosom, growing grander and
redder.

  ``Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet---she drinks
port when there's no more champagne,'' said the mignonne.

  The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton
scandal of the mignonne, and between them he was enabled
to form a correcter estimate of the company, and quite
recovered from his original awe; so much so as to feel a
touch of jealousy at seeing his lively little neighbour still
held in absolute possession.

  Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential
manner in the bearing of the men toward her, which
those haughty creatures accord not save to clever women;
and she contrived to hold the talk with three or four at the
head of the table while she still had passages aside with
Richard.

  The port and claret went very well after the champagne.
The ladies here did not ignominiously surrender the field to
the gentlemen; they maintained their position with honour.
Silver was seen far out on Thames. The wine ebbed, and
the laughter. Sentiment and cigars took up the wondrous
tale.

  ``Oh, what a lovely night!'' said the ladies, looking
above.

  ``Charming,'' said the gentlemen, looking below.

  The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the
feast. Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.

  ``We are split into couples,'' said Adrian to Richard, who
was standing alone, eyeing the landscape. ``'Tis the influence
of the moon! Apparently we are in Cyprus. How has my
son enjoyed himself? How likes he the society of Aspasia?
I feel like a wise Greek to-night.''

  Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked.
Ripton had been carried off by the sentimental bosom. He
came up to them and whispered: ``By Jove, Ricky! do you
know what sort of women these are?''

  Richard said he thought them a nice sort.

  ``Puritan!'' exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the
back. ``Why didn't you get tipsy, sir? Don't you ever
intoxicate yourself except at lawful marriages? Reveal to
us what you have done with the portly dame?''

  Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about
Richard, and watch over him. He was jealous of his innocent
Beauty's husband being in proximity with such women.
Murmuring couples passed them to and fro.

  ``By Jove, Ricky!'' Ripton favoured his friend with
another hard whisper, ``there's a woman smoking!''

  ``And why not, O Riptonus?'' said Adrian. ``Art unaware
that woman cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and
dost grumble to pay the small price for the splendid gem?''

  ``Well, I don't like women to smoke,'' said plain Ripton.

  ``Why mayn't they do what men do?'' the hero cried impetuously.
``I hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness.
It's that that makes the ruin and horrors I see. Why mayn't
they do what men do? I like the women who are brave
enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women are
bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures
who are all show, and deceive you in the end.''

  ``Bravo!'' shouted Adrian. ``There speaks the regenerator.''

  Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no
argument. He still thought women ought not to smoke;
and he thought of one far away, lonely by the sea, who was
perfect without being cosmopolitan.

  =The Pilgrim's Scrip= remarks that: ``Young men take
joy in nothing so much as the thinking women Angels: and
nothing sours men of experience more than knowing that all
are not quite so.''

  The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his
first Random extravagance, had he perceived the simple
warm-hearted worship of feminine goodness Richard's young
bride had inspired in the breast of the youth. It might
possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in nature.

  Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He
wandered about the grounds by himself, went through an
open postern, and threw himself down among some bushes
oil the slope of the hill. Lying there, and meditating, he
became aware of voices conversing.

  ``What does he want?'' said a woman's voice. ``It's
another of his villanies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder,
when I think of what I have to reproach him for, I think I
must go mad, or kill him.''

  ``Tragic!'' said the Hon. Peter. ``Haven't you revenged
yourself, Bella, pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a
commercial transaction. You ask for money, and you are
to have it---on the conditions: double the sum, and debts
paid.''

  ``He applies to me!''

  ``You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between
you. I think Mount has behaved very well, considering all
he knows. He's not easily hoodwinked, you know. He resigns
himself to his fate, and follows other game.''

  ``Then the condition is that I am to seduce this young
man?''

  ``My dear Bella! You strike your bird like a hawk. I
didn't say seduce. Hold him in---play with him. Amuse
him.''

  ``I don't understand half-measures.''

  ``Women seldom do.''

  ``How I hate you, Brayder!''

  ``I thank your ladyship.''

  The two walked farther, and the result of the colloquy
was shut from Ripton. He left the spot in a serious mood,
apprehensive of something dark to the people he loved,
though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter's stipulation
involved.

  On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected
to sit by Mrs. Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes.
The pair of parasites got on extremely well together. Soft
fell the plash of the oars; softly the moonlight curled around
them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies were in a state
of high sentiment. They sang without request. All deemed
the British balladmonger an appropriate interpreter of their
emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof, fair throats
will make men of taste swallow that remarkable composer
Eyes, lips, hearts; darts and smarts and sighs; beauty, duty;
bosom, blossom; false one, farewell! To this pathetic strain
they melted. Mrs. Mount, though strongly requested,
declined to sing. She preserved her state. Under the
tall aspens of Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white
moon in their wake. Richard's hand lay open by his side.
Mrs. Mount's little white hand by misadventure fell into it.
It was not pressed, or soothed for its fall, or made intimate
with eloquent fingers. It lay there? like a bit of snow on the
cold ground. A yellow leaf wavering down from the aspens
struck Richard's cheek, and he drew away the very hand to
throw back his hair and smooth his face, and then folded his
arms, unconscious of offence. He was thinking ambitiously
of his life: his blood was untroubled: his brain calmly
working.

  ``Which is the more perilous?'' is a problem put by the
=Pilgrim:= ``To meet the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?''
Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and
turned to flirt with one of her Court. The Guardsmen were
mostly sentimental. One or two rattled, and one was such
a good-humoured fellow that Adrian could not make him
ridiculous. The others seemed to give themselves up to a
silent waxing in length of limb. However far they sat
removed, everybody was entangled in their legs. Pursuing
his studies, Adrian came to the conclusion that the same
close intellectual and moral affinity which he had discovered
to exist between our nobility and our yeomanry, is to be
observed between the Guardsman class, and that of the
corps de ballet: they both live by the strength of their legs,
where also their wits, if they do not altogether reside there,
are principally developed: both are volage; wine, tobacco,
and the moon, influence both alike; and admitting the one
marked difference that does exist, it is, after all, pretty
nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two
legs as on the point of a toe.

  A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful
song about the twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn,
but required urgent persuasions and heavy trumpeting of
his lungs to get to the end: before he had accomplished it,
Adrian had contrived to raise a laugh in his neighbourhood,
so that the company was divided, and the camp split: jollity
returned to one-half, while sentiment held the other. Ripton,
blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing a
higher degree of heat than was possible for the rest. ``Are
you cold?'' she would ask, smiling charitably.

  ``_I_ am,'' said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct,
which was still evident to the decorous fat one, though more
removed therefrom.

  ``You always appear to be,'' she sniffed and snapped.

  ``Won't you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?'' said the naughty
little woman.

  Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those
familiar with the ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was
frequent. The mignonne was heard to whisper: ``That poor
fellow will certainly be baked.''

  Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air
on the water was chill and misty. Adrian had beside him
the demure one who had stopped the circulation of his anecdote.
She in nowise objected to the fair exchange, but said
``Hush!'' betweenwhiles.

  Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water;
across Putney reach; through Battersea bridge; and the City
grew around them, and the shadows of great mill-factories
slept athwart the moonlight.

  All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they
alighted on land. Several cavaliers crushed for the honour
of conducting Mrs. Mount to her home.

  ``My brougham's here; I shall go alone,'' said Mrs. Mount.
``Some one arrange my shawl.''

  She  turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a
delicate neck as he manipulated with the bearing of a mailed
knight.

  ``Which way are you going?'' she asked carelessly, and,
to his reply as to the direction, said: ``Then I can give you
a lift,'' and she took his arm with a matter-of-course air,
and walked up the stairs with him.

  Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow.
the portly dame retained him, and desired him to get her a
cab.

  ``Oh you happy fellow!'' said the bright-eyed mignonne,
passing by.

  Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having
to get into it himself.

  ``Try and let him come in too?'' said the persecuting
creature, again passing.

  ``Take liberties with your men---you sha'n't with me,''
retorted the angry bosom, and drove off.

  ``So she's been and gone and run away and left him after
all his trouble!'' cried the pert little thing, peering into
Ripton's eyes. ``Now you'll never be so foolish as to pin
your faith to fat women again. There! he shall be made
happy another time.'' She gave his nose a comical tap, and
tripped away with her possessor.

  Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random
thoughts laid hold of him. Cabs and carriages rattled past.
He was sure he had been among members of the nobility that
day, though when they went by him now they only recognized
him with an effort of the eyelids. He began to think
of the day with exultation, as an event. Recollections of the
mignonne were captivating. ``Blue eyes---just what I like!
And such a little impudent nose, and red lips, pouting---the
very thing I like! And her hair? darkish, I think---say,
brown. And so saucy, and light on her feet. And kind she
is, or she wouldn't have talked to me like that.'' Thus,
with a groaning soul, he pictured her. His reason voluntarily
consigned her to the aristocracy as a natural appanage:
but he did amorously wish that Fortune had made a
lord of him.

  Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange
conversation he had heard on the hill. He was not one to
suspect anybody positively. He was timid of fixing a suspicion.
It hovered indefinitely, and clouded people, without
stirring him to any resolve. Still the attentions of the lady
toward Richard were queer. He endeavoured to imagine
they were in the nature of things, because Richard was so
handsome that any woman must take to him. ``But he's
married,'' said Ripton, ``and he mustn't go near these people
if he's married.'' Not a high morality, perhaps: better than
none at all: better for the world were it practised more. He
thought of Richard along with that sparkling dame, alone
with her. The adorable beauty of his dear bride, her pure
heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking of her, he lost
sight of the mignonne who had made him giddy.

  He walked to Richard's hotel, and up and down the street
there, hoping every minute to hear his step; sometimes
fancying he might have returned and gone to bed. Two
o'clock struck. Ripton could not go away. He was sure he
should not sleep if he did. At last the cold sent him homeward,
and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of Piccadilly
he met his friend patrolling with his head up and that
swing of the feet proper to men who are chanting verses.

  ``Old Rip!'' cried Richard cheerily. ``What on earth
are you doing here at this hour of the morning?''

  Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. ``I
wanted to shake your hand before I went home.''

  Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. ``That
all? You may shake my hand any day, like a true man as
you are, old Rip! I've been speaking about you. Do you
know, that---Mrs. Mount---never saw you all the time at
Richmond, or in the boat!''

  ``Oh!'' Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf:
``You saw her safe home?''

  ``Yes. I've been there for the last couple of hours---
talking. She talks capitally: she's wonderfully clever.
She's very like a man, only much nicer. I like her.''

  ``But, Richard, excuse me---I'm sure I don't mean to
offend you---but now you're married . . . . perhaps you
couldn't help seeing her home, but I think you really indeed
oughtn't to have gone upstairs.''

Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.

  ``What do you mean?'' said Richard. ``You don't suppose
I care for any woman but my little darling down
there.'' He laughed.

  ``No; of course not. That's absurd. What I mean is,
that people perhaps will---you know, they do---they say all
manner of things, and that makes unhappiness, and . . . I
do wish you were going home to-morrow, Ricky. I mean,
to your dear wife.'' Ripton blushed and looked away as he
spoke.

  The hero gave one of his scornful glances. ``So you're
anxious about my reputation. I hate that way of looking
on women. Because they have been once misled---look how
much weaker they are!---because the world has given them
an ill fame, you would treat them as contagious, and keep
away from them for the sake of your character!''

  ``It would be different with me,'' quoth Ripton.

  ``How?'' asked the hero.

  ``Because I'm worse than you,'' was all the logical
explanation Ripton was capable of.

  ``I do hope you will go home soon,'' he added.

  ``Yes,'' said Richard, ``and I, so do I hope so. But I've
work to do now. I dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy
would be the last to ask me;---You saw her letter yesterday.
Now listen to me, Rip. I want to make you be just to
women.''

  Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking
of them as if he had known them and studied them for
years. Clever, beautiful, but betrayed by love, it was the
first duty of all true men to cherish and redeem them. ``We
turn them into curses, Rip; these divine creatures.'' And
the world suffered for it. That---that was the root of all
the evil in the world!''

  ``I don't feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip!
It's strange. I knew what they were when we came home
in the boat. But I do---it tears my heart to see a young
girl given over to an old man---a man she doesn't love.
That's shame!---Don't speak of it.''

  Forgetting to contest the premiss, that all betrayed women
are betrayed by love, Ripton was silenced. He, like most
young men, had pondered somewhat on this matter, and was
inclined to be sentimental when he was not hungry. They
walked in the moonlight by the railings of the park.
Richard harangued at leisure, while Ripton's teeth chattered.
Chivalry might be dead, but there was still something
to do, went the strain. The lady of the day had not
been thrown in the hero's path without an object, he said;
and he was sadly right there. He did not express the thing
clearly; nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean that
he intended to rescue that lady from further transgressions,
and show a certain scorn of the world. That lady, and then
other ladies unknown, were to be rescued. Ripton was to
help. He and Ripton were to be the knights of this enterprise.
When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and shivered.
Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be
Titans, for the powers of the world, the spurious ruling
Social Gods, would have to be defied and  overthrown. And
Titan number one flung up his handsome bold face as if to
challenge base Jove on the spot; and Titan number two
strained the upper button of his coat to meet across his
pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers
under his coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high
seat and was in the mists of the West, when he was allowed
to seek his blankets, and the cold acting on his friend's
eloquence made Ripton's flesh very contrite. The poor
fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but his heart was
good. By the time he had got a little warmth about him,
his heart gratefully strove to encourage him in the conception
of becoming a knight and a Titan; and so striving
Ripton fell asleep and dreamed.



	CHAPTER XXXVIII.

	MRS. BERRY ON MATRIMONY.


  Behold the hero embarked in the redemption of an erring
beautiful woman.

			<*>

  ``Alas!'' writes the =Pilgrim= at this very time to Lady
Blandish, ``I cannot get that legend of the Serpent from me,
the more I think. Has he not caught you, and ranked you
foremost in his legions? For see: till you were fashioned,
the fruits hung immobile on the boughs. They swayed
before us, glistening and cold. The hand must be eager
that plucked them. They did not come down to us, and
smile, and speak our language, and read our thoughts, and
know when to fly, when to follow! how surely to have us!

  ``Do but mark one of you standing openly in the track of
the Serpent. What shall be done with her? I fear the
world is wiser than its judges! Turn from her, says the
world. By day the sons of the world do. It darkens, and
they dance together downward. Then comes there one of
the world's elect who deems old counsel devilish; indifference
to the end of evil worse than its pursuit. He comes to
reclaim her. From deepest bane will he bring her back to
highest blessing. Is not that a bait already? Poor fish!
'tis wondrous flattering. The Serpent has slimed her so
to secure him! With slow weary steps he draws her into
light: she clings to him; she is human; part of his work,
and he loves it. As they mount upward, he looks on her
more, while she, it may be, looks above. What has touched
him? What has passed out of her, and into him? The
Serpent laughs below. At the gateways of the Sun they
fall together!''

			<*>

  This alliterative production was written without any sense
of the peril that makes prophecy.

  It suited Sir Austin to write thus. It was a channel to
his acrimony moderated through his philosophy. The letter
was a reply to a vehement entreaty from Lady Blandish for
him to come up to Richard and forgive him thoroughly:
Richard's name was not mentioned in it.

  ``He tries to be more than he is,'' thought the lady: and
she began insensibly to conceive him less than he was.

  The baronet was conscious of a certain false gratification
in his son's apparent obedience to his wishes, and complete
submission; a gratification he chose to accept as his due,
without dissecting or accounting for it. The intelligence
reiterating that Richard waited, and still waited; Richard's
letters, and more his dumb abiding and practical penitence;
vindicated humanity sufficiently to stop the course of virulent
aphorisms. He could speak, we have seen, in sorrow
for this frail nature of ours that he had once stood forth to
champion. ``But how long will this last?'' he demanded
with the air of Hippias. He did not reflect how long it had
lasted. Indeed, his indigestion of wrath had made of him a
moral Dyspepsy.

  It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the
arms of his young wife: nor was it this new knightly enterprise
he had presumed to undertake. Hero as he was, a
youth, open to the insane promptings of hot blood, he was
not a fool. There had been talk between him and Mrs.
Doria of his mother. Now that he had broken from his
father, his heart spoke for her. She lived, he knew: he
knew no more. Words painfully hovering along the borders
of plain speech had been communicated to him, filling him
with moody imaginings. If he thought of her, the red was
on his face, though he could not have said why. But now,
after canvassing the conduct of his father, and throwing
him aside as a terrible riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell
him of his other parent. As softly as she could she told the
story. To her the shame was past: she could weep for the
poor lady. Richard dropped no tears. Disgrace of this
kind is always present to a son, and, educated as he had
been, these tidings were a vivid fire in his brain. He
resolved to hunt her out, and take her from the man. Here
was work set to his hand. All her dear husband did was
right to Lucy. She encouraged him to stay for that purpose,
thinking it also served another. There was Tom
Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there was work for him to
do. Whether it would please his father he did not stop to
consider. As to the justice of the act let us say nothing,

  On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for
Sandoe's place of residence; and as he was unacquainted
with the name by which the poet now went in private, his
endeavours were not immediately successful. The friends
met in the evening at Lady Blandish's town-house, or at the
Foreys', where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal
Martyr, and staunch conservative, a favourable reception.
Pity,  deep pity for Richard's conduct Ripton saw breathing
out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon Feverel treated him with a
sort of rough commiseration, as a young fellow who had
spoilt his luck. Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though
for a different cause. She doubted if she did well in
seconding his father's unwise scheme---supposing him to
have a scheme. She saw the young husband encompassed
by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount
had been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge
of life. She touched on delicate verges to the baronet in
her letters, and he understood her well enough. ``If he
loves this person to whom he has bound himself, what fear
for him? Or are you coming to think it something that
bears the name of love because we have to veil the rightful
appellation?'' So he responded remote among the mountains.
She tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he
came to say that he denied himself the pleasure of seeing
his son specially, that he for a time might be put to the test
the lady seemed to dread. This was almost too much for
Lady Blandish. Love's charity boy so loftily serene now
that she saw him half denuded---a thing of shanks and wrists
---was a trial for her true heart.

  Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces
made about his marriage. ``We'll carry the day, Rip, my
Lucy and I! or I'll do it alone---what there is to do.'' He
slightly adverted to a natural want of courage in women.
which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was deficient
in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; ``I'm sure there
never was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She's
as brave as she's lovely, I'll swear she is! Look how
she behaved that day! How her voice sounded! She
was trembling . . . Brave? She'd follow you into battle,
Richard!''

  And Richard rejoined: ``Talk on, dear old Rip! She's
my darling love, whatever she is! And she is gloriously
lovely. No eyes are like hers. And when I make them
bashful---by heaven! I'll go down to-morrow morning the
first thing.''

  Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could
remain apart from it. So thought Richard for a space.

  ``But if I go, Rip,'' he said despondently, ``if I go for a
day even I shall have undone all my work with my father.
She says it herself---you saw it in her last letter.''

  ``Yes,'' Ripton assented, and the words ``Please remember
me to dear Mr. Thompson,'' fluttered about the Old Dog's
heart.
			<*>

  It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business
that led her through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that
she had once dandled in long clothes, and helped make a
man of, if ever woman did. He was walking under the trees
beside a lady, talking to her not indifferently. The gentleman
was her bridegroom and her babe. ``I know his back,''
said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it in
infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry
diverged from the path, and got before them on the left
flank; she stared, retreated, and came round upon the right.
There was that in the lady's face which Mrs. Berry did not
like. Her innermost question was, why he was not walking
with his own wife? She stopped in front of them. They
broke, and passed about her. She hemmed! at Richard's
elbow. The lady presently made a laughing remark to him,
whereat he turned to look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She
had to bob a second time, and then he remembered the
worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand
so that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was
extremely agitated. He dismissed her, promising to call
upon her in the evening. She heard the lady slip out something
from a side of her lip, and they both laughed as she
toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of each eye.

  ``I don't like the looks of that woman,'' she said, and repeated
it resolutely.

  ``Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?'' was her
next inquiry. ``Where's his wife?'' succeeded it. After
many interrogations of the sort, she arrived at naming the
lady a bold-faced thing; adding subsequently, brazen. The
lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that she wished to
get rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her
emotions on the breast of her babe. ``I know a lady when
I see one,'' said Mrs. Berry. ``I haven't lived with 'em for
nothing; and if she's a lady bred and born, I wasn't married
in the church alive.''

  Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired
to know. ``She's imitation lady, I'm sure she is!'' Berry
vowed. ``I say she don't look proper.''

  Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however,
what was one to think of a married man in company with
such?  ``Oh no! it ain't that!'' Mrs. Berry returned
immediately on the charitable tack. ``Belike it's some one
of his acquaintance 've married her for her looks, and he've
just met her. . . . Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!'' the
relinquished spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the
idea of a second man being so monstrous in wickedness.
``Just coupled, too!'' Mrs. Berry groaned on the suspicious
side of the debate. ``And such a sweet young thing for his
wife! But no, I'll never believe it. Not if he tell me so
himself! And men don't do that,'' she whimpered.

  Women are swift at coming to conclusions in these matters;
soft women exceedingly swift: and soft women who
have been betrayed are rapid beyond measure. Mrs. Berry
had not cogitated long ere she pronounced distinctly and
without a shadow of dubiosity: ``My opinion is---married
or not married, and wheresomever he pick her up---she's
nothin' more nor less than a Bella Donna!'' as which poisonous
plant she forthwith registered the lady in the
botanical note-book of her brain. It would have astonished
Mrs. Mount to have heard her person so accurately hit off
at a glance.

  In the evening Richard made good his promise, accompanied
by Ripton. Mrs. Berry opened the door to them.
She could not wait to get him into the parlour. ``You're
my own blessed babe; and I'm as good as your mother,---
though I didn't suck ye, bein' a maid!'' she cried, falling
into his arms, while Richard did his best to support the
unexpected burden. Then reproaching him tenderly for his
guile---at mention of which Ripton chuckled, deeming it his
own most honourable portion of the plot---Mrs. Berry led
them into the parlour, and revealed to Richard who she
was, and how she had tossed him, and hugged him, and
kissed him all over, when he was only that big---showing
him her stumpy fat arm. ``I kissed ye from head to tail, I
did,'' said Mrs. Berry, ``and you needn't be ashamed of it.
It's be hoped you'll never have nothin' worse come t' ye, my
dear!''

  Richard assured her he was not a bit ashamed, but warned
her that she must not do it now, Mrs. Berry admitting it
was out of the question now, and now that he had a wife,
moreover. The young men laughed, and Ripton laughing
over-loudly drew on himself Mrs. Berry's attention: ``But
that Mr. Thompson there---however he can look me in the
face after his inn'cence! helping blindfold an old woman!---
though I ain't sorry for what I did---that I'm free for to say,
and it's over, and blessed be all! Amen! So now where is
she and how is she, Mr. Richard, my dear---it's only cuttin'
off the `s' and you are as you was.---Why didn't ye bring
her with ye to see old Berry?''

  Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the
Isle of Wight.

  `` Oh! and you've left her for a day or two?'' said Mrs.
Berry.

  ``Good God! I wish it had been a day or two,'' cried
Richard.

  ``Ah! and how long have it been?'' asked Mrs. Berry,
her heart beginning to beat at his manner of speaking.

  ``Don't talk about it,'' said Richard.

  ``Oh! you never been dudgeonin' already? Oh! you
haven't been peckin' at one another yet?'' Mrs. Berry
exclaimed.

  Ripton interposed to tell her such fears were unfounded.

  ``Then how long ha' you been divided?''

  In a guilty voice Ripton stammered ``since September.''

  ``September!'' breathed Mrs. Berry, counting on her
fingers, ``September, October, Nov---two months and more!
nigh three! A young married husband away from the wife
of his bosom nigh three months! Oh my! Oh my! what
do that mean?''

  ``My father sent for me---I'm waiting to see him,'' said
Richard. A few more words helped Mrs. Berry to comprehend
the condition of affairs. Then Mrs. Berry spread her
lap, flattened out her hands, fixed her eyes, and spoke.

  ``My dear young gentleman!---I'd like to call ye my darlin'
babe! I'm going to speak as a mother to ye, whether ye
likes it or no; and what old Berry says, you won't mind, for
she's had ye when there was no conventionals about ye, and
she has the feelin's of a mother to you, though humble her
state. If there's one that know matrimony it's me, my dear,
though Berry did give me no more but nine months of it:
and I've known the worst of matrimony, which, if you wants
to be woful wise, there it is for ye. For what have been my
gain? That man gave me nothin' but his name; and Bessy
Andrews was as good as Bessy Berry, though both is `Bs,'
and says he, you was 'A,' and now you's `B,' so you're my
A B, he says, write yourself down that, he say; the bad
man, with his jokes!---Berry went to service.'' Mrs. Berry's
softness came upon her. ``So I tell ye, Berry went to service.
He left the wife of his bosom forlorn and he went to
service; because he were al'ays an ambitious man, and
wasn't, so to speak, happy out of his uniform---which was
his livery---not even in my arms: and he let me know it.
He got among them kitchen sluts, which was my mournin'
ready made, and worse than a widow's cap to me, which is
no shame to wear, and some say becoming. There's no man
as ever lived know better than my Berry how to show his
legs to advantage, and gals look at 'em. I don't wonder
now that Berry was prostrated. His temptations was
strong, and his flesh was weak. Then what I say is, that
for a young married man---be he whomsoever he may be---
to be separated from the wife of his bosom---a young sweet
thing, and he an innocent young gentleman!---so to sunder,
in their state, and be kep' from each other, I say it's as bad
as bad can be! For what is matrimony, my dears? We're
told it's a holy Ordnance. And why are ye so comfortable
in matrimony? For that ye are not a sinnin'! And they
that severs ye they tempts ye to stray: and you learn too
late the meanin' o' them blessin's of the priest---as it was
ordained. Separate---what comes? Fust it's like the circulation
of your blood a-stoppin'---all goes wrong. Then
there's misunderstandings---ye've both lost the key. Then,
behold ye, there's birds 'o prey hoverin' over each on ye,
and it's which'll be snapped up fust. Then---Oh, dear! Oh,
dear! it be like the devil come into the world again.'' Mrs.
Berry struck her hands and moaned. ``A day I'll give ye:
I'll go so far as a week: but there's the outside. Three
months dwellin' apart! That's not matrimony, it's divorcin'!
what can it be to her but widowhood? widowhood with no
cap to show for it! And what can it be to you, my dear?
Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor
man,'' Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, ``he ain't
a widow woman. I don't go to compare you to Berry, my
dear young gentleman. Some men's 'arts is vagabonds born
---they must go astray---it's there natur' to. But all men
are men, and I know the foundation of 'em, by reason of my
woe.''
 
  Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was respectfully attentive to
the sermon. The truth in the good creature's address was
not to be disputed, or despised, notwithstanding the inclination
to laugh provoked by her quaint way of putting it.
Ripton nodded encouragingly at every sentence, for he saw
her drift, and wished to second it.

  Seeking for an illustration of her meaning, Mrs. Berry
solemnly continued: ``We all know what checked prespiration
is.'' But neither of the young gentlemen could resist
this. Out they burst in a roar of laughter.

  ``Laugh away,'' said Mrs. Berry. ``I don't mind ye. I
say again, we all do know what checked prespiration is. It
fly to the lungs, it gives ye mortal inflammation, and it
carries ye off. Then I say checked matrimony is as bad.
It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue that's in ye,
and you might as well be dead! Them that is joined it's
their salvation not to separate! It don't so much matter
before it. That Mr. Thompson t'here---if he go astray, it
ain't from the blessed fold. He hurt himself alone---not
double, and belike treble, for who can say now what may
be? There's time for it. I'm for holding back young
people so that they knows their minds, howsomever they
rattles about their hearts. I ain't a speeder of matrimony,
and good's my reason! but where it's been done---where
they're lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do
say this, that to put division between 'em then, it's to
make wanderin' comets of 'em---creatures without a objeck,
and no soul can say what they's good for but to rush
about!''

  Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said
her utmost for the time bring.

  ``My dear old girl,'' Richard went up to her and applauding
her on the shoulder, ``you're a very wise old woman.
But you mustn't speak to me as if I wanted to stop here.
I'm compelled to. I do it for her good chiefly.''

  ``It's your father that's doin' it, my dear?''

  ``Well, I'm waiting his pleasure.''

  ``A pretty pleasure! puttin' a snake in the nest of young
turtle-doves! And why don't she come up to you?''

  ``Well, that you must ask her. The fact is, she's a little
timid girl---she wants me to see him first, and when I've
made all right, then she'll come.''

  ``A little timid girl!'' cried Mrs. Berry. ``Oh, lor', how
she must ha' deceived ye to make ye think that! Look at
that ring,'' she held out her finger, ``he's a stranger: he's
not my lawful! You know what ye did to me, my dear.
Could I get my own wedding-ring back from her? `No!'
says she, firm as a rock, `he said, _with this ring_ I thee wed'---
I think I see her now, with her pretty eyes and lovesome
locks---a darlin'!---And that ring she'd keep to, come life,
come death. And she must ha' been a rock for me to give in
to her in that. For what's the consequence? Here am I,''
Mrs. Berry smoothed down the back of her hand mournfully,
``here am I in a strange ring, that's like a strange man
holdin' of me, and me a wearin' of it just to seem decent,
and feelin' all over no better than a b------ a big---that nasty
name I can't abide!---I tell you, my dear, she ain't soft, no!
---except to the man of her heart; and the best of women's
too soft there---more's our sorrow!''

  ``Well, well!'' said Richard, who thought he knew.

  ``I agree with you, Mrs. Berry,'' Ripton struck in, ``Mrs.
Richard would do anything in the world her husband asked
her, I'm quite sure.''

  ``Bless you for your good opinion, Mr. Thompson! Why,
see her! she ain't frail on her feet; she looks ye straight in
the eyes; she ain't one of your hang-down misses. Look
how she behaved at the ceremony!''

  ``Ah!'' sighed Ripton.

  ``And if you'd ha' seen her when she spoke to me about
my ring! Depend upon it, my dear Mr. Richard, if she
blinded you about the nerve she've got, it was somethin' she
thought she ought to do for your sake, and I wish I'd been
by to counsel her, poor blessed babe!---And how much longer,
now, can ye stay divided from that darlin'?''

  Richard paced up and down uneasily.

  ``A father's will,'' urged Mrs. Berry, ``that's a son's law;
but he mustn't go again' the laws of his natur' to do it.''

  ``Just be quiet at present---talk of other things, there's a
good woman,'' said Richard.

  Mrs. Berry meekly folded her arms.

  ``How strange, now, our meetin' like this! meetin' at all,
too!'' she remarked contemplatively. ``It's them advertisements!
They brings people together from the ends of the
earth, for good or for bad. I often say, there's more lucky
accidents, or unlucky ones, since advertisements was the
rule, than ever there was before. They make a number of
romances, depend upon it! Do you walk much in the
Gardens, my dear?''

  ``Now and then,'' said Richard.

  ``Very pleasant it is there with the fine folks and flowers
and titled people,'' continued Mrs. Berry. ``That was a
handsome woman you was a-walkin' beside, this mornin'.''

  ``Very,'' said Richard.

  ``She was a handsome woman! or I should say, is, for her
day ain't past, and she know it. I thought at first---by her
back---it might ha' been your aunt, Mrs. Forey; for she do
step out well and hold up her shoulders: straight as a dart
she be! but when I come to see her face---Oh, dear me! says
I, this ain't one of the family. They none of 'em got such
bold faces---nor no _lady_ as I know have. But she's a fine
woman---that nobody can gainsay.''

  Mrs. Berry talked further of the fine woman. It was a
liberty she took to speak in this disrespectful tone of her,
and Mrs. Berry was quite aware that she was laying herself
open to rebuke. She had her end in view. No rebuke was
uttered, and during her talk she observed intercourse passing
between the eyes of the young men.

  ``Look here, Penelope,'' Richard stopped her at last. ``Will
it make you comfortable if I tell you I'll obey the laws of my
nature and go down at the end of the week?''

  ``I'll thank the Lord of heaven if you do!'' she exclaimed.

  ``Very well, then---be happy---I will. Now listen. I
want you to keep your rooms for me---those she had. I
expect, in a day or two, to bring a lady here------''

  ``A lady?'' faltered Mrs. Berry.

  ``Yes. A lady.''

  ``May I make so bold as to ask what lady?''

  ``You may not. Not now. Of course you will know.''

  Mrs. Berry's short neck made the best imitation it could of
an offended swan's action. She was very angry. She said
she did not like so many ladies, which natural objection
Richard met by saying that there was only one lady.

  ``And Mrs. Berry,'' he added, dropping his voice. ``You
will treat her as you did my dear girl, for she will require
not only shelter but kindness. I would rather leave her with
you than with any one. She has been very unfortunate.''

  His serious air and habitual tone of command fascinated
the softness of Berry, and it was not until he had gone that
she spoke out. ``Unfort'nate! He's going to bring mean
unfort'nate female! Oh! not from my babe can I bear that!
Never will I have her here! I see it. It's that bold-faced
woman he's got mixed up in, and she've been and made the
young man think he'll go for to reform her. It's one o' their
arts---that is; and he's too innocent a young man to mean
anythin' else. But I ain't a house of Magdalens---no! and
sooner than have her here I'd have the roof fall over me, I
would.''

  She sat down to eat her supper on the sublime resolve.

  In love, Mrs. Berry's charity was all on the side of the law,
and this is the case with many of her sisters. The =Pilgrim=
sneers at them for it, and would have us credit that it is
their admirable instinct which, at the expense of every virtue
save one, preserves the artificial barrier simply to impose
upon us. Men, I presume, are hardly fair judges, and should
stand aside and mark.

  Early next day Mrs. Berry bundled off to Richard's hotel
to let him know her determination. She did not find him
there. Returning homeward through the Park, she beheld
him on horseback riding by the side of the identical lady.
The sight of this public exposure shocked her more than the
secret walk under the trees. ``You don't look near your
reform yet,'' Mrs. Berry apostrophized her. ``You don't
look to me one that'd come the Fair Penitent till you've left
off bein' fair---if then you do, which some of ye don't. Laugh
away and show yer airs! Spite o' your hat and feather, and
your ridin'-habit, you're a Bella Donna.'' Setting her down
again absolutely for such, whatever it might signify, Mrs.
Berry had a virtuous glow.

  In the evening she heard the noise of wheels stopping at
the door. ``Never!'' she rose from her chair to exclaim.
``He ain't rided her out in the mornin', and been and made
a Magdalen of her afore dark?''

  A lady veiled was brought into the house by Richard.
Mrs. Berry feebly tried to bar his progress in the passage.
He pushed past her, and conducted the lady into the parlour
without speaking. Mrs. Berry did not follow. She heard
him murmur a few sentences within. Then he came out.
All her crest stood up, as she whispered vigorously, ``Mr.
Richard! if that woman stay here, I go forth. My house
ain't a penitentiary for unfortunate females, sir---''

  He frowned at her curiously; but as she was on the point
of renewing her indignant protest, he clapped his hand
across her mouth, and spoke words in her ear that had awful
import to her. She trembled, breathing low: ``My God,
forgive me! Lady Feverel is it? Your mother, Mr.
Richard?''  And her virtue was humbled before Lady
Feverel.


	CHAPTER XXXIX.

	AN ENCHANTRESS.


  One may suppose that a prematurely aged, oily little
man; a poet in bad circumstances; a decrepit butterfly
chained to a disappointed inkstand, will not put out strenuous
energies to retain his ancient paramour when a robust
young man comes imperatively to demand his mother of him
in her person. The colloquy was short between Diaper
Sandoe and Richard. The question was referred to the poor
spiritless lady, who, seeing that her son made no question of
it, cast herself on his hands. Small loss to her was Diaper;
but he was the loss of habit, and that is something to a
woman who has lived. The blood of her son had been
running so long alien from her that the sense of her motherhood
smote her now with strangeness, and Richard's stern
gentleness seemed like dreadful justice come upon her. Her
heart had almost forgotten its maternal functions. She
called him Sir, till he bade her remember he was her son.
Her voice sounded to him like that of a broken-throated
lamb, so painful and weak it was, with the plaintive stop in
the utterance. When he kissed her, her skin was cold. Her
thin hand fell out of his when his grasp relaxed. ``Can sin
hunt one like this?'' he asked, bitterly reproaching himself
for the shame she had caused him to endure, and a deep
compassion filled his breast.

  Poetic justice had been dealt to Diaper the poet. He
thought of all he had sacrificed for this woman---the comfortable
quarters, the friend, the happy flights. He could
not but accuse her of unfaithfulness in leaving him in his
old age. Habit had legalized his union with her. He wrote
as pathetically of the break of habit as men feel at the death
of love; and when we are old and have no fair hope tossing
golden locks before us, a wound to this second nature is quite
as sad. I know not even if it be not actually sadder.

  Day by day Richard visited his mother. Lady Blandish
and Ripton alone were in the secret. Adrian let him do as
he pleased. He thought proper to tell him that the public
recognition he accorded to a particular lady was, in the
present state of the world, scarcely prudent.

  ``'Tis a proof to me of your moral rectitude, my son, but
the world will not think so. No one character is sufficient
to cover two---in a Protestant country especially. The
divinity that doth hedge a Bishop would have no chance in
contact with your Madam Dana<e:>. Methinks I see the
reverend man! though he takes excellent care to make it a
contemptible hypothesis. That part of his pastoral duty he
wisely leaves to weanling laymen. Drop the woman, my
son. Or permit _me_ to speak what you would have her
hear.''

  Richard listened to him with disgust.

  ``Well, you've had my doctorial warning,'' said Adrian,
and plunged back into his book.

  When lady Feverel had revived to take part in the consultations
Mrs. Berry perpetually opened on the subject of
Richard's matrimonial duty, another chain was cast about
him. ``Do not, oh, do not offend your father!'' was her one
repeated supplication. Sir Austin had grown to be a vindictive
phantom in her mind. She never wept but when she
said this.

  So Mrs. Berry, to whom Richard had once made mention
of Lady Blandish as the only friend he had among women,
bundled off in her black-satin dress to obtain an interview
with her, and an ally. After coming to an understanding
on the matter of the visit, and reiterating many of her
views concerning young married people, Mrs. Berry said:
``My lady,  if I may speak so bold, I'd say the sin that's 
bein' done is the sin o' the lookers on. And when everybody
appear frighted by that young gentleman's father, I'll
say---hopin' your pardon---they no cause be frighted at all.
For though it's nigh twenty year since I knew him, and I
knew him then just sixteen months---no more---I'll say his
heart's as soft as a woman's, which I've cause for to know.
And that's it. That's where everybody's deceived by him,
and I was. It's because he keeps his face, and makes ye
think you're dealin' with a man of iron, and all the while
there's a woman underneath. And a man that's like a
woman he's the puzzle o' life! We can see through ourselves,
my lady, and we can see through men, but one o' that
sort---he's like somethin' out of nature. Then I say---hopin'
be excused---what's to do is for to treat him _like_ a woman,
and not for to let him 'ave his own way---which he don't
know himself, and is why nobody else do. Let that sweet
young couple come together, and be wholesome in spite of
him, I say; and then give him time to come round, just like
a woman; and round he'll come, and give 'em his blessin',
and we shall know we've made him comfortable. He's
angry because matrimony have come between him and his
son, and he, woman-like, he's wantin' to treat what is as if
it isn't. But matrimony's a holier than him. It began long
long before him, and it's be hoped will endoor long's the
time after, if the world's not coming to rack---wishin' him
no harm.''

  Now Mrs. Berry only put Lady Blandish's thoughts in
bad English. The lady took upon herself seriously to
advise Richard to send for his wife. He wrote, bidding her
come. Lucy, however, had wits, and inexperienced wits are
as a little knowledge. In pursuance of her sage plan to
make the family feel her worth, and to conquer the members
of it one by one, she had got up a correspondence with Adrian,
whom it tickled. Adrian constantly assured her all was
going well: time would heal the wound if both the offenders
had the fortitude to be patient: he fancied he saw signs of
the baronet's relenting: they must do nothing to arrest those
favourable symptoms. Indeed the wise youth was languidly
seeking to produce them. He wrote, and felt, as Lucy's
benefactor. So Lucy replied to her husband a cheerful
rigmarole he could make nothing of, save that she was happy
in hope, and still had fears. Then Mrs. Berry trained her
fist to indite a letter to her bride. Her bride answered it by
saying she trusted to time. ``You poor marter,'' Mrs. Berry
wrote back, ``I know what your sufferin's be. They is the
only kind a wife should never hide from her husband. He thinks
all sorts of things if she can abide being away. And you trusting
to time, why it's like trusting not to catch cold out of your
natural clothes.'' There was no shaking Lucy's firmness.

  Richard gave it up. He began to think that the life lying
behind him was the life of a fool. What had he done in it?
He had burnt a rick and got married! He associated the
two acts of his existence. Where was the hero he was to
have carved out of Tom Bakewell!---a wretch he had taught
to lie and chicane: and for what? Great heavens! how
ignoble did a flash from the light of his aspirations made his
marriage appear! The young man sought amusement. He
allowed his aunt to drag him into society, and sick of that
he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the
purpose he had in visiting her at all. Her man-like conversation,
which he took for honesty, was a refreshing change
on fair lips.

  ``Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick,'' said she. And it
came to be Bella and Dick between them. No mention of
Bella occurred in Richard's letters to Lucy.

  Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. ``I pretend to
be no better than I am,'' she said, ``and I know I'm no worse
than many a woman who holds her head high.'' To back this
she told him stories of blooming dames of good repute, and
poured a little social sewerage into his ears.

  Also she understood him. ``What you want, my dear
Dick, is something to do. You went and got married like a
---hum!---friends must be respectful. Go into the army.
Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or two---friends
should make themselves useful.''

  She told him what she liked in him. ``You're the only
man I was ever alone with who don't talk to me of love and
make me feel sick. I hate men who cant speak to a woman
sensibly.---Just wait a minute.'' She left him and presently
returned with, ``Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are you?''---
arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat
jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality
to the costume. ``What do you think of me? Wasn't it a
shame to make a woman of me when I was born to be a man?''

  ``I don't know that,'' said Richard, for the contrast in her
attire to those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.

  ``What! you think I don't do it well?''

  ``Charming! but I can't forget . . .''

  ``Now that is too bad!'' she pouted.

  Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight
streets arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great
fits of laughter at her impertinent manner of using her eye.
glass, and outrageous affectation of the supreme dandy.

  ``They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's
clothes, and vice versaw, I suppose. You'll bail me, old
fellaa, if I have to make my bow to the beak, won't you?
Say it's becas I'm an honest woman and don't care to hide
the---a---unmentionables when I wear them---as the t'others
do,'' sprinkled with the dandy's famous invocations.

  He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.

  ``You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler
take me? by Jove!''

  And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her,
while she bent her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm,
and reposed upon it more. There was delicacy in her
dandyism. She was a graceful cavalier.

  ``Sir Julius,'' as they named the dandy's attire, was frequently
called for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount.
When he beheld Sir Julius he thought of the lady, and ``vice
versaw,'' as Sir Julius was fond of exclaiming.

  Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?

  The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius.
Or she would sit, and talk, and altogether forget she was
impersonating that worthy fop.

  She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard
thought her the cleverest woman he had ever met.

  All kinds of problematic notions beset him. She was cold
as ice, she hated talk about love, and she was branded by
the world.

  A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria's ears. She
rushed to Adrian first. The wise youth believed there was
nothing in it. She sailed full down upon Richard. ``Is this
true? that you have been seen going publicly about with
an infamous woman, Richard? Tell me! pray relieve me!''

  Richard knew of no person answering to his aunt's description
in whose company he could have been seen.

  ``Tell me, I say! Don't quibble. Do you know any
woman of bad character?''

  The acquaintance of a lady very much misjudged and ill.
used by the world, Richard admitted to.

  Urgent grave advice Mrs. Doria tendered her nephew,
both from the moral and the worldly point of view, mentally
ejaculating all the while: ``That ridiculous System! That
disgraceful marriage!'' Sir Austin in his mountain solitude
was furnished with serious stuff to brood over.

  The rumour came to Lady Blandish. She likewise lectured
Richard, and with her he condescended to argue. But he
found himself obliged to instance something he had quite
neglected. ``Instead of her doing me harm, it's I that will
do her good.''

  Lady Blandish shook her head and held up her finger.
``This person must be very clever to have given you that
delusion, dear.''

  ``She is clever. And the world treats her shamefully.''

  ``She complains of her position to you?''

  ``Not a word. But I will stand by her. She has no
friend but me.''

  ``My poor boy! has she made you think that?''

  ``How unjust you all are!'' cried Richard.

  ``How mad and wicked is the man who can let him be
tempted so!'' thought Lady Blandish.

  He would pronounce no promise not to visit her, not to
address her publicly. The world that condemned her and
cast her out was no better---worse for its miserable hypocrisy.
He knew the world now, the young man said.

  ``My child! the world may be very bad. I am not going
to defend it. But you have some one else to think of. Have
you forgotten you have a wife, Richard?''

  ``Ay! you all speak of her now. There's my aunt:
`Remember you have a wife!' Do you think I love anyone
but Lucy? poor little thing! Because I am married am I
to give up the society of women?''

  ``Of women!''

  ``Isn't she a woman?''

  ``Too much so!'' sighed the defender of her sex.

  Adrian became more emphatic in his warnings. Richard
laughed at him. The wise youth sneered at Mrs. Mount.
The hero then favoured him with a warning equal to his
own in emphasis, and surpassing it in sincerity.

  ``We won't quarrel, my dear boy,'' said Adrian. ``I'm a
man of peace. Besides, we are not fairly proportioned for a
combat. Ride your steed to virtue's goal! All I say is, that
I think he'll upset you, and it's better to go at a slow pace
and in companionship with the children of the sun. You
have a very nice little woman for a wife---well, good-bye!''

  To have his wife and the world thrown at his face, was
unendurable to Richard; he associated them somewhat after
the manner of the rick and the marriage. Charming Sir
Julius, always gay, always honest, dispersed his black moods.

  ``Why, you're taller,'' Richard made the discovery.

  ``Of course I am. Don't you remember you said I was
such a little thing when I came out of my woman's shell?''

  ``And how have you done it?''

  ``Grown to please you.''

  ``Now, if you can do that, you can do anything.''

  ``And so I would do anything.''

  ``You would?''

  ``Honour!''

  ``Then'' . . . his project recurred to him. But the incongruity
of speaking seriously to Sir Julius struck him
dumb.

  ``Then what?'' asked she.

  ``Then you're a gallant fellow.''

  ``That all?''

  ``Isn't it enough?''

  ``Not quite. You were going to say something. I saw it
in your eyes.''

  ``You saw that I admired you.''

  ``Yes, but a man mustn't admire a man.''

  ``I suppose I had an idea you were a woman.''

  ``What! when I had the heels of my boots raised half an
inch,'' Sir Julius turned one heel, and volleyed out silver
laughter.

  ``I don't come much above your shoulder even now,'' she
said, and proceeded to measure her height beside him with
arch up-glances.

  ``You must grow more.''

  ``'Fraid I can't, Dick! Bootmakers can't do it.''

  ``I'll show you how,'' and he lifted Sir Julius lightly, and
bore the fair gentleman to the looking-glass, holding him
there exactly on a level with his head. ``Will that do?''

  ``Yes! Oh but I can't stay here.''

  ``Why can't you?''

  ``Why can't I?''

  Their eyes met. He put her down instantly.

  Sir Julius, charming as he was, lost his vogue. Seeing
that, the wily woman resumed her shell. The memory of
Sir Julius breathing about her still, doubled the feminine
attraction.

  ``I ought to have been an actress,'' she said.

  Richard told her he found all natural women had a similar
wish.

  ``Yes! Ah! then! if I had been!'' sighed Mrs. Mount,
gazing on the pattern of the carpet.

  He took her hand, and pressed it.

  ``You are not happy as you are?''

  ``No.''

  ``May I speak to you?''

  ``Yes.''

  Her nearest eye, setting a dimple of her cheek in motion,
slid to the corner toward her ear, as she sat with her head
sideways to him listening. When he had gone, she said to
herself: ``Old hypocrites talk in that way; but I never
heard of a young man doing it, and not making love at the
same time.''

  Their next meeting displayed her quieter: subdued as one
who had been set thinking. He lauded her fair looks.
``Don't make me thrice ashamed,'' she petitioned.

  But it was not only that mood with her. Dauntless
defiance that splendidly befitted her gallant outline and gave
a wildness to her bright bold eyes, when she would call out:
``Happy? who dares say I'm not happy? D' you think if
the world whips me I'll wince? D' you think I care for
what they say or do? Let them kill me! they shall never
get one cry out of me!'' and flashing on the young man as
if he were the congregated enemy, add: ``There! now you
know me!''---that was a mood that well became her, and
helped the work. She ought to have been an actress.

  ``This must not go on,'' said Lady Blandish and Mrs.
Doria in unison. A common object brought them together.
They confined their talk to it, and did not disagree. Mrs.
Doria engaged to go down to the baronet. Both ladies knew
it was a dangerous, likely to turn out a disastrous, expedition.
They agreed to it because it was something to do,
and doing anything is better than doing nothing. ``Do it,''
said the wise youth, when they made him a third, ``do it, if
you want him to be a hermit for life. You will bring back
nothing but his dead body, ladies---a Hellenic, rather than
a Roman, triumph. He will listen to you---he will accompany
you to the station---he will hand you into the carriage
---and when you point to his seat he will bow profoundly,
and retire into his congenial mists.''

  Adrian spoke their thoughts. They fretted; they relapsed.

  ``Speak to him, you, Adrian,'' said Mrs. Doria. ``Speak
to the boy solemnly. It would be almost better he should
go back to that little thing he has married.''

  ``Almost?'' Lady Blandish opened her eyes. ``I have
been advising it for the last month and more.''

  ``A choice of evils,'' said Mrs. Doria's sour-sweet face and
shake of the head.

  Each lady saw a point of dissension, and mutually agreed,
with heroic effort, to avoid it by shutting their mouths.
What was more, they preserved the peace in spite of Adrian's
clever artifices.

  ``Well, I'll talk to him again,'' he said. ``I'll try to get
the Engine on the conventional line.''

  ``Command him!'' exclaimed Mrs. Doria.

  ``Command an Engine, ma'am?''

  ``Gentle means are, I think, the only means with Richard,''
said Lady Blandish.

  ``Appeal to his reason,'' Mrs. Doria iterated.

  ``The reason of an Engine, ma'am?''

  Throwing banter aside, as much as he could, Adrian spoke
to Richard. ``You want to reform this woman. Her manner
is open---fair and free---the traditional characteristic. We
won't stop to canvass how that particular honesty of deportment
that wins your approbation has been gained. In her
college it is not uncommon. Girls, you know, are not like
boys. At a certain age they can't be quite natural. It's
a bad sign if they don't blush, and fib, and affect this and
that. It wears off when they're women. But a woman who
speaks like a man, and has all those excellent virtues you
admire---where has she learnt the trick? She tells you.
You don't surely approve of the school? Well, what is
there in it, then? Reform her, of course. The task is
worthy of your energies. But, if you are appointed to do
it, don't do it publicly, and don't attempt it just now.
May I ask you whether your wife participates in this
undertaking.''

  Richard walked away from the interrogation. The wise
youth, who hated long unrelieved speeches and had healed
his conscience, said no more.

  Dear tender Lucy! Poor darling! Richard's eyes moistened.
Her letters seemed sadder latterly. Yet she never
called to him to come, or he would have gone. His heart
leapt up to her. He announced to Adrian that he should
wait no longer for his father. Adrian placidly nodded.
The enchantress observed that her knight had a clouded
brow and an absent voice.

  ``Richard---I can't call you Dick now, I really don't know
why''---she said, ``I want to beg a favour of you.''

  ``Name it. I can still call you Bella, I suppose?''

  ``If you care to. What I want to say is this: when you
meet me out---to cut it short---please not to recognize me.''

  ``And why?''

  ``Do you ask to be told _that?_''

  ``Certainly I do.''

  ``Then look: I won't compromise on.''

  ``I see no harm, Bella.''

  ``No,'' she caressed his hand, ``and there is none. I know
that. But,'' modest eyelids were drooped, ``other people
do,'' struggling eyes were raised.

  ``What do we care for other people?''

  ``Nothing. I don't. Not that!'' snapping her finger,
``I care for you, though.'' A prolonged look followed the
declaration.

  ``You're foolish, Bella.''

  ``Not quite so giddy---that's all.''

  He did not combat it with his usual impetuosity.
Adrian's abrupt inquiry had sunk in his mind, as the wise
youth intended it should. He had instinctively refrained
from speaking to Lucy of this lady. But what a noble creature
the woman was!

  So they met in the Park; Mrs. Mount whipped past him;
and secrecy added a new sense to their intimacy.

  Adrian was gratified at the result produced by his
eloquence.

  Though this lady never expressed an idea, Richard was
not mistaken in her cleverness. She could make evenings
pass gaily, and one was not the fellow to the other. She
could make you forget she was a woman, and then bring the
fact startlingly home to you. She could read men with one
quiver of her half-closed eye-lashes. She could catch the
coming mood in a man, and fit herself to it. What does a
woman want with ideas, who can do thus much? Keenness
of perception, conformity, delicacy of handling, these be all
the qualities necessary to parasites.

  Love would have scared the youth: she banished it from
her tongue. It may also have been true that it sickened
her. She played on his higher nature. She understood
spontaneously what would be most strange and taking to
him in a woman. Various as the Serpent of old Nile,
she acted fallen beauty, humourous indifference, reckless
daring, arrogance in ruin. And acting thus, what think
you?---She did it so well because she was growing half in
earnest.

  ``Richard! I am not what I was since I knew you. You
will not give me up quite?''

  ``Never, Bella.''

  ``I am not so bad as I'm painted!''

  ``You are only unfortunate.''

  ``Now that I know you I think so, and yet I am happier.''

  She told him her history when this soft horizon of repentance
seemed to throw heaven's twilight across it. A woman's
history, you know: certain chapters expunged. It was dark
enough to Richard.

  ``Did  you love the man?'' he asked. ``You say you love
no one now.''

  ``Did I love him? He was a nobleman and I a tradesman's
daughter. No. I did not love him. I have lived to
learn it. And now I should hate him, if I did not despise
him.''

  ``Can you be deceived in love?'' said Richard, more to
himself than to her.

  ``Yes. When we're young we can be very easily deceived.
If there is such a thing as love, we discover it after we have
tossed about and roughed it. Then we find the man, or the
woman, that suits us:---and then it's too late! we can't have
him.''

  ``Singular!'' murmured Richard, ```she says just what my
father said.''

  He spoke aloud: ``I could forgive you if you had loved
him.''

  ``Don't be harsh, grave judge! How is a girl to distinguish?''

  ``You had some affection for him? He was the first?''

  She chose to admit that. ``Yes. And the first who talks
of love to a girl must be a fool if he doesn't blind her.''

  ``That makes what is called first love nonsense.''

  ``Isn't it?''

  He repelled the insinuation. ``Because I know it is not,
Bella.''

  Nevertheless she had opened a wider view of the world to
him, and a colder. He thought poorly of girls. A woman---
a sensible, brave, beautiful woman seemed, on comparison,
infinitely nobler than those weak creatures.

