George Meredith
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Volume 1
"You don't see Sandoe's depth," Adrian replied. "Consider that phrase, 'Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other leading spirits—I think that's your term just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, and rants to the Impalpable."
Austin laughed. "Marriage and smiling babes she would have in abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you know him. He will be over at Poer Hall shortly, and you will see what a Man of the Age means. But now, pray, consult with me about these boys."
"Oh, those boys!" Adrian tossed a hand. "Are there boys of the Age as well as men? Not? Then boys are better than men: boys are for all Ages. What do you think, Austin? They've been studying Latude's Escape. I found the book open in Ricky's room, on the top of Jonathan Wild. Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and taught them nothing. So they're going to make a Latude of Mr. Tom Bakewell. He's to be Bastille Bakewell, whether he will or no. Let them. Let the wild colt run free! We can't help them. We can only look on. We should spoil the play."
Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast Impatience with pleasantries—a not congenial diet; and Austin, the most patient of human beings, began to lose his self-control.
"You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have but a few hours left us. Work first, and joke afterwards. The boy's fate is being decided now."
"So is everybody's, my dear Austin!" yawned the epicurean.
"Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship—under yours especially."
"Not yet! not yet!" Adrian interjected languidly. "No getting into scrapes when I have him. The leash, young hound! the collar, young colt! I'm perfectly irresponsible at present."
"You may have something different to deal with when you are responsible, if you think that."
"I take my young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a Caracalla: a Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play the fiddle to a conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must be a disputatious apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and men, and have the habit of saying his prayers."
"Then you leave me to act alone?" said Austin, rising.
"Without a single curb!" Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced withdrawal. "I'm sure you would not, still more certain you cannot, do harm. And be mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever's done, old Blaize will have to be bought off. There's the affair settled at once. I suppose I must go to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can't see this poor devil condemned, though it's nonsense to talk of a boy being the prime instigator."
Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of the wise youth, his cousin, and the little that he knew of his fellows told him he might talk forever here, and not be comprehended. The wise youth's two ears were stuffed with his own wisdom. One evil only Adrian dreaded, it was clear —the action of the law.
As he was moving away, Adrian called out to him, "Stop, Austin! There! don't be anxious! You invariably take the glum side. I've done something. Never mind what. If you go down to Belthorpe, be civil, but not obsequious. You remember the tactics of Scipio Africanus against the Punic elephants? Well, don't say a word—in thine ear, coz: I've turned Master Blaize's elephants. If they charge, 'twill bye a feint, and back to the destruction of his serried ranks! You understand. Not? Well, 'tis as well. Only, let none say that I sleep. If I must see him to- night, I go down knowing he has not got us in his power." The wise youth yawned, and stretched out a hand for any book that might be within his reach. Austin left him to look about the grounds for Richard.
CHAPTER VII
A little laurel-shaded temple of white marble looked out on the river from a knoll bordering the Raynham beechwoods, and was dubbed by Adrian Daphne's Bower. To this spot Richard had retired, and there Austin found him with his head buried in his hands, a picture of desperation, whose last shift has been defeated. He allowed Austin to greet him and sit by him without lifting his head. Perhaps his eyes were not presentable.
"Where's your friend?" Austin began.
"Gone!" was the answer, sounding cavernous from behind hair and fingers. An explanation presently followed, that a summons had come for him in the morning from Mr. Thompson; and that Mr. Ripton had departed against his will.
In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent and remain by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the post of danger. Sir Austin signified his opinion that a boy should obey his parent, by giving orders to Benson for Ripton's box to be packed and ready before noon; and Ripton's alacrity in taking the baronet's view of filial duty was as little feigned as his offer to Richard to throw filial duty to the winds. He rejoiced that the Fates had agreed to remove him from the very hot neighbourhood of Lobourne, while he grieved, like an honest lad, to see his comrade left to face calamity alone. The boys parted amicably, as they could hardly fail to do, when Ripton had sworn fealty to the Feverals with a warmth that made him declare himself bond, and due to appear at any stated hour and at any stated place to fight all the farmers in England, on a mandate from the heir of the house.
"So you're left alone," said Austin, contemplating the boy's shapely head. "I'm glad of it. We never know what's in us till we stand by ourselves."
There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity, however, replied at last, "He wasn't much support."
"Remember his good points now he's gone, Ricky."
"Oh! he was staunch," the boy grumbled.
"And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried your own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?"
"I have done everything."
"And failed!"
There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion—
"Tom Bakewell's a coward!"
"I suppose, poor fellow," said Austin, in his kind way, "he doesn't want to get into a deeper mess. I don't think he's a coward."
