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Louisa May Alcott - "A Garland for Girls"

William Henry Hudson - "The Famous Missions of California"

Richard Harding Davis - "Captain Macklin"

Samuel Pepys - "Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1665 N.S. Complete"

The Adventures of Harry Richmond, Complete

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




While I was in this state of wrathful championship, the hall-door was
opened. I ran out and caught sight of my aunt Dorothy, in company with
old Mr. Bannerbridge. I was kissed and hugged for I know not how long,
until the smell of Riversley took entire possession of me, and my old
home seemed nearer than the one I lived in; but my aunt, seeing tears on
my cheeks, asked me what was my cause of sorrow. In a moment I poured out
a flood of complaints against Mrs. Waddy for vexing my father. When she
heard of the scarlet livery, my aunt lifted her hands. 'The man is near
the end of his wits and his money together,' said Mr. Bannerbridge; and
she said to me, 'My darling Harry will come back to his own nice little
room, and see his grandpapa soon, won't you, my pet? All is ready for him
there as it used to be, except poor mama. "Kiss my boy, my Harry--Harry
Richmond." Those were her last words on her death-bed, before she went to
God, Harry, my own! There is Sampson the pony, and Harry's dog Prince,
and his lamb Daisy, grown a sheep, and the ploughboy, Dick, with the big
boots.' Much more sweet talk of the same current that made my face cloudy
and bright, and filled me with desire for Riversley, to see my mother's
grave and my friends.

Aunt Dorothy looked at me. 'Come now,' she said; 'come with me, Harry.'
Her trembling seized on me like a fire. I said, 'Yes,' though my heart
sank as if I had lost my father with the word. She caught me in her arms
tight, murmuring, 'And dry our tears and make our house laugh. Oh! since
the night that Harry went . . . . . And I am now Harry's mama, he has
me.'

I looked on her forehead for the wreath of white flowers my mother used
to wear, and thought of my father's letter with the prayer written on the
black-bordered page. I said I would go, but my joy in going was gone. We
were stopped in the doorway by Mrs. Waddy. Nothing would tempt her to
surrender me. Mr. Bannerbridge tried reasoning with her, and, as he said,
put the case, which seemed to have perched on his forefinger. He talked
of my prospects, of my sole chance of being educated morally and
virtuously as became the grandson of an English gentleman of a good old
family, and of my father having spent my mother's estate, and of the
danger of his doing so with mine, and of religious duty and the awfulness
of the position Mrs. Waddy stood in. He certainly subdued me to very
silent breathing, but did not affect me as my aunt Dorothy's picturing of
Riversley had done; and when Mrs. Waddy, reduced to an apparent
submissiveness, addressed me piteously, 'Master Richmond, would you leave
papa?' I cried out, 'No, no, never leave my papa,' and twisted away from
my aunt's keeping. My father's arrival caused me to be withdrawn, but I
heard his offer of his hospitality and all that was his; and subsequently
there was loud talking on his part. I was kissed by my aunt before she
went. She whispered, 'Come to us when you are free; think of us when you
pray.' She was full of tears. Mr. Bannerbridge patted my head.

The door closed on them and I thought it was a vision that had passed.
But now my father set my heart panting with questions as to the terrible
possibility of us two ever being separated. In some way he painted my
grandfather so black that I declared earnestly I would rather die than go
to Riversley; I would never utter the name of the place where there was
evil speaking of the one I loved dearest. 'Do not, my son,' he said
solemnly, 'or it parts us two.' I repeated after him, 'I am a Roy and not
a Beltham.' It was enough to hear that insult and shame had been cast on
him at Riversley for me to hate the name of the place. We cried and then
laughed together, and I must have delivered myself with amazing
eloquence, for my father held me at arms' length and said, 'Richie, the
notion of training you for a General commandership of the British army is
a good one, but if you have got the winning tongue, the woolsack will do
as well for a whisper in the ear of the throne. That is our aim, my son.
We say,--you will not acknowledge our birth, you shall acknowledge our
worth.' He complained bitterly of my aunt Dorothy bringing a lawyer to
our house. The sins of Mrs. Waddy were forgiven her, owing to her noble
resistance to the legal gentleman's seductive speech. So I walked up and
down stairs with the kings of England looking at me out of the coloured
windows quietly for a week; and then two ugly men entered the house,
causing me to suffer a fearful oppression, though my father was
exceedingly kind to them and had beds provided for them, saying that they
were very old retainers of his.

