 CHAPTER 31 GENERAL WITHDRAWING OF HEADS From street windows, emigration of organs and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry's abode, proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh regions. With a pensive mind, she grasped Ripton's arm to regulate his steps and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which altitude he shook a dollarous head at the guilty woman. She smoothed her excited apron sighing. Let no one imagine that she regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret. And probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more. Such is the born pagan's tenacity. Mrs. Berry sighed and gave him back his shake of the head. Oh, you wanton, improvident creature, said he. Oh, you very wise old gentleman, said she. He asked her the things she had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist reply. He sounded a bogie's alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated to the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make. It's dawn, she exclaimed. How could she regret what she felt comfort to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them and crouched silent on the cake with one finger downwards at Ripton's incision there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess. The eloquent indication was understood. Dear, dear, cried Mrs. Berry, what a heap of cake and no one to send it to. Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret. Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and result to a boiling geyser of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled and waggled and nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without effort, preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph, gravitation, who was on the lookout for his whole length shortly. Ha-ha! he shouted about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken and almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry's words had just reached his wits. Why, do you laugh, young man? she inquired, familiar and motherly on account of his condition. Ripton laughed louder and caught his chest on the edge of the table and his nose on a chicken. That's good, he said, recovering and rocking under Mrs. Berry's eyes. No friend. I did not say no friend, she remarked. I said no one. Maynen, I know not where for to send it to. Ripton's response to this was, you put a griffin on that cake. We chiefs each side. Is crest, Mrs. Berry said sweetly. Oldest baronetcy in England waved Ripton. Yes, Mrs. Berry encouraged him on. You think he's Richard's? We're obliged to be very close, and she's the most lovely, if I hear man say thing against her. You needn't far to cry over her, young man, said Mrs. Berry. I wanted for to drink their right else by their right names, and then go about my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me. Ripton stood bolt upright at her words. You do, he said, and filling a bumper, he, with cheerfully finest articulation and glibness of tongue, proposed the health of Richard and Lucy Feverell of Rainham Abbey, and that mankind should not require an expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast he drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rush light of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa, and there stretched. One minute subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below, after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wine glass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident but inexplicable access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay. And she had already given the pre-looting demonic ironic outburst when the maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her, upon which Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom and ordered that he should be shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She repeated the injunction. The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry wishing first to see herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking glass, and tried to look a very little better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton, and was settled, smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced. The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had put him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table and its white-bestard cake made him whistle. Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favor to be seated. A fine morning, ma'am, said Adrian. It have been, Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the window and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth. A very fine spring pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her countenance. Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to weather on a deep sigh. Her wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing his steriks before him, and as he was never more in his element than when he had a sinner and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry. I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings, he remarked, with a look at the table. Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were not Mr. Thompson's lodgings. No, said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him. Mr. Feverell is out, I suppose. A convulsive start at the name and two corroborating hands dropped on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply. Mr. Feverell's man, continued Adrian, told me I should be certain to find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson. I'm too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I fancy you have been having a party of them here, ma'am. A bachelor's breakfast. In the presence of that cake, this observation seemed to mask an irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She felt she must speak, making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could she began. Sir, may I beg for to know your name? Mr. Harley accorded her request. Growning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued, and you are Mr. Harley that was, oh, and you've come for Mr... Mr. Richard Feverell was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for. Oh, and it's no mistake, an ease of reynum abbey, Mrs. Berry inquired. Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there. His father, Sir Austin, wailed the black satin bunch from behind her handkerchief. Adrian verified Richard's dissent. Oh, then, what have I been and done? She cried and stared blankly at her visitor. I've been and married my baby. I've been and married the bread out of my own mouth. Oh, Mr. Harley, Mr. Harley, I knew you and you as a boy that big and wore jackets and all of you. And it's my softness that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's askin'. Look at that cake, Mr. Harley. Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. Wedding cake, ma'am, he said. Bride cake it is, Mr. Harley. Did you make it yourself, ma'am? The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry and upset that train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession. I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley, she replied. It's a bought cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms that baby that I should someday be marrying him out of my own house. I little dreamed that. Oh, why did he come to me? Don't you remember his old nurse when he was a baby in arms that went away so sudden, and no falterers, Mr. Harley. The very morning after the night you got into Mr. Benson's cellar and got so tipsy on his madieri, I remember it clear as yesterday. And Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use the whip to you. And I helped put you to bed. I'm that very woman. Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful life. Well, ma'am. Well, he said, he would bring her to the furnace. Won't you see it all, kind sir? Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic dumb show. Doubtless by this time, Adrian did see it all and was mentally cursing at folly and reckoning the immediate consequences. But he looked uninstructed. His peculiar dimple smile was undisturbed. His comfortable full bodied posture was the same. Well, ma'am, he spurred her on. Mrs. Berry burst forth. It were done this morning, Mr. Harley, in the church, at half past eleven o'clock, or twenty-two, by license. Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. Oh, he said, like one who is as hard as fax and as little to be moved. Somebody was married this morning. Was it Mr. Thompson or Mr. Feverell? Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton and removed the shawl from him, saying, Do we look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley? Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity. This young gentleman was at church this morning, he asked. Oh, quite reasonable and proper, then. Mrs. Berry begged him to understand. Of course, ma'am. Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth clearly. You were all reasonable and proper, ma'am. The principal male performer, then, is my cousin, Mr. Feverell. He was married by you this morning, by license, at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast and left intoxicated. Mrs. Berry flew out. He never drank a drop, sir. A more moderate young gentleman you never see. Oh, don't you think that now, Mr. Harley, he was as upright and master is his mind as you be. I, the wise youth, nodded thanks to her for the comparison, I mean the other form of intoxication. Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score. Adrian desired her to sit down and compose herself and tell him circumstantially what had been done. She obeyed in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanor. Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his mask and had ever since lived in exile from the reynum world on a little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She was that woman and the thought of her made her almost accused providence for the betraying excess of softness it had endowed her with. How was she to recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a faint name, not a word of the family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal, though she felt something more than ordinary to him. She knew she did. He came bringing a beautiful young lady and on what grounds could she turn her back on them? Why, seeing that all was chased and legal, why should she interfere to make them unhappy? So few the chances of happiness in this world. Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring. One wrench, said the sobbing culprit, one and me ring was off. She had no suspicions and the task of writing her name in the vestry book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other signatures. I dare say you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done, said Adrienne. Indeed, sir, moaned Berry, I were and am, and would do your best to rectify the mischief, amen. Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would, she protested solemnly. As of course you should, knowing the family, where may these lunatics have gone to spend the moon? Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied, to the aisle I don't quite know, sir. She snapped the indication short and jumped out of the pit she had fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those deers should not be pursued and cruelly bonked of their young bliss. Charlie, not to-day. A pleasant spot, Adrienne observed, smiling at his easy prey. By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynam, and this was enough to satisfy Adrienne's mind that there had been concoction and chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman. Chance certainly had not brought him to the young one. Very well, ma'am, he said, in answer to her petitions for his favourable offices with sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and the bridal pair. I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the affair being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the consummation. He will be in town tomorrow morning, but one of you two must see him tonight. An emetic kindly administered will set our friend here on his legs, a bath and a clean shirt, and he might go. I don't see why your name should appear at all. Brush him up and send him to Bellingham by the seven o'clock train. He will find his way to Raynam. He knows the neighbourhood best in the dark. Let him go and state the case. Remember, one of you must go. With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the couple of unfortunates for them to fight and lose all their virtues over, Adrian said, Good morning. Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. You ought to refuse a piece of his cake, Miss Starly. Oh, dear no, ma'am, Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. I shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who will rejoice to eat his wedding cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry. Put it in paper if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it to them and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of relationship. Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she regretted her conduct. She vowed that they seemed made for each other, that both were beautiful, both had spirit, both were innocent. And to part them or make them unhappy would be Mrs. Berry wrought herself to cry aloud, Oh, such a pity. Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion. He took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises and left Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart. So dies the system, was Adrian's comment in the street, and now let profits roar. He dies respectively in a marriage bed which is more than I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime he gave the cake a dramatic tap. I'll go sew nightmares. End of Chapter 31 Chapter 32 The Ordeal of Richard Feverell This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Boutros The Ordeal of Richard Feverell by George Meredith Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable disinterestedness and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, all the other objects may make what new moves they please. One does not marvel at them. Their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period. Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights to relinquish the security of his stronghold for he saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him and air balloons scaling the Empyrean, but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the winds, while he remained tranquil on his solid, unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his comfort to his conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows on the contrary. His sole amusement was their society. Alone he was rather dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the animated varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play, and the faculties profited to hold his elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others. Thus wonder at Master Richard's madness, though he himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive hunch of cake he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment, horror. Passing by some personal chagrin in the prospect, for his patron had projected a journey commencing with Paris culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of history and tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations that his spirit might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been planned during Richard's absence to surprise him. Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his romance as we say that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere hardens to the hobby, which, if an obstinate animal is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground. He must recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the shelter of a butt and baton on a crust Adrian deemed the bitterness of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and splendor due to his superior emotions or not at all. Consequently the wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him that at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned he should look with such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after. Hippias received the first portion of the cake. He was sitting by the window in his hotel reading. He had fought down his breakfast with more than usual success and was looking forward to his dinner at the forays with less than usual timidity. Ah, glad you've come, Adrian, he said, and expanded his breakfast. I was afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you. We'll walk down together through the park. It's absolutely dangerous to walk alone in these streets. My opinion is that orange peel lasts all through the year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it. I give you my word. I slipped on a piece of orange peel yesterday afternoon in Piccadilly, and I thought I was down. I gave myself by a miracle. You have an appetite, I hope, asked Adrian. I think I shall get one after a bit of a walk, chirped Hippias. Yes, I think I feel hungry now. Charmed to hear it, said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on his knees. How should you define folly? He checked the process to inquire. Hmm, Hippias meditated. He prided himself on being oracular when such questions were addressed to him. I think I should define it to be a slide. Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange peel. Once on it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle. You must present that to the pilgrim. And the monument of folly, what would that be? Hippias meditated anew. All the human race on one shoulder he chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance. Very good, Adrian applauded, or in default of that, some symbol of the thing, say, such as this of which I have here brought you a chip. Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake. This is the monument made portable, eh? Cake! cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense disgust. You're right of them that eat it. If I, if I don't mistake, he peered at it, the noxious composition bedisoned in that way is what they call wedding cake. It's aren't poison. Who is it you want to kill? What are you carrying such stuff about for? Adrian rang the bell for a knife. To present you with your do and proper portion. You will have friends and relatives who can't be saved from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits perhaps the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity to distribute this token of esteem to their friends. With the object probably he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to slice the cake of enabling those friends. These edifices require very delicate incision. Each particular current and subtle condiment hangs to its neighbor. A wedding cake is evidently the most highly civilized of cakes and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of civilization. I was saying, they send us these love tokens, no doubt we shall have to weigh out the crumbs if each is to have his fair share, that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing some hours in purgatory. This as far as I can apportion it, without weights and scales is your share, my uncle. He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias. Get away Hippias vehemently motioned and started from his chair. I'll have none of it, I tell you. It's death. It's 50 times worse than that beastly compound Christmas pudding. What fool has been doing this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me. It's an insult. 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 class taken that way. It's a capital cake and upon my honor you have helped to make it. You have a deed. 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 appetite's gone for today. 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 license at half past 11 o'clock or 22. 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 assistance 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 were softened by the shock. His hand traveled halfway 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 underage. 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? Anyone who is breached can obtain a license in our noble country and the interest 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 assure you. I'm down to instill belief by gentle degrees and put an artistic finish to the work. He had the gratification of passing 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 dyspepsie had bought his philosophy at a heavy price. He had a right to use it. Adrian resumed the procession of the cake. He cited his melancholy uncle Alginan hunting an appetite in the row and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged. The captain did not pass 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 Mary 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 license at the Kensington Parish Church, his own ring being lost, he employed the ring of his beautiful bride's lacrimose 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. Alginan 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 said him right, to the Miss Desbro, a Roman Catholic dairymaid, reminds one of Pastoral England in the time of the Plantagenets. He is quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's daughter and himself as Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal is in Hyman's chains and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel? Oh, by all means, not now. Alginan had an unwanted 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 pricked his horse. Once 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 script 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 worrier, if not wiser, and weak as he is, has learned 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 guest. He was awake to Mrs. Doria's maternal predestinations and guessed that Claire stood ready with the best form of filial obedience. There were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian humor 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 fourie girls and other females of the family assembly 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 fourie 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 exclaimed, oh, fish cake, I suppose. I wish he understood a little better the obligations of relationship. Whether he understands them, I can't say, observed Adrian, but I assure you he is very energetic in extending them. The wise youth talked innuendos 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 grandescent people Mrs. Doria asked with a hostile upper lip. Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, do they keep a beetle at the door? Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandeson made her treat this as a piece of satirical ingenuousness. I dare say they do, she said, and a curate on hand. Oh, I should think a dozen! Old Mr. Doria 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 fouries gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent old fashion 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 Forrey, a barrister of standing. 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? Not quite so much, pretty near. For instance, he can marry. That's not a criminal case, you know. And the marriage is valid? You can dispute it? Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds, then? Both water and fire. The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the vigorous circulation of the claret. Dear me, sir, said Adrian, I beg pardon. The circumstances must excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairy maid this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law. It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than juice he has and a dairy maid. I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace, Adrian continued. I wanted to be able to console my aunt. Well, but, well, but, the old gentleman much the most excited puffed, hey, Brandon, he's a boy, this young ass. Do you mean to tell me a boy can go and marry when he pleases and any troll he pleases and the marriage is good? If I thought that, I'd turn every woman off my premises. I would, from the housekeeper to the scullery maid. I'd have no woman near him till the young Greenhorn was gray, sir, suggested Brandon. Till he knew what women are made of, sir, the old gentleman finished his sentence vehemently. What do you think will Feverell say to it, Mr. Adrian? He has been trying the very system you have proposed, sir, one that does not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile intelligence. I'm afraid it's the very worst way of solving the problem. Of course it is, said Clarence, none but a fool. At your age, Adrian relieved his embarrassment, it is natural, my dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or imprisoned manhood something monstrous. And we do not expect you to see what amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme and we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into asceticism or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself from naughtiness? A discussion peculiar to men of the world succeeded the laugh at Mr. Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian, in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Fori particularly wished to speak with him. Adrian preferred not to go in alone. Very well, he said, and sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of law in Brandon Fori and receiving naught but hollow echoes from that profound cavity. He would not affirm that the marriage was invalid. He would not affirm that it could not be annulled. He thought not. Still, he thought it would be worth trying. A consummated and a non-consummated union were two different things. Dear me, said Adrian, does the law recognize that? Why, that's almost human. Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Fori particularly wished to speak with him. What can be the matter, he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in women strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt. So it proved when the gentlemen joined the fair society all the younger ladies stood about the table whereon the cake stood displayed, gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision and intrude the comments and continually arising from fresh shocks of wonder at the unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty air of men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the gallant males also range themselves round the common object of curiosity. Here, Adrian, Mrs. Doria, cried. Where is Adrian? Pray come here. Tell me. Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do here? You know all about it for you brought it. Claire, so you bring it into the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer. Now do not make me impatient, Adrian. Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated rapidity and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled. I was really bound to bring it, Adrian tested. Answer me. The wise youth bowed. Categorically, this cake came from the house of a person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you partly, partly to me, partly to Claire and to the rest of our family on the principle of equal division for which purpose it is present. Yes, speak. It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean. This, then, is the breakfast and the ring, Adrian, where is Richard? Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror. But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town, her struggling hope sank. The wretched boy has ruined himself, she said, and sat down trembling. Oh, that system. The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead of oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that system. She hesitated not to say that her brother had got what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice had overtaken him. Now he would see but at what a price, at what a sacrifice. Mrs. Doria commanded Adrian to confirm her fears. Sadly, the wise youth recapitulated Barry's words. He was married this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty-two-twelve, by license at the Kensington Parish Church. Then that was his appointment, Mrs. Doria murmured. That was the cake for breakfast breathed a second of her sex. And it was his ring exclaimed a third. The men were silent and laid long faces. Claire stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other's eyes. Is it that abominable country person, Adrian? The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the papus dairymaid, said Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents. Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried, Brandon! She was a woman and her thoughts resolved to action spontaneously. Brandon! She drew the barrister a little aside. Can they not be followed and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate them? A boy! It is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not Brandon? The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh but he answered her in treaties. From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the office perilous. I am speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one of your courts to pursue them and separate them instantly? This evening? Yes! Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not. You might call in one of your judges, Brandon. Brandon assured her that the judges were a hard-worked race and to a man slept heavily after dinner. Will you do so tomorrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you promise me to do so, Brandon? Or a magistrate? A magistrate would send a policeman after them. My dear Brandon, I beg you to assist us in this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I believe he would forgive anything but this. You have no idea what his notions are of blood. Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid. What is it aunt? asked the wise youth. You want them followed and torn asunder by wild policemen? Tomorrow? Brandon queerly interposed. Won't that be just too late? Adrian suggested. Mrs. Doria sighed out her last spark of hope. You see, said Adrian. Yes, yes Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations. Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon, it cannot be. It's quite impossible. Can you stand there and tell me that boy is legally married? I never will believe it. The law cannot be so shamefully bad as to permit a boy, a mere child, to do such absurd things. Grand Papa, she beckoned to the old gentleman. Grand Papa, pray do make Brandon speak. These lawyers never will. He might stop it if he would. If I were a man, do you think I would stand here? Well, my dear, the old gentleman toddled to composer, I am quite of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or I. My belief is they, none of them, know anything till they join issue and go into court. I want to see a few female lawyers. To encourage the bankrupt paraquiaire, sir, said Adrian, they would have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand. And you can just Adrian, his aunt reproached him, but I will not be beaten. I know I am firmly convinced that no law would ever allow a boy to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that. And nothing shall persuade me that it is so. Now tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak and answer to my questions and please to forget you are dealing with a woman. Can my nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly? Is what he has done legitimate? Is he bound for life by what he has done while a boy? Well, Brandon breathed through his teeth. The matter is so very delicate, you see, Helen, you're to forget that Adrian remarked. Well, pursued Brandon, perhaps if you could arrest and divide them before nightfall and make affidavit of certain facts. Yes, the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth. Well, in that case, or if a lunatic you could prove him to have been of unsound mind. Oh, there's no doubt of his madness on my mind, Brandon. Yes, well, in that case, or if of different religious persuasions. She is a Catholic, Mrs. Doria, joyfully interjected. Yes, well, in that case, objections might be taken to the form of the marriage, if he proved fictitious, or if he's under, say, 18 years. He can't be much more, cried Mrs. Doria. I think, she appeared to reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, what is Richard's age? The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the phantom straw she caught at. Oh, about that I should fancy, he muttered, and found it necessary at the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment. Mrs. Doria surpassed his expectations. Yes, I, well, then, Brandon was resuming with a shrug which was meant to say he still pledged himself to nothing when Claire's voice was heard from out the buzzing circle of her cousins. Richard is 19 years and six months old today mama. Nonsense, child! Mama. Claire's voice was very steadfast. Nonsense, I tell you, how can you know? Richard is one year and nine months older than me mama. Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Claire was too strong for her. Singular child! She mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully rejected straws while drowning. But there's the religion still that comforted herself and sat down to conjectate. The men smiled and looked vacuous. Music was proposed. There are times when soft music have not charms, when it is put to as base uses as imperial Caesar's dust and is taken to fill horrid pauses. Angelica Fori thumped the piano and sang I'm a laughing gitana, ha ha ha ha. Then Mary Branksburn wetted their voices and songfully incited all young people to haste to the bower that love has built and defy the wise ones of the world. But the wise ones of the world were in a majority there and very few places of assembly will be found where they are not. So the glowing appeal of the British ballad monger passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed. She marched to entertain the company. The singular child calmly marched to the instrument and turned over the appropriate illustrations to the ballad monger's repertoire. Claire sang a little Irish air. Her duty done she marched from the piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters. But Claire deceived her mother and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling an agony of pity that she might the more warrantably pity herself a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the ballad monger puts into our mouths so boldly. Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme rendered fruitless in a minute and by the system which had almost reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She had enough of bitterness to brood over and some excuse for self-pity. Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature prevented her from giving up. Straws were straws and the frailer they were, the harder she clutched them. She rose from her chair and left the room calling to Adrian to follow her. Adrian she said turning upon him in the passage, you mentioned a house where this horrible cake where he was this morning. I desire you to take me to that woman immediately. The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night after enjoying the comedy of real life. My dear aunt, he was beginning to insinuate. Order a cab to be sent for and get your hat, said Mrs. Doria. There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to the pilgrim's dictum that women are practical creatures and now reflected on his own account that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation and a nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him. What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly know, but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other. And her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath. She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse. She dared not abuse her brother to his face. Him she would have to console. Adrian was a fellow hypocrite to the system and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic ground by a discussion of the case. So she drove to Bessie Berry simply to inquire whether her nephew had flown. When a soft woman and that soft woman a sinner is matched with a woman of energy, she does not show much fight and she meets no mercy. Bessie Berry's creditor came to her in female form that night. She then beheld it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes and the peculiar male characteristic of being moved and ultimately silenced by tears. As female, her creditor was terrible indeed. Still had it not been a late hour Bessie Berry would have died rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of Wight. They had a long start. They were out of the reach of pursuers. They were safe. And she told what she had to tell. She told more than was wise of her to tell. She made mention of her early service in the family and of her little pension, alas her little pension. Her creditor had come expecting no payment come as creditors are wont in such moods just to take it out of her to employ the familiar term. At once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension. To know is at an end she said in the calmest manner and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her. She only asked a little consideration for her feelings. True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene. Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it. Mrs. Doria was not generous. The pilgrim may be wrong about the sex not growing, but its fashion conducting warfare we must allow to be barbarous and according to what is deemed the pristine or wild cat method ruin nothing short of it accompanied poor Berry to her bed that night and her character bled till morning on her pillow. The scene over Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had been at the cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and gentlemen present put it upon the greedy mice who were accused of having gorged and gone to bed. I'm sure they're quite welcome said Mrs. Doria. It's a farce this marriage and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking. I would not touch an atom of it. Why they were married in a married woman's ring. Can that be legal as you call it? Oh I'm convinced. Don't tell me. Austin will be in town tomorrow and if he is true to his principles he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from infamy. I want no legal advice. I go upon common sense, common decency. This marriage is false. Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her life that she could not give it up. She took Claire to her bed and caressed and wept over her as she would not have done had she known the singular child saying, Poor Richard, my dear poor boy, we must save him, Claire. We must save him. Of the two the mother showed the greater want of iron on this occasion. Claire lay in her arms rigid and emotionless with one of her hands tight locked. All she said was, I knew it in the morning mama. She slept clasping Richard's nuptial ring. By this time all specially concerned in the system knew it. The honeymoon was shoring placidly above them. Is not happiness like another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar sooner or later. Who knows the honeymoon should not steal somebody's sweetness. Richard Turpin went forth singing money or life to the world. Richard Feverell has done the same substituting happiness for money frequently synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have and was just as much a highway robber as his fellow dick so that those who have failed to recognize him as a hero before may now regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks exceedingly patient and beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature and the order of things on earth have no warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the Jews. And now the author of the system was on trial under the eyes of the lady who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous, those soft watchful woman's eyes? And now the author of the system was on trial under the eyes of the lady who loved him. What so kind as they? Yet are they very rigorous those soft watchful woman's eyes? If you are below the measure they have made of you you will feel it in the fullness of time. She cannot but show you that she took you for a giant and has had to come down a bit. You feel yourself strangely diminishing in those sweet mirrors till at last they drop on you complacently level. But oh beware vain man of ever waxing enamored of that wonderful elongation of a male creature you saw reflected in her adoring upcast orbs. Beware of assisting to delude her. A woman who is not quite a fool will forgive your being but a man if you are surely that. She will happily learn to acknowledge that no mortal tailor could have fitted that figure she made of you respectively. And that practically though she's sized to think it her ideal of you was on the pattern of an overgrown charity boy in the regulation jacket and breech. For this she first scorns the narrow capacities of the tailor and then smiles at herself. But should as thou when the hour says plainly be thyself and the woman is willing to take thee as thou art, should as thou still aspire to be that thing of shanks and rests, will thou not seem contemptible as well as ridiculous? And when the fall comes will it not be flat on thy face instead of to the common height of men? You may fall miles below her measure of you and be safe. Nothing is damaged save an overgrown charity boy. But if you fall below the common height of men you must make up your mind to see her rustle her gown, spy at the looking glass and transfer her allegiance. The moral of which is that if we pretend to be what we are not, woman, for whose amusement the farce is performed will find us out and punish us for it. And it is usually the end of a sentimental dalliance. Had Sir Austin given vent to the pain and wrath it was natural he should feel he might have gone to unphilosophic excesses. And however much he lowered his reputation as sage, Lady Blandish would have excused him. She would not have loved him less for seeing him closer. But the poor gentleman tasked his soul and stretched his muscles to act up to her conception of him. He, a man of science and life who was bound to be surprised by nothing in nature, it was not for him to do more than lift his eyebrows and draw in his lips at the news delivered by Ripton Thompson, that ill bird at Rainham. All he said after Ripton had handed the letters and carried his penitential headache to bed was, you see, Emeline, it is useless to base any system on a human being. A very philosophical remark for one who has been busily at work building for nearly twenty years, too philosophical to seem genuine, it revealed where the blow struck sharpest. Richard was no longer the Richard of his creation, his pride and his joy, but simply a human being with the rest, the bright star had sunk among the mass. And yet what had the young man done? And in what had the system failed? The lady could not but ask herself this while she condoled with the offended father. My friend she said, tenderly taking his hand before he retired, I know how deeply you must be grieved. I know what your disappointment must be. I do not beg of you to forgive him now. You cannot doubt his love for this young person, and according to his light has he not behaved honorably, and as you would have wished rather than bring her to shame you will think of that. It has been an accident, a misfortune, a terrible misfortune. The God of this world is in the machine, not out of it, Sir Austin interrupted her, and pressed her hand to get the good night over. At any other time her mind would have been arrested to admire the phrase. Now it seemed perverse, vain, false, and she was tempted to turn the meaning that was in it against himself much as she pitied him. You know, Emeline, he added, I believe very little in the question, or misfortune, to which men attribute their successes and reverses. They are useful impersonations to novelists, but my opinion is sufficiently high of flesh and blood to believe that we make our own history without intervention. Accidents? Terrible misfortunes. What are they? Good night. Good night, she said, looking sad and troubled. When I said misfortune I meant, of course, that he is to blame, but shall I leave you his letter to me? I think I have enough to meditate upon, he replied, to coldly bowing. God bless you, she whispered. And may I say it, do not shut your heart. He assured her that he hoped not to do so, and the moment she was gone he said about shutting it as tight as he could. If, instead of saying, base no system on a human being, he had said, never experimentalize with one, he would have been nearer the truth of his own case. He had experimented on humanity in the person of the sun he loved as his life, and at once, when the experiment appeared to have failed, all humanity's failings fell on the shoulders of his son. Richard's parting laugh in the train, it was explicable now, it sounded in his ears like the mockery of his base nature of ours at every endeavor to exalt and chase in it. The young man had plotted this. From step to step Sir Austin traced the plot. The curious mask he had worn since his illness, the selection of his incapable uncle Hippias for a companion in preference to Adrian. It was an evident, well perfected plot. That hideous laugh would not be silenced. Base, like the