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John S. C. Abbott - "David Crockett: His Life and Adventures"

L. Muhlbach - "Frederick the Great and His Court"

Georg Ebers - "The Emperor, Part 2, Volume 7."

George Meredith - "The Tragic Comedians, v1"

The Adventures of Harry Richmond, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, Complete



THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND


By George Meredith




CONTENTS

BOOK 1.
I. I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION
II. AN ADVENTURE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT
III. DIPWELL FARM
IV. I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR
V. I HAVE A DEAR FRIEND
VI. A TALE OF A GOOSE

BOOK 2.
VII. A FREE LIFE ON THE ROAD
VIII. JANET ILCHESTER
IX. AN EVENING WITH CAPTAIN BULSTED
X. AN EXPEDITION
XI. THE GREAT FOG AND THE FIRE AT MIDNIGHT
XII. WE FIND OURSELVES BOUND ON A VOYAGE
XIII. WE CONDUCT SEVERAL LEARNED ARGUMENTS WITH THE CAPTAIN OF THE
'PRISCILLA'
XIV. I MEET OLD FRIENDS

BOOK 3.
XV. WE ARE ACCOSTED BY A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE LADY IN THE FOREST
XVI. THE STATUE ON THE PROMONTORY
XVII. MY FATHER BREATHES, MOVES, AND SPEAKS
XVIII. WE PASS A DELIGHTFUL EVENING, AND I HAVE A MORNING VISION
XIX. OUR RETURN HOMEWARD
XX. NEWS OF A FRESH CONQUEST OF MY FATHER'S
XXI. A PROMENADE IN BATH
XXII. CONCLUSION OF THE BATH EPISODE

BOOK 4.
XXIII. MY TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY
XXIV. I MEET THE PRINCESS
XXV. ON BOARD A YACHT
XXVI. IN VIEW OF THE HOHENZOLLERN'S BIRTHPLACE
XXVII. THE TIME OF ROSES
XXVIII. OTTILIA
XXIX. AN EVENING WITH DR. JULIUS VON KARSTEG
XXX. A SUMMER STORM, AND LOVE
XXXI. PRINCESS OTTILIA'S LETTER
XXXII. AN INTERVIEW WITH PRINCE ERNEST AND A MEETING WITH PRINCE OTTO

BOOK 5.
XXXIII. WHAT CAME OF A SHILLING
XXXIV. I GAIN A PERCEPTION OF PRINCELY STATE
XXXV. THE SCENE IN THE LAKE-PALACE LIBRARY
XXXVI. HOMEWARD AND HOME AGAIN.
XXXVII. JANET RENOUNCES ME
XXXVIII. MY BANKERS' BOOK.

BOOK 6.
XXXIX. I SEE MY FATHER TAKING THE TIDE AND AM CARRIED ON IT MYSELF
XL. MY FATHER'S MEETING WITH MY GRANDFATHER
XLI. COMMENCEMENT OF THE SPLENDOURS AND PERPLEXITIES OF MY FATHER'S
GRAND PARADE
XLII. THE MARQUIS OF EDBURY AND HIS PUPPET
XLIII. I BECOME ONE OF THE CHOSEN OF THE NATION
XLIV. MY FATHER IS MIRACULOUSLY RELIEVED BY FORTUNE

BOOK 7.
XLV. WITHIN AN INCH OF MY LIFE .
XLVI. AMONG GIPSY WOMEN
XLVII. MY FATHER ACTS THE CHARMER AGAIN
XLVIII. THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED
XLIX. WHICH FORESHADOWS A GENERAL GATHERING
L. WE ARE ALL IN MY FATHER'S NET
LI. AN ENCOUNTER SHOWING MY FATHER'S GENIUS IN A STRONG LIGHT

BOOK 8.
LII. STRANGE REVELATIONS, AND MY GRANDFATHER HAS HIS LAST OUTBURST
LIII. THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING
LIV. MY RETURN TO ENGLAND
LV. I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT
LVI. CONCLUSION




