The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 78

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 loath to commence.

"Wis.h.i.+n' 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 a.s.sisted 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 b.u.mped 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 published. 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 only 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 reads 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 their 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 s.e.xes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to a.s.sent to this old lady's doctrine 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 goin' wrong--to my mind. I think it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray G.o.d and walk forward."

The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she had absolutely run 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 women.

"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 that 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 sc.r.a.p 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 that 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.