The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 50

"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 cla.s.s, 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 appet.i.te'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 twelve. 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 a.s.sistance, 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 was 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sure you."

Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic finish to the work. He had the gratification of pa.s.sing his uncle through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in conviction, and exclaimed, "This accounts for his conduct to me.

That boy must have a cunning nothing short of infernal! I feel ... I feel it just here," he drew a hand along his midriff.

"I'm not equal to this world of fools," he added faintly, and shut his eyes. "No, I can't dine. Eat? ha! ... no. Go without me!"

Shortly after Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed, "See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!" and as the pillow swelled over his ears, "I'm not sure that a day's fast won't do me good." The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had a right to use it.

Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.

He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appet.i.te in the Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged.

The Captain did not pa.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.ked his horse.

"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once more in motion.

The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures!

Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate.

Well might THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP say of her that, "She is always at Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve throughout the ages; whereas the PILGRIM would have us believe that the Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has learnt a lesson from time. Probably the PILGRIM'S meaning may be taken to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.

At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria's maternal predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty, and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and other females of the family a.s.sembly 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 relations.h.i.+p."

"Whether he understands them, I can't say," observed Adrian, "but I a.s.sure you he is very energetic in extending them."

The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by at the aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly mysterious and deep.

"Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?" Mrs.

Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.

Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, "Do they keep a beadle at the door?"

Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece of satirical ingenuousness. "I daresay they do," she said.

"And a curate on hand?"

"Oh, I should think a dozen!"

Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarence to give that house a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment's notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.

The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent old fas.h.i.+on remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon as they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord, and the gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled to the business of the table, sure that an hour for unbosoming and imbibing was their own. Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of standing.

"I want to ask you," he said, "whether an infant in law can legally bind himself."

"If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I suppose he can," yawned Brandon.

"Is he responsible for his acts?"

"I've no doubt we could hang him."

"Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?"