CHAPTER I

I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION

One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were
awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great
hall-doors. Squire Beltham was master there: the other members of the
household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs.
Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an old half-caste butler; various domestic
servants; and a little boy, christened Harry Lepel Richmond, the squire's
grandson. Riversley Grange lay in a rich watered hollow of the Hampshire
heath-country; a lonely circle of enclosed brook and pasture, within view
of some of its dependent farms, but out of hail of them or any dwelling
except the stables and the head-gardener's cottage. Traditions of
audacious highwaymen, together with the gloomy surrounding fir-scenery,
kept it alive to fears of solitude and the night; and there was that in
the determined violence of the knocks and repeated bell-peals which
assured all those who had ever listened in the servants' hall to
prognostications of a possible night attack, that the robbers had come at
last most awfully. A crowd of maids gathered along the upper corridor of
the main body of the building: two or three footmen hung lower down, bold
in attitude. Suddenly the noise ended, and soon after the voice of old
Sewis commanded them to scatter away to their beds; whereupon the footmen
took agile leaps to the post of danger, while the women, in whose bosoms
intense curiosity now supplanted terror, proceeded to a vacant room
overlooking the front entrance, and spied from the window.

Meanwhile Sewis stood by his master's bedside. The squire was a hunter,
of the old sort: a hard rider, deep drinker, and heavy slumberer. Before
venturing to shake his arm Sewis struck a light and flashed it over the
squire's eyelids to make the task of rousing him easier. At the first
touch the squire sprang up, swearing by his Lord Harry he had just
dreamed of fire, and muttering of buckets.

'Sewis! you're the man, are you: where has it broken out?'

'No, sir; no fire,' said Sewis; 'you be cool, sir.'

'Cool, sir! confound it, Sewis, haven't I heard a whole town of steeples
at work? I don't sleep so thick but I can hear, you dog! Fellow comes
here, gives me a start, tells me to be cool; what the deuce! nobody hurt,
then? all right!'

The squire had fallen back on his pillow and was relapsing to sleep.

Sewis spoke impressively: 'There's a gentleman downstairs; a gentleman
downstairs, sir. He has come rather late.'

'Gentleman downstairs come rather late.' The squire recapitulated the
intelligence to possess it thoroughly. 'Rather late, eh? Oh! Shove him
into a bed, and give him hot brandy and water, and be hanged to him!'

Sewis had the office of tempering a severely distasteful announcement to
the squire.

He resumed: 'The gentleman doesn't talk of staying. That is not his
business. It 's rather late for him to arrive.'

'Rather late!' roared the squire. 'Why, what's it o'clock?'

Reaching a hand to the watch over his head, he caught sight of the
unearthly hour. 'A quarter to two? Gentleman downstairs? Can't be that
infernal apothecary who broke 's engagement to dine with me last night?
By George, if it is I'll souse him; I'll drench him from head to heel as
though the rascal 'd been drawn through the duck-pond. Two o'clock in the
morning? Why, the man's drunk. Tell him I'm a magistrate, and I'll commit
him, deuce take him; give him fourteen days for a sot; another fourteen
for impudence. I've given a month 'fore now. Comes to me, a Justice of
the peace!--man 's mad! Tell him he's in peril of a lunatic asylum. And
doesn't talk of staying? Lift him out o' the house on the top o' your
boot, Sewis, and say it 's mine; you 've my leave.'

Sewis withdrew a step from the bedside. At a safe distance he fronted his
master steadily; almost admonishingly. 'It 's Mr. Richmond, sir,' he
said.

'Mr. . . .' The squire checked his breath. That was a name never uttered
at the Grange. 'The scoundrel?' he inquired harshly, half in a tone of
one assuring himself, and his rigid dropped jaw shut.

The fact had to be denied or affirmed instantly, and Sewis was silent.

Grasping his bedclothes in a lump, the squire cried:

'Downstairs? downstairs, Sewis? You've admitted him into my house?'

'No, sir.'

'You have!'

'He is not in the house, sir.'

'You have! How did you speak to him, then?'

'Out of my window, sir.'

'What place here is the scoundrel soiling now?'

'He is on the doorstep outside the house.'

'Outside, is he? and the door's locked?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Let him rot there!'

