The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 67

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 frightened 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 n.o.body 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--wis.h.i.+n' 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 a.s.sured her all was going well: time would heal the wound if both the offenders had the fort.i.tude 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 a.s.sociated 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 ign.o.ble did a flash from the light of his aspirations make his marriage appear! The young man sought amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 refres.h.i.+ng change on fair lips.

"Call me Bella: I'll call you d.i.c.k," said she. And it came to be Bella and d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute."

She left him and presently returned with, "Ah, d.i.c.k! old fellow! how are you?"--arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat jauntily c.o.c.ked, 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 s.e.x 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-gla.s.s, and outrageous affectation of the supreme dandy.

"They take up men, d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k! won't let any peeler take me? by Jove!"

And he with many a.s.surances 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 any one 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 s.e.x.

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 surpa.s.sing 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 a slow pace and in companions.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sociated 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 sh.e.l.l?"