rest, treacherous, a creature of passions, using his abilities solely to gratify them. Never surely had humanity such chances as in him. A Manichean tendency from which the sententious eulogist of nature had been struggling for years, and which was partly at the bottom of the system, now began to cloud and usurp dominion of his mind. As he sat alone in the forlorn dead hush of his library, he saw the devil. How are we to know when we are at the head and fountain of the fates of them we love? There, by the springs of Richard's future, his father sat, and the devil said to him, only be quiet, do nothing, resolutely do nothing. Your object now is to keep a brave face to the world so that all may know you superior to this human nature that has deceived you. For it is the shameless deception, not the marriage, that has wounded you. I answered the baronet, the shameless deception, not the marriage. Wicked and ruinous as it must be, a destroyer of my tenderest hopes, my dearest schemes, not the marriage, the shameless deception. And he crumpled up his son's letter to him, and tossed it into the fire. How are we to distinguish the dark chief of the Manicheans when he talks our own thoughts to us? Further he whispered, and your system, if you would be brave to the world, have courage to cast the dream of it out of you, relinquish an impossible project, see it as it is dead. Too good for men. I muttered the baronet, all who would save them perish on the cross. And so he sat, nursing the devil. By and by he took his lamp, and put on the old cloak and cap, and went to gaze at Ripton. That exhausted debauchee and youth, without a destiny, slept a dead sleep. A handkerchief was bound about his forehead, and his helpless, sunken chin and snoring nose projected up the pillow, made him look absurdly piteous. The baronet remembered how often he had compared his boy with this one, his own bright boy, and where was the difference between them. Mere outward gilding said his familiar. Yes, he responded, I dare say, this one never positively plotted to deceive his father. He followed his appetites unchecked, and is internally the sounder of the two. Ripton, with his sunken chin and nose under the light of the lamp, stood for human nature, honest, however abject. Miss Random, I fear very much, is a necessary establishment, whispered the monitor. Does the evil in us demand its natural food, or it corrupts the whole, ejaculated Sir Austin? And is no angel of avail till that is drawn off? And is that our conflict to see whether we can escape the contagion of its embrace, and come uncorrupted out of that? The world is wise in its way, said the voice. Though it look on itself through port wine, he suggested remembering his lawyer Thompson. Wise in not seeking to be too wise, said the voice, and getting intoxicated on its drug of comfort. Human nature is weak, and Miss Random is an establishment, with wild oaths and institution. It always has been so, and always will be. So I fear in spite of your very noble efforts, and leads wither, and ends where. Richard's laugh taken up by horrid reverberations as it were through the lengths of the lower halls, replied, This colloquy of two voices in a brain was concluded by Sir Austin asking again if there were no actual difference between the flower of his hopes and yonder drunken weed, and receiving for answer that there was a decided dissimilarity in the smell of the couple becoming cognizant of which he retreated. Sir Austin did not battle with the tempter. He took him into his bosom at once, as if he had been ripe for him, and had been in a state. Because he suffered, and decreed that he would suffer silently, and be the only sufferer, it seemed to him that he was great-minded in his calamity. He had stood against the world. The world had beaten him. What then? He must shut his heart, and mask his face that was all. To be far in advance of the mass is as fruitless to mankind, he reflected here. For how do we know that they move behind us at all or move in our track? What we win for them is lost and where we are overthrown we lie. It was thus that a fine mind and a fine heart at the bounds of a nature not great chose to color his retrogression and countenance his shortcoming, and it was thus that he set about ruining the work he had done. He might well say, as he once did, that there are hours when the clearest soul becomes a cunning fox. For a grief that was private and peculiar, he unhesitatingly cast the blame upon humanity, just as he had accused it in the period of what he termed his own ordeal. How had he borne that by masking his face, and he prepared the ordeal for his son by doing the same? This was by no means an idea of a man's duty and tribulation about which he could be strenuously eloquent. But it was his instinct so to act, and in times of trial great natures alone are not at the mercy of their instincts. Moreover it would cost him pain to mask his face, pain worse than that he endured when there still remained an object for him to open his heart to in proportion. And he always reposed upon the spartan comfort of bearing pain and being passive. Do nothing, said the devil he nursed, which meant in his case, take me into you and don't cast me out. Excellent and sane is the outburst of wrath to men when it stops short of slaughter. For who, that locks it up to eat in solitary, can say that it is consumed? Sir Austin had as weaker digestion for wrath as poor hippies for a green duckling. Instead of eating it, it ate him. The wild beast in him was not the less deadly because it did not roar, and the devil in him not the less active because he resolved to do nothing. He sat at the springs of Richard's future in the forlorn dead hush of his library there, hearing the cinders click in the extinguished fire, and that humming stillness in which one may fancy one hears the midnight fates busily stirring their embryos. The lamp glowed mildly on the bust of Chatham. Toward morning a gentle knock fell at his door. Lady Blandish glided in. With hasty step she came straight to him and took both his hands. My friend, she said, speaking tearfully and trembling, I feared I should find you here. I could not sleep. How is it with you? Well, Emeline, well, he replied, torturing his brows to fix the mask. He wished it had been Adrian who had come to him. He had an extraordinary longing for Adrian's society. He knew that the wise youth would divine how to treat him, and he mentally confessed to just enough weakness to demand a certain kind of management. Besides, Adrian, he had not doubt, would accept him entirely as he seemed, and not pester him in any way by trying to unlock his heart. Whereas a woman, he feared, would be waxing too womanly and swelling from tears and supplications to a scene of all things abhorred by him the most. So he wrapped the floor with his foot and gave the lady no very welcome face when he said it was well with him. She sat down by his side, still holding one hand firmly, and softly detaining the other. Oh, my friend, may I believe you. May I speak to you? She leaned close to him. You know my heart. I have no better ambition than to be your friend. Surely I divide your grief. And may I not claim your confidence? Who has wept more over your great and dreadful sorrows? I would not have come to you, but I do believe that sorrow shared relieves the burden. And it is now that you may feel a woman's aid, and something of what a woman could be to you. Be assured, he gravely said, I thank you, Emeline, for your intentions. No, no, not for my intentions, and do not thank me. Think of him, think of your dear boy, our Richard, as we have called