By this time the midnight visitor's patience had become exhausted. A
renewal of his clamour for immediate attention fell on the squire's ear,
amazing him to stupefaction at such challengeing insolence.

'Hand me my breeches,' he called to Sewis; 'I can't think brisk out of my
breeches.'

Sewis held the garment ready. The squire jumped from the bed, fuming
speechlessly, chafing at gaiters and braces, cravat and coat, and allowed
his buttons to be fitted neatly on his calves; the hammering at the
hall-door and plucking at the bell going on without intermission. He wore
the aspect of one who assumes a forced composure under the infliction of
outrages on his character in a Court of Law, where he must of necessity
listen and lock his boiling replies within his indignant bosom.

'Now, Sewis, now my horsewhip,' he remarked, as if it had been a simple
adjunct of his equipment.

'Your hat, sir?'

'My horsewhip, I said.'

'Your hat is in the hall,' Sewis observed gravely.

'I asked you for my horsewhip.'

'That is not to be found anywhere,' said Sewis.

The squire was diverted from his objurgations against this piece of
servitorial defiance by his daughter Dorothy's timid appeal for
permission to come in. Sewis left the room. Presently the squire
descended, fully clad, and breathing sharply from his nostrils. Servants
were warned off out of hearing; none but Sewis stood by.

The squire himself unbolted the door, and threw it open to the limit of
the chain.

'Who's there?' he demanded.

A response followed promptly from outside: 'I take you to be Mr. Harry
Lepel Beltham. Correct me if I err. Accept my apologies for disturbing
you at a late hour of the night, I pray.'

'Your name?'

'Is plain Augustus Fitz-George Roy Richmond at this moment, Mr. Beltham.
You will recognize me better by opening your door entirely: voices are
deceptive. You were born a gentleman, Mr. Beltham, and will not reduce me
to request you to behave like one. I am now in the position, as it were,
of addressing a badger in his den. It is on both sides unsatisfactory. It
reflects egregious discredit upon you, the householder.'

The squire hastily bade Sewis see that the passages to the sleeping
apartments were barred, and flung the great chain loose. He was acting
under strong control of his temper.

It was a quiet grey night, and as the doors flew open, a largely-built
man, dressed in a high-collared great-coat and fashionable hat of the
time, stood clearly defined to view. He carried a light cane, with the
point of the silver handle against his under lip. There was nothing
formidable in his appearance, and his manner was affectedly affable. He
lifted his hat as soon as he found himself face to face with the squire,
disclosing a partially bald head, though his whiskering was luxuriant,
and a robust condition of manhood was indicated by his erect attitude and
the immense swell of his furred great-coat at the chest. His features
were exceedingly frank and cheerful. From his superior height, he was
enabled to look down quite royally on the man whose repose he had
disturbed.

The following conversation passed between them.

'You now behold who it is, Mr. Beltham, that acknowledges to the
misfortune of arousing you at an unseemly hour--unbetimes, as our gossips
in mother Saxon might say--and with profound regret, sir, though my habit
is to take it lightly.'

'Have you any accomplices lurking about here?'

'I am alone.'

'What 's your business?'

'I have no business.'

'You have no business to be here, no. I ask you what 's the object of
your visit?'

'Permit me first to speak of the cause of my protracted arrival, sir. The
ridicule of casting it on the post-boys will strike you, Mr. Beltham, as
it does me. Nevertheless, I must do it; I have no resource. Owing to a
rascal of the genus, incontinent in liquor, I have this night walked
seven miles from Ewling. My complaint against him is not on my own
account.'

'What brought you here at all?'

'Can you ask me?'

'I ask you what brought you to my house at all?'

'True, I might have slept at Ewling.'

'Why didn't you?'

'For the reason, Mr. Beltham, which brought me here originally. I could
not wait-not a single minute. So far advanced to the neighbourhood, I
would not be retarded, and I came on. I crave your excuses for the hour
of my arrival. The grounds for my coming at all you will very well
understand, and you will applaud me when I declare to you that I come to
her penitent; to exculpate myself, certainly, but despising
self-justification. I love my wife, Mr. Beltham. Yes; hear me out, sir. I
can point to my unhappy star, and say, blame that more than me. That star
of my birth and most disastrous fortunes should plead on my behalf to
you; to my wife at least it will.'