  She was best in her character of lovely rebel accusing foul
injustice. ``What am I to do? You tell me to be different.
How can I? What am I to do? Will virtuous people let
me earn my bread? I could not get a housemaid's place!
They wouldn't have me---I see their noses smelling! Yes:
I can go to the hospital and sing behind a screen! Do you
expect me to bury myself alive? Why, man, I have blood:
I can't become a Stone. You say I am honest, and I will be.
Then let me tell you that I have been used to luxuries, and I
can't do without them. I might have married men---lots
would have had me. But who marries one like me but a fool?
and I could not marry a fool. The man I marry I must
respect. He could not respect me---I should know him to be
a fool, and I should be worse off than I am now. As I am
now they may look as pious as they like---I laugh at
them!''

  And so forth: direr things. Imputations upon wives:
horrible exultation at the universal peccancy of husbands.
This lovely outcast almost made him think she had the right
on her side, so keenly her Parthian arrows pierced the holy
centres of society, and exposed its rottenness.

  Mrs. Mount's house was discreetly conducted: nothing
ever occurred to shock him there. The young man would
ask himself where the difference was between her and the
women of society? How base, too, was the army of banded
hypocrites! He was ready to declare war against them on
her behalf. His casus belli, accurately worded, would have
read curiously. Because the world refused to lure the lady
to virtue with the offer of a housemaid's place, our knight
threw down his challenge. But the lady had scornfully
rebutted this prospect of a return to chastity. Then the
form of the challenge must be: Because the world declined
to support the lady in luxury for nothing! But what did
that mean? In other words: she was to receive the devil's
wages without rendering him her services. Such an arrangement
appears hardly fair on the world or on the devil.
Heroes will have to conquer both before they will get them
to subscribe to it.

  Heroes, however, are not in the habit of wording their
declarations of war at all. Lance in rest they challenge and
they charge. Like women they trust to instinct, and graft
on it the muscle of men. Wide fly the leisurely-remonstrating
hosts: institutions are scattered, they know not wherefore,
heads are broken that have not the balm of a reason
why. 'Tis instinct strikes! Surely there is something
divine in instinct.

  Still, war declared, where were these hosts? The hero
could not charge down on the ladies and gentlemen in a ball-room,
and spoil the quadrille. He had sufficient reticence to
avoid sounding his challenge in the Law Courts; nor could
he well go into the Houses of Parliament with a trumpet,
though to come to a tussle with the nation's direct representatives
did seem the likelier method. It was likewise
out of the question that he should enter every house and
shop, and battle with its master in the cause of Mrs. Mount.
Where, then, was his enemy. Everybody was his enemy,
and everybody was nowhere! Shall he convoke multitudes
on Wimbledon Common? Blue Policemen, and a distant
dread of ridicule, bar all his projects. Alas for the hero in
our day!

  Nothing teaches a strong arm its impotence so much as
knocking at empty air.

  ``What can I do for this poor woman?'' cried Richard,
after fighting his phantom enemy till he was worn out.

  ``O Rip! old Rip!'' he addressed his friend, ``I'm distracted.
I wish I was dead! What good am I for? Miserable!
selfish! What have I done but make every soul I
know wretched about me? I follow my own inclinations---
I make people help me by lying as hard as they can---and
I'm a liar. And when I've got it I'm ashamed of myself.
And  now when I do see something unselfish for me to do, I
come upon grins---I don't know where to turn---how to act
---and I laugh at myself like a devil!''

  It was only friend Ripton's ear that was required, so his
words went for little: but he did say he thought there was
small matter to be ashamed of in winning and wearing the
Beauty of Earth. Richard added his customary comment
of ``Poor little thing!''

  He fought his duello with empty air till he was exhausted.
A last letter written to his father procured him no reply.
Then, said he, I have tried my utmost. I have tried to
be dutiful---my father won't listen to me. One thing I can
do---I can go down to my dear girl, and make her happy,
and save her at least from some of the consequences of my
rashness.

  ``There's nothing better for me!'' he groaned. His great
ambition must be covered by a house-top: he and the cat
must warm themselves on the domestic hearth! The hero
was not aware that his heart moved him to this. His heart
was not now in open communion with his mind.

  Mrs. Mount heard that her friend was going---would go.
She knew he was going to his wife. Far from discouraging
him, she said nobly: ``Go---I believe I have kept you. Let
us have an evening together, and then go: for good if you
like. If not, then to meet again another time. Forget me.
I sha'n't forget you. Your the best fellow I ever knew,
Richard. You are, on my honour! I swear I would not
step in between you and your wife to cause either of you a
moment's unhappiness. When I can be another woman I
will, and I shall think of you then.''

  Lady Blandish heard from Adrian that Richard was positively
going to his wife. The wise youth modestly veiled
his own merit in bringing it about by saying: ``I couldn't
see that poor little woman left alone down there any
longer.''

  ``Well! Yes!'' said Mrs. Doria, to whom the modest
speech was repeated, ``I suppose, poor boy, it's the best he
can do now.''

  Richard bade them adieu, and went to spend his last
evening with Mrs. Mount.

  The enchantress received him in state.

  ``Do you know this dress? No? It's the dress I wore
when I first met you---not when I first saw you. I think I
remarked you, sir, before you deigned to cast an eye upon
humble me. When we first met we drank champagne
together, and I intend to celebrate our parting in the same
liquor. Will you liquor with me, old boy?''

  She was gay. She revived Sir Julius occasionally. He,
dispirited, left the talking all to her.

  Mrs. Mount kept a footman. At a late hour the man of
calves dressed the table for supper. It was a point of
honour for Richard to sit down to it and try to eat. Drinking,
thanks to the kindly mother nature, who loves to see
her children made fools of, is always an easier matter. The
footman was diligent: the champagne corks feebly recalled
the file-firing at Richmond.

  ``We'll drink to what we might have been, Dick,'' said
the enchantress.

  Oh, the glorious wreck she looked.

  His heart choked as he gulped the buzzing wine.

  ``What! down, my boy?'' she cried. ``They shall never
see me hoist signals of distress. We must all die, and the
secret of the thing is to die game, by Jove! Did you ever
hear of Laura Fenn? a superb girl! handsomer than your
humble servant---if you'll believe it---a `Miss' in the
bargain, and as a consequence, I suppose, a much greater
rake. She was in the hunting-field. Her horse threw her,
and she fell plump on a stake. It went into her left breast.
All the fellows crowded round her, and one young man, who
was in love with her---he sits in the House of Peers now---
we used to call him `Duck' because he was such a dear---
he dropped from his horse to his knees: `Laura! Laura!
my darling! speak a word to me!---the last!' She turned
over all white and bloody! `I---I shan't be in at the death!'
and gave up the ghost! Wasn't that dying game? Here's
to the example of Laura Fenn! Why, what's the matter?
See! it makes a man turn pale to hear how a woman can
die. Fill the glasses, John. Why, you're as bad!''

  ``It's give me a turn, my lady,'' pleaded John, and the
man's hand was unsteady as he poured out the wine.

  ``You ought not to listen. Go, and drink some brandy.''
John footman went from the room.

  ``My brave Dick! Richard! what a face you've got!''

  He showed a deep frown on a colourless face.

  ``Can't you bear to hear of blood? You know, it was only
one naughty woman out of the world. The clergyman of
the parish didn't refuse to give her decent burial. We are
Christians! Hurrah!''

  She cheered, and laughed. A lurid splendour glanced
about her like lights from the pit.

  ``Pledge me, Dick! Drink, and recover yourself. Who
minds? We must all die---the good and the bad. Ashes to
ashes---dust to dust---and wine for living lips! That's
poetry---almost. Sentiment: `May we never say die till
we've drunk our fill!' Not bad---eh? A little vulgar, perhaps,
by Jove! Do you think me horrid?''

  ``Where's the wine?'' Richard shouted. He drank a
couple of glasses in succession, and stared about. Was he in
hell, with a lost soul raving to him?

  ``Nobly spoken! and nobly acted upon, my brave Dick
Now we'll be companions. `She wished that heaven had
made her such a man.' Ah, Dick! Dick! too late! too
late!''

  Softly fell her voice. Her eyes threw slanting beams.

  ``Do you see this?''

  She pointed to a symbolic golden anchor studded with
gems and coiled with a rope of hair in her bosom. It was a
gift of his.

  ``Do you know when I stole the lock? Foolish Dick!
you gave me an anchor without a rope. Come and see.''

  She rose from the table, and threw herself on the sofa.

  ``Don't you recognize your own hair! I should know a
thread of mine among a million.''

  Something of the strength of Samson went out of him as
he inspected his hair on the bosom of Delilah.

  ``And you knew nothing of it! You hardly know it now
you see it! What couldn't a woman steal from you? But
you're not vain, and that's a protection. You're a miracle,
Dick: a man that's not vain! Sit here.'' She curled up
her feet to give him place on the sofa. ``Now let us talk
like friends that part to meet no more. You found a ship
with fever on board, and you weren't afraid to come along-side
and keep her company. The fever isn't catching, you
see. Let us mingle our tears together. Ha! ha! a man
said that once to me. The hypocrite wanted to catch the
fever, but he was too old. How old are you, Dick?''

  Richard pushed a few months forward.

  ``Twenty-one? You just look it, you blooming boy. Now
tell me my age, Adonis!---Twenty---_what?_''

  Richard had given the lady twenty-five years .

  She laughed violently. ``You don't pay compliments,
Dick. Best to be honest; Guess again. You don't like
to? Not twenty-five, or twenty-four, or twenty-three, or---
see how he begins to stare!---twenty-two. Just twenty-one,
my dear. I think my birthday's somewhere in next month.
Why, look at me, close---closer. Have I a wrinkle?''

  ``And when, in heaven's name!'' . . . he stopped short.

  ``I understand you. When did I commence for to live?
At the ripe age of sixteen I saw a nobleman in despair
because of my beauty. He vowed he'd die. I didn't want
him to do that. So to save the poor man for his family, I
ran away with him, and I dare say they didn't appreciate
the sacrifice, and he soon forgot to, if he ever did. It's the
way of the world!''

  ``Where's the wine?'' cried Richard. He seized some
dead champagne, emptied the bottle into a tumbler, and
drank it off.

  John footman entered to clear the table, and they were
left without further interruption.

  ``Bella! Bella!'' Richard uttered in a deep sad voice, as
he walked the room.

  She leaned on her arm, her hair crushed against a reddened
cheek, her eyes half-shut and dreamy.

  ``Bella!'' he dropped beside her. ``You are unhappy.''

  She blinked and yawned, as one who is awaked suddenly.
``I think you spoke,'' said she.

  ``You are unhappy, Bella. You can't conceal it. Your
laugh sounds like madness. You must be unhappy. So
young, too! Only twenty-one!''

  ``What does it matter? Who cares for me?''

  The mighty pity falling from his eyes took in her whole
shape. She did not mistake it for tenderness, as another
would have done.

  ``Who cares for you, Bella? I do. What makes my
misery now, but to see you there, and know of no way of
helping you? Father of mercy! it seems too much to have
to stand by powerless while such a ruin is going on!''

  Her hand was shaken in his by the passion of torment
with which his frame quaked.

  Involuntarily a tear started between her eyelids. She
glanced up at him quickly, then looked down, drew her hand
from his, and smoothed it, eyeing it.

  ``Bella! you have a father alive!''

  ``A linendraper, dear. He wears a white neck-cloth.''

  This article of apparel instantaneously changed the tone
of the conversation, for he, rising abruptly, nearly squashed
the lady's lap-dog, whose squeaks and howls were piteous,
and demanded the most fervent caresses of its mistress. It
was: ``Oh, my poor pet Mumpsy, and he didn't like a nasty
great big ugly heavy foot on his poor soft silky---mum---
mum---back, he didn't, and he soodn't that he---mum---mum
---soodn't; and he cried out and knew the place to come to,
and was oh so sorry for what had happened to him---mum
---mum---mum---and now he was going to be made happy,
his mistress make him happy---mum---mum---mum---
moo-o-o-o.''

  ``Yes!'' said Richard savagely, from the other end of the
room, ``you care for the happiness of your dog.''

  ``A course se does,'' Mumpsy was simperingly assured in
the thick of his silky flanks.

  Richard looked for his hat. Mumpsy was deposited on
the sofa in a twinkling. 

  ``Now,'' said the lady, ``you must come and beg Mumpsy's
pardon whether you meant to do it or no, because little
doggies can't tell that---how should they? And there's poor
Mumpsy thinking you're a great terrible rival that tries to
squash him all flat to nothing, on purpose, pretending you
didn't see; and he's trembling, poor dear wee pet! And I
may love my dog, sir, if I like; and I do; and I won't have
him ill-treated, for he's never been jealous of you, and he is
a darling, ten times truer than men, and I love him fifty
times better. So come to him with me.''

  First a smile changed Richard's face; then laughing a
melancholy laugh, he surrendered to her humour, and went
through the form of begging Mumpsy's pardon.

  ``The dear dog! I do believe he saw we were getting
dull,'' said she.

  ``And immolated himself intentionally? Noble animal!''

  ``Well, we'll act as if we thought so. Let us be gay,
Richard, and not part like ancient fogies. Where's your
fun? You can rattle; why don't you? You haven't seen
me in one of my characters---not Sir Julius: wait a couple
of minutes.'' She ran out.

  A white visage reappeared behind a spring of flame. Her
black hair was scattered over her shoulders and fell half
across her brows. She moved slowly, and came up to him,
fastening weird eyes on him, pointing a finger at the region
of witches. Sepulchral cadences accompanied the representation.
He did not listen, for he was thinking what a
deadly charming and exquisitely horrid witch she was.
Something in the way her underlids worked seemed to
remind him of a forgotten picture; but a veil hung on the
picture. There could be no analogy, for this was beautiful
and devilish, and that, if he remembered rightly, had the
beauty of seraphs.

  His reflections and her performance were stayed by a
shriek. The spirits of wine had run over the plate she held
to the floor. She had the coolness to put the plate down on
the table, while he stamped out the flame on the carpet.
Again she shrieked: she thought she was on fire. He fell
on his knees and clasped her skirts all round, drawing his
arms down them several times.

  Still kneeling, he looked up, and asked, ``Do you feel safe
now?''

  She bent her face glaring down till the ends of her hair
touched his cheek.

  Said she, ``Do you?''

  Was she a witch verily? There was sorcery in her breath;
sorcery in her hair: the ends of it stung him like little
snakes.

  ``How do I do it, Dick?'' She flung back laughing.

  ``Like you do everything, Bella,'' he said, and took a
breath.

  ``There! I won't be a witch; I won't be a witch: they
may burn me to a cinder, but I won't be a witch!''

  She sang, throwing her hair about, and stamping her feet.

  ``I suppose I look a figure. I must go and tidy myself.''

  ``No, don't change. I like to see you so.'' He gazed at
her with a mixture of wonder and admiration. ``I can't
think you the same person---not even when you laugh.''

  ``Richard,'' her tone was serious, ``you were going to speak
to me of my parents.''

  ``How wild and awful you looked, Bella!''

  ``My father, Richard, was a very respectable man.''

  ``Bella, you'll haunt me like a ghost.''

  ``My mother died in my infancy, Richard.''

  ``Don't put up your hair, Bella.''

  ``I was an only child!''

  Her head shook sorrowfully at the glistening fire-irons.
He followed the abstracted intentness of her look, and came
upon her words.

  ``Ah, yes! speak of your father, Bella. Speak of him.''

  ``Shall I haunt you, and come to your bedside, and cry,
`Tis time!'?''

  ``Dear Bella! if you will tell me where he lives, I will go
to him. He shall receive you. He shall not refuse---he
shall forgive you.''

  ``If I haunt you, you can't forget me, Richard.;;

  ``Let me go to your father, Bella---let me go to him to-morrow.
I'll give you my time. It's all I can give. O
Bella! let me save you.''

  ``So you like me best dishevelled, do you, you naughty
boy! Ha! ha!'' and away she burst from him, and up flew
her hair, as she danced across the room, and fell at full
length on the sofa.

  He felt giddy: bewitched.

  ``We'll talk of everyday things, Dick,'' she called to him
from the sofa. ``It's our last evening. Our last? Heigho!
It makes me sentimental. How's that Mr. Ripson, Pipson,
Nipson?---it's not complimentary, but I can't remember
names of that sort. Why do you have friends of that sort?
He's not a gentleman. Better is he? Well, he's rather _too_
insignificant for me. Why do you sit off there? Come to
me instantly. There---I'll sit up, and be proper, and you'll
have plenty of room. Talk, Dick!''

  He was reflecting on the fact that her eyes were brown.
They had a haughty sparkle when she pleased, and when
she pleased a soft languor circled them. Excitement
had dyed her cheeks deep red. He was a youth, and she
an enchantress. He a hero; she a female will-o'-the-wisp.

  The eyes were languid now, set in rosy colour.

  ``You will not leave me yet, Richard? not yet?''

  He had no thought of departing.

  ``It's our last night---I suppose it's our last hour together
in this world---and I don't want to meet you in the next, for
poor Dick will have to come to such a very, very disagreeable
place to make the visit.''

  He grasped her hand at this.

  ``Yes, he will! too true! can't be helped: They say I'm
handsome.''

  ``You're lovely, Bella.''

  She drank in his homage.

  ``Well, we'll admit it. His Highness below likes lovely
women, I hear say. A gentlemen of taste! You don't know
all my accomplishments yet, Richard.''

  ``I sha'n't be astonished at anything new, Bella.''

  ``Then hear, and wonder.'' Her voice trolled out some
lively roulades. ``Don't you think he'll make me his prima
donna below? It's nonsense to tell me there's no singing
there. And the atmosphere will be favourable to the voice.
No _damp,_ you know. You saw the piano---why didn't you
ask me to sing before? I can sing Italian. I had a master
---who made love to me. I forgave him because of the
music-stool---men can't help it on a music-stool, poor
dears!''

  She went to the piano, struck the notes, and sang---

	``My heart, my heart---I think 'twill break.''

  ``Because I'm such a rake. I don't know any other
reason. No; I hate sentimental songs. Won't sing that.
Ta-tiddy-tiddy-iddy-a . . . e!     How ridiculous those
women were, coming home from Richmond!

	`` `Once the sweet romance of story
	    Clad thy moving form with grace;
	Once the world and all its glory
	    Was but framework to thy face.
	Ah, too fair!---what I remember,
	    Might my soul recall---but no!
	To the winds this wretched ember
	    Of a fire that falls so low!'

  ``Hum! don't much like that. Tum-te-tum-tam---accanto
al fuoco---heigho! I don't want to show off, Dick---or to
break down---so I won't try that.

	`` `Oh! but for thee, Oh! but for thee,
	    I might have been a happy wife,
	And nursed a baby on my knee,
	    And never blushed to give it life.'

  ``I used to sing that when I was a girl, sweet Richard,
and didn't know at all, at all, what it meant. Mustn't sing
that sort of song in company. We're oh! so proper---even
we!

	`` `If I had a; husband, what think you I'd do?
	    I'd make it my business to keep him a lover;
	For when a young gentleman ceases to woo,
	    Some other amusement he'll quickly discover.'

  ``For such are young gentlemen made of---made of: such
are young gentlemen made of!''

  After this trifling she sang a Spanish ballad sweetly. He
was in the mood when the imagination intensely vivifies
everything. Mere suggestions of music sufficed. The lady
in the ballad had been wronged. Lo! it was the lady
before him; and soft horns blew; he smelt the languid
night-flowers; he saw the stars crowd large and close above
the and plain: this lady leaning at her window desolate,
pouring out her abandoned heart.

  Heroes know little what they owe to champagne.

  The lady wandered to Venice. Thither he followed her at
a leap. In Venice she was not happy. He was prepared
for the misery of any woman anywhere. But, oh! to be
with her! To glide with phantom-motion through throbbing
streets; past houses muffled in shadow and gloomy legends;
under storied bridges; past palaces charged with full life in
dead quietness; past grand old towers, colossal squares,
gleaming quays, and out, and on with her, on into the silver
infinity shaking over seas!

  Was it the champagne? the music? or the poetry?
Something of the two former, perhaps: but most the
enchantress playing upon him. How many instruments
cannot clever women play upon at the same moment! And
this enchantress was not too clever, or he might have felt
her touch. She was no longer absolutely bent on winning
him, or he might have seen a man<oe>uvre. She liked him---
liked none better. She wished him well. Her pique was
satisfied. Still he was handsome, and he was going. What
she liked him for, she rather---very slightly---wished to do
away with, or see if it could be done away with: just as one
wishes to catch a pretty butterfly, without hurting its patterned
wings. No harm intended to the innocent insect,
only one wants to inspect it thoroughly, and enjoy the marvel
of it, in one's tender possession, and have the felicity of
thinking one could crush it, if one would.

  He knew her what she was, this lady. In Seville, or in
Venice, the spot was on her. Sailing the pathways of the
moon it was not celestial light that illumined her beauty.
Her sin was there: but in dreaming to save, he was soft to
her sin---drowned it in deep mournfulness.

  Silence, and the rustle of her dress, awoke him from his
musing. She swam wave-like to the sofa. She was at his feet.

  ``I have been light and careless to-night, Richard. Of
course I meant it. I _must_ be happy with my best friend
going to leave me.''

  Those witch underlids were working brightly.

  ``You will not forget me? and I shall try . . . try . . .''
Her lips twitched. She thought him such a very handsome
fellow.

  ``If I change---if I can change . . . Oh! if you could
know what a net I'm in, Richard!''

  Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard
loveliness, not divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang
like fire in his breast, and set him rocking with horrid pain.
He bent closer to her pale beseeching face. Her eyes still
drew him down.

  ``Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!''

  ``Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!''

  He cried: ``I never will!'' and strained her in his arms,
and kissed her passionately on the lips.

  She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted
head with a kind of maiden shame under his arm,
sighing heavily, weeping, clinging to him. It was wicked
truth.

  Not a word of love between them!

  Was ever hero in this fashion won?


	CHAPTER XL.

	THE LITTLE BIRD AND THE FALCON: A BERRY TO THE RESCUE


  At a season when the pleasant South-western island has
few attractions to other than invalids and hermits enamoured
of wind and rain, the potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon,
still lingered there to the disgust of his friends and
special parasite. ``Mount's in for it again,'' they said
among themselves. ``Hang the women!'' was a natural
sequence. For, don't you see, what a shame it was of the
women to be always kindling such a very inflammable
subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged his bow,
and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but
none would perceive, though he vouched for it with his
most eloquent oaths, that this was a totally different case
from the antecedent ones. So it had been sworn to them
too frequently before. He was as a man with mighty
tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but
inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed
and expounded his noble emotions. They were now quite
beyond the comprehension of blasphemy, even when emphasized,
and by this the poor lord divinely felt the case was
different. There is something impressive in a great human
hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery
he cannot contend with, or account for, or explain by means
of intelligible words. At first he took refuge in the depths
of his contempt for women. Cupid gave him line. When
he had come to vent his worst of them, the fair face stamped
on his brain beamed the more triumphantly: so the harpooned
whale rose to the surface, and after a few convulsions,
surrendered his huge length. My lord was in love
with Richard's young wife. He gave proofs of it by burying
himself beside her. To her, could she have seen it, he
gave further proofs of a real devotion, in affecting, and in
her presence feeling, nothing beyond a lively interest in her
well-being. This wonder, that when near her he should be
cool and composed, and when away from her wrapped in a
tempest of desires, was matter for what powers of cogitation
the heavy nobleman possessed.

  The Hon. Peter, tired of his journeys to and fro, urged
him to press the business. Lord Mountfalcon was wiser,
or more scrupulous, than his parasite. Almost every evening
he saw Lucy. The inexperienced little wife apprehended
no harm in his visits. Moreover, Richard had commanded
her to the care of Lord Mountfalcon, and Lady Judith.
Lady Judith had left the island for London: Lord Mountfalcon
remained. There could be no harm. If she had ever
thought so, she no longer did. Secretly, perhaps, she was
flattered. Lord Mountfalcon was as well educated as it is
the fortune of the run of titled elder sons to be: he could
talk and instruct: he was a lord: and he let her understand
that he was wicked, very wicked, and that she improved
him. The heroine, in common with the hero, has her
ambition to be of use in the world-to do some good: and
the task of reclaiming a bad man is extremely seductive
to good women. Dear to their tender bosoms as old
china is a bad man they are mending! Lord Mountfalcon
had none of the arts of a libertine: his gold, his title,
and his person, had hitherto preserved him from having
long to sigh in vain, or sigh at all, possibly: the Hon.
Peter did his villanies for him. No alarm was given to
Lucy's pure instinct, as might have been the case had my
lord been over-adept. It was nice in her martyrdom to have
a true friend to support her, and really to be able to do
something for that friend. Too simple-minded to think
much of his lordship's position, she was yet a woman. ``He,
a great nobleman, does not scorn to acknowledge me, and
think something of me,'' may have been one of the half-thoughts
passing through her now and then, as she reflected
in self-defence on the proud family she had married into.

  January was watering and freezing old earth by turns,
when the Hon. Peter travelled down to the sun of his purse
with great news. He had no sooner broached his lordship's
immediate weakness, than Mountfalcon began to plunge like
a heavy dragoon in difficulties. He swore by this and that
he had come across an angel for his sins, and would do her
no hurt. The next moment he swore she must be his, though
she cursed like a cat. His lordship's illustrations were not
choice. ``I haven't advanced an inch,'' he groaned. ``Brayder!
upon my soul, that little woman could do anything
with me. By heaven! I'd marry her to-morrow. Here I
am, seeing her every day in the week out or in, and what do
you think she gets me to talk about?---history! Isn't it
enough to make a fellow mad? and there am I lecturing like
a prig, and by heaven! while I'm at it I feel a pleasure in
it; and when I leave the house I should feel an immense
gratification in shooting somebody. What do they say in
town?''

  ``Not much,'' said Brayder significantly.

  ``When's that fellow---her husband---coming down?''

  ``I rather hope we've settled him for life, Mount.''

  Nobleman and parasite exchanged looks.

  ``How d'ye mean?''

  Brayder hummed an air, and broke it to say, ``He's in for
Don Juan at a gallop, that's all.''

  ``The deuce! Has Bella got him?'' Mountfalcon asked
with eagerness.

  Brayder handed my lord a letter. It was dated from the
Sussex coast, signed ``Richard,'' and was worded thus:

  ``My beautiful Devil---

  ``Since we're both devils together, and have found each
other out, come to me at once, or I shall be going somewhere
in a hurry. Come, my bright hell-star! I ran away from
you, and now I ask you to come to me! You have taught
me how devils love, and I can't do without you. Come an
hour after you receive this.''

  Mountfalcon turned over the letter to see if there was any
more. ``Complimentary love-epistle!'' he remarked, and
rising from his chair and striding about, muttered, ``The
dog! how infamously he treats his wife!''

  ``Very bad,'' said Brayder.

  ``How did you get hold of this?''

  ``Strolled into Bella's dressing-room, waiting for her---
turned over her pincushion haphazard. You know her
trick.''

  ``By Jove! I think that girl does it on purpose. Thank
heaven, I haven't written her any letters for an age. Is
she going to him?''

  ``Not she! But it's odd, Mount!---did you ever know her
refuse money before? She tore up the cheque in style, and
presented me the fragments with two or three of the delicacies
of language she learnt at your Academy. I rather
like to hear a woman swear. It embellishes her!''

  Mountfalcon took counsel of his parasite as to the end the
letter could me made be serve. Both conscientiously agreed
that Richard's behaviour to his wife was infamous, and that
he at least deserved no mercy. ``But,'' said his lordship,
``it won't do to show the letter. At first she'll be swearing
it's false, and then she'll stick to him closer. I know the
slut.''