But the next day our scarlet livery appeared. After exacting particular
attention to his commands, my father quitted Mrs. Waddy, and we mounted
the carriage, laughing at her deplorable eyes and prim lips, which he
imitated for my amusement. 'A load is off my head,' he remarked. He asked
me if splendour did not fatigue me also. I caught the answer from his
face and replied that it did, and that I should like to go right on to
Dipwell 'The Burgundy sleeps safe there,' said my father, and thought
over it. We had an extraordinary day. People stood fast to gaze at us; in
the country some pulled off their hats and set up a cheer. The landlords
of the inns where we baited remained bare-headed until we started afresh,
and I, according to my father's example, bowed and lifted my cap gravely
to persons saluting us along the roads. Nor did I seek to know the reason
for this excess of respectfulness; I was beginning to take to it
naturally. At the end of a dusty high-road, where it descends the hill
into a town, we drew up close by a high red wall, behind which I heard
boys shouting at play. We went among them, accompanied by their master.
My father tipped the head boy for the benefit of the school, and
following lunch with the master and his daughter, to whom I gave a kiss
at her request, a half-holiday was granted to the boys in my name. How
they cheered! The young lady saw my delight, and held me at the window
while my father talked with hers; and for a long time after I beheld them
in imagination talking: that is to say, my father issuing his
instructions and Mr. Rippenger receiving them like a pliant hodman; for
the result of it was that two days later, without seeing my kings of
England, my home again, or London, I was Julia Rippenger's intimate
friend and the youngest pupil of the school. My father told me
subsequently that we slept at an hotel those two nights intervening.
Memory transplants me from the coach and scarlet livery straight to my
place of imprisonment.




CHAPTER V

I MAKE A DEAR FRIEND

Heriot was the name of the head boy of the school. Boddy was the name of
one of the ushers. They were both in love with Julia Rippenger. It was my
fortune to outrun them in her favour for a considerable period, during
which time, though I had ceased to live in state, and was wearing out my
suits of velvet, and had neither visit nor letter from my father, I was
in tolerable bliss. Julia's kisses were showered on me for almost
anything I said or did, but her admiration of heroism and daring was so
fervent that I was in no greater danger of becoming effeminate than
Achilles when he wore girl's clothes. She was seventeen, an age
bewitching for boys to look up to and men to look down on. The puzzle of
the school was how to account for her close relationship to old
Rippenger. Such an apple on such a crab-tree seemed monstrous. Heriot
said that he hoped Boddy would marry old Rippenger's real daughter, and,
said he, that's birch-twigs. I related his sparkling speech to Julia, who
laughed, accusing him, however, of impudence. She let me see a portrait
of her dead mother, an Irish lady raising dark eyelashes, whom she
resembled. I talked of the portrait to Heriot, and as I had privileges
accorded to none of the other boys and could go to her at any hour of the
day after lessons, he made me beg for him to have a sight of it. She
considered awhile, but refused. On hearing of the unkind refusal, Heriot
stuck his hands into his pockets and gave up cricketing. We saw him
leaning against a wall in full view of her window, while the boys crowded
round him trying to get him to practise, a school-match of an important
character coming off with a rival academy; and it was only through fear
of our school being beaten if she did not relent that Julia handed me the
portrait, charging me solemnly to bring it back. I promised, of course.
Heriot went into his favourite corner of the playground, and there looked
at it and kissed it, and then buttoned his jacket over it tight, growling
when I asked him to return it. Julia grew frightened. She sent me with
numbers of petitions to him.

'Look here, young un,' said Heriot; 'you're a good little fellow, and I
like you, but just tell her I believe in nothing but handwriting, and if
she writes to me for it humbly and nicely she shall have it back. Say I
only want to get a copy taken by a first-rate painter.'

Julia shed tears at his cruelty, called him cruel, wicked, false to his
word. She wrote, but the letter did not please him, and his reply was
scornful. At prayers morning and evening, it was pitiful to observe her
glance of entreaty and her downfallen eyelashes. I guessed that in
Heriot's letters to her he wanted to make her confess something, which
she would not do. 'Now I write to him no more; let him know it, my
darling,' she said, and the consequence of Heriot's ungrateful obstinacy
was that we all beheld her, at the ceremony of the consecration of the
new church, place her hand on Mr. Boddy's arm and allow him to lead her
about. Heriot kept his eyes on them; his mouth was sharp, and his arms
stiff by his sides. I was the bearer of a long letter to her that
evening. She tore it to pieces without reading it. Next day Heriot walked
slowly past Mr. Boddy holding the portrait in his hands. The usher called
to him!

