The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 87

"Yes."

"Tell me"--but he broke away from her, saying: "You shall hear the particulars to-morrow," and she, not alive to double meaning just then, allowed him to leave her.

He had eaten nothing for twelve hours, and called for food, but he would take only dry bread and claret, which was served on a tray in the library. He said, without any show of feeling, that he must eat before he saw the younger hope of Raynham: so there he sat, breaking bread, and eating great mouthfuls, and was.h.i.+ng them down with wine, talking of what they would. His father's studious mind felt itself years behind him, he was so completely altered. He had the precision of speech, the bearing of a man of thirty. Indeed he had all that the necessity for cloaking an infinite misery gives. But let things be as they might he was _there_. For one night in his life Sir Austin's perspective of the future was bounded by the night.

"Will you go to your wife now?" he had asked, and Richard had replied with a strange indifference. The baronet thought it better that their meeting should be private, and sent word for Lucy to wait upstairs. The others perceived that father and son should now be left alone. Adrian went up to him, and said: "I can no longer witness this painful sight, so Good-night, Sir Famis.h.!.+ You may cheat yourself into the belief that you've made a meal, but depend upon it your progeny--and it threatens to be numerous--will cry aloud and rue the day. Nature never forgives! A lost dinner can never be replaced! Good-night, my dear boy. And here--oblige me by taking this," he handed Richard the enormous envelope containing what he had written that evening. "Credentials!" he exclaimed humorously, slapping Richard on the shoulder. Ripton heard also the words "propagator--species," but had no idea of their import. The wise youth looked: You see we've made matters all right for you here, and quitted the room on that unusual gleam of earnestness.

Richard shook his hand, and Ripton's. Then Lady Blandish said her good-night, praising Lucy, and promising to pray for their mutual happiness. The two men who knew what was hanging over him, spoke together outside. Ripton was for getting a positive a.s.surance that the duel would not be fought, but Adrian said: "Time enough to-morrow. He's safe enough while he's here. I'll stop it to-morrow:" ending with banter of Ripton and allusions to his adventures with Miss Random, which must, Adrian said, have led him into many affairs of the sort. Certainly Richard was there, and while he was there he must be safe. So thought Ripton, and went to his bed. Mrs. Doria deliberated likewise, and likewise thought him safe while he was there. For once in her life she thought it better not to trust to her instinct, for fear of useless disturbance where peace should be. So she said not a syllable of it to her brother.

She only looked more deeply into Richard's eyes, as she kissed him, praising Lucy. "I have found a second daughter in her, dear. Oh! may you both be happy!"

They all praised Lucy, now. His father commenced the moment they were alone. "Poor Helen! Your wife has been a great comfort to her, Richard. I think Helen must have sunk without her. So lovely a young person, possessing mental faculty, and a conscience for her duties, I have never before met."

He wished to gratify his son by these eulogies of Lucy, and some hours back he would have succeeded. Now it had the contrary effect.

"You compliment me on my choice, sir?"

Richard spoke sedately, but the irony was perceptible, and he could speak no other way, his bitterness was so intense.

"I think you very fortunate," said his father.

Sensitive to tone and manner as he was, his ebullition of paternal feeling was frozen. Richard did not approach him. He leaned against the chimney-piece, glancing at the floor, and lifting his eyes only when he spoke. Fortunate! very fortunate! As he revolved his later history, and remembered how clearly he had seen that his father must love Lucy if he but knew her, and remembered his efforts to persuade her to come with him, a sting of miserable rage blackened his brain.

But could he blame that gentle soul? Whom could he blame? Himself?

Not utterly. His father? Yes, and no. The blame was here, the blame was there: it was everywhere and nowhere, and the young man cast it on the Fates, and looked angrily at heaven, and grew reckless.

"Richard," said his father, coming close to him, "It is late to-night. I do not wish Lucy to remain in expectation longer, or I should have explained myself to you thoroughly, and I think--or at least hope--you would have justified me. I had cause to believe that you had not only violated my confidence, but grossly deceived me. It was not so, I now know. I was mistaken. Much of our misunderstanding has resulted from that mistake. But you were married--a boy: you knew nothing of the world, little of yourself. To save you in after-life--for there is a period when mature men and women who have married young are more impelled to temptation than in youth,--though not so exposed to it,--to save you, I say, I decreed that you should experience self-denial and learn something of your fellows of both s.e.xes, before settling into a state that must have been otherwise precarious, however excellent the woman who is your mate. My System with you would have been otherwise imperfect, and you would have felt the effects of it. It is over now. You are a man. The dangers to which your nature was open are, I trust, at an end. I wish you to be happy, and I give you both my blessing, and pray G.o.d to conduct and strengthen you both."

Sir Austin's mind was unconscious of not having spoken devoutly.

True or not, his words were idle to his son: his talk of dangers over, and happiness, mockery.

Richard coldly took his father's extended hand.

"We will go to her," said the baronet. "I will leave you at her door."

Not moving: looking fixedly at his father with a hard face on which the colour rushed, Richard said: "A husband who has been unfaithful to his wife may go to her there, sir?"

It was horrible, it was cruel: Richard knew that. He wanted no advice on such a matter, having fully resolved what to do. Yesterday he would have listened to his father, and blamed himself alone, and done what was to be done humbly before G.o.d and her: now in the recklessness of his misery he had as little pity for any other soul as for his own. Sir Austin's brows were deep drawn down.

"What did you say, Richard?"

Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and cast aside--could it be?

Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last parted. What else do you think would have kept me from her?"

Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to her now?"

"That will be between us two," was the reply.

Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke from a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"----

"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not. Have no fear."

"Then you did not love your wife?"

"Did I not?" A smile pa.s.sed faintly over Richard's face.

"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"

"So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had none."

O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose in the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.

"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room.

Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true forgiving heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.

He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that to hear him one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His words were idle.

"She must know it," said Richard, sternly. "I will go to her now, sir, if you please."

Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He could not induce his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being interchanged, he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange thing to have come to. On which should the accusation fall--on science, or on human nature?

He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he deserved that blow from his son which had plunged him into wretchedness.

Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East within an hour. Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and heroically dashed his head into cold water. "She shall be ready, sir," he nodded.

"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go on being paid to you."

"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.

"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."

"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "G.o.d bless me, Mr. Richard"----

"No questions. You'll do what I say."

"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."

The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood, and he had to walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him the feelings of a man when he thought of it.

The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door, and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that pa.s.sed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming woman: for pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart thump and his eyes swim.

"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was fastened on his.

They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace. Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling wave.

This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly--far on the horizon of memory--the fatal truth returned to him.

Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask G.o.d to confirm it.

The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, s.h.i.+fting, and fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling wave.