  ``The rule of contrary,'' said Brayder carelessly. ``She
must see the trahison with her eyes. They believe their
eyes. There's your chance, Mount. You step in: you give
her revenge and consolation---two birds at one shot. That's
what they like.''

  ``You're an ass, Brayder,'' the nobleman exclaimed.
``You're an infernal blackguard. You talk of this little
woman as if she and other women were all of a piece. I
don't see anything I gain by this confounded letter. Her
husband's a brute---that's clear.''

  ``Will you leave it to me, Mount?''

  ``Be damned before I do!'' muttered my lord.

  ``Thank you. Now see how this will end. You're too
soft, Mount. You'll be made a fool of.''

  ``I tell you, Brayder, there's nothing to be done. If I
carry her off---I've been on the point of doing it every day---
what'll come of that? She'll look---I can't stand her eyes---
I shall be a fool---worse off with her than I am now.''

  Mountfalcon yawned despondently. ``And what do you
think?'' he pursued. ``Isn't it enough to make a fellow
gnash his teeth? She's . . .'' he mentioned something in an
underbreath, and turned red as he said it.

  ``Hm!'' Brayder put up his mouth and rapped the handle
of his cane on his chin. ``That's disagreeable, Mount. You
don't exactly want to act in that character. You haven't
got a diploma. Bother!''

  ``Do you think I love her a bit less?'' broke out my lord
in a frenzy. ``By heaven! I'd read to her by her bedside,
and talk that infernal history to her, if it pleased her, all
day and all night.''

  ``You're evidently graduating for a midwife, Mount.''

  The nobleman appeared silently to accept the imputation.

  ``What do they say in town?'' he asked again. 

  Brayder said the sole question was, whether it was maid,
wife, or widow.

  ``I'll go to her this evening,'' Mountfalcon resumed, after
---to judge by the cast of his face---reflecting deeply. ``I'll
go to her this evening. She shall know what infernal torment
she makes me suffer.''

  ``Do you mean to say she don't know it?''

  ``Hasn't an idea---thinks me a friend. And so, by heaven!
I'll be to her.''

  ``A-hm!'' went the Honourable Peter. ``This way to
the sign of the Green Man, ladies!''

  ``Do you want to be pitched out of the window,
Brayder?''

  ``Once was enough, Mount. The Salvage Man is strong.
I may have forgotten the trick of alighting on my feet.
There---there! I'll be sworn she's excessively innocent, and
thinks you a disinterested friend.''

  ``I'll go to her this evening,'' Mountfalcon repeated.
``She shall know what damned misery it is to see her in
such a position. I can't hold out any longer. Deceit's
horrible to such a girl as that. I'd rather have her cursing
me than''------

  ``Caressing?'' the Hon. Peter ventured to suggest.

  ``Speaking and looking as she does,'' continued my lord,
not heeding him. ``Dear little girl!---she's only a child.
You haven't an idea how sensible that little woman is.''

  ``Have you?'' inquired the cunning one.

  ``My belief is, Brayder, that there are angels among
women,'' said Mountfalcon, evading his parasite's eye as he
spoke.

  To the world Lord Mountfalcon was the thoroughly
wicked man; his parasite simply ingeniously dissipated.
Full many a man of God had thought it the easier task to
reclaim the Hon. Peter.

  Lucy received her noble friend by firelight that evening,
and sat much in the shade. She offered to have the candles
brought in. He begged her to allow the room to remain as
it was. ``I have something to say to you,'' he observed with
a certain solemnity.

  ``Yes---to me?'' said Lucy quickly.

  Lord Mountfalcon knew he had a great deal to say, but
how to say it, and what it exactly was, he did not know.

  ``You conceal it admirably,'' he began, ``but you must be
very lonely here---I fear, unhappy.''

  ``I should have been lonely, but for your kindness, my
lord,'' said Lucy. ``I am not unhappy.'' Her face was in
shade and could not belie her.

  ``Is there any help that one who would really be your
friend might give you, Mrs. Feverel?''

  ``None indeed that I know of,'' Lucy replied. ``Who can
help us to pay for our sins?''

  ``At least you may permit me to endeavour to pay my
debts, since you have helped me to wash out some of _my_
sins.''

  ``Ah, my lord!'' said Lucy, not displeased. It is sweet
for a woman to believe she had drawn the serpent's teeth.

  ``I tell you the truth,'' Lord Mountfalcon went on. ``What
object could I have in deceiving you? I know you quite
above flattery---so different from other women!''

  ``Oh, pray do not say that,'' interposed Lucy.

  ``According to my experience, then.''

  ``But you say you have met such---such very bad
women.''

  ``I have. And now that I meet a good one, it is my
misfortune.''

  ``Your misfortune, Lord Mountfalcon?''

  ``Yes, and I might say more.''

  His lordship held impressively mute.

  ``How strange men are!'' thought Lucy. ``He has some
unhappy secret.''

  Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room
on various pretences during the nobleman's visits, put a stop
to the revelation, if his lordship intended to make any.
When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling: ``Do you
know, I am always ashamed to ask you to begin to read.''

  Mountfalcon stared. ``To read?---oh! ha! yes!'' he remembered
his evening duties. ``Very happy, I'm sure.
_Lot_ me see. Where were we?''

  ``The life of the Emperor Julian. But indeed I feel quite
ashamed to ask you to read, my lord. It's new to me; like
a new world---hearing about Emperors, and armies, and
things that really have been on the earth we walk upon. It
fills my mind. But it must have ceased to interest you, and
I was thinking that I would not tease you any more.''

  ``Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel. 'Pon my honour,
I'd read till I was hoarse, to hear your remarks.''

  ``Are you laughing at me?''

  ``Do I look so?''

  Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping
the lids he could appear to endow them with mental
expression.

  ``No, you are not,'' said Lucy. ``I must thank you for
your forbearance.''

  The nobleman went on his honour loudly.

  Now it was an object of Lucy's to have him reading; for
his sake, for her sake, and for somebody else's sake; which
somebody else was probably considered first in the matter.
When he was reading to her, he seemed to be legitimizing
his presence there; and though she had no doubts or suspicions
whatever, she was easier in her heart while she had
him employed in that office. So she rose to fetch the book,
laid it open on the table at his lordship's elbow, and quietly
waited to ring for candles when he should be willing to commence.

  That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up
to the farce, and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent
unprotected child with anguish hanging over her, that withheld
the words he wanted to speak, or insinuate. He sat
silent and did nothing.

  ``What I do not like him for,'' said Lucy meditatively, ``is
his changing his religion. He would have been such a hero,
but for that. I could have loved him.''

  ``Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?'' Lord
Mountfalcon asked.

  ``The Emperor Julian.''

  ``Oh! the Emperor Julian! Well, he was an apostate:
but then, you know, he meant what he was about. He didn't
even do it for a woman.''

  ``For a woman!'' cried Lucy. ``What man would for a
woman?''

  ``I would.''

  ``You, Lord Mountfalcon?''

  ``Yes. I'd turn Catholic to-morrow.''

  ``You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord.''

  ``Then I'll unsay it.''

  Lucy slightly shuddered. She put her hand upon the bell
to ring for lights.

  ``Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?'' said the nobleman.

  ``Oh yes? yes! I do. One who does not give his conscience
I would not have.''

  ``If he gives his heart and body can he give more?''

  Lucy's hand pressed the bell. She did not like the doubtful
light with one who was so unscrupulous. Lord Mountfalcon
had never spoken in this way before. He spoke
better, too. She missed the aristocratic twang in his voice,
and the hesitation for words, and fluid lordliness with which
he rolled over difficulties in speech.

  Simultaneously with the sounding of the bell the door
opened, and presented Tom Bakewell. There was a double
knock at the same instant at the street door. Lucy delayed
to give orders.

  ``Can it be a letter, Tom?---so late!'' she said, changing
colour. ``Pray run and see.''

  ``That an't a powst,'' Tom remarked, as he obeyed his
mistress.

  ``Are you very anxious for a letter, Mrs. Feverel?'' Lord
Mountfalcon inquired.

  ``Oh, no!---yes, I am, very!'' said Lucy. Her quick ear
caught the tones of a voice she remembered. ``That dear
old thing has come to see me,'' she cried, starting up.

  Tom ushered a bunch of black satin into the room.

  ``Mrs. Berry!'' said Lucy, running up to her and kissing
her.

  ``Me, my darlin'!'' Mrs. Berry, breathless and rosy with
her journey, returned the salute. ``Me truly it is, in fault
of a better, for I ain't one to stand by and give the devil.
his licence---roamin'! and the salt sure enough have spoilt
my bride-gown at the beginnin', which ain't the best sign.
Bless ye! Oh, here he is.'' She behold a male figure in a
chair by the half light, and swung round to address him.
``You bad man!'' she held aloft one of her fat fingers, ``I've
come on ye like a bolt, I have, and goin' to make ye do your
duty, naughty boy! But your my darlin' babe,'' she melted,
as was her custom, ``and I'll never meet you and not give to
ye the kiss of a mother.''

  Before Lord Mountfalcon could find time to expostulate
the soft woman had him by the neck, and was down among
his luxurious whiskers.

  ``Ha!'' She gave a smothered shriek, and fell back.
``What hair's that?''

  Tom Bakewell just then illumined the transaction.

  ``Oh, my gracious!'' Mrs. Berry breathed with horror,
``I been and kiss a strange man!''

  Lucy, half-laughing, but in dreadful concern, begged the
noble lord to excuse the woful mistake.

  ``Extremely flattered, highly favoured, I'm sure,'' said his
lordship, re-arranging his disconcerted moustache; ``may I
beg the pleasure of an introduction?''

  ``My husband's dear old nurse---Mrs. Berry,'' said Lucy,
taking her hand to lend her countenance. ``Lord Mountfalcon,
Mrs. Berry.''

  Mrs. Berry sought grace while she performed a series of
apologetic bobs, and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.
``'M sure, my lord! 'm sure, my lord! had I a'known
---your lordship know I never should 'a presume. Oh, dear!
oh, dear! it was accidentals, quite, my lord! mistakin' of
your lordship for another. I never, never kiss a man but
my babe and my Berry, never! no indeed! not bein' the
woman to---''

  ``Pray don't exclude me now,'' said the affable nobleman.

  Lucy put her into a chair: Lord Mountfalcon asked for an
account of her passage over to the island; receiving distressingly
full particulars, by which it was revealed that the softness
of her heart was only equalled by the weakness of her
stomach. The recital calmed Mrs. Berry down.

  ``Well, and where's my---where's Mr. Richard? 'yer husband,
my dear?'' Mrs. Berry turned from her tale to question.

  ``Did you expect to see him here?'' said Lucy in a broken
voice.

  ``And where else, my love? since he haven't been seen in
London a whole fortnight.''

  Lucy did not speak.

  ``We will dismiss the Emperor Julian till to-morrow, I
think,'' said Lord Mountfalcon rising, and bowing.

  Lucy gave him her hand with mute thanks. He touched
it distantly, embraced Mrs. Berry in a farewell bow and was
shown out of the house by Tom Bakewell.

  The moment he was satisfactorily gone, Mrs. Berry threw
up her arms. ``Did ye ever know sich a horrid thing to go
and happen to a virtous woman!'' she exclaimed. ``I could
cry at it, I could! To be goin' and kissin' a strange hairy
man! Oh, dear me! what's comin' next, I wonder? Whiskers!
thinks I---for I know the touch o' whiskers---'t ain't
like other hair---what! have he growed a crop that sudden,
I says to myself; and it kind o' flashed on me I been and
made a awful mistake! and the lights come in, and I see
that great hairy man---beggin' his pardon---nobleman, and
if I could 'a dropped through the floor out o' sight o' men,
drat 'em! they're al'ays in the way, that they are!''

  ``Mrs. Berry,'' Lucy checked her, ``did you expect to find
him here?''

  ``Askin' that solemn?'' retorted Berry. ``What him?
your husband? O' course I did! and you got him---somewheres
hid.''

  ``I have not heard from my husband for fifteen days,''
said Lucy, and her tears rolled heavily off her cheeks.

  ``Not heer from him!---fifteen days!'' Berry echoed.

  ``O Mrs. Berry! dear kind Mrs. Berry! have you no
news? nothing to tell me! I've borne it so long. They're
cruel to me, Mrs. Berry. Oh, do you know if I have offended
him---my husband? While he wrote I did not complain. I
could live on his letters for years. But not to hear from
him! To think I have ruined him, and that he repents!
Do they want to take him from me? Do they want me
dead? O Mrs. Berry! I've had no one to speak out my
heart to all this time, and I cannot, cannot help crying,
Mrs. Berry!''

  Mrs. Berry was inclined to be miserable at what she
heard from Lucy's lips, and she was herself full of dire
apprehension; but it was never this excellent creature's
system to be miserable in company. The sight of a sorrow
that was not positive, and could not refer to proof, set her
resolutely the other way.

  ``Fiddle-faddle,'' she said. ``I'd like to see him repent!
He won't find anywheres a beauty like his own dear little
wife, and he know it. Now, look you here, my dear---you
blessed weepin' pet---the man that could see ye with that
hair of yours there in ruins, and he backed by the law, and
not rush into your arms and hold ye squeezed for life, he
ain't got much man in him, I say; and no one can say that
of my babe! I was sayin', look here, to comfort ye---Oh, why,
to be sure he've got some surprise for ye. And so've I, my
lamb! Hark, now! His father've come to town, like a good
reasonable man at last, to u-nite ye both, and bring your
bodies together, as your hearts is, for everlastin'. Now
ain't that news?''

  ``Oh?'' cried Lucy, ``that takes my last hope away. I
thought he had gone to his father. She burst into fresh
tears.

  Mrs. Berry---paused, disturbed.

  ``Belike he's travellin' after him,'' she suggested.

  ``Fifteen days, Mrs. Berry!''

  ``Ah, fifteen weeks, my dear, after sich a man as that.
He's a regular meteor, is Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham
Abbey. Well, so hark you here. I says to myself, that
knows him---for I did think my babe _was_ in his natural nest
---I says, the bar'net'll never write for you both to come up
and beg forgiveness, so down I'll go and fetch you up. For
there was your mistake, my dear, ever to leave your husband
to go away from ye one hour in a young marriage. It's
dangerous, it's mad, it's wrong, and it's only to be righted
by your obeyin' of me, as I commands it: for I has my fits,
though I _am_ a soft 'un. Obey me, and ye'll be happy to-morrow---
or the next to it.''

  Lucy was willing to see comfort. She was weary of her
self-inflicted martyrdom, and glad to give herself up to
somebody else's guidance utterly.

  ``But why does he not write to me, Mrs. Berry?''

  ``'Cause, 'cause---who can tell the why of men, my clear?
But that he love ye faithful, I'll swear. Haven't he groaned
in my arms that he couldn't come to ye?---weak wretch!
Hasn't he swore how he loved ye to me, poor young man!
But this is your fault, my sweet. Yes, it be. You should
'a followed my 'dvice at the fust---'stead o' going into your
'eroics about this and t'other.'' Here Mrs. Berry poured
forth fresh sentences on matrimony, pointed especially at
young couples. ``I should 'a been a fool if I hadn't suffered
myself,'' she confessed, ``so I'll thank my Berry if I makes
you wise in season.''

  Lucy smoothed her ruddy plump cheeks, and gazed up
affectionately into the soft woman's' kind brown eyes. Endearing
phrases passed from mouth to mouth. And as she
gazed Lucy blushed, as one who has something very secret
to tell, very sweet, very strange, but cannot quite bring
herself to speak it.

  ``Well! there's three men in my life I kissed,'' said Mrs.
Berry, too much absorbed in her extraordinary adventure to
notice the young wife's struggling bosom, ``three men, and
one a nobleman! He 've got more whisker than my Berry.
I wonder what the man thought. Ten to one he'll think,
now, I was glad o' my chance---they're that vain, whether
they's lords or commons. How was I to know? I nat'ral
thinks none but her husband 'd sit in that chair. Ha! and
in the dark? and alone with ye?'' Mrs. Berry hardened
her eyes, ``and your husband away? What do this mean?
Tell to me, child, what it mean his bein' here alone without
ere a candle?''

  ``Lord Mountfalcon is the only friend I have here,'' said
Lucy. ``He is very kind. He comes almost every evening---''

  ``Lord Muntfalcon---that his name?'' Mrs. Berry exclaimed.
``I been that flurried by the man, I didn't mind it
at first. He come every evenin', and your husband out o'
sight! My goodness me! it's gettin' worse and worse.
And what do he come for, now, ma'am? Now tell me
candid what ye do together here in the dark of an evenin'.''

  Mrs. Berry glanced severely.

  ``O Mrs. Berry! please not to speak in that way---I don't
like it,'' said Lucy pouting.

  ``What do he come for, I ask?''

  ``Because he is kind, Mrs. Berry. He sees me very lonely,
and wishes to amuse me. And he tells me of things I know
nothing about and------''

  ``And wants to be a teachin' some of his things, mayhap,''
Mrs. Berry interrupted with a ruffled breast.

  ``You are a very ungenerous, suspicious, naughty old
woman,'' said Lucy, chiding her.

  ``And you're a silly, unsuspectin' little bird,'' Mrs. Berry
retorted, as she returned her taps on the cheek. ``You
haven't told me what ye do together, and what's his excuse
for comin'.''

  ``Well, then, Mrs. Berry, almost every evening that he
comes we read History, and he explains the battles, and
talks to me about the great men. And _he_ says I'm not silly,
Mrs. Berry.''

  ``That's' one bit o' lime on your wings, my bird. History,
indeed! History to a young married lovely woman alone in
the dark! a pretty History! Why, I know that man's name,
my dear. He's a notorious living rake, that Lord Mountfalcon.
No woman's safe with him.''

  ``Ah, but he hasn't deceived me, Mrs. Berry. He has not
pretended he was good.''

  ``More's his art,'' quoth the experienced dame. ``So you
read---History together in the dark, my dear!''

  ``I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to
see my face. Look! there's the book open ready for him
when the candles come in. And now, you dear kind darling
old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me. I do love you.
Talk of other things.''

  ``So we will,'' said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy's caresses.
``So let us. A nobleman, indeed! alone with a young wife
in the dark, and she sich a beauty! I say this shall be put
a stop to now and 'enceforth, on the spot it shall! He won't
meneuvle Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I drop him.
I'm dyin' for a cup a' tea, dear.''

  Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable
of quite dropping him, was continuing to say: ``Let him go
and boast I kiss him; he ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of in a
chaste woman's kiss---unawares---which men don't get too
often in their lives, I can assure 'em;''---her eye surveyed
Lucy's figure.

  Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded
her with her arms, and drew her into feminine depths. ``Oh,
you blessed!'' she cried in most meaning tone, ``you good,
lovin', proper little wife, you!''

  ``What is it, Mrs. Berry!'' lisps Lucy, opening the most
innocent blue eyes.

  ``As if _I_ couldn't see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded
me, or I'd 'a marked ye the fust shock. Thinkin' to deceive
me!''

  Mrs. Berry's eves spoke generations. Lucy's wavered;
she coloured all over, and hid her face on the bounteous
breast that mounted to her.

  ``You're a sweet one,'' murmured the soft woman, patting
her back, and rocking her. ``You're a rose, you are! and a
bud on your stalk. Haven't told a word to your husband,
my dear?'' she asked quickly.

  Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.

  ``That's right. We'll give him a surprise; let it come all
at once on him, and thinks he---losin 'breath---`I'm a father!'
Nor a hint even you haven't give him?''

  Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.

  ``Oh! you _are_ a sweet one,'' said Bessy Berry, and rocked
her more closely and lovingly.

  Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which
let all of male persuasion retire a space nothing under one
mile.

  Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting
dates on her fingers' ends. Concluding the sum, she
cries prophetically: ``Now this right everything---a baby in
the balance! Now I say this angel-infant come from on
high. It's God's messenger, my love! and it's not wrong to
say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn't 'a had one
---not for all the tryin' in the world, you wouldn't, and some
tries hard enough, poor creatures! Now let us rejice and
make merry! I'm for cryin' and laughin', one and the same.
---This is the blessed seal of matrimony, which Berry never
stamp on me. It's be hoped it's a boy. Make that man a
grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe.
Oh! this is what I call 'appiness, and I'll have my tea a
little stronger in consequence. I declare I could get tipsy,
to know this joyful news.''

  So Mr. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger.
She ate and she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The
bliss of the chaste was hers.

  Says Lucy demurely: ``Now you know why I read
History, and that sort of books.''

  ``Do I?'' replies Berry. ``Belike I do. Since what you
done's so good, my darlin', I'm agreeable to anything. A
fig for all the lords! They can't come anigh a baby. You
may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and Romances, and
Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your own
dear way, and that's all I cares for.''

  ``No, but you don't understand,'' persists Lucy. ``I only
read sensible books, and talk of serious things, because I'm
sure . . . because I have heard say . . . dear Mrs. Berry!
don't you understand now?''

  Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. ``Only to think of her
bein' that thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell
me that people of one religion ain't as good as another, after
that. Why, you want to make him a historian, to be sure!
And that rake of a lord who've been comin' here playin' at
wolf, you been and made him---unbeknown to himself---sort
o' tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that little
women ain't got art ekal to the cunningest of 'em. Oh! I
understand. Why, to be sure, didn't I know a lady, a widow
of a clergyman: he was a postermost child, and afore his
birth that woman read nothin' but Blair's `Grave' over and
over again, from the end to the beginnin';---that's a serious
book!---very hard readin'!---and at four year of age that child
that come of it reelly was the piousest infant!---he was like
a little curate. His eyes was up; he talked se solemn.''
Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate's appearance and manner
of speaking. ``So she got her wish, for one!''

  But at this lady Lucy laughed.

  They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged
for Mrs. Berry to sleep with her. ``If it's not dreadful to
ye, my sweet, sleepin' beside a woman,'' said Mrs. Berry.
``I know it were to me shortly after my Berry, and felt it.
It don't somehow seem nat'ral after matrimony---a woman
in your bed! I was 'bliged t' ave somebody, for the cold
sheets do give ye the creeps when you've been used to that
that's different.''

  Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these
objections. Then Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited
pretty caps, and laced linen, all adapted for a very small
body, all the work of her own hands: and Mrs. Berry praised
them and her. ``You been guessing a boy---womanlike,''
she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed by
the fire, and knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each
other, praying; both praying for the unborn child; and Mrs.
Berry pressed Lucy's waist the moment she was about to
breathe the petition to heaven to shield and bless that
coming life; and thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a strong
love for her. Then Lucy got into bed first, leaving Berry
to put out the light, and before she did so, Berry leaned over
her, and eyed her roguishly, saying, ``I never see ye like this,
but I'm half in love with ye myself, you blushin' beauty!
Sweet's your eyes, and your hair do take one so---lyin' back.
I'd never forgive my father if he kep me away from ye four-and-twenty
hours just. Husband o' that!'' Berry pointed
at the young wife's loveliness. ``Ye look so ripe with kisses,
and there they are a-langishin'!--- . . You never look
so but in your bed, ye beauty!---just as it ought to be.''
Lucy had to pretend to rise to put out the light before Berry
would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they lay
in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their
departure to-morrow, and reviewed Richard's emotions when
he came to hear he was going to be made a father by her,
and hinted at Lucy's delicious shivers when Richard was
again in his rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now
usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things; enough to
make one fancy the adage subverted, that stolen fruits are
sweetest; she drew such glowing pictures of bliss within the
law and the limits of the conscience, till at last, worn out,
Lucy murmured ``Peepy, dear Berry,'' and the soft woman
gradually ceased her chirp.

  Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet
brave heart beside her, and listening to Lucy's breath as it
came and went; squeezing the fair sleeper's hand now and
then, to ease her love as her reflections warmed. A storm of
wind came howling over the Hampshire hills, and sprang
white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It
passed, leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land. The
moon shone brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark.
His bark was savage and persistent. She was roused by the
noise. By and by she fancied she heard a movement in the
house; then it seemed to her that the house-door opened.
She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in
the midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked
and bolted the door of the room, assured herself of Lucy's
unconsciousness, and went on tiptoe to the window. The
trees all stood white to the north; the ground glittered; the
cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her
bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the situation
of the window permitted. Berry was a soft, not a
timid, woman: and it happened this night that her thoughts
were above the fears of the dark. She was sure of the
voices; curiosity without a shade of alarm held her on the
watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel round her
neck and shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth
as well as she could, and remained stationary. The low hum
of the voices came to a break; something was said in a
louder tone; the house-door quietly shut; a man walked out
of the garden into the road. He paused opposite her
window, and Berry let the blind go back to its place, and
peeped from behind an edge of it. He was in the shadow of
the house, so that it was impossible to discern much of his
figure. After some minutes he walked rapidly away, and
Berry returned to the bed an icicle, from which Lucy's
limbs sensitively shrank.

  Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had
been disturbed in the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he
had slept like a top. Mrs. Berry went into the garden. The
snow was partially melted; all save one spot, just under the
portal, and there she saw the print of a man's foot. By
some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one
of Richard's boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she
measured the sole of the boot in that solitary footmark.
There could be no doubt that it fitted. She tried it from
heel to toe a dozen times.



	CHAPTER XLI.

	CLARE'S DIARY.

  Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity
of a philosopher who says, 'Tis now time; and the satisfaction
of a man who has not arrived thereat without a
struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His deep love
for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and
more tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for
the creature who had robbed him of his son and hewed at
his System, were in his heart of hearts. This he knew; and
in his own mind he took credit for his softness. But the
world must not suppose him soft; the world must think he
was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his
long absence signify?---Something highly unphilosophical.
So, though love was strong, and was moving him to a
straightforward course, the last tug of vanity drew him still
aslant.

  The Aphorist read himself so well, that to Juggle with
himself was a necessity. As he wished the world to see
him, he beheld himself: one who entirely put aside mere
personal feelings: one in whom parental duty, based on the
science of life, was paramount: a Scientific Humanist, in
short

  He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady
Blandish's manner when he did appear. ``At last!'' said
the lady, in a sad way that sounded reproachfully. Now the
Scientific Humanist had, of course, nothing to reproach
himself with.

  But where was Richard?

  Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.

  ``If he had gone,'' said the baronet, ``he would have anticipated
me by a few hours.''

  This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated
her, and shown his great forgiveness. She, however,
sighed, and looked at him wistfully.

  Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy
did not seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases
encountered a rueful assent, more flattering to their grandeur
than to their influence.

  Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir
Austin's pitch of self-command was to await the youth without
signs of impatience.

  Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and
mentioned the rumour of him that was about.

  ``If'' said the baronet, ``this person, his wife, is what you
paint her, I do not share your fears for him. I think too
well of him. If she is one to inspire the sacredness of that
union, I think too well of him. It is impossible.''

  The lady saw one thing to be done.

  ``Call her to you,'' she said. ``Have her with you at
Raynham. Recognize her. It is the disunion and doubt
that so confuses him and drives him wild. I confess to you
I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If she is with
you his way will be clear. Will you do that?''

  Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish's
proposition was far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid
by nature, have no idea of science.

  ``We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present
let it be between me and my son.''

  He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to
do anything, when he had just brought himself to do so much.

  A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.

  The meeting between him and his father was not what his
father had expected, and had crooned over in the Welsh
mountains, among the echoes of his Aphorisms. Richard
shook his hand respectfully, and inquired after his health
with the common social solicitude. He then said: ``During
your absence, sir, I have taken the liberty, without consulting
you, to do something in which you are more deeply concerned
than myself. I have taken upon myself to find out my
mother and place her under my care. I trust you will not
think I have done wrong. I acted as I thought best.''

  Sir Austin replied: ``You are of an age, Richard, to judge
for yourself in such a case. I would have you simply beware
of deceiving yourself in imagining that you considered any
one but yourself in acting as you did.''