'What have you there, Heriot?'

My hero stared. 'Only a family portrait,' he answered, thrusting it safe
in his pocket and fixing his gaze on Julia's window.

'Permit me to look at it,' said Mr. Boddy.

'Permit me to decline to let you,' said Heriot.

'Look at me, sir,' cried Boddy.

'I prefer to look elsewhere, sir,' replied Heriot, and there was Julia
visible at her window.

'I asked you, sir, civilly,' quoth Boddy, 'for permission to look,--I
used the word intentionally; I say I asked you for permission . . .'

'No, you didn't,' Heriot retorted, quite cool; 'inferentially you did;
but you did not use the word permission.'

'And you turned upon me impudently,' pursued Boddy, whose colour was
thunder: 'you quibbled, sir; you prevaricated; you concealed what you
were carrying . . .'

'Am carrying,' Heriot corrected his tense; 'and mean to, in spite of
every Boddy,' he murmured audibly.

'Like a rascal detected in an act of felony,' roared Boddy, 'you
concealed it, sir . . .'

'Conceal it, sir.'

'And I demand, in obedience to my duty, that you instantly exhibit it for
my inspection, now, here, at once; no parleying; unbutton, or I call Mr.
Rippenger to compel you.'

I was standing close by my brave Heriot, rather trembling, studious of
his manfulness though I was. His left foot was firmly in advance, as he
said, just in the manner to start an usher furious:

'I concealed it, I conceal it; I was carrying it, I carry it: you demand
that I exhibit for your inspection what I mean no Boddy to see? I have to
assure you respectfully, sir, that family portraits are sacred things
with the sons of gentlemen. Here, Richie, off!'

I found the portrait in my hand, and Heriot between me and the usher, in
the attitude of a fellow keeping another out of his home at
prisoner's-base. He had spied Mr. Rippenger's head at the playground
gate. I had just time to see Heriot and the usher in collision before I
ran through the gate and into Julia's arms in her garden, whither the
dreadful prospect of an approaching catastrophe had attracted her.

Heriot was merely reported guilty of insolence. He took his five hundred
lines of Virgil with his usual sarcastic dignity: all he said to Mr.
Rippenger was, 'Let it be about Dido, sir,' which set several of the boys
upon Dido's history, but Heriot was condemned to the battles with Turnus.
My share in this event secured Heriot's friendship to me without costing
me the slightest inconvenience. 'Papa would never punish you,' Julia
said; and I felt my rank. Nor was it wonderful I should when Mr.
Rippenger was constantly speaking of my father's magnificence in my
presence before company. Allowed to draw on him largely for pocket-money,
I maintained my father's princely reputation in the school. At times,
especially when the holidays arrived and I was left alone with Julia, I
had fits of mournfulness, and almost thought the boys happier than I was.
Going home began to seem an unattainable thing to me. Having a father,
too, a regular father, instead of a dazzling angel that appeared at
intervals, I considered a benefaction, in its way, some recompense to the
boys, for their not possessing one like mine. My anxiety was relieved by
my writing letters to my father, addressed to the care of Miss Julia
Rippenger, and posting them in her work-basket. She favoured me with very
funny replies, signed, 'Your own ever-loving Papa,' about his being
engaged killing Bengal tigers and capturing white elephants, a noble
occupation that gave me exciting and consolatory dreams of him.

We had at last a real letter of his, dated from a foreign city; but he
mentioned nothing of coming to me. I understood that Mr. Rippenger was
disappointed with it.

Gradually a kind of cloud stole over me. I no longer liked to ask for
pocket-money; I was clad in a suit of plain cloth; I was banished from
the parlour, and only on Sunday was I permitted to go to Julia. I ceased
to live in myself. Through the whole course of lessons, at play-time, in
my bed, and round to morning bell, I was hunting my father in an unknown
country, generally with the sun setting before me: I ran out of a wood
almost into a brook to see it sink as if I had again lost sight of him,
and then a sense of darkness brought me back to my natural consciousness,
without afflicting me much, but astonishing me. Why was I away from him?
I could repeat my lessons in the midst of these dreams quite fairly; it
was the awakening among the circle of the boys that made me falter during
a recital and ask myself why I was there and he absent? They had given
over speculating on another holiday and treat from my father; yet he had
produced such an impression in the school that even when I had descended
to the level of a total equality with them, they continued to have some
consideration for me. I was able to talk of foreign cities and could tell
stories, and I was, besides, under the immediate protection of Heriot.
But now the shadow of a great calamity fell on me, for my dear Heriot
announced his intention of leaving the school next half.