"He is a coward," cried Richard. "Do you think if I had a file I would stay in prison? I'd be out the first night! And he might have had the rope, too—a rope thick enough for a couple of men his size and weight. Ripton and I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour, and it didn't give way. He's a coward, and deserves his fate. I've no compassion for a coward."
"Nor I much," said Austin.
Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation of poor Tom. He would have hidden it had he known the thought in Austin's clear eyes while he faced them.
"I never met a coward myself," Austin continued. "I have heard of one or two. One let an innocent man die for him."
"How base!" exclaimed the boy.
"Yes, it was bad," Austin acquiesced.
"Bad!" Richard scorned the poor contempt. "How I would have spurned him!
He was a coward!"
"I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his excuse, and tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her guilty accuser."
"What a coward!" shouted Richard. "And he confessed it publicly?"
"You may read it yourself."
"He actually wrote it down, and printed it?"
"You have the book in your father's library. Would you have done so much?"
Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told people.
"Then who is to call that man a coward?" said Austin. "He expiated his cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think 'God does not see.' I shall escape.' He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make his heart bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to know myself an impostor when men praised me."
Young Richard's eyes were wandering on Austin's gravely cheerful face. A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.
"So I think you're wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward because he refuses to try your means of escape," Austin resumed. "A coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice. And, where the person involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a coward."
Richard was dumb. Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he had spent on those two saving instruments. If he avowed Tom's manly behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position. Whereas, by keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys or men.
In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long. He had but a blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young Richard. Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher. A single instance, a cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing ancient or latent opposition. The born preacher we feel instinctively to be our foe. He may do some good to the wretches that have been struck down and lie gasping on the battlefield: he rouses antagonism in the strong. Richard's nature, left to itself, wanted little more than an indication of the proper track, and when he said, "Tell me what I can do, Austin?" he had fought the best half of the battle. His voice was subdued. Austin put his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"You must go down to Farmer Blaize."
"Well!" said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.
"You'll know what to say to him when you're there."
The boy bit his lip and frowned. "Ask a favour of that big brute,
Austin? I can't!"
"Just tell him the whole case, and that you don't intend to stand by and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of his scrape."
"But, Austin," the boy pleaded, "I shall have to ask him to help off Tom
Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I hate him?"
Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences till he got there.
Richard groaned in soul.
"You've no pride, Austin."
"Perhaps not."
"You don't know what it is to ask a favour of a brute you hate."
Richard stuck to that view of the case, and stuck to it the faster the more imperatively the urgency of a movement dawned upon him.
"Why," continued the boy, "I shall hardly be able to keep my fists off him!"
"Surely you've punished him enough, boy?" said Austin.
"He struck me!" Richard's lip quivered. "He dared not come at me with his hands. He struck me with a whip. He'll be telling everybody that he horsewhipped me, and that I went down and begged his pardon. Begged his pardon! A Feverel beg his pardon! Oh, if I had my will!"
"The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his grounds. He turned you off, and you fired his rick."
"And I'll pay him for his loss. And I won't do any more."
"Because you won't ask a favour of him?"
"No! I will not ask a favour of him."
Austin looked at the boy steadily. "You prefer to receive a favour from poor Tom Bakewell?"
At Austin's enunciation of this obverse view of the matter Richard raised his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon him. "Favour from Tom Bakewell, the ploughman? How do you mean, Austin?"
"To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country lad to sacrifice himself for you? I confess I should not have so much pride."
"Pride!" shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his sight hard at the blue ridges of the hills.
Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew a picture of Tom in prison, and repeated Tom's volunteer statement. The picture, though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard, whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear, unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a bacon- munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a man; a dear brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of devotion and unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and it kindled his imagination to realize the abject figure of poor clodpole Tom, and surround it with a halo of mournful light. His soul was alive. Feelings he had never known streamed in upon him as from an ethereal casement, an unwonted tenderness, an embracing humour, a consciousness of some ineffable glory, an irradiation of the features of humanity. All this was in the bosom of the boy, and through it all the vision of an actual hob-nail Tom, coarse, unkempt, open from ear to ear; whose presence was a finger of shame to him and an oppression of clodpole; yet toward whom he felt just then a loving-kindness beyond what he felt for any living creature. He laughed at him, and wept over him. He prized him, while he shrank from him. It was a genial strife of the angel in him with constituents less divine; but the angel was uppermost and led the van—extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured pride—pride that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of gaping Tom, and cry to Richard, in the very tone of Adrian's ironic voice, "Behold your benefactor!"
Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he had stirred. Little of it was perceptible in Richard's countenance. The lines of his mouth were slightly drawn; his eyes hard set into the distance. He remained thus many minutes. Finally he jumped to his legs, saying, "I'll go at once to old Blaize and tell him."
Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of Daphne's Bower, in the direction of Lobourne.
CHAPTER VIII
Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard Feverel as that young gentleman expected him to be. The farmer, seated in his easy- chair in the little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned farm-house, with a long clay pipe on the table at his elbow, and a veteran pointer at his feet, had already given audience to three distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately, according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object. In the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly after his departure, arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about Lobourne as the Captain, popular wherever he was known. Farmer Blaize reclined m considerable elation. He had brought these great people to a pretty low pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably, as a British yeoman should; but not budged a foot in his demands: not to the baronet: not to the Captain: not to good young Mr. Wentworth. For Farmer Blaize was a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the baronet a frank confession of the hold he had on the family, he determined to tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for tangible advantages—compensation to his pocket, his wounded person, and his still more wounded sentiments: the total indemnity being, in round figures, three hundred pounds, and a spoken apology from the prime offender, young Mister Richard. Even then there was a reservation. Provided, the farmer said, nobody had been tampering with any of his witnesses. In that ease Farmer Blaize declared the money might go, and he would transport Tom Bakewell, as he had sworn he would. And it goes hard, too, with an accomplice, by law, added the farmer, knocking the ashes leisurely out of his pipe. He had no wish to bring any disgrace anywhere; he respected the inmates of Raynham Abbey, as in duty bound; he should be sorry to see them in trouble. Only no tampering with his witnesses. He was a man for Law. Rank was much: money was much: but Law was more. In this country Law was above the sovereign. To tamper with the Law was treason to the realm.
"I come to you direct," the baronet explained. "I tell you candidly what way I discovered my son to be mixed up in this miserable affair. I promise you indemnity for your loss, and an apology that shall, I trust, satisfy your feelings, assuring you that to tamper with witnesses is not the province of a Feverel. All I ask of you in return is, not to press the prosecution. At present it rests with you. I am bound to do all that lies in my power for this imprisoned man. How and wherefore my son was prompted to suggest, or assist in, such an act, I cannot explain, for I do not know."
"Hum!" said the farmer. "I think I do."
"You know the cause?" Sir Austin stared. "I beg you to confide it to me."
"'Least, I can pretty nigh neighbour it with a gues," said the farmer. " We an't good friends, Sir Austin, me and your son, just now—not to say cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I'm a man as don't like young gentlemen a-poachin' on his grounds without his permission,—in special when birds is plentiful on their own. It appear he do like it. Consequently I has to flick this whip—as them fellers at the races: All in this 'ere Ring's mine! as much as to say; and who's been hit, he's had fair warnin'. I'm sorry for't, but that's just the case."
Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he should find him.
Algernon's interview passed off in ale and promises. He also assured
Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected by his proviso.
No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.
"Money's safe, I know," said he; "now for the 'pology!" and Farmer Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his head further back.
The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate visits had been conspired together. Still the baronet's frankness, and the baronet's not having reserved himself for the third and final charge, puzzled him. He was considering whether they were a deep, or a shallow lot, when young Richard was announced.
A pretty little girl with the roses of thirteen springs in her cheeks, and abundant beautiful bright tresses, tripped before the boy, and loitered shyly by the farmer's arm-chair to steal a look at the handsome new-comer. She was introduced to Richard as the farmer's niece, Lucy Desborough, the daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and, what was better, though the farmer did not pronounce it so loudly, a real good girl.
Neither the excellence of her character, nor her rank in life, tempted Richard to inspect the little lady. He made an awkward bow, and sat down.
The farmer's eyes twinkled. "Her father," he continued, "fought and fell for his coontry. A man as fights for's coontry's a right to hould up his head—ay! with any in the land. Desb'roughs o' Dorset! d'ye know that family, Master Feverel?"
Richard did not know them, and, by his air, did not desire to become acquainted with any offshoot of that family.
"She can make puddens and pies," the farmer went on, regardless of his auditor's gloom. "She's a lady, as good as the best of 'em. I don't care about their being Catholics—the Desb'roughs o' Dorset are gentlemen. And she's good for the pianer, too! She strums to me of evenin's. I'm for the old tunes: she's for the new. Gal-like! While she's with me she shall be taught things use'l. She can parley-voo a good 'un and foot it, as it goes; been in France a couple of year. I prefer the singin' of 't to the talkin' of 't. Come, Luce! toon up—eh? —Ye wun't? That song abort the Viffendeer—a female"—Farmer Blaize volunteered the translation of the title—"who wears the—you guess what! and marches along with the French sojers: a pretty brazen bit o' goods, I sh'd fancy."