  ``I have not deceived myself, sir,'' said Richard, and the
interview was over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings,
and in that both were satisfied: but the baronet, as one who
loves, hoped and looked for tones indicative of trouble and
delight in the deep heart; and Richard gave him none of
those. The young man did not even face him as he spoke:
if their eyes met by chance, Richard's were defiantly cold,
His whole bearing was changed.

  ``This rash marriage has altered him,'' said the very just
man of science in life, and that meant: ``it has debased him.''

  He pursued his reflections. ``I see in him the desperate
maturity of a suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith
that good work is never lost, what should I think of the toil
of my years? Lost, perhaps to me! lost to him! It may
show itself in his children.''

  The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in
benefiting embryos: but it was a somewhat bitter prospect
to Sir Austin. Bitterly he felt the injury to himself.
One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman
called at the hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw
her, and she told him a tale that threw Christian light on
one part of Richard's nature. But this might gratify the
father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man of science.
A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought. He sat
down deliberately to study his son.

  No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and
drank; joked and laughed. He was generally before Adrian
in calling for a fresh bottle. He talked easily of current
topics; his gaiety did not sound forced. In all he did, nevertheless,
there was not the air of a youth who sees a future
before him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be carelessness,
and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much
on his mind. The man of science was not reckoning that
Richard also might have learned to act and wear a mask.
Dead subjects---that is to say, people not on their guard---he
could penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare chance, as
scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
examining the structure of the living.

  However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin.
They were engaged to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys,
and walked down to her in the afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm,
Adrian beside them. Previously the offended father
had condescended to inform his son that it would shortly be
time for him to return to his wife, indicating that arrangements
would ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham.
Richard had replied nothing; which might mean
excess of gratitude, or hypocrisy in concealing his pleasure,
or any one of the thousand shifts by which gratified human
nature expresses itself when all is made to run smooth with
it. Now Mrs. Berry had her surprise ready charged for the
young husband. She had Lucy in her own house waiting
for him. Every day she expected him to call and be overcome
by the rapturous surprise, and every day, knowing his
habit of frequenting the park, she marched Lucy thither,
under the plea that Master Richard, whom she had already
christened, should have an airing.

  The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare
Kensington chestnuts, when these two parties met. Happily
for Lucy and the hope she bore in her bosom, she was perversely
admiring a fair horsewoman galloping by at the
moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or twice, to
prepare her eyes for the shock, but Lucy's head was still
half averted, and thinks Mrs. Berry ``'Twon't hurt her if
she go into his arms head foremost.'' They were close;
Mrs. Berry performed the bob preliminary. Richard held
her silent with a terrible face: he grasped her arm, and put
her behind him. Other people intervened. Lucy saw
nothing to account for Berry's excessive flutter. Berry
threw it on the air and some breakfast bacon, which, she
said, she knew in the morning while she ate it, was bad for
the bile, and which probably was the cause of her bursting
into tears, much to Lucy's astonishment.

  ``What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?''

  ``It's all------'' Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned
sideways, ``it's all stomach, my dear. Don't ye mind,'' and
becoming aware of her unfashionable behaviour, she trailed
off to the shelter of the elms.

  ``You have a singular manner with old ladies,'' said Sir
Austin to his son, after Berry had been swept aside.
``Scarcely courteous. She behaved like a mad woman, certainly.
---Are you ill, my son?''

  Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through
with weakness. The baronet sought Adrian's eye. Adrian
had seen Lucy as they passed, and he had a glimpse of
Richard's countenance while disposing of Berry. Had Lucy
recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly.
As she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances,
to leave matters as they were. He answered the baronet's
look with a shrug.

  ``Are you ill, Richard?'' Sir Austin again asked his son.

  ``Come on, sir! come on!'' cried Richard.

  His father's further meditations, as they stepped briskly
to the Foreys, gave poor Berry a character which one who
lectures on matrimony, and has kissed but three men in her
life, shrieks to hear the very title of.

  ``Richard will go to his wife to-morrow,'' Sir Austin said
to Adrian some time before they went in to dinner.

  Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired
lady by the side of the old one Richard had treated
so peculiarly; and to the baronet's acknowledgment that
he remembered to have observed such a person, Adrian said:
``That was his wife, sir.''

  Sir Austin could now dissect the living subject. As if a
bullet had torn open the young man's skull, and some blast
of battle laid his palpitating organization bare, he watched
every motion of his brain and his heart; and with the grief
and terror of one whose mental habit was ever to pierce to
extremes. Not altogether conscious that he had hitherto
played with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into
the stormful reality of it. He projected to speak plainly to
his son on all points that night.

  ``Richard is very gay,'' Mrs. Doria whispered her brother.

  ``All will be right with him to-morrow,'' he replied; for
the game had been in his hands so long, so long had he been
the God of the machine, that having once resolved to speak
plainly and to act, he was to a certain extent secure, bad as
the thing to mend might be.

  ``I notice he has a rather wild laugh---I don't exactly like
his eyes,'' said Mrs. Doria.

  ``You will see a change in him to-morrow,'' the man of
science remarked.

  It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that
change. In the middle of the dinner a telegraphic message
from her son-in-law, worthy John Todhunter, reached the
house, stating that Clare was alarmingly ill, bidding her
come instantly. She cast about for some one to accompany
her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his consent
for Richard to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him
apart, and in that interview he said to his son: ``My dear
Richard! it was my intention that we should come to an
understanding together this night. But the time is short---
poor Helen cannot spare many minutes. Let me then say
that you deceived me, and that I forgive you. We fix  our
seal on the past. You will bring your wife to me when you
return.'' And very cheerfully the baronet looked down on
the generous future he thus founded.

  ``Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?'' said
Richard.

  ``Yes, my son, when you bring her.''

  ``Are you mocking me, sir?''

  ``Pray, what do you mean?''

  ``I ask you to receive her at once.''

  ``Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend
that you will be kept from your happiness many days.''

  ``I think it will be some time, sir!'' said Richard, sighing
deeply.

  ``And what mental freak is this that can induce you to
postpone it and play with your first duty?''

  ``What is my first duty, sir?''

  ``Since you are married, to be with your wife.''

  ``I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!''
said Richard to himself, not intending irony.

  ``Will you receive her at once?'' he asked resolutely.
The baronet was clouded by his son's reception of his
graciousness. His grateful prospect had formerly been
Richard's marriage---the culmination of his System. Richard
had destroyed his participation in that. He now looked for
a pretty scene in recompense:---Richard leading up his wife
to him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so
held one ostentatious minute in his embrace.

  He said: ``Before you return, I demur to receiving
her.''

  ``Very well, sir,'' replied his son, and stood as if he had
spoken all.

  ``Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your
rash proceeding!'' the baronet exclaimed; and the next
moment it pained him he had uttered the words, Richard's
eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It pained him, but he
divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from
glancing acutely and asking: ``Do you?''

  ``Regret it, sir?'' The question aroused one of those
struggles in the young man's breast which a passionate
storm of tears may still, and which sink like leaden death
into the soul when tears come not. Richard's eyes had the
light of the desert.

  ``Do you?'' his father repeated. ``You tempt me---I
almost fear you do.'' At the thought---for he expressed his
mind---the pity that he had for Richard was not pure gold.

  ``Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is!
Ask me what it is to have taken one of God's precious angels
and chained her to misery! Ask me what it is to have
plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand over her and
see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes,
I do! Would you?''

  His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his
eyebrows.

  Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand?
There is ever in the mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We
see and understand; we see and won't understand.

  ``Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon,''
he said gravely: and in the same voice Richard
answered: ``I passed her because I could not do otherwise.''

  ``Your wife, Richard?''

  ``Yes! my wife!''

  ``If she had seen you, Richard?''

  ``God spared her that!''

  Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing
Richard's hat and greatcoat in her energetic hands, came
between them at this juncture. Dimples of commiseration
were in her cheeks while she kissed her brother's perplexed
forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare, deploring his
fatuity.

  Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he
took counsel with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing.
``Somebody has kissed him, sir, and the chaste boy can't get
over it.'' This absurd suggestion did more to appease the
baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable reasonable key to
Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might be a
prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System
in difficulties.

  ``I may have been wrong in one thing,'' he said, with an
air of the utmost doubt of it. ``I, perhaps, was wrong in
allowing him so much liberty during his probation.''

  Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded
it.

  ``Yes, yes; that is on me.''

  His was an order of mind that would accept the most
burdensome charges, and by some species of moral usury
make a profit out of them.

  Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment
of the telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress
at a toothache, or possibly the first symptoms of an heir to
his house. 

  ``That child's mind has disease in it. She is not sound,''
said the baronet.

  On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood
Mrs. Berry. Her wish to speak a few words with the
baronet reverentially communicated, she was ushered
upstairs into his room.

  Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was
beckoned to occupy.

  ``Well, ma'am, you have something to say,'' observed the
baronet, for she seemed loth to commence.

  ``Wishin' I hadn't:'' Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful
of the good rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: ``I
dare say, Sir Austin, you don't remember me, and I little
thought when last we parted our meeting 'd be like this.
Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no more
than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,---twenty year!
Leastways not quite twenty, it ain't.''

  ``Round figures are best,'' Adrian remarked

  ``In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up,
---and got himself married!'' said Mrs. Berry, diving straight
into the case.

  Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit
who had assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch
of his patience to hear himself addressed on a family matter,
but he was naturally courteous.

  ``He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If
twenty year alters us as have knowed each other on the
earth, how must they alter they that we parted with just
come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! se
sweet! se strong! _so_ fat!''

  Adrian laughed aloud.

  Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: 
``I wished afore I spoke to say how thankful am I
bound to be for my pension not cut short, as have offended
so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey,
ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished.
And a pension to me now, it's something more than
it were. For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid,
which I was---that's a bait many a man 'll bite, that won't
so a forsaken wife!''

  ``If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to
you,'' the baronet interrupted her.

  ``It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over,
thank the Lord! So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:
---Lord speed me! Believin' our idees o' matrimony to be
sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married---married for life! Yes!
I don't even like widows. For I can't stop at the grave.
Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's my husband,
and if I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking
humbly, my Berry is the husband o' my body; and to think
of two claimin' of me then---it makes me hot all over. Such
is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman. No
givin' in marriage, o' course I know, and if so I'm single.''

  The baronet suppressed a smile. ``Really, my good
woman, you wander very much.''

  ``Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me
all the same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error,
it's done, and bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew
what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed 'taint all of
humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her
idees, too. She read History! She talk that sensible as
would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful
o' men---unpertected. And it's a young marriage---but
there's no fear for her, as far as she go. The fear's t'other
way. There's that in a man---at the commencement---
which make of him Lord knows what! if you any way
interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet. It's consolation
catch her, which is what we mean by seducin'. Whereas a'
man---he's a savage!''

  Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening
with huge delight.

  ``Well ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if
you would only come to it quickly.''

  ``Then here's my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him
so as there ain't another young gentleman like him in
England, and proud he make me. And as for her, I'll risk
sayin---it's done, and no harm---you might search England
through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's his match
like his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together
as should be? O Lord no! Months they been divided.
Then she all lonely and exposed, I went, and fetched her
out of seducers' ways---which they may say what they like,
but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and
confidin'---I fetch her, and---the liberty---boxed her safe in
my own house. So much for that sweet! That you may
do with women. But it's him---Mr. Richard---I _am_ bold, I
know, but there---I'm in for it, and the Lord 'll help me!
It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a
young marriage. It's him, and---I say nothin' of her, and
how sweet she bears it, and it's eating her at a time when.
Natur' should have no other trouble but the one that's goin'
on---it's him, and I ask---so bold---shall there---and a
Christian gentleman his father---shall there be a tug 'tween
him as a son and him as a husband---soon to be somethin'
else? I speak bold out---I'd have sons obey ther fathers,
but the priest's words spoke over him, which they're now in
my ears, I say I ain't a doubt on earth---I'm sure there ain't
one in heaven---which dooty's the holier of the two.''

  Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the
junction of the sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured
on his prime subject, however, was slightly disagreeable,
and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old lady's
doctine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred
that he had latterly followed it out. He sat cross-legged
and silent, a finger to his temple.

  ``One gets so addle'-pated thinkin' many things,'' said
Mrs. Berry, simply. ``That's why we see wonder clever
people al'ays goin' wrong---to my mind. I think it's al'ays
the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward.''

  The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's
thoughts, and she had absolutely ran him down and taken
an explanation out of his mouth, by which Mrs. Berry was
to have been informed that he had acted from a principle
of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected
to comprehend.

  Of course he became advised immediately that it would be
waste of time to direct such an explanation to her inferior
capacity.

  He gave her his hand, saying, ``My son has gone out of
town to see his cousin who is ill. He will return in two or
three days, and then they will both come to me at Raynham.''

  Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way
to the floor perpendicularly. ``He pass her like a stranger
in the park this evenin','' she faltered.

  ``Ah?'' said the baronet. ``Yes, well! they will be at
Raynham before the week is over.''

  Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. ``Not of his own
accord he pass that sweet young wife of his like a stranger
this day, Sir Austin!''

  ``I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am.''

  Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.

  ``All's well as ends well,'' she said to herself. ``It's bad
inquirin' too close among men. We must take 'em somethin'
like Providence---_as_ they come. Thank heaven! I
kep' back the baby.''

  In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.
Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen
of woman.

  ``I think I have not met a better in my life,'' said the
baronet, mingling praise and sarcasm.

			<*>

  Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she
breathed; her white hands stretched their length along the
sheets, at peace from head to feet. She needs iron no more.
Richard is face to face with death for the first time. He
sees the sculpture of clay---the spark gone.

  Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child
would have spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she
been alive. She was dead, and none knew her malady. On
her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.

  When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish,
she, for some comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange
thing to Richard, speaking low in the chamber of the dead;
and then he learnt that it was his own lost ring Clare wore
in the two worlds. He learnt from her husband Clare's last
request had been that neither of the rings should be removed.
She had written it; she would not speak it.

  ``I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have
the care of me between this and the grave, to bury me with
my hands untouched.''

  The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she
was suffering, as she wrote them on a scrap of paper found
beside her pillow.

  In wonder as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare's
dead hand, Richard paced the house, and hung about the
awful room; dreading to enter it, reluctant to quit it. The
secret Clare had buried while she lived, arose with her
death. He saw it play like flame across her marble features.
The memory of her voice was like a knife at his nerves. His
coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was
bitter blame.

  On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him
in his bedroom, with a face so white he asked himself if
aught worse could happen to a mother than the loss of her
child. Choking she said to him, ``Read this,'' and thrust a
leather-bound pocket-book trembling in his hand. She
would not breathe to him what it was. She entreated him
not to open it before her.

  ``Tell me,'' she said, ``tell me what you think. John
must not hear of it. I have nobody to consult but you---O
Richard!''

  ``=My Diary='' was written in the round hand of Clare's
childhood on the first page. The first name his eye encountered
was his own.

  ``Richard's fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a
purse and put it under his pillow, because he is going to
have plenty of money. He does not notice me now because
he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but Richard is not, and
never will be.''

  The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded,
and a childish prayer to God for him set down. Step by
step he saw her growing mind in his history. As she advanced
in years she began to look back, and made much of
little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.

  ``We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together,
and pelted each other, and I told him he used to call them
`coals-sleeps' when he was a baby, and he was angry at
my telling him, for he does not like to be told he was ever a
baby.''

  He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid
scorn of her meek affection. Little Clare! how she lived
before him in her white dress and pink ribbons, and soft dark
eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He read on:

  ``Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard,
and I am sure there is not, not in the whole world. He says
he is going to be a great General and going to the wars. If
he does I shall dress myself as a boy and go after him, and
he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray he will
never, never be wounded. I wonder what I should feel if
Richard was ever to die.''

  Upstairs Clare was lying dead.

  ``Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard
and me. Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head
as she does. He is angry with me because I do not look
people in the face and speak out, but I know I am not looking
after earth-worms.''

  Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the
recollection.

  Then it came to a period when the words: ``Richard
kissed me,'' stood by themselves, and marked a day in her life.

  Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote
poetry. He read one of his old forgotten compositions
penned when he had that ambition.

	``Thy truth to me is truer
	    Than horse, or doll, or blade;
	Thy vows to me are fewer
	    Than ever maiden made.

	Thou steppest from thy splendour
	    To make my life a song:
	My bosom shall be tender
	    As thine has risen strong.''

  All the verses were transcribed. ``It is he who is the
humble knight,'' Clare explained at the close, ``and his lady
is a Queen. Any Queen would throw her crown away for
him.''

  It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her
mother.

  ``Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys
and men. Something tells me I shall never see Raynham
again. He was dressed in blue. He said Good bye, Clare,
and kissed me on the cheek. Richard never kisses me on
the mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and kissed
him while he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm under his
head, and the other out on the bed. I moved away a bit of
his hair that was over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have
one piece. I do not let anybody, see I am unhappy, not even
mama. She says I want iron, I am sure I do not. I like
to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard's is Richard
Doria Feverel.''

  His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He
knew the music of that name. He had heard it somewhere.
It sounded faint and mellow now behind the hills of death.
He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour
seemed to belong to her. The awful stillness and the darkness
were Clare's. Clare's voice clear and cold from the
grave possessed it.

  Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless
pages. She spoke of his marriage, and her finding the
ring.

  ``I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married
that morning. I saw him stand by the altar when they
laughed at breakfast. His wife must be so beautiful!
Richard's wife! Perhaps he will love me better now he
is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is
shameful. If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may
be happy. I hope God hears poor sinners' prayers. I am
very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do. They say I am
good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not
looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me,
God!''

  Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her
duty to obey her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.

  ``I have seen Richard. Richard despises me,'' was the
next entry.

  But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate
feminine handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul
to one terrible conclusion.

  ``I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the
touch of my fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand
him now. He should not have kissed me so that last
time. I wished to die while his mouth was on mine.''

  Further: ``I have no escape. Richard said he would die
rather than endure it. I know he would. Why should I be
afraid to do what he would do? I think if my husband
whipped me I could bear it better. He is so kind, and tries
to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I
pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of
Him the more I pray.''

  Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges
seemed to be mounting and travelling for his brain. Had
Clare taken his wild words in earnest? Did she lie there
dead---he shrouded the thought.

  He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again
reading.

  ``A quarter to one o'clock. I shall not be alive this time
to-morrow. I shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last
night we were in the fields together, and he walked with his
arm round my waist. We were children, but I thought
we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and
he said---if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as
my wife. Then I made a vow to wear it for ever and ever.
. . . It is not mama's fault. She does not think as Richard
and I do of these things. He is not a coward, nor am I.
He hates cowards.

  ``I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps
when I am dead he will hear what I say.

  ``I heard just now Richard call distinctly---Clari, come
out to me. Surely he has not gone. I am going I know not
where. I cannot think. I am very cold.''

  The words were written larger, and staggered towards the
close, as if her hand had lost mastery over the pen.

  ``I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy
and a big boy. I am not sure now of his voice. I can only
remember certain words. `Clari,' and `Don Ricardo,' and
his laugh. He used to be full of fun. Once we laughed all
day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a friend,
and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married
a young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not
have been happier. I must have died. God never looks on
me.

  ``It is past two o'clock. The sheep are bleating outside.
It must be very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard.''

  With his name it began and ended. Even to herself
Clare was not over-communicative. The book was slender,
yet her nineteen years of existence left half the number of
pages white.

  Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her.
There she lay, the same impassive Clare. For a moment he
wondered she had not moved---to him she had become so
different. She who had just filled his ears with strange
tidings---it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed
to have been speaking to him all through his life. His
image was on that still heart.

  He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained
with her alone, till the sense of death oppressed him,
and then the shock sent him to the window to look for sky
and stars. Behind a low broad pine, hung with frosty mist,
he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent fold. Death
in life it sounded.

  The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed.
She knelt by his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs
shook their bodies, but neither of them shed many tears.
They held a dark unspoken secret in common. They prayed
God to forgive her.

  Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters.
Her mother breathed no wish to have her at
Lobourne.

  After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew
brought them together.

  ``Richard,'' she said, ``the worst is over for me. I have
no one to love but you, dear. We have all been fighting
against God, and this . . . Richard! you will come with
me, and be united to your wife, and spare my brother what
I suffer.''

  He answered the broken spirit. ``I have killed one. She
sees me as I am. I cannot go with you to my wife, because
I am not worthy to touch her hand, and were I to go, I
should do _this_ to silence my self-contempt. Go you to her,
and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head
that---No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which
shall cleanse me. If I find it I shall come to claim her. If
not, God help us all!''

  She had no force to contest his solemn words, or stay
him, and he went forth.



	CHAPTER XLII.

	AUSTIN RETURNS.


  A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the
full blaze of Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian
glanced leisurely behind.

  ``Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I'm
not a man of fashion happily, or you would have struck the
seat of them:---vital! How are you?''

  That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long
absence.

  Austin took his arm, and asked for news with the hunger
of one who had been in the wilderness five years.

  ``The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin.
The free Briton is to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot.
The Aristocracy has had a cycle's notice to quit. The
Monarchy and old Madeira are going out; Demos and Cape
wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see,
your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five
years, and you will return to ruined stomachs, cracked
sconces, general upset, and an equality made perfect by
universal prostration.''

  Austin indulged him in a laugh. ``I want to hear about
ourselves. How is old Ricky?''

  ``Yon know of his---what do they call it when greenhorns
are licensed to jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?---a
very charming little woman she makes, by the way---presentable!
quite old Anacreon's rose in milk. Well! everybody
thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It
continued to flourish in spite. It's in a consumption now,
though---emaciated, lean, raw, spectral! I've this morning
escaped from Raynham to avoid the sight of it. I have
brought our genial uncle Hippias to town---a delightful
companion! I said to him: `We've had a fine Spring.'
`Ugh!' he answers, `there's a time when you come to think
the Spring old.' You should have heard how he trained out
the `old.' I felt something like decay in my sap just to
hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our
uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's
guard ourselves there, and go and order dinner.''

  ``But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?'' said Austin.

  ``Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone
and got a baby!''

  ``A child? Richard has one?'' Austin's clear eyes shone
with pleasure.

  ``I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages.
He has one: one as big as two. 'Tis that has been the
death-blow to the System. It bore the marriage---the baby
was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby, 't would
live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy.
I assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening its
mouth every hour of the day, trying to gulp him down,
aware that it would be a consummate cure, or a happy
release.''

  By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and
smiled sadly.

  ``How has Ricky turned out?'' he asked. ``What sort of
a character has he?''

  ``The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it.
Character? he has the character of a bullet with a treble
charge of powder behind it. Enthusiasm is the powder.
That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the maiden days
of Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your
fashion, Austin,---you have something to answer for. Unfortunately
he began with the feminine side of it. Cupid proud
of Ph<oe>bus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to people his
kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the
guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work.
Oh, horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System
in the flesh, and you have our Richard. The consequence
is, that this male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though
the gates are open for him, the trumpets blow, and the fair
unspotted one awaits him fruitful within. We heard of him
last that he was trying the German waters---preparatory to
his undertaking the release of Italy from the subjugation of
the Teuton. Let's hope they'll wash him. He is in the
company of Lady Judith Felle---your old friend, the ardent
female Radical who married the decrepit lord to carry out
her principles. They always marry English lords, or foreign
princes. I admire their tactics.''

  ``Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but
she was always too sentimental,'' said Austin.

  ``Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I
like her _for_ her sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are
sure to live long and die fat. 'Tis feeling that's the slayer,
coz. Sentiment! 'tis the cajolery of existence: the soft
bloom which whose weareth, he or she is enviable. Would
that I had more!''

  ``You're not much changed, Adrian.''

  ``I'm not a Radical, Austin.''

  Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian's figurative
speech, instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for
his son, in a posture of statuesque offended paternity, before
he would receive his daughter-in-law and grandson. That
was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the System to
swallow the baby.

  ``We're in a tangle,'' said the wise youth. ``Time will
extricate us, I presume, or what is the venerable signor good
for?''

  Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy's place
of residence.

  ``We'll go to her by and by,'' said Adrian.

  ``I shall go and see her now,'' said Austin.

  ``Well, we'll go and order the dinner first, coz.''

  ``Give me her address.''

  ``Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard,''
Adrian objected. ``Don't you care what you eat?'' he roared
hoarsely, looking humourously hurt. ``I dare say not. A slice
out of him that's handy---sauce du ciel! Go, batten on the
baby, cannibal. Dinner at seven.''

  Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy's, and strolled
off to do the better thing. 

  Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her
tea-cup. Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a
smack, he had vaulted lightly and thereby indicated that, he
was positively coming the next day. She forgot him in the
bustle of her duties and the absorption of her faculties in
thoughts of the incomparable stranger Lucy had presented
to the world, till a knock at the street-door reminded her.
``There he is!'' she cried, as she ran to open to him.
``There's my stranger come!'' Never was a woman's faith
in omens so justified. The stranger desired to see Mrs.
Richard Feverel. He said his name was Mr. Austin Wentworth.
Mrs. Berry clasped her hands, exclaiming, ``Come
at last!'' and ran bolt out of the house to look up and down
the street. Presently she returned with many excuses for
her rudeness, saying: ``I 'xpected to see her comin' home,
Mr. Wentworth. Every day twice a day she go out to give
her blessed angel an airing. No leavin' the child with
nursemaids for her! She _is_ a mother! and good milk, too,
thank the Lord! though her heart's se low.''

  Indoors Mrs. Berry stated who she was, related the
history of the young couple, and her participation in it, and
admired the beard. ``Though I'd swear you don't wear it
for ornament, now!'' she said, having in the first impulse
designed a stroke at man's vanity.

  Ultimately Mrs. Berry spoke of the family complication,
and with dejected head and joined hands threw out dark
hints about Richard.

  While Austin was giving his cheerfuller views of the case
Lucy came in, preceding the baby.

  ``I am Austin Wentworth,'' he said, taking her hand.
They read each other's faces, these two, and smiled kinship.

  ``Your name is Lucy?''

  She affirmed it softly.

  ``And mine is Austin, as you know.''

  Mrs. Berry allowed time for Lucy's charms to subdue him,
and presented Richard's representative, who, seeing a new
face, suffered himself to be contemplated before he commenced
crying aloud, and knocking at the doors of Nature
for something that was due to him.

  ``Ain't he a lusty darlin'?'' says Mrs. Berry. ``Ain't he
like his own father? There can't be no doubt about zoo,
zoo pitty pet. Look at his fists. Ain't he got passion? Ain't
he a splendid roarer? Oh!'' and she went off rapturously
into baby-language

  A fine boy, certainly. Mrs. Berry exhibited his legs for
further proof, desiring Austin's confirmation as to their
being dumplings.

  Lucy murmured a word of excuse, and bore the splendid
roarer out of the room.

  ``She might 'a done it here,'' said Mrs. Berry. ``There's
no prettier sight, I say. If her dear husband could but see
that! He's off in his heroics---he want to be doin' all sorts
o' things: I say he'll never do anything grander than that
baby. You should 'a seen her uncle over that baby---he
came here, for I said, you _shall_ see your own fam'ly, my
dear, and so she thinks. He come, and he laughed over that
baby in the joy of his 'art, poo' man! he cried, he did. You
should see that Mr. Thompson, Mr. Wentworth---a friend o'
Mr. Richard's, and a very modest-minded young gentleman
---he worships her in his innocence. It's a sight to see him
with that baby. My belief is he's unhappy 'cause he can't
anyways be nursemaid to him. Lor! and there, everything
so beautiful, and just that one screw loose. O Mr. Wentworth!
what _do_ you think of her, sir?''

  Austin's reply was as satisfactory as a man's poor speech
could make it. He heard that Lady Feverel was in the
house, and Mrs. Berry prepared the way for him to pay his
respects to her. Then Mrs. Berry ran to Lucy, and the
house buzzed with new life. The simple creatures felt in
Austin's presence something good among them. ``He don't
speak much,'' said Mrs. Berry, ``but I see by his eye he
mean a deal. He ain't one o' yer long-word gentry, who's
all gay deceivers, every one of 'em.''