'I can't stand being prayed at, morning and evening, by a fellow who
hasn't the pluck to strike me like a man,' he said. Mr. Rippenger had the
habit of signalizing offenders, in his public prayers, as boys whose
hearts he wished to be turned from callousness. He perpetually suspected
plots; and to hear him allude to some deep, long-hatched school
conspiracy while we knelt motionless on the forms, and fetch a big breath
to bring out, 'May the heart of Walter Heriot be turned and he comprehend
the multitudinous blessings,' etc., was intensely distressing. Together
with Walter Heriot, Andrew Saddlebank, our best bowler, the drollest
fellow in the world, John Salter, and little Gus Temple, were oftenest
cited. They declared that they invariably uttered 'Amen,' as Heriot did,
but we none of us heard this defiant murmur of assent from their lips.
Heriot pronounced it clearly and cheerfully, causing Julia's figure to
shrink as she knelt with her face in the chair hard by her father's
desk-pulpit. I received the hearty congratulations of my comrades for
singing out 'Amen' louder than Heriot, like a chorister, though not in so
prolonged a note, on hearing to my stupefaction Mr. Rippenger implore
that the heart of 'him we know as Richmond Roy' might be turned. I did it
spontaneously. Mr. Rippenger gazed at me in descending from his desk;
Julia, too, looking grieved. For my part, I exulted in having done a
thing that gave me a likeness to Heriot.

'Little Richmond, you're a little hero,' he said, caressing me. 'I saw
old Rippenger whisper to that beast, Boddy. Never mind; they won't hurt
you as long as I'm here. Grow tough, that's what you've got to do. I'd
like to see you horsed, only to see whether you're game to take it
without wincing--if it didn't hurt you much, little lad.'

He hugged me up to him.

'I'd take anything for you, Heriot,' said I.

'All right,' he answered, never meaning me to suffer on his account. He
had an inimitable manner of sweet speaking that endeared him to younger
boys capable of appreciating it, with the supernatural power of music. It
endeared him, I suppose, to young women also. Julia repeated his phrases,
as for instance, 'Silly boy, silly boy,' spoken with a wave of his hand,
when a little fellow thanked him for a kindness. She was angry at his
approval of what she called my defiance of her father, and insisted that
I was the catspaw of one of Heriot's plots to vex him. 'Tell Heriot you
have my command to say you belong to me and must not be misled,' she
said. His answer was that he wanted it in writing. She requested him to
deliver up her previous letters. Thereupon he charged me with a lengthy
epistle, which plunged us into boiling water. Mr. Boddy sat in the
schoolroom while Heriot's pen was at work, on the wet Sunday afternoon.
His keen little eyes were busy in his flat bird's head all the time
Heriot continued writing. He saw no more than that Heriot gave me a book;
but as I was marching away to Julia he called to know where I was going.

'To Miss Rippenger,' I replied.

'What have you there?'

'A book, sir.'

'Show me the book.'

I stood fast.

'It 's a book I have lent him, sir,' said Heriot, rising. 'I shall see if
it's a fit book for a young boy,' said Boddy; and before Heriot could
interpose, he had knocked the book on the floor, and out fell the letter.
Both sprang down to seize it: their heads encountered, but Heriot had the
quicker hand; he caught the letter, and cried 'Off!' to me, as on
another occasion. This time, however, he was not between me and the
usher. I was seized by the collar, and shakes roughly.

'You will now understand that you are on a footing with the rest of the
boys, you Roy,' said Boddy. 'Little scoundrelly spoilt urchins, upsetting
the discipline of the school, won't do here. Heriot, here is your book. I
regret,' he added, sneering, 'that a leaf is torn.'

'I regret, sir, that the poor boy was so savagely handled,' said Heriot.

He was warned to avoid insolence.

'Oh, as much Virgil as you like,' Heriot retorted; 'I know him by heart.'