'You've come to see my daughter Marian, have you?'

'My wife, sir.'

'You don't cross my threshold while I live.'

'You compel her to come out to me?'

'She stays where she is, poor wretch, till the grave takes her. You've
done your worst; be off.'

'Mr. Beltham, I am not to be restrained from the sight of my wife.'

'Scamp!'

'By no scurrilous epithets from a man I am bound to respect will I be
deterred or exasperated.'

'Damned scamp, I say!' The squire having exploded his wrath gave it free
way. 'I've stopped my tongue all this while before a scoundrel 'd
corkscrew the best-bottled temper right or left, go where you will one
end o' the world to the other, by God! And here 's a scoundrel stinks of
villany, and I've proclaimed him 'ware my gates as a common trespasser,
and deserves hanging if ever rook did nailed hard and fast to my barn
doors! comes here for my daughter, when he got her by stealing her,
scenting his carcase, and talking 'bout his birth, singing what not sort
o' foreign mewin' stuff, and she found him out a liar and a beast, by
God! And she turned home. My doors are open to my flesh and blood. And
here she halts, I say, 'gainst the law, if the law's against me. She's
crazed: you've made her mad; she knows none of us, not even her boy. Be
off; you've done your worst; the light's gone clean out in her; and hear
me, you Richmond, or Roy, or whatever you call yourself, I tell you I
thank the Lord she has lost her senses. See her or not, you 've no hold
on her, and see her you shan't while I go by the name of a man.'

Mr. Richmond succeeded in preserving an air of serious deliberation under
the torrent of this tremendous outburst, which was marked by scarce a
pause in the delivery.

He said, 'My wife deranged! I might presume it too truly an inherited
disease. Do you trifle with me, sir? Her reason unseated! and can you
pretend to the right of dividing us? If this be as you say--Oh! ten
thousand times the stronger my claim, my absolute claim, to cherish her.
Make way for me, Mr. Beltham. I solicit humbly the holiest privilege
sorrow can crave of humanity. My wife! my wife! Make way for me, sir.'

His figure was bent to advance. The squire shouted an order to Sewis to
run round to the stables and slip the dogs loose.

'Is it your final decision?' Mr. Richmond asked.

'Damn your fine words! Yes, it is. I keep my flock clear of a foul
sheep.'

'Mr. Beltham, I implore you, be merciful. I submit to any conditions:
only let me see her. I will walk the park till morning, but say that an
interview shall be granted in the morning. Frankly, sir, it is not my
intention to employ force: I throw myself utterly on your mercy. I love
the woman; I have much to repent of. I see her, and I go; but once I must
see her. So far I also speak positively.'

'Speak as positively as you like,' said the squire.

'By the laws of nature and the laws of man, Marian Richmond is mine to
support and comfort, and none can hinder me, Mr. Beltham; none, if I
resolve to take her to myself.'

'Can't they!' said the squire.

'A curse be on him, heaven's lightnings descend on him, who keeps husband
from wife in calamity!'

The squire whistled for his dogs.

As if wounded to the quick by this cold-blooded action, Mr. Richmond
stood to his fullest height.

'Nor, sir, on my application during to-morrow's daylight shall I see
her?'

'Nor, sir, on your application'--the squire drawled in uncontrollable
mimicking contempt of the other's florid forms of speech, ending in his
own style,--'no, you won't.'

'You claim a paternal right to refuse me: my wife is your child. Good. I
wish to see my son.'

On that point the squire was equally decided. 'You can't. He's asleep.'

'I insist.'

'Nonsense: I tell you he's a-bed and asleep.'

'I repeat, I insist.'

'When the boy's fast asleep, man!'

'The boy is my flesh and blood. You have spoken for your daughter--I
speak for my son. I will see him, though I have to batter at your doors
till sunrise.'