  Lucy pressed the hearty suckling into her breast. ``I
wonder what he thinks of me, Mrs. Berry? I could not
speak to him. I loved him before I saw him. I knew what
his face was like.''

  ``He looks proper even with a beard, and that's a trial for
a virtuous man,'' said Mrs. Berry. ``One sees straight
_through_ the hair with him. Think! he'll think what any
_man_ 'd think---you a-suckin,' spite o' all your sorrow, my
sweet,---and my Berry talkin' of his Roman matrons!---here's
a English wife 'll match 'em all! that's what he thinks.
And now that leetle dark under yer eye'll clear, my darlin',
now he've come.''

  Mrs. Berry looked to no more than that; Lucy to no more
than the peace she had in being near Richard's best friend.
When she sat down to tea it was with a sense that the little
room that held her was her home perhaps for many a day.

  A chop procured and cooked by Mrs. Berry formed Austin's
dinner. During the meal he entertained them with anecdotes
of his travels. Poor Lucy had no temptation to try to conquer
Austin. That heroic weakness of hers was gone.

  Mrs. Berry had said: ``Three cups---I goes no further,''
and Lucy had rejected the proffer of more tea, when Austin,
who was in the thick of a Brazilian forest, asked her if she
was a good traveller.
  
  ``I mean, can you start at a minute's notice?''

  Lucy hesitated, and then said, ``Yes,'' decisively, to which
Mrs. Berry added, that she was not a ``luggage-woman.''

  ``There used to be a train at seven o'clock,'' Austin remarked,
consulting his watch.

  The two women were silent.

  ``Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten
minutes?''

  Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.

  Lucy's lips parted to speak. She could not answer.

  Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry's dropping hands.

  ``Joy and deliverance!'' she exclaimed with a foundering
voice.

  ``Will you come?'' Austin kindly asked again.

  Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered,
``Yes.'' Mrs. Berry cunningly pretended to interpret the
irresolution in her tones with a mighty whisper: ``She's
thinking what's to be done with baby.''

  ``He must learn to travel, too,'' said Austin.

  ``Oh!'' cried Mr. Berry, ``and I'll be his miss, and bear
him, a sweet! Oh! and think of it! me nursemaid once
more at Raynham Abbey! but it's nurse-woman now, you
must say. Let us be goin' on the spot.''

  She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would
cool the heaven-sent resolve. Austin smiled, eyeing his watch
and Lucy alternately. She was wishing to ask a multitude
of questions. His face reassured her, and saying: ``I will
be dressed instantly,'' she also left the room. Talking,
bustling, preparing, wrapping up my lord, and looking to
their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready within the
time prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming
over the baby. ``He'll sleep it through,'' she said. ``He's
had enough for an alderman, and goes to sleep sound after
his dinner, he do, a duck!'' Before they departed, Lucy
ran up to Lady Feverel. She returned for the small one.

  ``One moment, Mr. Wentworth?''

  ``Just two,'' said Austin.

  Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back
her eyes were full of tears.

  ``She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth.''

  ``She shall,'' Austin said simply.

  Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to
dwell at all upon the great act of courage she was performing.

  ``I do hope the baby will not wake,'' was her chief solicitude.

  ``He!'' cries nurse-woman Berry from the rear, ``his little
tum-tum's _as_ tight _as_ he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a
beauty! and ye may take yer oath he never wakes till that's
slack. He've got character of his own, a blessed!''

  There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be
taken by storm. The baronet sat alone in his library, sick
of resistance, and rejoicing in the pride of no surrender; a
terror to his friends and to himself. Hearing Austin's name
sonorously pronounced by the man of calves, he looked up
from his book, and held out his hand. ``Glad to see you,
Austin.'' His appearance betokened complete security. The
next minute he found himself escaladed.

  It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in
the room besides Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the
lamp: Mrs. Berry close to the door. The door was half
open, and passing through it might be seen the petrified
figure of a fine man. The baronet glancing over the lamp
rose at Mrs. Berry's signification of a woman's personality.
Austin stepped back and led Lucy to him by the hand. ``I
have brought Richard's wife, sir,'' he said with a pleased,
perfectly uncalculating, countenance, that was disarming.
Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed. She felt her two
hands taken, and heard a kind voice. Could it be possible it
belonged to the dreadful father of her husband? She lifted
her eyes nervously: her hands were still detained. The
baronet contemplated Richard's choice. Had he ever had a
rivalry with those pure eyes? He saw the pain of her position
shooting across her brows, and, uttering gentle inquiries
as to her health, placed her in a seat. Mrs. Berry had already
fallen into a chair.

  ``What aspect do you like for your bedroom?---East?''
said the baronet.

  Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: ``Am I to stay?''

  ``Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once,''
he pursued. ``You have the Lobourne valley there and a
good morning air, and will feel more at home.''

  Lucy's colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough,
as one who should say, ``The day is ours!'' Undoubtedly---
strange as it was to think it---the fortress was carried.

  ``Lucy is rather tired,'' said Austin, and to hear her Christian
name thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her
eyes.

  The baronet was about to touch the bell. ``But have you
come alone?'' he asked.

  At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it
seemed to require effort for her to move, and when she was
within the region of the lamp, her agitation could not escape
notice. The blissful bundle shook in her arms.

  ``By the way, what is he to me?'' Austin inquired generally
as he went and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham.
``My relationship is not so defined as yours, sir.''

  An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped
at his grandson with the courteous indifference of one who
merely wished to compliment the mother of anybody's child.

  ``I really think he's like Richard,'' Austin laughed. Lucy
looked: I am sure he is.

  ``As like as one to one,'' Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but
Grandpapa not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to
pluck up. ``And he's as healthy as his father was, Sir
Austin---spite o' the might 'a beens. Reg'lar as the clock!
We never want a clock since he come. We knows the hour
a' the day, and _of_ the night.''

  ``You nurse him yourself, of course?'' the baronet spoke
to Lucy, and was satisfied on that point.

  Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy,
fearing the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged
her not to wake him. ``'I'd take a deal to do that,'' said
Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master Richard's health and the
small wonder it was that he enjoyed it, considering the
superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions of his
mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.

  ``He looks healthy,'' said the baronet, ``but I am not a
judge of babies.''

  Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge
its new commandant, who was now borne away, under the
directions of the housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard
had slept in when an infant.

  Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said:
``She is extremely well-looking.'' He replied: ``A person
you take to at once.'' There it ended.

  But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft,
where Lucy and Mrs. Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to
talk about the reception they had met with, and the house,
and the peculiarities of the rooms, and the solid happiness
that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry all the while would persist
in consulting the looking-glass. Her first distinct answer
was, ``My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?''

  ``Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed
he would be so kind, so considerate?''

  ``I'm sure I looked a frump,'' returned Mrs. Berry. ``Oh,
dear! two birds at a shot. What _do_ you think, now?''

  ``I never saw so wonderful a likeness,'' says Lucy.

  ``Likeness! look at me.'' Mrs. Berry was trembling and
hot in the palms.

  ``You're very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?''

  ``Ain't it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my
dear.''

  ``Go to bed, Berry, dear,'' says Lucy, pouting in her soft
caressing way. ``I will undress you, and see to you, dear
heart! You've had so much excitement.''

  ``Ha! ha!'' Berry laughed hysterically; ``she thinks it's
about this business of hers. Why, it's child's-play, my darlin'.
But I didn't look for tragedy to-night. Sleep in this house
I can't, my love!''

  Lucy was astonished. ``Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?---
Oh! why, you silly old thing? I know.''

  ``Do ye!'' said Mrs. Berry with a sceptical nose.

  ``You're afraid of ghosts.''

  ``Belike I am when they're six foot two in their shoes, and
bellows when you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my
Berry!''

  ``Your husband?''

  ``Large as life!''

  Lucy meditated on optical delusions, but Mrs. Berry
described him as the Colossus who had marched them into
the library, and vowed that he had recognized her, and
quaked. ``Time ain't aged him,'' said Mrs. Berry, ``whereas
me! he've got his excuse now. I _know_ I look a frump.''

  Lucy kissed her: ``You look the nicest, dearest old
thing.''

  ``You may say an old thing, my dear.''

  ``And your husband is really here?''

  ``Berry's below!''

  Profoundly uttered as this was, it chased every vestige of
incredulity.

  ``What will you do, Mrs. Berry?''

  ``Go, my dear. Leave him to be happy in his own way.
It's over atween us, I see that. When I entered the house I
felt there was something comin' over me, and lo and behold
ye! no sooner was we in the hall-passage---if it hadn't been
for that blessed infant I sh'd 'a dropped. I must 'a known
his step, for my heart began thumpin', and I knew I hadn't
got my hair straight---that Mr. Wentworth was in such a
hurry---nor my best gown. I knew he'd scorn me. He hates
frumps.''

  ``Scorn you!'' cried Lucy angrily. ``He who has behaved
so wickedly!''

  Mrs. Berry attempted to rise. ``I may as well go at once,''
she whimpered. ``If I see him I shall only be disgracin' of
myself. I feel it all on my side already. Did ye mark him,
my dear? He's in his uniform. His uni_corn_ I used to call
it, vexin' him. I know I was vexin' to him at times, I was.
Those big men are se touchy about their dignity---nat'ral.
Hark at me! I'm goin' all soft in a minute. Let me leave
the house, my dear. I dare say it was good half my fault.
Young women don't understand men sufficient---not altogether
---and I was a young woman then---and then what
they goes and does they ain't quite answerable for: they
feels, I dare say, pushed from behind. Yes. I'll go. I'm
a frump. I'll go. 'Tain't in natur' for me to sleep in the
same house.''

  Lucy laid her hands on Mrs. Berry's shoulders, and forcibly
fixed her in her seat. ``Leave baby, naughty woman? I
tell you he shall come to you, and fall on his knees to you
and beg your forgiveness.''

  ``Berry on his knees!''

  ``Yes. And he shall beg and pray you to forgive him.''

  ``If you get more from Martin Berry than breath-away
words, great'll be my wonder!'' said Mrs. Berry.

  ``We will see,'' said Lucy, thoroughly determined to do
something for the good creature that had befriended her.

  Mrs. Berry examined her gown. ``Won't it seem we're
runnin' after him?'' she murmured faintly.

  ``He is your husband, Mrs. Berry. He may be wanting
to come to you now.''

  ``Oh! where is all I was goin' to say to that man when
we met!'' Mrs. Berry ejaculated. Lucy had left the room.
On the landing outside the door Lucy met a lady dressed
in black, who stopped her and asked if she was Richard's
wife, and kissed her, passing from her immediately. Lucy
despatched a message for Austin, and related the Berry
history. Austin sent for the great man, and said: ``Do you
know your wife is here?'' Before Berry had time to draw
himself up to enunciate his longest, he was requested to step
upstairs, and as his young mistress at once led the way,
Berry could not refuse to put his legs in motion and carry the
stately edifice aloft.

  Of the interview Mrs. Berry gave Lucy a slight sketch
that night. ``He began in the old way, my dear, and says
I, a true heart and plain words, Martin Berry. So there he
cuts himself and his Johnson short, and down he goes---down
on his knees. I never could 'a believed it. I kep my dignity
as a woman till I see that sight, but that done for me. I
was a ripe apple in his arms 'fore I knew where I was.
There's something about a fine man on his knees that's too
much for us women. And it reely was the penitent on his
two knees, not the lover on his one. If he mean it! But
ah! what do' you think he begs of me, my dear?---not to
make it known in the house just yet! I can't, I can't say
that look well.''

  Lucy attributed it to his sense of shame at his conduct,
and Mrs. Berry did her best to look on it in that light.

  ``Did the bar'net kiss ye when you wished him good
night?'' she asked. Lucy said he had not. ``Then bide
awake as long as ye can,'' was Mrs. Berry's rejoinder.
``And now let us pray blessings on that simple-speaking
gentleman who does se much 'cause he says se little.''

  Like many other natural people, Mrs. Berry was only silly
where her own soft heart was concerned. As she secretly
anticipated, the baronet came into her room when all was
quiet. She saw him go and bend over Richard the Second,
and remain earnestly watching him. He then went to the
half-opened door of the room where Lucy slept, leaned his
ear a moment, knocked gently, and entered. Mrs. Berry
heard low words interchanging within. She could not catch a
syllable, yet she would have sworn to the context. ``He've
called her his daughter, promised her happiness, and given
a father's kiss to her.'' When Sir Austin passed out she
was in a deep sleep.



	CHAPTER XLIII.

	NATURE SPEAKS.

  Briareus reddening angrily over the sea---where is that
vaporous Titan? And Hesper get in his rosy garland---why
looks he so implacably sweet? It is that one has left that
bright home to go forth and do cloudy work, and he has got
a stain with which he dare not return. Far in the West fair
Lucy beckons him to come. Ah, heaven! if he might! How
strong and fierce the temptation is! how subtle the sleepless
desire! it drugs his reason, his honour. For he loves her;
she is still the first and only woman to him. Otherwise
would this black spot be hell to him? otherwise would his
limbs be chained while her arms spread open to him. And
if he loves her, why then what is one fall in the pit, or a
thousand? Is not love the password to that beckoning
bliss? So may we say; but here is one whose body has
been made a temple to him, and it is desecrated.

  A temple, and desecrated! For what is it fit for but for
a dance of devils? His education has thus wrought him to
think.

  He can blame nothing but his own baseness. But to feel
base and accept the bliss that beckons---he has not fallen so
low as that.

 Ah, happy English home! sweet wife! what mad miserable
Wisp of Fancy led him away from you, high in his conceit?
Poor wretch! that thought to be he of the hundred
hands, and war against the absolute Gods. Jove whispered
a light commision to the Laughing Dame; she met him;
and how did he shake Olympus? with laughter.

  Sure it were better to be Orestes, the Furies howling in
his ear, than one called to by a heavenly soul from whom
he is for ever outcast. He has not the oblivion of madness.
Clothed in the lights of his first passion, robed in the splendour
of old skies, she meets him everywhere; morning.
evening and night, she shines above him; waylays him
suddenly in forest depths; drops palpably on his heart. At
moments he forgets; he rushes to embrace her; calls her his
beloved, and lo, her innocent kiss brings agony of shame to
his face.

  Daily the struggle endured. His father wrote to him,
begging him by the love he had for him to return. From
that hour Richard burnt unread all the letters he received.
He knew too well how easily he could persuade himself:
words from without might tempt him and quite extinguish
the spark of honourable feeling that tortured him, and that
he clung to in desperate self-vindication.

  To arrest young gentlemen on the downward slope is both
a dangerous and thankless office. It is, nevertheless, one
fair women greatly prize, and certain of them professionally
follow. Lady Judith, as far as her sex would permit, was
also of the Titans in their battle against the absolute Gods;
for which purpose, mark you, she had married a lord incapable
in all save his acres. Her achievements she kept to
her own mind: she did not look happy over them. She met
Richard accidentally in Paris; she saw his state; she let
him learn that she alone on earth understood him. The
consequence was that he was forthwith enrolled in her train.
It soothed him to be near a woman. Did she venture her guess
as to the cause of his conduct, she blotted it out with a facility
women have, and cast on it a melancholy hue he was taught
to participate in. She spoke of sorrows, personal sorrows,
much as he might speak of his---vaguely, and with self-blame.
And she understood him. How the dark unfathomed
wealth within us gleams to a woman's eye! We are at compound
interest immediately: so much richer than we knew!
---almost as rich as we dreamed! But then the instant we
are away from her we find ourselves bankrupt, beggared.
How is that? We do not ask. We hurry to her and bask
hungrily in her orbs. The eye must be feminine to be thus
creative: I cannot say why. Lady Judith understood
Richard, and he feeling infinitely vile, somehow held to her
more feverishly, as one who dreaded the worst in missing
her. The spirit must rest; he was weak with what he
suffered.

  Austin found them among the hills of Nassau in Rhineland:
Titans, male and female, who had not displaced Jove,
and were now adrift prone on floods of sentiment. The blue-frocked
peasant swinging behind his oxen of a morning, the
gaily-kerchiefed fruit-woman, the jackass-driver, even the
doctor of those regions, have done more for their fellows.
Horrible reflection! Lady Judith is serene above it, but it
frets at Richard when he is out of her shadow. Often
wretchedly he watches the young men of his own age trooping
to their work. Not cloud-work theirs! Work solid,
unambitious, fruitful!

  Lady Judith had a nobler in prospect for the hero. He
gaped for anything blindfolded, and she gave him the map
of Europe in tatters. He swallowed it comfortably. It was
an intoxicating cordial. Himself on horseback over-riding
wrecks of Empires! Well might common-sense cower with
the meaner animals at the picture. Tacitly they agreed to
recast the civilized globe. The quality of vapour is to melt
and shape itself anew; but it is never the quality of vapour
to reassume the same shapes. Briareus of the hundred unoccupied
hands may turn to a monstrous donkey with his
hind legs aloft, or twenty thousand jabbering apes. The
phantasmic groupings of the young brain are very like those
we see in the skies, and equally the sport of the wind.
Lady Judith blew. There was plenty of vapour in him,
and it always resolved into some shape or other. You
that mark those clouds of eventide, and know youth, will
see the similitude: it will not be strange, it will barely
seem foolish to you, that a young man of Richard's age,
Richard's education and position, should be in this wild
state. Had he not been nursed to believe he was born for
great things? Did she not say she was sure of it? And to
feel base, and yet born for better, is enough to make one
grasp at anything cloudy. Suppose the hero with a game
leg.--- How intense is his faith in quacks! with what a
passion of longing is he not seized to break somebody's head!
They spoke of Italy in low voices. ``The time will come,''
said she. ``And I shall be ready,'' said he. What rank
was he to take in the liberating army? Captain, colonel,
general in chief, or simple private? Here, as became him,
he was much more positive and specific than she was.
Simple private, he said. Yet he saw himself caracoling on
horseback. Private in the cavalry, then, of course. Private
in the cavalry over-riding wrecks of Empires. She looked
forth under her brows with mournful indistinctness at that
object in the distance. They read Petrarch to get up the
necessary fires. Italia mia! Vain indeed was this speaking
to those thick and mortal wounds in her fair body, but their
sighs went with the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po, and their
hands joined. Who has not wept for Italy? I see the
aspirations of a world arise for her, thick and frequent an
the puffs of smoke from cigars of Pannonian sentries!

  So when Austin came Richard said he could not leave
Lady Judith, Lady Judith said she could not part with him.
For his sake, mind! This Richard verified. Perhaps he
had reason to be grateful. The high-road of Folly may have
led him from one that terminates worse. He is foolish, God
knows; but for my part I will not laugh at the hero because
he has not got his occasion. Meet him when he is, as it
were, anointed by his occasion, and he is no laughing matter.

  Richard felt his safety in this which, to please the world,
we must term folly. Exhalation of vapours was a wholesome
process to him, and somebody who gave them shape
and hue a beneficent Iris. He told Austin plainly he could
not leave her, and did not anticipate the day when he could.

  ``Why can't you go to your wife, Richard?''

  ``For a reason you would be the first to approve, Austin.''

  He welcomed Austin with every show of manly tenderness,
and sadness at heart. Austin he had always associated
with his Lucy in that Hesperian palace of the West. Austin
waited patiently. Lady Judith's old lord played on all the
baths in Nassau without evoking the tune of health.
Whithersoever he listed she changed her abode. So admirable
a wife was to be pardoned for espousing an old man,
She was an enthusiast even in her connubial duties. She
had the brows of an enthusiast. With occasion she might
have been a Charlotte Corday. So let her also be shielded
from the ban of ridicule. Nonsense of enthusiasts is very
different from nonsense of ninnies. She was truly a high-minded
person, of that order who always do what they see
to be right, and always have confidence in their optics. She
was not unworthy of a young man's admiration, if she was
unfit to be his guide. She resumed her ancient intimacy
with Austin easily, while she preserved her new footing with
Richard. She and Austin were not unlike, only Austin
never dreamed, and had not married an old lord.

  The three were walking on the bridge at Limburg on the
Lahn, where the shadow of a stone bishop is thrown by the
moonlight on the water brawling over slabs of slate. A
woman passed them bearing in her arms a baby, whose
mighty size drew their attention.

  ``What a wopper!'' Richard laughed.

  ``Well, that is a fine fellow,'' said Austin, ``but I don't
think he's much bigger than your boy.''

  ``He'll do for a nineteenth-century Arminius,'' Richard
was saying. Then he looked at Austin.

  ``What was that you said?'' Lady Judith asked of
Austin.

  ``What have I said that deserves to be repeated?'' Austin
counterqueried quite innocently.

  ``Richard has a son?''

  ``You didn't know it?''

  ``His modesty goes very far,'' said Lady Judith sweeping
a curtsey to Richard's paternity.

  Richard's heart throbbed with violence. He looked again
in Austin's face. Austin took it so much as a matter of
course that he said nothing more on the subject.

  ``Well!'' murmured Lady Judith.

  The moment the two men were alone, Richard said in a
quick voice: ``Austin! were you in earnest?''

  ``I hope so,'' Austin replied. ``When?''

  ``In what you said on the bridge.''

  ``On the bridge?''

  ``You said I had a''---he could hardly, get the words out
``---a son.''

  ``You didn't know it, Richard?''

  ``No.''

  ``Why, they all wrote to you. Lucy wrote to you: your
father, your aunt. I believe Adrian wrote too.''

  ``I tore up their letters,'' said Richard.

  ``He's a noble fellow, I can tell you. You've nothing to
be ashamed of, my dear boy. He'll soon be coming to ask
about you. I made sure you knew.''

  ``No, I never knew.'' Richard walked away, and then
said: ``What is he like?''

  ``Well, he really is like you, but he has his mother's
eyes.''

  ``And she's---quite well!''

  ``Yes. I think the child has kept her so.''

  ``And they're both at Raynham?''

  ``Both.''

  Hence, fantastic vapours! What are ye to this! Where
are the dreams of the hero when he learns he has a child?
Nature is taking him to her bosom. She will speak presently.
Every domesticated boor in these hills can boast the
same, yet marvels the hero at none of his visioned prodigies
as he does when he comes to hear of this most common performance.
A father? Richard fixed his eyes as if he were
trying to make out the lineaments of his child.

  Telling Austin he would be back in a few minutes, he sallied
into the air, and walked on and on. ``A father!'' he
kept repeating to himself: ``a child!'' And though he knew
it not, he was striking the key-notes of Nature. But he did
know of a singular harmony that suddenly burst over his
whole being.

  The moon was surpassingly bright: the summer air heavy
and still. He left the high road and pierced into the forest.
His walk was rapid: the leaves on the trees brushed his
cheeks; the dead leaves heaped in the dells noised to his feet.
Something of a religious joy---a strange sacred pleasure---
was in him. By degrees it wore; he remembered himself:
and now he was possessed by a proportionate anguish. A
father! he dared never see his child. And he had no longer
his phantasies to fall upon. He was utterly bare to his sin.
In his troubled mind it seemed to him that Clare looked
down on him---Clare who saw him as he was---and that to
her eyes it would be infamy for him to go and print his kiss
upon his child. Then came stern efforts to command his
misery and make the nerves of his face iron.

  By the log of an ancient tree half buried in dead leaves of
past summers, beside a brook, he halted as one who had
reached his journey's end. There he discovered he had a
companion in Lady Judith's little dog. He gave the
friendly animal a pat of recognition, and both were silent in
the forest-silence.

  It was impossible for Richard to return; his heart was
surcharged. He must advance, and on he footed, the little
dog following.

  An oppressive slumber hung about the forest-branches.
In the dells and on the heights was the same dead heat.
Here where the brook tinkled it was no cool-lipped sound,
but metallic, and without the spirit of water. Yonder in a
space of moonlight on lush grass, the beams were as white
fire to sight and feeling. No haze spread around. The valleys
were clear, defined to the shadows of their verges; the
distances sharply distinct, and with the colours of day but
slightly softened. Richard beheld a roe moving across a
slope of sward far out of rifle-mark. The breathless silence
was significant, yet the moon shone in a broad blue heaven.
Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him;
couched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly
when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth
flitted through the dusk of the forest.

  On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland
stood gray topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades.
Richard mechanically sat down on the crumbling flints to
rest, and listened to the panting of the dog. Sprinkled at
his feet were emerald lights: hundreds of glow-worms
studded the dark dry ground.

  He sat and eyed them, thinking not at all. His energies
were expended in action. He sat as a part of the ruins, and
the moon turned his shadow Westward from the South.
Overhead, as she declined, long ripples of silver cloud were
imperceptibly stealing toward her. They were the van of a
tempest. He did not observe them, or the leaves beginning
to chatter. When he again pursued his course with his face
to the Rhine, a huge mountain appeared to rise sheer over
him, and he had it in his mind to scale it. He got no
nearer to the base of it for all his vigorous outstepping.
The ground began to dip; he lost sight of the sky. Then
heavy thunder-drops struck his cheek, the leaves were singing,
the earth breathed, it was black before him and behind.
All at once the thunder spoke. The mountain he had
marked was bursting over him.

  Up started the whole forest in violet fire. He saw the
country at the foot of the hills to the bounding Rhine gleam,
quiver, extinguished. Then there were pauses; and the
lightning seemed as the eye of heaven, and the thunder
as the tongue of heaven, each alternately addressing him;
filling him with awful rapture. Alone there----sole human
creature among the grandeurs and mysteries of storm---he
felt the representative of his kind, and his spirit rose, and
marched, and exulted, let it be glory, let it be ruin! Lower
down the lightened abysses of air rolled the wrathful crash:
then white thrusts of light were darted from the sky, and
great curving ferns, seen steadfast in pallor a second, were
supernaturally agitated, and vanished. Then a shrill song
roused in the leaves and the herbage. Prolonged and louder
it sounded, as deeper and heavier the deluge pressed. A
mighty force of water satisfied the desire of the earth. Even
in this, drenched as he was by the first outpouring, Richard
had a savage pleasure. Keeping in motion he was scarcely
conscious of the wet, and the grateful breath of the weeds
was refreshing. Suddenly he stopped short, lifting a curious
nostril. He fancied he smelt meadow-sweet. He had never
seen the flower in Rhineland---never thought of it; and it
would hardly be met with in a forest. He was sure he
smelt it fresh in dews. His little companion wagged a
miserable wet tail some way in advance. He went on slowly,
thinking indistinctly. After two or three steps he stooped
and stretched out his hand to feel for the flower, having, he
know not why, a strong wish to verify its growth there.
Groping about his hand encountered something warm that
started at his touch, and he, with the instinct we have,
seized it, and lifted it to look at it. The creature was very
small, evidently quite young. Richard's eyes, now accustomed
to the darkness, wore able to discern it for what it
was, a tiny leveret, and he supposed that the dog had probably
frightened its dam just before he found it. He put
the little thing on one hand in his breast, and stepped out
rapidly as before.

  The rain was now steady; from every tree a fountain
poured. So cool and easy had his mind become that he was
speculating on what kind of shelter the birds could find, and
how the butterflies and moths saved their coloured wings
from washing. Folded close they might hang under a leaf,
he thought. Lovingly he looked into the dripping darkness
of the coverts on each side, as one of their children. Then
he was musing on a strange sensation he experienced. It
ran up one arm with an indescribable thrill, but communicated
nothing to his heart. It was purely physical, ceased
for a time, and recommenced, till he had it all through his
blood, wonderfully thrilling. He grew aware that the little
thing he carried in his breast was licking his hand there.
The small rough tongue going over and over the palm of his
hand produced this strange sensation he felt. Now that he
knew the cause, the marvel ended, but now that he know
the cause his heart was touched and made more of it. The
gentle scraping continued without intermission as on he
walked. What did it say to him? Human tongue could
not have said so much just then.