Mademoiselle Lucy corrected her uncle's French, but objected to do more. The handsome cross boy had almost taken away her voice for speech, as it was, and sing in his company she could not; so she stood, a hand on her uncle's chair to stay herself from falling, while she wriggled a dozen various shapes of refusal, and shook her head at the farmer with fixed eyes.
"Aha!" laughed the farmer, dismissing her, "they soon learn the difference 'twixt the young 'un and the old 'un. Go along, Luce! and learn yer lessons for to-morrow."
Reluctantly the daughter of the Royal Navy glided away. Her uncle's head followed her to the door, where she dallied to catch a last impression of the young stranger's lowering face, and darted through.
Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. "She an't so fond of her uncle as that, every day! Not that she an't a good nurse—the kindest little soul you'd meet of a winter's walk! She'll read t' ye, and make drinks, and sing, too, if ye likes it, and she won't be tired. A obstinate good 'un, she be! Bless her!"
The farmer may have designed, by these eulogies of his niece, to give his visitor time to recover his composure, and establish a common topic. His diversion only irritated and confused our shame-eaten youth. Richard's intention had been to come to the farmer's threshold: to summon the farmer thither, and in a loud and haughty tone then and there to take upon himself the whole burden of the charge against Tom Bakewell. He had strayed, during his passage to Belthorpe, somewhat back to his old nature; and his being compelled to enter the house of his enemy, sit in his chair, and endure an introduction to his family, was more than he bargained for. He commenced blinking hard in preparation for the horrible dose to which delay and the farmer's cordiality added inconceivable bitters. Farmer Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a hurry. He spoke of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at the Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing; hoped that no future Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw and heard Arson in it all. He blinked harder as he neared the cup. In a moment of silence, he seized it with a gasp.
"Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire to your rick the other night."
An odd consternation formed about the farmer's mouth. He changed his posture, and said, "Ay? that's what ye're come to tell me sir?"
"Yes!" said Richard, firmly.
"And that be all?"
"Yes!" Richard reiterated.
The farmer again changed his posture. "Then, my lad, ye've come to tell me a lie!"
Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush of ire he had kindled.
"You dare to call me a liar!" cried Richard, starting up.
"I say," the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his thigh thereto, "that's a lie!"
Richard held out his clenched fist. "You have twice insulted me. You have struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have apologized—I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that fellow in prison. Yes! I would have degraded myself that another man should not suffer for my deed"—
"Quite proper!" interposed the farmer.
"And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You're a coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own house."
"Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master," said the farmer, indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. "Sit ye down. Don't ye be hasty. If ye hadn't been hasty t'other day, we sh'd a been friends yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh'd be sorry to reckon you out a liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o' your name. I respects yer father though we're opp'site politics. I'm willin' to think well o' you. What I say is, that as you say an't the trewth. Mind! I don't like you none the worse for't. But it an't what is. That's all! You knows it as well's I!"
Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily reseated himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his late interview with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely that a towering passion is hardly the justification for a wrong course of conduct.
"Come," continued the farmer, not unkindly, "what else have you to say?"
Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at Richard's lips again! Alas, poor human nature! that empties to the dregs a dozen of these evil drinks, to evade the single one which Destiny, less cruel, had insisted upon.
The boy blinked and tossed it off.
"I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for your striking me."
Farmer Blaize nodded.
"And now ye've done, young gentleman?"
Still another cupful!
"I should be very much obliged," Richard formally began, but his stomach was turned; he could but sip and sip, and gather a distaste which threatened to make the penitential act impossible. "Very much obliged," he repeated: "much obliged, if you would be so kind," and it struck him that had he spoken this at first he would have given it a wording more persuasive with the farmer and more worthy of his own pride: more honest, in fact: for a sense of the dishonesty of what he was saying caused him to cringe and simulate humility to deceive the farmer, and the more he said the less he felt his words, and, feeling them less, he inflated them more. "So kind," he stammered, "so kind" (fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so kind!) "as to do me the favour" (me the favour!) "to exert yourself" (it's all to please Austin) "to endeavour to—hem! to" (there's no saying it!)—
The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.
"What I came to ask is, whether you would have the kindness to try what you could do" (what an infamous shame to have to beg like this!) "do to save—do to ensure—whether you would have the kindness" It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to apologize for one's wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the offended party—that was beyond the self-abasement any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time, "Behold your Benefactor!" and, with the words burning in his ears, Richard swallowed the dose:
"Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,—if you don't mind—will you help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?"
To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for the boy, though he could not quite see why he did not take the gate at the first offer.
"Oh!" said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request. "Hum! ha! we'll see about it t'morrow. But if he's innocent, you know, we shan't mak'n guilty."
"It was I did it!" Richard declared.