him. Oh, do not think it a foolish superstition of mine. But I have had a thought this night that has kept me in torment till I rose to speak to you. Tell me first you have forgiven him. A father bears no malice to his son, Emeline. Your heart has forgiven him? My heart has taken what he gave, and quite forgiven him? You will hear no complaints of mine. The lady paused despondingly and looked at him in a wistful manner, saying with a sigh, Yes, I know how noble you are, and different from others. He drew one of his hands from her relaxed hold. You ought to be in bed, Emeline. I cannot sleep. Go, and talk to me another time. No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless him, it will end miserably. My friend, have you done so? He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of his mask. Have you done so often? This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of their sons, Emeline. No, not that, but will you pray for your boy and bless him before the day comes? He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly. And I must do this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him from the seed he has sown? Consider, Emeline, what you say. He has repeated his cousin's sin. You see the end of that. Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed, it is different, and he be just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person has great beauty. She has the elements of good breeding. She, indeed I think, had she been in another position you would not have looked upon her unfavorably. She may be too good for my son, the baronet spoke with sublime bitterness. No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it. Pass her. Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her. He thought we were plotting against him. He thought he should lose her forever, and in the madness of an hour he did this. My Emeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches. Ah, do not trifle, my friend. Say, would you have had him act as young men in his position generally do to young women beneath them? Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely. You mean, he said, that fathers must fold their arms and either submit to infamous marriages or have these creatures ruined. I do not mean that, exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did mean, and how to express it. I mean that he loved her. Is it not a madness at his age? But what I chiefly mean is, save him from the consequences. No, you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride, his sensitiveness, his great wild nature, wild when he is set wrong. Think how intense it is set upon love. Think, my friend, do not forget his love for you. Sir Austin smiled an admirable smile of pity. That I should save him or anyone from consequences is asking more than the order of things will allow to you, Emeline, and is not in the disposition of this world. I cannot. Consequences are the natural offspring of acts. My child, you are talking sentiment, which is the distraction of our modern age in everything, a phantasmal vapor distorting the image of the life we live. You ask me to give him a golden age in spite of himself. All that could be done by keeping him in the paths of virtue and truth, I did. He has become a man, and as a man he must reap his own sowing. The baffled lady sighed. He sat so rigid, he spoke so securely, as if wisdom were to him more than the love of his son. And yet he did love his son, feeling sure that he loved his son while he spoke so loftily. She reverenced him still, baffled as she was, and sensible that she had been quibbled with. All I ask of you is to open your heart to him, she said. He kept silent. Call him a man, he is, and must ever be the child of your education, my friend. You would console me, Emeline, with the prospect that, if he ruins himself, he spares the world of young women. Yes, that is something. Closely she scanned the mask. It was impenetrable. He could meet her eyes and respond to the pressure of her hand and smile, and not show what he felt. Nor did he deem it hypocritical to seek to maintain his elevation in her soft soul, by simulating supreme philosophy over offended love. Nor did he know that he had an angel with him then, a blind angel and a weak one, but one who struck upon his chance. Am I pardoned for coming to you, she said, after a pause? Surely I can read my Emeline's intentions, he gently replied. Very poor ones, I feel my weakness. I cannot utter half I have been thinking. Oh, if I could. You speak very well, Emeline. At least I am pardoned. Surely so. And before I leave you, dear friend, shall I be forgiven? May I beg it? Will you bless him? He was again silent. Pray for him Austin, pray for him ere the night is over. As she spoke, she slid down to his feet and pressed his hand to her bosom. The baronet was startled. In very dread of the soft fit that wooed him, he pushed back his chair and rose and went to the window. Its day already, he said, with assumed vivacity, throwing open the shutters and displaying the young light on the lawn. Lady Blandish dried her tears as she knelt and then joined him and glanced up silently at Richard's moon standing in wane towards the west. She hoped it was because of her having been premature and pleading so earnestly that she had failed to move him, and she accused herself more than the baronet. But in acting as she had done, she had treated him as no common man, and she was compelled to perceive that his heart was at present hardly superior to the hearts of ordinary men, however composed his face might be, and apparently serene his wisdom. From that moment she grew critical of him and began to study her idol, a process dangerous to idols. He, now that she seemed to have relinquished the painful subject, drew to her, and as one who wished to smooth a foregone roughness murmured, God's rarest blessing is after all a good woman. My Emeline bears her sleepless night well. She does not shame the day. He gazed down on her with a fondling tenderness. I could bear many, many, she replied, meeting his eyes, and you would see me look better and better if, if only, but she had no encouragement to end the sentence. Perhaps he wanted some mute form of consolation. Perhaps the handsome placid features of the dark-eyed dame touched him. At any rate their Platonism was advanced by his putting an arm about her. She felt the arm and talked of the morning. Thus, proximate, they by and by both heard something very like a groan behind them, and looking round beheld the saurian eye. Lady Blander smiled, but the baronet's discomposure was not to be concealed. By a strange fatality every stage of their innocent loves was certain to have a human beholder. Oh, I'm sure I beg pardon, Benson mumbled, arresting his head in a melancholy pendulosity. He was ordered out of the room. And I think I shall follow him and try to get forty winks, said Lady Blandish. They parted with a quiet squeeze of hands. The baronet then called in Benson. Get me my breakfast as soon as you can, he said, regardless of the aspect of injured conscience, Benson somberly presented to him. I am going to town early, and Benson, he added. You will also go to town this afternoon or tomorrow if it suits you, and take your book with you to Mr. Thompson. You will not return here. A provision will be made for you. You can go. The heavy butler, essayed to speak, but the tremendous blow and the baronet's gesture choked him. At the door he made another effort which shook the rolls of his loose skin and the patient's signal sent him out dumb. And Reynum was quit of the one believer in the great Shaddok dogma. End of Chapter 33