The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 65

"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 fis.h.!.+ '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 pa.s.sed 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 canva.s.sing the conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a terrible riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent. As softly as she could she told the story.

To her the shame was past: she could weep for the poor lady. Richard dropped no tears. Disgrace of this kind is always present to a son, and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a vivid fire in his brain. He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from the man. Here was work set to his hand. All her dear husband did was right to Lucy. She encouraged him to stay for that purpose, thinking it also served another. There was Tom Bakewell to watch over Lucy: there was work for him to do. Whether it would please his father he did not stop to consider. As to the justice of the act, let us say nothing.

On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe's place of residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet now went in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful. The friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish's town-house, or at the Foreys', where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr, and staunch conservative, a favourable reception. Pity, deep pity for Richard's conduct Ripton saw breathing out of Mrs. Doria. Algernon Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of rough commiseration, as a young fellow who had run off the road.

Pity was in Lady Blandish's eyes, though for a different cause. She doubted if she did well in seconding his father's unwise scheme--supposing him to have a scheme. She saw the young husband encompa.s.sed by dangers at a critical time. Not a word of Mrs. Mount had been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life.

She touched on delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he understood her well enough. "If he loves this person to whom he has bound himself, what fear for him? Or are you coming to think it something that bears the name of love because we have to veil the rightful appellation?" So he responded, remote among the mountains.

She tried very hard to speak plainly. Finally he came to say, that he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially, that he for a time might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread. This was almost too much for Lady Blandish. Love's charity boy so loftily serene now that she saw him half denuded--a thing of shanks and wrists--was a trial for her true heart.

Going home at night Richard would laugh at the faces made about his marriage. "We'll carry the day, Rip, my Lucy and I! or I'll do it alone--what there is to do." He slightly adverted to a natural want of courage in women, which Ripton took to indicate that his Beauty was deficient in that quality. Up leapt the Old Dog; "I'm sure there never was a braver creature upon earth, Richard! She's as brave as she's lovely, I'll swear she is! Look how she behaved that day! How her voice sounded! She was trembling.... Brave? She'd follow you into battle Richard!"

And Richard rejoined: "Talk on, dear old Rip! She's my darling love, whatever she is! And she is gloriously lovely. No eyes are like hers. I'll go down to-morrow morning the first thing."

Ripton only wondered the husband of such a treasure could remain apart from it. So thought Richard for a s.p.a.ce.

"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 a.s.sented, and the words "Please remember me to dear Mr. Thompson," fluttered about the Old Dog's heart.

It came to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed about her. The lady made a laughing remark to him, whereat he turned to look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She had to bob a second time, and then he remembered the worthy creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand so that he put her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely agitated. He dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening. She heard the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they both laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of each eye. "I don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and repeated it resolutely.

"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her 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."

Establis.h.i.+ng 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sured 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 her old Berry?"

Richard hurriedly explained that Lucy was still in the Isle of Wight.

"Oh! and you've left her for a day or two?" said Mrs. Berry.

"Good G.o.d! 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 says, the bad man, with his jokes!--Berry went to service." Mrs.

Berry's softness came upon her. "So I tell ye, Berry went to service. He left the wife of his bosom forlorn and he went to service; because he were 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 s.l.u.ts, which was my mournin' ready made, and worse than a widow's cap to me, which is no shame to wear, and some say becoming. There's no man as ever lived known better than my Berry how to show his legs to advantage, and gals look at 'em. I don't wonder now that Berry was prostrated. His temptations was strong, and his flesh was weak. Then what I say is, that for a young married man--be he whomsoever he may be--to be separated from the wife of his bosom--a young sweet thing, and he an innocent young gentleman!--so to sunder, in their state, and be kep' from each other, I say it's as bad as bad can be! For what is matrimony, my dears? We're told it's a holy Ordnance. And why are ye so comfortable in matrimony? For that ye are not a sinnin'! And they that severs ye they tempts ye to stray: and you learn too late the meanin' o' them blessin's of the priest--as it was ordained. Separate--what comes? Fust it's like the circulation of your blood a-stoppin'--all goes wrong. Then there's misunderstandings--ye've both lost the key. Then, behold ye, there's birds o' prey hoverin' over each on ye, and it's which'll be snapped up fust. Then--Oh, dear! Oh, dear! it be like the devil come into the world again." Mrs. Berry struck her hands and moaned. "A day I'll give ye: I'll go so far as a week: but there's the outside. Three months dwellin' apart! That's not matrimony, it's divorcin'! what can it be to her but widowhood?

widowhood with no cap to show for it! And what can it be to you, my dear? Think! you been a bachelor three months! and a bachelor man,"

Mrs. Berry shook her head most dolefully, "he ain't a widow woman.

I don't go to compare you to Berry, my dear young gentleman. Some men's hearts is vagabonds born--they must go astray--it's their natur'

to. But all men are men, and I know the foundation of 'em, by reason of my woe."

Mrs. Berry paused. Richard was humorously respectful to the sermon.

The truth in the good creature's address was not to be disputed, or despised, notwithstanding the inclination to laugh provoked by her quaint way of putting it. Ripton nodded encouragingly at every sentence, for he saw her drift, and wished to second it.

Seeking for an ill.u.s.tration 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 agin, we all do know what checked prespiration is. It fly to the lungs, it gives ye mortal inflammation, and it carries ye off. Then I say checked matrimony is as bad. It fly to the heart, and it carries off the virtue that's in ye, and you might as well be dead! Them that is joined it's their salvation not to separate! It don't so much matter before it. That Mr. Thompson there--if he go astray, it ain't from the blessed fold. He hurt himself alone--not double, and belike treble, for who can say now what may be? There's time for it. I'm for holding back young people so that they knows their minds, howsomever they rattles about their hearts. I ain't a speeder of matrimony, and good's my reason! but where it's been done--where they're lawfully joined, and their bodies made one, I do say this, that to put division between 'em then, it's to make wanderin' comets of 'em--creatures without a objeck, and no soul can say what they's good for but to rush about!"

Mrs. Berry here took a heavy breath, as one who has said her utmost for the time being.

"My dear old girl," Richard went up to her and, applauding her on the shoulder, "you're a very wise old woman. But you mustn't speak to me as if I wanted to stop here. I'm compelled to. I do it for her good chiefly."

"It's your father that's doin' it, my dear?"