  A pale gray light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed
the dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The
green drenched weeds lay all about in his path, bent thick,
and the forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man
who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain,
Richard was passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung
with votive wreaths, where the peasant halts to kneel and
pray. Cold, still, in the twilight it stood, rain-drops pattering
round it. He looked within, and saw the Virgin holding
her Child. He moved by. But not many steps had he gone
ere his strength went out of him, and he shuddered. What
was it? He asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as
lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He felt in his
heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With shut
eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led
him he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered
again and again.

  When he looked out from his trance on the breathing
world, the small birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh
sunlight was over all the hills. He was on the edge of the
forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn under a spacious
morning sky.



	CHAPTER XLIV.

	AGAIN THE MAGIAN CONFLICT.

  They heard at Raynham that Richard was coming. Lucy
had the news first in a letter from Ripton Thompson, who
met him at Bonn. Ripton did not say that he had employed
his vacation holiday on purpose to use his efforts to induce
his dear friend to return to his wife; and finding Richard
already on his way, of course Ripton said nothing to him,
but affected to be travelling for his pleasure like any cockney.
Richard also wrote to her. In case she should have gone to
the sea he directed her to send word to his hotel that he
might not lose an hour. His letter was sedate in tone, very
sweet to her. Assisted by the faithful female Berry, she
was conquering an Aphorist.

  ``Woman's reason is in the milk of her breasts,'' was one
of his rough notes, due to an observation of Lucy's maternal
cares. Let us remember, therefore, we men who have drunk
of it largely there, that she has it.

  Mrs. Berry zealously apprised him how early Master
Richard's education had commenced, and the great future
historian he must consequently be. This trait in Lucy was
of itself sufficient to win Sir Austin.

  ``Here my plan with Richard was false,'' he reflected:
``in presuming that anything save blind fortuity would
bring him such a mate as he should have.'' He came to add:
``And has got!''

  He could admit now that instinct had so far beaten
science; for as Richard was coming, as all were to be
happy, his wisdom embraced them all paternally as the
author of their happiness. Between him and Lucy a tender
intimacy grew.

  ``I told you she could talk, sir,'' said Adrian.

  ``She thinks!'' said the baronet.

  The delicate question how she was to treat her uncle he
settled generously. Farmer Blaize should come up to
Raynham when he would: Lucy must visit him at least
three times a week. He had Farmer Blaize and Mrs. Berry
to study, and really excellent Aphorisms sprang from the
plain human bases this natural couple presented.

  ``It will do us no harm,'' he thought, ``some of the honest
blood of the soil in our veins.'' And he was content in
musing on the parentage of the little cradled boy. A common
sight for those who had the entry to the library was
the baronet cherishing the hand of his daughter-in-law.

  So Richard was crossing the sea, and hearts at Raynham
were beating quicker measures as the minutes progressed.
That night he would be with them. Sir Austin gave Lucy
a longer, warmer salute when she came down to breakfast in
the morning. Mrs. Berry waxed thrice amorous. ``It's
your second bridals, ye sweet livin' widow!'' she said.
``Thanks be the Lord! it's the same man too! and a baby
over the bed-post,'' she appended seriously.

  ``Strange,'' Berry declared it to be, ``strange I feel none
o' this to my Berry now. All my feelin's o' love seem t' ave
gone into you two sweet chicks.''

  In fact the faithless male Berry complained of being
treated badly, and affected a superb jealousy of the baby;
but the good dame told him that if he suffered at all he
suffered his due. Berry's position was decidedly uncomfortable.
It could not be concealed from the lower household
that he had a wife in the establishment, and for the
complications this gave rise to, his wife would not legitimately
console him. He devised to petition the baronet.
Lucy did intercede for him, but Mrs. Berry was obdurate.
She averred she would not give up the child till he was
weaned. ``Then, perhaps,'' she said prospectively. ``You
see I ain't se soft as you thought for.''

  ``You're a very unkind, vindictive old woman,'' said
Lucy.

  ``Belike I am,'' Mrs. Berry was proud to agree. We like
a new character, now and then. Berry had delayed too
long.

  She explained herself: ``Let me see my Berry with his
toes up, and I'm his tender nurse. It's a nursewoman he've
found---not a wife. 'Tain't revengin' him, my darlin'! She
never is to a baby---not a woman isn't---what she grow to a
man. I had to see my Berry again to learn that, it seem.
We goes off---somehow---to a man. Hard on em', it may be.
Nat'ral, it is. The Scripture tells of concubines. And there
was Abram, we read. But it's all a puzzle, man _and_ woman!
and we perplexes each other on to the end. Nor 'tain't
that Berry's alter. That man's much as he was, in body
both and in spirit. It's me am changed, and Berry discovers
it to me I am. It's a mis'rable truth, it be, my
feelin's as a wedded wife seem gone now I got him. `Kiss
me,' says he. I gives him my cheek. `So cold, Bessy
Berry,' he says reproachful. I don't say nothin', for how'd
'he understand if I tell him I gone back to a spinster? So it
is! and was I to see my Berry kissin' another woman now,
I'd only feel perhaps---just that,'' Mrs. Berry simulated a
short spasm. ``And it makes me feel different about Eternal
Life now,'' she continued. ``It was always a-marriagin' in
it before:---couldn't think of it without partners:---all for
sex! But now them words `No givin' in Marriage' comes
home to me. A man and a woman they does their work
below, and it's ended long afore they lays their bodies in the
grave---leastways the woman. It's be hoped you won't feel
that, my darlin', yet awhile---you se rosy simmerin' there!''

  ``Be quiet, Mrs. Berry,'' says Lucy, wishing to be pensive.

  ``Boilin', then. Bless her! she knows she is!'' And
Mrs. Berry, in contemplation of the reunion of the younger
couple, went into amorous strophes immediately.

  Were it not notorious that the straightlaced-prudish dare
not listen to the natural chaste, certain things Mrs. Berry
thought it adviseable to impart to the young wife with regard
to Berry's infidelity, and the charity women should have
toward sinful men, might here be reproduced. Enough
that she thought proper to broach the matter, and cite her
own Christian sentiments.

  Oily calm is on the sea. At Raynham they look up at the
sky and speculate that Richard is approaching fairly speeded.
He comes to throw himself on his darling's mercy. Lucy
irradiated over forest and sea, tempest and peace---to her the
hero comes humbly. Great is that day when we see our folly!
Ripton and he were the friends of old. Richard encouraged
him to talk of the two he could be eloquent on, and Ripton,
whose secret vanity was in his powers of speech, never tired
of enumerating Lucy's virtues, and the peculiar attributes of
the baby.

  ``She did not say a word against me, Rip?''

  ``Against you, Richard! he moment she knew she was
to be a mother, she thought of nothing but her duty to the
child. She's one who can't think of herself.''

  ``You've seen her at Raynham, Rip?''

  ``Yes, once. They asked me down. And your father's so
fond of her---I'm sure he thinks no woman like her, and he's
right. She is so lovely, and so good.''

  Richard was too full of blame of himself to blame his
father: too British to expose his emotions. Ripton divined
how deep and changed they were by his manner. He had
cast aside the hero, and however Ripton had obeyed him
and looked up to him in the heroic time, he loved him ten-fold
now. He told his friend how much Lucy's mere
womanly sweetness and excellence had done for him, and
Richard contrasted his own profitless extravagance with the
patient beauty of his dear home-angel. He was not one to
take her on the easy terms that offered. There was that to
do which made his cheek burn as he thought of it, but he
was going to do it, even though it lost her to him. Just to
see her and kneel to her was joy sufficient to sustain him,
and warm his blood in the prospect. They marked the
white cliffs growing over the water. Nearer the sun made
them lustrous. Houses and people seemed to welcome the
wild youth to common-sense, simplicity, and home.

  They were in town by mid-day. Richard had a momentary
idea of not driving to his hotel for letters. After a
short debate he determined to go there. The porter said he
had two letters for Mr. Richard Feverel---one had been
waiting some time. He went to the box and fetched them.
The first Richard opened was from Lucy, and as he read it,
Ripton observed the colour deepen on his face, while a
quivering smile playd about his mouth. He opened the
other indifferently. It began without any form of address.
Richard's forehead darkened at the signature. This letter
was in a sloping feminine hand, and flourished with light
strokes all over, like a field of the bearded barley. Thus it
ran:---

  ``I know you are in a rage with me because I would not
consent to ruin you, you foolish fellow. What do you call
it? Going to that unpleasant place together. Thank you,
my milliner is not ready yet, and I want to make a good
appearance when I do go. I suppose I shall have to some
day. Your health, Sir Richard. Now let me speak to you
seriously. _Go home to your wife at once._ But I know the
sort of fellow you are, and I must be plain with you. Did I
ever say I loved you? You may hate me as much as you
please, but I will save you from being a fool.

  ``Now listen to me. You know my relations with Mount.
_That beast Brayder_ offered to pay all my debts and set me
afloat, if I would keep you in town. I declare on my honour
I had no idea why, and I did not agree to it. But you were
such a handsome fellow---I noticed you in the Park before I
heard a word of you. But then you fought shy---you were
just as tempting as a girl. You _stung_ me. Do you know
what that is? I would make you care for me, and we know
how it ended, without any intention of mine, I _swear._ I'd
have cut off my hand rather than do you any harm, upon my
honour. Circumstances! Then I saw it was all up between
us. Brayder came and began to chaff about you. I dealt the
animal a stroke on the face with my riding-whip---I shut him
up pretty quick. Do you think I would let a man speak
about you?---I was going to swear. You see I remember
Dick's lessons. O my God! I do feel unhappy.---Brayder
offered me money. Go and think I took it, if you like.
What do I care what anybody thinks! Something that black-guard
said made me suspicious. I went down to the Isle of
Wight where Mount was, and your wife was just gone with an
old lady who came and took her way. I should so have liked
to see her. You said, you remember, she would take me as
a sister, and treat me---I laughed at it then. My God! how
I could cry now, if water did any good to a _devil,_ as you
politely call poor me. I called at your house and saw your
manservant, who said Mount had just been there. In a
minute it struck me. I was sure Mount was after a woman,
but it never struck me that woman was your wife. Then I
saw why they wanted me to keep you away. I went to
Brayder. You know how I hate him. I made love to the
man to get it out of him. Richard! my word of honour,
they have planned to carry her off, if Mount finds he cannot
seduce her. Talk of devils! He's one; but he is not so bad
as Brayder. I cannot forgive a mean dog his villany.

  ``Now after this, I am quite sure you are too much of a
man to stop away from her another moment. I have no
more to say. I suppose we shall not see each other again,
so good-bye, Dick! I fancy I hear you cursing me. Why
can't you feel like other men on the subject? But if you
were like the rest of them I should not have cared for you a
farthing. I have not worn lilac since I saw you last. I'll
be buried in your colour, Dick. That will not offend you---
will it?

  ``You are not going to believe I took the money? If I
thought you thought that---it makes me _feel_ like a devil only
to fancy you think it.

  ``The first time you meet Brayder, _cane him publicly._

  ``Adieu! Say it's because you don't like his  face. I suppose
devils must not say _Adieu._ Here's plain old good-bye,
then, between you and me. Good-bye, dear Dick! You
won't think that of me?

  ``May I eat dry bread to the day of my death if I took, or
ever will touch, a scrap of their money.	=Bella.=''

  Richard folded up the letter silently.

  ``Jump into the cab,'' he said to Ripton.

  ``Anything the matter, Richard?''

  ``No.''

  The driver received directions. Richard sat without
speaking. His friend knew that face. He asked whether
there was bad news in the letter. For answer he had the
lie circumstantial. He ventured to remark that they were
going the wrong way.

  ``It's the right way,'' cried Richard, and his jaws were
hard and square, and his eyes looked heavy and full.

  Ripton said no more, but thought.

  The cabman pulled up at a Club. A gentleman, in whom
Ripton recognised the Hon. Peter Brayder, was just then
swinging a leg over his horse, with one foot in the stirrup.
Hearing his name called, the Hon. Peter turned about, and
stretched an affable hand.

  ``Is Mountfalcon in town?'' said Richard, taking the
horse's reins instead of the gentlemanly hand. His voice
and aspect were quite friendly.

  ``Mount?'' Brayder replied, curiously watching the
action; ``yes. He's off this evening.''

  ``He _is_ in town?'' Richard released his horse. ``I want
to see him. Where is he?''

  The young man looked pleasant: that which might halve
aroused Brayder's suspicions was an old affair in parasitical
register by this time. ``Want to see him? What about?''
he said carelessly, and gave the address.

  ``By the way,'' he sung out, ``we thought of putting your
name down, Feverel.'' He indicated the lofty structure.
``What do you say?''

  Richard nodded back to him, crying, ``Hurry.'' Brayder
returned the nod, and those who promenaded the district
soon beheld his body in elegant motion to the stepping of his
well-earned horse.

  ``What do you want to see Lord Mountfalcon for,
Richard?'' said Ripton.

  ``I just want to see him,'' Richard replied.

  Ripton was left in the cab at the door of my lord's residence.
He had to wait there a space of about ten minutes,
when Richard returned with a clearer visage, though somewhat
heated. He stood outside the cab, and Ripton was
conscious of being examined by those strong grey eyes. As
clear as speech he understood them to say to him, ``You
won't do,'' but which of the many things on earth he would
not do for he was at loss to think.

  ``Go down to Raynham, Ripton. Say I shall be there to-night
certainly. Don't bother me with questions. Drive off
at once. Or wait. Get another cab. I'll take this.''
Ripton was ejected, and found himself standing alone in
the street. As he was on the point of rushing after the
galloping cab-horse to get a word of elucidation, he heard
some one speak behind him.

  ``You are Feverel's friend.''

  Ripton had an eye for lords. An ambrosial footman,
standing at the open door of Lord Mountfalcon's house, and
a gentleman standing on the door-step, told him that he was
addressed by that nobleman. He was requested to step into
the house. When they were alone, Lord Mountfalcon,
slightly ruffled, said: ``Feverel has insulted me grossly. I
must meet him, of course. It's a piece of infernal folly!---I
suppose he is not quite mad?''

  Ripton's only definite answer was a gasping iteration of
``My lord.''

  My lord resumed: ``I am perfectly guiltless of offending
him, as far as I know. In fact, I had a friendship for him.
Is he liable to fits of this sort of thing?''

  Not yet at conversation-point, Ripton stammered: ``Fits,
my lord?''

  ``Ah!'' went the other, eyeing Ripton in lordly cognizant
style. ``You know nothing of this business perhaps?''

  Ripton said he did not.

  ``Have you any influence with him?''

  ``Not much, my lord. Only now and then---a little.''

  ``You are not in the Army?''

  The question was quite unnecessary. Ripton confessed to
the law, and my lord did not look surprised.

  ``I will not detain you,'' he said, distantly bowing.

  Ripton gave him a commoner's obeisance; but getting to
the door, the sense of the matter enlightened him.

  ``It's a duel, my lord?''

  ``No help for it, if his friends don't shut him up in
Bedlam between this and to-morrow morning.''

  Of all horrible things a duel was the worst in Ripton's
imagination. He stood holding the handle of the door,
revolving this last chapter of calamity suddenly opened
where happiness had promised.

  ``A duel! but he won't, my lord,---he mustn't fight, my
lord.''

  ``He must come on the ground,'' said my lord positively.

  Ripton ejaculated unintelligible stuff. Finally Lord
Mountfalcon said: ``I went out of my way, sir, in speaking
to you. I saw you from the window. Your friend is mad.
Deuced methodical, I admit, but mad. I have particular
reasons to wish not to injure the young man, and if an
apology is to be got out of him when we're on the ground,
I'll take it, and we'll stop the damned scandal, if possible.
You understand? I'm the insulted party, and I shall only
require of him to use formal words of excuse to come to
an amicable settlement. Let him just say he regrets it.
Now, sir,'' the nobleman spoke with considerable earnestness,
``should anything happen---I have the honour to be
known to Mrs. Feverel---and I beg you will tell her. I very
particularly desire you to let her know that I was not to
blame.''

  Mountfalcon rang the bell, and bowed him out. With
this on his mind Ripton harried down to those who were
waiting in joyful trust at Raynham.



	CHAPTER XLV.

	THE LAST SCENE.

  The watch consulted by Hippias alternately with his
pulse, in occult calculation hideous to mark, said half-past
eleven on the midnight. Adrian, wearing a composedly
amused expression on his dimpled plump face,---held slightly
sideways, aloof from paper and pen,---sat writing at the
library table. Round the baronet's chair, in a semicircle,
were Lucy, Lady Blandish, Mrs. Doria, and Ripton, that
very ill bird at Raynham. They were silent as those who
question the flying minutes. Ripton had said that Richard
was sure to come; but the feminine eyes reading him ever
and anon, had gathered matter for disquietude, which
increased as time sped. Sir Austin persisted in his habitual
air of speculative repose.

  Remote as he appeared from vulgar anxiety, he was the
first to speak and betray his state.

  ``Pray put up that watch. Impatience serves nothing,''
he said, half-turning hastily to his brother behind him.
Hippias relinquished his pulse and mildly groaned: ``It's
no nightmare, this!''

  His remark was unheard, and the bearing of it remained
obscure. Adrian's pen made a louder flourish on his manuscript;
whether in commiseration or infernal glee, none
might say.

  ``What are you writing?'' the baronet inquired testily of
Adrian, after a pause; twitched, it may be, by a sort of
jealousy of the wise youth's coolness.

  ``Do I disturb you, sir?'' rejoined Adrian. ``I am
engaged on a portion of a Proposal for uniting the Empires
and Kingdoms of Europe under one Paternal Head, on the
model of the ever-to-be-admired and lamented Holy Roman.
This treats of the management of Youths and Maids, and of
certain magisterial functions connected therewith. `It is
decreed that these officers be all and every men of science,'
etc.'' And Adrian cheerily drove his pen afresh.

  Mrs. Doria took Lucy's hand, mutely addressing encouragement
to her, and Lucy brought as much of a smile as she
could command to reply with.

  ``I fear we must give him up tonight,'' observed Lady
Blandish.

  ``If he said he would come, he will come,'' Sir Austin
interjected. Between him and the lady there was something
of a contest secretly going on. He was conscious that
nothing save perfect success would now hold this self-emancipating
mind. She had seen him through.

  ``He declared to me he would be certain to come,'' said
Ripton; but he could look at none of them as he said it, for
he was growing aware that Richard might have deceived
him, and was feeling like a black conspirator against their
happiness. He determined to tell the baronet what he
knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.

  ``What is the time?'' he asked Hippias in a modest voice.

  ``Time for me to be in bed,'' growled Hippias, as if everybody
present had been treating him badly.

  Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted
above. She quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the
forehead, saying: ``You had better not come down again,
my child.'' She kept her eyes on him. ``Oblige me by
retiring for the night,'' he added. Lucy shook their hands,
and went out accompanied by Mrs. Doria.

  ``This agitation will be bad for the child,'' he said, speaking
to himself aloud.

  Lady Blandish remarked: ``I think she might just as well
have returned. She will not sleep.''

  ``She will control herself for the child's sake.''

  ``You ask too much of her.''

  ``Of her not,'' he emphasized.

  It was twelve o'clock when Hippias shut his watch, and
said with vehemence: ``I'm convinced my circulation
gradually and steadily decreases.''

  ``Going back to the pre-Harvey period,'' murmured
Adrian as he wrote.

  Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment
would introduce them to the interior of his machinery,
the external view of which was sufficiently harrowing; so
they maintained a discreet reserve. Taking it for acquiescence
in his deplorable condition, Hippias resumed despairingly:
``It's a fact. I've brought you to see that. No one
can be more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse. My
System is organically sound---I believe: I do every possible
thing, and yet I get worse. Nature never forgives! I'll go
to bed.''

  The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.

  Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: ``I suppose
nothing short of a miracle helps us when we have offended
her.''

  ``Nothing short of a quack satisfies us,'' said Adrian,
applying wax to an envelope of official dimensions.

  Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they
talked; haunted by Lucy's last look at him. He got up his
courage presently and went round to Adrian, who, after a
few whispered words, deliberately rose and accompanied
him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone,
Lady Blandish said to the baronet: ``He is not coming.''

  ``To-morrow, then, if not to-night,'' he replied. ``But I
say he will come to-night.''

  ``You do really wish to see him united to his wife?''

  The question made the baronet raise his brows with some
displeasure.

  ``Can you ask me?''

  ``I mean,'' said the ungenerous woman, ``your System
will require no further sacrifices from either of them?''

  When he did answer, it was to say: ``I think her altogether
a superior person. I confess I should scarcely have
hoped to find one like her.''

  ``Admit that your science does not accomplish everything.''

  ``No: it was presumptuous---beyond a certain point,''
said the baronet, meaning deep things.

  Lady Blandish eyed him. ``Ah me!'' she sighed, ``if we
would always be true to our own wisdom!''

  ``You are very singular to-night, Emmeline.'' Sir Austin
stopped his walk in front of her.

  In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son
freely forgiven. Here was a young woman of humble birth
freely accepted into his family and permitted to stand upon
her qualities. Who would have done more---or as much?
This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have
fought it. All the people of position that he was acquainted
with would have fought it, and that without feeling it so
peculiarly. But while the baronet thought this, he did not
think of the exceptional education his son had received. He
took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his System
when it was absolutely on trial. False to his son it could
not be said that he had been: false to his System he was.
Others saw it plainly, but he had to learn his lesson by
and by.

  Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her
hand to the table, saying, ``Well! well!'' She fingered a
half-opened parcel lying there, and drew forth a little book
she recognized. ``Ha! what is this?'' she said.

  ``Benson returned it this morning,'' he informed her.
``The stupid fellow took it away with him---by mischance,
I am bound to believe.''

  It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady
Blandish turned over the leaves, and came upon the later
jottings.

  She read: ``A maker of Proverbs---what is he but a narrow
mind the mouthpiece of narrower?''

  ``I do not agree with that,'' she observed. He was in no
humour for argument.

  ``Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?''

  He merely said: ``Consider the sort of minds influenced
by set sayings. A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea,
I conceive; and the majority rest there content: can the
keeper of such a house be flattered by his company?''

  She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him
again. There must be greatness in a man who could thus
speak of his own special and admirable aptitude.
Further she read, ``Which is the coward among us?---_He
who sneers at the failings of Humanity!_''

  ``Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!'' cried the
dark-eyed dame as she beamed intellectual raptures.

  Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: ``There
is no more grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion,
than a wise man at the mercy of his feelings.''

  ``He must have written it,'' she thought, ``when he had
himself for an example strange man that he is!''

  Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though
decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered:
but if what she reverenced as a great mind could
conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her
captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest
manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser bands. Nevertheless
Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's
allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
She said again: ``He is not coming to-night,'' and the
baronet, on whose visage a contemplative pleased look had
been rising for a minute past, quietly added: ``He is
come.''

  Richard's voice was heard in the hall.

  There was commotion all over the house at the return of
the young heir. Berry, seizing every possible occasion to
approach his Bessy now that her involuntary coldness had
enhanced her value---``Such is men!'' as the soft woman
reflected---Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in
pompous tones and wheedling gestures. ``The best word
you've spoke for many a day,'' says she, and leaves him
unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.

  ``Lord be praised!'' she entered the adjoining room
exclaiming, ``we're goin' to be happy at last. They men
have come to their senses. I could cry to your Virgin and
kiss your Cross, you sweet!''

  ``Hush!'' Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the
child on her knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep,
clutched; the large blue eyes started awake; and his mother,
all trembling and palpitating, knowing, but thirsting to hear
it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to still her frame,
and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper from
bursting Mrs. Berry.

  Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the
old home that had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood
close to his wife and child. He might embrace them both:
and now the fulness of his anguish and the madness of the
thing he had done smote the young man: now first he tasted
hard earthly misery.

  Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the
finger of heaven directed him homeward? And he had
come: here he stood: congratulations were thick in his ears:
the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was invited
to drink of it. Which was the dream? his work for the
morrow, or this? But for a leaden load he felt like a bullet
in his breast, he might have thought the morrow with death
sitting on it was the dream. Yes; he was awake. Now
first the cloud of phantasms cleared away: he beheld his
real life, and the colours of true human joy: and on the
morrow perhaps he was to close his eyes on them. That
leaden bullet dispersed all unrealities.

  They stood about him in the hall, his father, Lady
Blandish, Mrs. Doria, Adrian, Ripton; people who had
known him long. They shook his hand: they gave him
greetings he had never before understood the worth of or
the meaning. Now that he did they mocked him. There
was Mrs. Berry in the background bobbing, there was Martin
Berry bowing, there was Tom Bakewell grinning. Somehow
he loved the sight of these better.

  ``Ah, my old Penelope!'' he said, breaking through the
circle of his relatives to go to her, ``so you've found him at
last? Tom! how are you? Berry! I hope you're going to
behave like a man.''

  Berry inclined with dignified confusion, and drew up to
man's height---to indicate his honourable intentions, let us
hope. Tom Bakewell performed a motion as if to smear his
face with an arm, but decided on making his grin vocal.

  ``Bless ye, my Mr. Richard,'' whimpered Mrs. Berry, and
whispered rosily, ``all's agreeable now. She's waiting up
in bed for ye, like a new-born.''

  The person who betrayed most agitation was Mrs. Doria.
She held close to him, and eagerly studied his face and every
movement, as one accustomed to masks. ``You are pale,
Richard?'' He pleaded exhaustion. ``What detained you,
dear?'' ``Business,'' he said. She drew him imperiously
apart from the others. ``Richard! is it over?'' He asked
what she meant. ``The dreadful duel, Richard.'' He looked
darkly. ``Is it over? is it done, Richard?'' Getting no
immediate answer, she continued---and such was her agitation
that the words were shaken by pieces from her mouth:
``Don't pretend not to understand me, Richard! Is it over?
Are you going to die the death of my child---Clare's death?
Is not one in a family enough? Think of your dear young
wife---we love her so!---your child!---your father! Will
you kill us all?''

  Mrs. Doria had chanced to overhear a trifle of Ripton's
communication to Adrian, and had built thereon with the
dark forces of a stricken soul.

  Wondering how this woman could have divined it, Richard
calmly said: ``It's arranged---the matter you allude to.''

  ``Indeed! truly, dear?''

  ``Yes.''

  ``Tell me''---but he broke away from her, saying: ``You
shall hear the particulars to-morrow,'' and she, not alive to
double meaning just then, allowed him to leave her.

  He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for
food, but he would take only dry bread and claret, which
was served on a tray in the library. He said, without any
show of feeling, that he must eat before he saw the younger
hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking bread, and
eating great mouthfuls, and washing them down with wine,
talking of what they would. His father's studious mind felt
itself years behind him, he was so completely altered. He
had the precision of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty.
Indeed he had all that the necessity for cloaking an
infinite misery gives. But let things be as they might, he
was there. For one night in his life Sir Austin's perspective
of the future was bounded by the night.

  ``Will you go to your wife now?'' he had asked, and
Richard had replied with a strange indifference. The
baronet thought it better that their meeting should be
private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs. The
others perceived that father and son should now be left
alone. Adrian went up to him, and said: ``I can no longer
witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir Famish! You
may cheat yourself into the belief that you've made a meal,
but depend upon it your progeny---and it threatens to be
numerous---will cry aloud and rue the day. Nature never
forgives! A lost dinner can never be replaced! Good-night,
my dear boy. And here---oblige me by taking this,''
he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what
he had written that evening. ``Credentials!'' he exclaimed
humourously, slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton
heard also the words ``propagator---species,'' but had no
idea of their import. The wise youth looked: You see
we've made matters all right for you here, and quitted the
room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.