Some minutes later the boy was taken out of his bed by his aunt Dorothy,
who dressed him by the dark window-light, crying bitterly, while she
said, 'Hush, hush!' and fastened on his small garments between tender
huggings of his body and kissings of his cheeks. He was told that he had
nothing to be afraid of. A gentleman wanted to see him: nothing more.
Whether the gentleman was a good gentleman, and not a robber, he could
not learn but his aunt Dorothy, having wrapped him warm in shawl and
comforter, and tremblingly tied his hat-strings under his chin, assured
him, with convulsive caresses, that it would soon be over, and he would
soon be lying again snug and happy in his dear little bed. She handed him
to Sewis on the stairs, keeping his fingers for an instant to kiss them:
after which, old Sewis, the lord of the pantry, where all sweet things
were stored, deposited him on the floor of the hall, and he found himself
facing the man of the night. It appeared to him that the stranger was of
enormous size, like the giants of fairy books: for as he stood a little
out of the doorway there was a peep of night sky and trees behind him,
and the trees looked very much smaller, and hardly any sky was to be seen
except over his shoulders.

The squire seized one of the boy's hands to present him and retain him at
the same time: but the stranger plucked him from his grandfather's hold,
and swinging him high, exclaimed, 'Here he is! This is Harry Richmond. He
has grown a grenadier.'

'Kiss the little chap and back to bed with him,' growled the squire.

The boy was heartily kissed and asked if he had forgotten his papa. He
replied that he had no papa: he had a mama and a grandpapa. The stranger
gave a deep groan.

'You see what you have done; you have cut me off from my own,' he said
terribly to the squire; but tried immediately to soothe the urchin with
nursery talk and the pats on the shoulder which encourage a little boy to
grow fast and tall. 'Four years of separation,' he resumed, 'and my son
taught to think that he has no father. By heavens! it is infamous, it is
a curst piece of inhumanity. Mr. Beltham, if I do not see my wife, I
carry off my son.'

'You may ask till you're hoarse, you shall never see her in this house
while I am here to command,' said the squire.

'Very well; then Harry Richmond changes homes. I take him. The affair is
concluded.'

'You take him from his mother?' the squire sang out.

'You swear to me she has lost her wits; she cannot suffer. I can. I shall
not expect from you, Mr. Beltham, the minutest particle of comprehension
of a father's feelings. You are earthy; you are an animal.'

The squire saw that he was about to lift the boy, and said, 'Stop, never
mind that. Stop, look at the case. You can call again to-morrow, and you
can see me and talk it over.'

'Shall I see my wife?'

'No, you shan't.'

'You remain faithful to your word, sir, do you?'

'I do.'

'Then I do similarly.'

'What! Stop! Not to take a child like that out of a comfortable house at
night in Winter, man?'

'Oh, the night is temperate and warm; he shall not remain in a house
where his father is dishonoured.'

'Stop! not a bit of it,' cried the squire. 'No one speaks of you. I give
you my word, you 're never mentioned by man, woman or child in the
house.'

'Silence concerning a father insinuates dishonour, Mr. Beltham.'

'Damn your fine speeches, and keep your blackguardly hands off that boy,'
the squire thundered. 'Mind, if you take him, he goes for good. He
doesn't get a penny from me if you have the bringing of him up. You've
done for him, if you decide that way. He may stand here a beggar in a
stolen coat like you, and I won't own him. Here, Harry, come to me; come
to your grandad.'

Mr. Richmond caught the boy just when he was turning to run.

'That gentleman,' he said, pointing to the squire, 'is your grandpapa. I
am your papa. You must learn at any cost to know and love your papa. If I
call for you to-morrow or next day they will have played tricks with
Harry Richmond, and hid him. Mr. Beltham, I request you, for the final
time, to accord me your promise observe, I accept your promise--that I
shall, at my demand, to-morrow or the next day, obtain an interview with
my wife.'

The squire coughed out an emphatic 'Never!' and fortified it with an oath
as he repeated it upon a fuller breath.

'Sir, I will condescend to entreat you to grant this permission,' said
Mr. Richmond, urgently.