It was past the hour of my customary visit to Julia, and she came to
discover the reason of my delay. Boddy stood up to explain. Heriot went
forward, saying, 'I think I'm the one who ought to speak, Miss Rippenger.
The fact is, I hear from little Roy that you are fond of tales of Indian
adventure, and I gave him a book for you to read, if you like it. Mr.
Boddy objected, and treated the youngster rather rigorously. It must have
been quite a misunderstanding on his part. Here is the book it's
extremely amusing.'

Julia blushed very red. She accepted the book with a soft murmur, and the
sallow usher had not a word.

'Stay,' said Heriot. 'I took the liberty to write some notes. My father
is an Indian officer, you know, and some of the terms in the book are
difficult without notes. Richie, hand that paper. Here they are, Miss
Rippenger, if you'll be so kind as to place them in the book.'

I was hoping with all my might that she would not deny him. She did, and
my heart sank.

'Oh, I can read it without notes,' she said, cheerfully.

After that, I listened with indifference to her petition to Boddy that I
might be allowed to accompany her, and was not at all chagrined by his
refusal. She laid down the book, saying that I could bring it to her when
I was out of disgrace.

In the evening we walked in the playground, where Heriot asked me to do a
brave thing, which he would never forget. This was that I should take a
sharp run right past Boddy, who was pacing up and down before the gate
leading into Julia's garden, and force her to receive the letter. I went
bounding like a ball. The usher, suspecting only that I hurried to speak
to him, let me see how indignant he was with my behaviour by striding all
the faster as I drew near, and so he passed the gate, and I rushed in. I
had just time to say to Julia, 'Hide it, or I'm in such a scrape.'

The next minute she was addressing my enemy:

'Surely you would not punish him because he loves me?' and he, though he
spoke of insubordination, merited chastisement; and other usher phrases,
seemed to melt, and I had what I believe was a primary conception of the
power of woman. She led him to talk in the gentlest way possible of how
the rain had refreshed her flowers, and of this and that poor rose.

I could think of nothing but the darling letter, which had flashed out of
sight as a rabbit pops into burrows. Boddy departed with a rose.

'Ah, Richie,' she said, 'I have to pay to have you with me now.'

We walked to the summer-house, where she read Heriot's letter through.
'But he is a boy! How old is Heriot? He is not so old as I am!'

These were her words, and she read the letter anew, and read it again
after she had placed it in her bosom, I meanwhile pouring out praises of
Heriot.

'You speak of him as if you were in love with him, Richmond,' she said.

'And I do love him,' I answered.

'Not with me?' she asked.

'Yes, I do love you too, if you will not make him angry.'

'But do you know what it is he wants of me?'

I guessed: 'Yes; he wants you to let him sit close to you for half an
hour.'

She said that he sat very near her in church.

'Ah,' said I, 'but he mustn't interrupt the sermon.'

She laughed, and mouthed me over with laughing kisses. 'There's very
little he hasn't daring enough for!'

We talked of his courage.

'Is he good as well?' said Julia, more to herself than to me; but I sang
out,

'Good! Oh, so kind!'

This appeared to convince her.

'Very generous to you and every one, is he not?' she said; and from that
moment was all questions concerning his kind treatment of the boys, and
as to their looking up to him.

I quitted her, taking her message to Heriot: 'You may tell him--tell him
that I can't write.'

Heriot frowned on hearing me repeat it.

'Humph!' he went, and was bright in a twinkling: 'that means she'll
come!' He smacked his hands together, grew black, and asked, 'Did she
give that beast Boddy a rose?'

I had to confess she did; and feeling a twinge of my treason to her, felt
hers to Heriot.

'Humph!' he went; 'she shall suffer for that.'

All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal
my father to me.

There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot's face for one who loved it
as I did. Julia's betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their
confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served them
ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with
interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and Julia
met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers wandered over
the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a short flutter
and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had some knowledge
that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of Heriot and Julia as
a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play the part of old Nick
the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than ever. It was not a new
thing that she should send in cakes of her own making, but it was
extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful presents as often as
once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy exclaim, either among
a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is a pretty girl!' on her
passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of his own idea. I am
persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy, the boys would have
been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the church and forbid
the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the junior usher,
Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once drank a bottle
of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak creature to
our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his pale
complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him was
full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have thought with the
other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never could imagine her
so delicious as when she smiled at my father.