  Richard shook his hand; and Ripton's. Then Lady
Blandish said her good-night, praising Lucy, and promising
to pray for their mutual happiness. The two men who
knew what was hanging over him, spoke together outside.
Ripton was for getting a positive assurance that the duel
would not be fought, but Adrian said: ``Time enough to-morrow.
He's safe enough while he's here. I'll stop it
to-morrow:'' ending with banter of Ripton and allusions to
his adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian said,
have led him into many affairs of the sort. Certainly
Richard was there, and while he was there he must be safe.
So thought Ripton, and went to his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated
likewise, and likewise thought him safe while he
was there. For once in her life she thought it better not to
trust to her instinct, for fear of useless disturbance where
peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to her
brother. She only looked more deeply into Richard's eyes,
as she kissed him, praising Lucy. ``1 have found a second
daughter in her, dear. Oh! may you both be happy!''

  They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the
moment they were alone. ``Poor Helen! Your wife has
been a great comfort to her, Richard. I think Helen must
have sunk without her. So lovely a young person, possessing
mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have
never before met.''

  He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy,
and some hours back he would have succeeded. Now it had
the contrary effect.

  ``You compliment me on my choice, sir?''

  Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible,
and he could speak no other way, his bitterness was so
intense.

  ``I think you very fortunate,'' said his father.

  Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of
paternal feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him.
He leaned against the chimney-piece, glancing at the floor,
and lifting his eyes only when he spoke. Fortunate! very
fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and remembered
how clearly he had seen that his father must love
Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his efforts to
persuade her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage
blackened his brain. But could he blame that gentle soul?
Whom could he blame? Himself? Not utterly. His
Father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was
there: it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man
cast it on the Fates. and looked angrily at heaven, and grew
reckless.

  ``Richard,'' said his father, coming close to him, ``it is
late to-night. I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation
longer, or I should have explained myself to you thoroughly,
and I think---or at least hope---you would have justified me.
I had cause to believe that you had not only violated my
confidence, but grossly deceived me. It was not so, I now
know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding has
resulted from that mistake. But you were married---a boy:
you knew nothing of the world, little of yourself. To save
you in after-life---for there is a period when mature men
and women who have married young are more impelled to
temptation than in youth,---though not so exposed to it,---to
save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial
and learn something of your fellows of both sexes,
before settling into a state that must have been otherwise
precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate.
My System with you would have been otherwise imperfect,
and you would have felt the effects of it. It is over now.
You are a man. The dangers to which your nature was
open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to be happy, and
I give you both my blessing, and pray God to conduct and
strengthen you both.''

  Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken
devoutly. True or not, his words were idle to his son: his
talk of dangers over, and happiness, mockery.

  Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.

  ``We will go to her,'' said the baronet. ``I will leave you
at her door.''

  Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard
face on which the colour rushed, Richard said: ``A husband
who has been unfaithful to his wife may go to her there,
sir?''

  It was horrible, it was, cruel: it was uncalled for---
Richard knew that. He wanted no advice on such a matter,
having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday he would
have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and
done what was to be done humbly before God and her: now
in the recklessness of his misery he had as little pity for
any other soul as for his own. Sir Austin's brows were
deep drawn down.

  ``What did you say, Richard?''

  Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this---the worst
he could hear---this that he had dreaded once and doubted,
and smoothed over, and cast aside---could it be?

  Richard said: ``I told you all but the very words when
we last parted. What else do you think would have kept
me from her?''

  Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: ``What
brings you to her now?''

  ``That will be between us two,'' was the reply.

  Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible.
He spoke from a wrathful heart: ``You will not dare to take
her without------''

  ``No, sir,'' Richard interrupted him, ``I shall not. Have
no fear.''

  ``Then you did not love your wife?''

  ``Did I not?'' A smile passed faintly over Richard's
face.

  ``Did you care so much for this---this other person?''

  ``So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for
her, I can say I had none.''

  O base human nature! Then how? then why? A
thousand questions rose in the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry
could have answered them every one.

  ``Poor child! poor child!'' he apostrophized Lucy
pacing the room. Thinking of her, knowing her deep love
for his son---her true forgiving heart---it seemed she should
be spared this misery.

  He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction
between women and men in this one sin, he said, and
supported it with physical and moral citations. His argument
carried him so far that to hear him one would have
imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His
words were idle.

  ``She must know it,'' said Richard sternly. ``I will go to
her now, sir, if you please.''

  Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself,
confounded his principles, made nonsense of all his
theories. He could not induce his son to waver in his
resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being interchanged,
he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on
Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it
was a strange thing to have come to. On which should the
accusation fall---on science, or on human nature?

  He remained in the library pondering over the question,
at times breathing contempt for his son, and again seized
with unwonted suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled,
much to be pitied, even if he deserved that blow from his
son which had plunged him into wretchedness.

  Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy
sleeper, and told him to have his mare saddled and waiting
at the park gates East within an hour. Tom's nearest
approach to a hero was to be a faithful slave to his
master, and in doing this he acted to his conception of that
high and glorious character. He got up and heroically
dashed his head into cold water. ``She shall be ready, sir,''
he nodded.

  ``Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your
money will go on being paid to you.''

  ``Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard,'' said Tom.

  ``And you will always watch and see no harm comes to
her, Tom.''

  ``Mrs. Richard, sir?'' Tom stared. `` God bless me, Mr.
Richard''------

  ``No questions. You'll do what I say.''

  ``Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight.''

  The very name of the island shocked Richard's blood, and
he had to walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's
door. That infamous conspiracy to which he owed his
degradation and misery scarce left him the feelings of a man
widen he thought of it.

  The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened
the door, and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward
him. In the moment that passed ere she was in his arms,
he had time to observe the change in her. He had left her
a girl: he beheld a woman---a blooming woman: for pale at
first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and
deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through
the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty
made his heart thump, and his eyes swim.

  ``My darling!'' each cried, and they clung together, and
her mouth was fastened on his.

  They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss.
Supporting her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak
as she, hung over her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they
were as one body, and in the oblivion her lips put upon him
he was free to the bliss of her embrace. Heaven granted him
that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet with
both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never
quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling wave.
This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward,
was broken with bashfulness in her husband's arms---
womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love; ten-fold
more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood.
Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly---
far on the horizon of memory---the fatal truth returned to
him.

  Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to
confirm it.

  The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen
in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting,
and fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of
them as the light on a rolling wave.

  And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of
heaven! And his she was! a woman---his wife! The
temptation to take her, and be dumb, was all powerful: the
wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the prayer
of his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this
time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure---with fierce
exultation and defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose
pure tenderness had now surmounted the first wild passion
of their meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered
body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully
quivering: ``Come and see him---baby;'' and then in great
hope of the happiness she was going to give her husband,
and share with him, and in tremour and doubt of what his
feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows worked: she
tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of separation,
misunderstanding, and uncertainty.

  ``Darling! come and see him. He is here.'' She spoke
more clearly, though no louder.

  Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he
suffered himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His
heart began rapidly throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained
cot covered with lace like milky summer cloud.

  It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked
on that child's face.

  ``Stop?'' he cried suddenly.

  Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it
should have been disturbed.

  ``Lucy, come back.''

  ``What is it, darling?'' said she, in alarm at his voice and
the grip he had unwittingly given her hand.

  O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must
face death, perhaps die and be torn from his darling---his
wife and his child; and that ere he went forth, ere he could
dare to see his child and lean his head reproachfully on his
young wife's breast---for the last time, it might be---he must
stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of him.

  ``Lucy?'' She saw him wrenched with agony, and her
own face took the whiteness of his---she bending forward to
him, all her faculties strung to hearing.

  He held her two hands that she might look on him and not
spare the horrible wound he was going to lay open to her
eyes.

  ``Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?''

  She moved her lips repeating his words.

  ``Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?''

  Her head shook widened eyes.

  ``Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my
wife! Do you understand?''

  Again the widened eyes were shaken negatively.

  ``You do not?''

  ``Darling,'' she faltered plaintively, and hung crouching
under him, ``what have I done to make you angry with me?''

  ``O beloved!'' cried he, the tears bursting out of his eyes.
``O beloved!'' was all he could say, kissing her hands passionately.

  She waited, reassured, but in terror.

  ``Lucy. I stayed away from you---I could not come to
you, because . . . I dared not come to you, my wife, my beloved!
I could not come because I was a coward: because
---hear me---this was the reason: I have broken my marriage
oath.''

  Again her lips moved repeating his words. She caught
at a dim fleshless meaning in them. ``But you love me?
Richard! My husband! you love me?''

  ``Yes. I have never loved, I never shall love, woman but
you.''

  ``Darling! Kiss me.''

  ``Have you understood what I have told you?''

  ``Kiss me,'' she said.

  He did not join lips. ``I have come to you to-night to ask
your forgiveness.''

  Her answer was: ``Kiss me.''

  ``Can you forgive a man so base?''

  ``But you love me, Richard?''

  ``Yes: that I can say before God. I love you, and I have
betrayed you, and am unworthy of you---not worthy to touch
your hand, to kneel at your feet, to breathe the same air with
you.''

  Her eyes shone brilliantly. ``You love me! you love me,
darling!'' And as one who has sailed through dark fears
into daylight, she said: ``My husband! my darling! you
will never leave me? We never shall be parted again?''

  He drew his breath painfully. To smooth her face growing
rigid with fresh fears at his silence, he met her mouth.
That kiss in which she spoke what her soul had to say,
calmed her, and she smiled happily from it, and in her manner
reminded him of his first vision of her on the summer
morning in the field of the meadow-sweet. He held her to
him, and thought then of a holier picture: of Mother and
Child: of the sweet wonders of life she had made real to
him.

  Had he not absolved his conscience? At least the pangs
to come made him think so. He now followed her leading
hand. Lucy whispered: ``You mustn't disturb him---
mustn't touch him, dear!'' and with dainty fingers drew off
the covering to the little shoulder. One arm of the child
was out along the pillow; the small hand open. His baby-mouth
was pouted full; the dark lashes of his eyes seemed
to lie on his plump cheeks. Richard stooped lower down to
him, hungering for some movement as a sign that he lived.
Lucy whispered. ``He sleeps like you, Richard---one arm
under his head.'' Great wonder, and the stir of a grasping
tenderness was in Richard. He breathed quick and soft,
bending lower, till Lucy's curls, as she nestled and bent with
him, rolled on the crimson quilt of the cot. A smile went
up the plump cheeks: forthwith the bud of a mouth was in
rapid motion. The young mother whispered, blushing:
``He's dreaming of me,'' and the simple words did more than
Richard's eyes to make him see what was. Then Lucy
began to hum and buzz sweet baby-language, and some of
the tiny fingers stirred, and he made as if to change his cosy
position, but reconsidered, and deferred it, with a peaceful
little sigh. Lucy whispered: ``He is such a big fellow.
Oh! when you see him awake he is so like you, Richard.''
He did not hear her immediately: it seemed a bit of heaven
dropped there in his likeness: the more human the fact of
the child grew the more heavenly it seemed. His son! his
child! should he ever see him awake? At the thought he
took the words that had been spoken, and started from the
dream he had been in. ``Will he wake soon, Lucy?''

  ``Oh no! not yet, dear: not for hours. I would have kept
him awake for you, but he was so sleepy.''

  Richard stood back from the cot. He thought that if he
saw the eyes of his boy, and had him once on his heart, he
never should have force to leave him. Then he looked down
on him, again struggled to tear himself away. Two natures
warred in his bosom, or it may have been the Magian Conflict
still going on. He had come to see his child once and to
make peace with his wife before it should be too late. Might
he not stop with them? Might he not relinquish that
devilish pledge? Was not divine happiness here offered to
him?---If foolish Ripton had not delayed to tell him of his
interview with Mountfalcon all might have been well. But
pride said it was impossible. And then injury spoke. For
why was he thus base and spotted to the darling of his love?
A mad pleasure in the prospect of wreaking vengeance on
the villain who had laid the trap for him, once more blackened
his brain. If he would stay he could not. So he resolved,
throwing the burden on Fate. The struggle was over, but
oh, the pain! Lucy beheld the tears streaming hot from his
face on the child's cot. She marvelled at such excess of
emotion. But when his chest heaved, and the extremity of
mortal anguish appeared to have seized him, her heart sank,
and she tried to get him in her arms. He turned away
from her and went to the window. A half-moon was over
the lake.

  ``Look!'' he said, ``do you remember our rowing there one
night, and we saw the shadow of the cypress? I wish I could
have come early to-night that we might have had another
row, and I have heard you sing there!''

  ``Darling!'' said she, ``will it make you happier if I go
with you now? I will.''

  ``No, Lucy. Lucy, you are brave!''

  ``Oh, no! that I'm not. I thought so once. I know I am
not now.''

  ``Yes! to have lived---the child on your heart---and never
to have uttered a complaint!---you are brave. O my Lucy!
my wife! you that have made me man! I called you a
coward. I remember it. I was the coward---I the wretched
vain fool! Darling! I am going to leave you now. You are
brave, and you will bear it. Listen: in two days, or three,
I may be back---back for good, if you will accept me.
Promise me to go to bed quietly. Kiss the child for me,
and tell him his father has seen him. He will learn to speak
soon. Will he soon speak, Lucy?''

  Dreadful suspicion kept her speechless; she could only
clutch one arm of his with both her hands.

  ``Going?'' she presently gasped.

  ``For two or three days. No more---I hope.''

  ``To-night?''

  ``Yes. Now.''

  ``Going now? my husband!'' her faculties abandoned
her.

  ``You will be brave, my Lucy!''

  ``Richard! my darling husband! Going? What is it
takes you from me?'' But questioning no further, she fell
on her knees, and cried piteously to him to stay---not to leave
them. Then she dragged him to the little sleeper, and urged
him to pray by his side, and he did, but rose abruptly from
his prayer when he had muttered a few broken words---she
praying on with tight-strung nerves in the faith that what
she said to the interceding Mother above would be stronger
than human hands on him. Nor could he go while she
knelt there.

  And he wavered. He had not reckoned on her terribIe,
suffering. She came to him, quiet. ``I knew you would
remain.'' And taking his hand, innocently fondling it. ``Am
I so changed from her he loved? You will not leave me,
dear?'' But dread returned, and the words quavered as she
spoke them.

  He was almost vanquished by the loveliness of her womanhood.
She drew his hand to her heart, and strained it there
under one breast. ``Come: lie on my heart,'' she murmured
with a smile of holy sweetness.

  He wavered more, and drooped to her, but summoning
the powers of hell, kissed her suddenly, cried the words of
parting, and hurried to the door. It was over in an instant.
She cried out his name, clinging to him wildly, and was
adjured to be brave, for he would be dishonoured if he did
not go. Then she was shaken off.

  Mrs. Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of
the child, which showed that no one was comforting it, and
failing to get any answer to her applications for admittance,
she made bold to enter. There she saw Lucy, the child in
her lap, sitting on the floor senseless:---she had taken it
from its sleep and tried to follow her husband with it as her
strongest appeal to him, and had fainted.

  ``Oh my! Oh my!'' Mrs. Berry moaned, ``and I just now
thinkin' they was so happy!''

  Warming and caressing the poor infant she managed by
degrees to revive Lucy, and heard what had brought her to
that situation.

  ``Go to his father,'' said Mrs. Berry. ``Ta-te-tiddle-te-heighty-O!
Go, my love, and every horse in Raynham shall
be out after 'm. This is what men brings us to! Heighty-oighty-iddlety-Ah!
Or you take blessed baby, and I'll
go.''

  The baronet himself knocked at the door. ``What is
this?'' he said. ``I heard a noise and a step descend.''

  ``It's Mr. Richard have gone, Sir Austin! have gone from
his wife and babe! Rum-te-um-te-iddledy---Oh, my goodness!
what sorrow's come on us!'' and Mrs. Berry wept, and
sang to baby, and baby cried vehemently, and Lucy, sobbing,
took him and danced him and sang to him with drawn lips
and tears dropping over him. And if the Scientific Humanist
to the day of his death forgets the sight of those two poor
true women jigging on their wretched hearts to calm the
child, he must have very little of the human in him.

  There was no more sleep for Raynham that night.



	CHAPTER XLVI.

	LADY BLANDISH TO AUSTIN WENTWORTH.

  ``His ordeal is over. I have just come from his room and
seen him bear the worst that could be. Return at once---
he has asked for you. I can hardly write intelligibly, but I
will tell you what we know.

  ``Two days after the dreadful night when he left us, his
father heard from Ralph Morton. Richard had fought a
duel in France with Lord Mountfalcon, and was lying
wounded at a hamlet on the coast. His father started
immediately with his poor wife, and I followed in company
with his aunt and his child. The wound was not dangerous.
He was shot in the side somewhere, but the ball injured no
vital part. We thought all would be well. Oh! how sick
I am of theories, and Systems, and the pretensions of men!
There was his son lying all but dead, and the man was still
unconvinced of the folly he had been guilty of. I could
hardly bear the sight of his composure. I shall hate the
name of Science till the day I die. Give me nothing but
commonplace unpretending people!

  ``They were at a wretched French cabaret, smelling
vilely, where we still remain, and the people try as much
as they can do to compensate for our discomforts by their
kindness. The French poor people are very considerate
where they see suffering. I will say that for them. The
doctors had not allowed his poor Lucy to go near him,
She sat outside his door, and none of us dared disturb
her. That was a sight for Science. His father and myself,
and Mrs. Berry, were the only ones permitted to wait on
him, and whenever we came out, there she sat, not
speaking a word---for she had been told it would endanger
his life---but she looked such awful eagerness. She had
the sort of eye I fancy mad persons have. I was sure
her reason was going. We did everything we could think of
to comfort her. A bed was made up for her and her meals
were brought to her there. Of course there was no getting
her to eat. What do you suppose _his_ alarm was fixed on?
He absolutely said to me---but I have not patience to repeat
his words. He thought her to blame for not _commanding_
herself for the sake of her _maternal duties._ He had absolutely
an idea of insisting that she should make an effort to
suckle the child. I shall love that Mrs. Berry to the end of
my days. I really believe she has _twice_ the sense of any of
us---Science and all. She asked him plainly if he wished to
poison the child, and then he gave way, but with a bad grace.

  ``Poor man! perhaps I am hard on him. I remember
that you said Richard had done wrong. Yes; well, that
may be. But his father eclipsed his wrong in a greater
wrong---a crime, or quite as bad; for if he deceived himself
in the belief that he was acting righteously in separating
husband and wife, and exposing his son as he did I can only
say that there are some who are worse than people who
deliberately commit _crimes._ No doubt science will benefit
by it. They kill little animals for the sake of science.

  ``We have with us Doctor Bairam, and a French physician
from Dieppe, a very skilful man. It was he who told us
where the real danger lay. We thought all would be well.
A week had passed, and no fever supervened. We told
Richard that his wife was coming to him, and he could bear
to hear it. I went to her and began to circumlocute, thinking
she listened---she had the same eager look. When I told
her she might go in with me to see her dear husband, her
features did not change. M. Despr<e'>s, who held her pulse
at the time, told me, in a whisper, it was cerebral fever---
brain fever coming on. We have talked of her since. I
noticed that though she did not seem to understand me, her
bosom heaved, and she appeared to be trying to repress it,
and choke something. I am sure now, from what I know of
her character, that she---even in the approaches of delirium
---was preventing herself from crying out. Her last hold of
reason was a thought for Richard. It was against a creature
like this that we plotted! I have the comfort of knowing
that I did my share in helping to destroy her. Had she
seen her husband a day or two before---but no! there was a
new _System_ to interdict that! Or had she not so violently
controlled her nature as she did, I believe she might have
been saved.

  ``He said once of a man, that his conscience was a coxcomb.
Will you believe that when he saw his son's wife---
poor victim! lying delirious, he could not even then see his
error. You said he wished to take Providence out of God's
hands. His mad self-deceit would not leave him. I am
positive that, while he was standing over her, he was blaming
her for not having considered the child. Indeed he
made a remark to me that it was unfortunate---`disastrous,'
I think he said---that the child should have to be fed by
hand. I dare say it is. All I pray is that this young child
may be saved from him. I cannot bear to see him look on
it. He does not spare himself _bodily_ fatigue---but what is
that? that is the vulgarest form of love. I know what you
will say. You will say I have lost all charity, and I have.
But I should not feel so, Austin, if I could be _quite sure_ that
he is an altered man even now the blow has struck him. He
is reserved and simple in his speech, and his grief is evident,
but I have doubts. He heard her while she was senseless
call him cruel and harsh, and cry that she had suffered, and
I saw then his mouth contract as if he had been touched.
Perhaps, when he thinks, his mind will be clearer, but what
he has done cannot be undone. I do not imagine he will
abuse women any more. The doctor called her a `forte et
belle jeune femme:' and _he_ said she was as noble a soul as
ever God moulded clay upon. A noble soul `forte et belle!'
She lies upstairs. If he can look on her and not see his _sin,_
I almost fear God will never enlighten him.

  ``She died five days after she had been removed. The
shock had utterly deranged her. I was with her. She died
very quietly, breathing her last breath without pain---asking
for no one---a death I should like to die.

  ``Her cries at one time were dreadfully loud. She
screamed that she was `drowning in fire,' and that her husband
would not come to her to save her. We deadened the
sound as much as we could, but it was impossible to prevent
Richard from hearing. He knew her voice, and it produced
an effect like fever on him. Whenever she called he
answered. You could not hear them without weeping.
Mrs. Berry sat with her, and I sat with him, and his father
moved from one to the other.

  ``But the trial for us came when she was gone. How to
communicate it to Richard---or whether to do so at all! His
father consulted with us. We were quite decided that it
would be madness to breathe it while he was in that state.
I can admit now---as things have turned out---we were
wrong. His father left us---I believe he spent the time in
prayer---and then leaning on me, he went to Richard, and
said in so many words, that his Lucy was no more. I
thought it must kill him. He listened, and smiled. I never
saw a smile so sweet and so sad. He said he had seen her
die, as if he had passed through his suffering a long time
ago. He shut his eyes. I could see by the motion of his
eyeballs up that he was straining his sight to some inner
heaven.---I cannot go on.

  ``I think Richard is safe. Had we postponed the tidings,
till he came to his clear senses, it must have killed him.
His father was right for once, then. But if he has saved his
son's body, he has given the death-blow to his heart. Richard
will never be what he promised.

  ``A letter found on his clothes tells us the origin of the
quarrel. I have had an interview with Lord M. this morning.
I cannot say I think him exactly to blame: Richard
forced him to fight. At least I do not select him the foremost
for blame. He was deeply and sincerely affected by
the calamity he has caused. Alas I he was only an instrument.
Your poor aunt is utterly prostrate and talks strange
things of her daughter's death. She is only happy in
_drudging._ Dr. Bairam says we must under any circumstances
keep her employed. Whilst she is doing something,
she can chat freely, but the moment her hands are not occupied
she gives me an idea that she is going into a fit.

  ``We expect the dear child's uncle to-day. Mr. Thompson
is here. I have taken him upstairs to look at her. That
poor young man has a true heart.

  ``Come at once. You will not be in time to see her. She
will lie at Raynham. If you could you would see an angel.
_He_ sits by her side for hours. I can give you no description
of her beauty.

  ``You will not delay, I know, dear Austin, and I want
you, for your presence will make me more charitable than
find it possible to be. Have you noticed the expression
in the eyes of blind men? That is just how Richard looks,
as he lies there silent in his bed---striving to image her on
his brain.''




			THE END.



------------------------------------------------------------


Source
======

  This machine-readable edition of `The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel' is based on the 1889 edition of George Meredith's
Works (10 vol.) published by Chapman and Hall, London, and
printed by Nichols and Sons, 25 Parliament Street,
Westminster.

Changes
=======

  Page divisions and column titles have been silently removed.

 All end-of-line hyphenation have been removed, and the
de-hyphenated words placed at the end of the first line.
The guide for whether to keep or remove the hyphen has been
the text itself.

  The Table of Contents, containing chapter headings and
page numbers, has been deleted.

  The following misprints have been corrected:

p. 10, l. 16: cool.				(was: missing period)
p. 19, l. -4: ``I'll give you			(was: Il'l)
p. 90, l. 18: was piteous. ``Even in		(was: piteous. || ``Even)
p. 95, l. 19: `and' and `y,' ''			(was: missing '')
p.117, l. 13: and lawyers tell us?''		(was: missing '')
p.141, l.-18: abruptly dismissed		(was: dismisscd)
p.148, l. 23: not the first time		(was: the the)
p.177, l. -9: before it will succumb		(was: suc-||sumb)
p.178, l.-12: talk about||attitudes!''		(was: missing '')
p.179, l.  1: ``It seems Folly's		(was: missing ``)
p.181, l. 28: education's peculiar!''		(was: peculiar!')
p.193, l. 16: ``You know, sir, what		(was: missing ``)
p.203, l. 13: Sing Cuckoo!'			(was: missing ')
p.224, l.  4: you'll see her to-night.''	(was: missing '')
p.226, l. 13: I'll wager. Ha! Ha!''		(was: ``Ha! Ha!'')
p.239, l. 11L your blue eyes!'			(was: eyes!'')
p.293, l. 24: It's that Clarence!		(was: `It's that)
p.315, l. 12: along. I'll put you on board	(was: ``I'll)
p.321, l. -8: father at all,'' said Richard	(was: missing '')
p.322, l.-10: Lady Judith said: ``I think	(was: missing ``)
p.342, l. 15: than Venus up aloft.''		(was: missing '')
p.343, l. -1: `I'll wait till then,'		(was: ,I'll)
p.399, l.  6: enough have spoilt		(was: spilto)
p.411, l.-15: my dear. Don't ye mind,''		(was: dear,)
p.416, l.-14: o' men--unpertected		(was: o 'men)
p.418, l.  8: the week is over.''		(was: over,'')
p.424, l. -7: `Ugh!' he answers			(was: missing `)
p.428, l. -2: who was in the thick		(was: whe was)
p.445, l.-12: on to the end.			(was: toe)
p.460, l.-10: could it be?			(was: it be?'')
p.468, l.-10: ``His ordeal is over.		(was: missing ``)

  Some occasional inconsistencies in hyphenation have been
silently removed.

  This number of fairly obvious misprints may be taken as an
indication that a large number of undetected misprints still
lurks in the text.


Notes
=====

  There is some variance in how the title _The Pilgrim's
Scrip_ is presented. The first few are not in small caps as
in the remainder of the text. 
  Some titles do not include the _the_.
  No change attempted.

p.228, l.  9: 	gallop off with them,||But

  Two corrections possible:

	them.||But	or	them,||but

  The first one has been used, but the second one might be 
intended.

p.278, l.-12: ``Tomorrow, if you please [...]''

  In the original only the ending '' were printed.
  Again, two corrections are possible: remove the '' or add
``. The second of these have been used, but it is not
entirely clear from the context if the text is actually
spoken.


Markup conventions
==================

  The following markup has been added:

  Each paragraph begins with two spaces indentation.

_ _	indicates text in italics
= =	indicates texts in small caps (extra emphasis)

---	indicates an em dash.  Longer sequences represent
	correspondingly longer dashes.

<titlepage>
	is used to indicate where the titlepage starts
<text>	is used to indicate where the text starts


<ae>	ae ligature
<AE>	AE ligature
<e'>	e acute
<e:>	e dieresis
<i:>	i dieresis
<oe>	oe ligature
<OE>	OE ligature

<*> 	used to indicate an ellipsis in the text, usually
	printed	as an empty line



  The transcription and proof-reading was done by Anders
Thulin, Rydsvagen 288, S-582 58 Linkoping, Sweden.  (Email:
ath@linkoping.trab.se)

  As far as I am concerned, this electronical edition is
free, and may be used in any way for any purpose whatever.

  I'd be glad to hear of any errors or omissions you might
find.