'No, never: I won't!' rejoined the squire, red in the face from a fit of
angry coughing. 'I won't; but stop, put down that boy; listen to me, you
Richmond! I'll tell you what I'll do. I 'll--if you swear on a Bible,
like a cadger before a bench of magistrates, you'll never show your face
within a circuit o' ten miles hereabouts, and won't trouble the boy if
you meet him, or my daughter or me, or any one of us-hark ye, I'll do
this: let go the boy, and I'll give ye five hundred--I'll give ye a
cheque on my banker for a thousand pounds; and, hark me out, you do this,
you swear, as I said, on the servants' Bible, in the presence of my
butler and me, "Strike you dead as Ananias and t' other one if you don't
keep to it," do that now, here, on the spot, and I'll engage to see you
paid fifty pounds a year into the bargain. Stop! and I'll pay your debts
under two or three hundred. For God's sake, let go the boy! You shall
have fifty guineas on account this minute. Let go the boy! And your
son--there, I call him your son--your son, Harry Richmond, shall inherit
from me; he shall have Riversley and the best part of my property, if not
every bit of it. Is it a bargain? Will you swear? Don't, and the boy's a
beggar, he's a stranger here as much as you. Take him, and by the Lord,
you ruin him. There now, never mind, stay, down with him. He's got a cold
already; ought to be in his bed; let the boy down!'

'You offer me money,' Mr. Richmond answered.

'That is one of the indignities belonging to a connection with a man like
you. You would have me sell my son. To see my afflicted wife I would
forfeit my heart's yearnings for my son; your money, sir, I toss to the
winds; and I am under the necessity of informing you that I despise and
loathe you. I shrink from the thought of exposing my son to your besotted
selfish example. The boy is mine; I have him, and he shall traverse the
wilderness with me. By heaven! his destiny is brilliant. He shall be
hailed for what he is, the rightful claimant of a place among the
proudest in the land; and mark me, Mr. Beltham, obstinate sensual old man
that you are! I take the boy, and I consecrate my life to the duty of
establishing him in his proper rank and station, and there, if you live
and I live, you shall behold him and bow your grovelling pig's head to
the earth, and bemoan the day, by heaven! when you,--a common country
squire, a man of no origin, a creature with whose blood we have mixed
ours--and he is stone-blind to the honour conferred on him--when you in
your besotted stupidity threatened to disinherit Harry Richmond.'

The door slammed violently on such further speech as he had in him to
utter. He seemed at first astonished; but finding the terrified boy about
to sob, he drew a pretty box from one of his pockets and thrust a
delicious sweetmeat between the whimpering lips. Then, after some moments
of irresolution, during which he struck his chest soundingly and gazed
down, talked alternately to himself and the boy, and cast his eyes along
the windows of the house, he at last dropped on one knee and swaddled the
boy in the folds of the shawl. Raising him in a business-like way, he
settled him on an arm and stepped briskly across gravel-walk and lawn,
like a horse to whose neck a smart touch of the whip has been applied.

The soft mild night had a moon behind it somewhere; and here and there a
light-blue space of sky showed small rayless stars; the breeze smelt
fresh of roots and heath. It was more a May-night than one of February.
So strange an aspect had all these quiet hill-lines and larch and
fir-tree tops in the half-dark stillness, that the boy's terrors were
overlaid and almost subdued by his wonderment; he had never before been
out in the night, and he must have feared to cry in it, for his sobs were
not loud. On a rise of the park-road where a fir-plantation began, he
heard his name called faintly from the house by a woman's voice that he
knew to be his aunt Dorothy's. It came after him only once: 'Harry
Richmond'; but he was soon out of hearing, beyond the park, among the
hollows that run dipping for miles beside the great highroad toward
London. Sometimes his father whistled to him, or held him high and nodded
a salutation to him, as though they had just discovered one another; and
his perpetual accessibility to the influences of spicy sugarplums,
notwithstanding his grief, caused his father to prognosticate hopefully
of his future wisdom. So, when obedient to command he had given his
father a kiss, the boy fell asleep on his shoulder, ceasing to know that
he was a wandering infant: and, if I remember rightly, he dreamed he was
in a ship of cinnamon-wood upon a sea that rolled mighty, but smooth
immense broad waves, and tore thing from thing without a sound or a hurt.