The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v3
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George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v3
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CHAPTER XVIII
WE PASS A DELIGHTFUL EVENING, AND I HAVE A MORNING VISION
In a long saloon ornamented with stags' horns and instruments of the
chase, tusks of boars, spear-staves, boarknives, and silver horns, my
father, I, and Temple sat down to a memorable breakfast, my father in his
true form, dressed in black silken jacket and knee-breeches, purple-
stockings and pumps; without a wig, I thanked heaven to see. How
blithely he flung out his limbs and heaved his chest released from
confinement! His face was stained brownish, but we drank old Rhine wine,
and had no eye for appearances.
'So you could bear it no longer, Richie?' My father interrupted the
narrative I doled out, anxious for his, and he began, and I interrupted
him.
'You did think of me often, papa, didn't you?'
His eyes brimmed with tenderness.
'Think of you!' he sighed.
I gave him the account of my latest adventures in a few panting breaths,
suppressing the Bench. He set my face to front him.
'We are two fools, Mr. Temple,' he said.
'No, sir,' said Temple.
'Now you speak, papa,' said I.
He smiled warmly.
'Richie begins to remember me.'
I gazed at him to show it was true.
'I do, papa--I'm not beginning to.'
At his request, I finished the tale of my life at school. 'Ah, well!
that was bad fortune; this is good!' he exclaimed. 'Tis your father, my
son: 'tis day-light, though you look at it through a bed-curtain, and
think you are half-dreaming. Now then for me, Richie.'
My father went on in this wise excitedly:
'I was laying the foundation of your fortune here, my boy. Heavens!
when I was in that bronze shell I was astonished only at my continence in
not bursting. You have grown,--you have shot up and filled out. I
register my thanks to your grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor
degree, to Captain Jasper Welsh. Between that man Rippenger and me there
shall be dealings. He flogged you: let that pass. He exposed you to the
contempt of your school-fellows because of a breach in my correspondence
with a base-born ferule-swinger. What are we coming to? Richie, my son,
I was building a future for you here. And Colonel Goodwin-Colonel
Goodwin, you encountered him too, and his marriageable daughter--I owe it
to them that I have you here! Well, in the event of my sitting out the
period this morning as the presentment of Prince Albrecht, I was to have
won something would have astonished that unimpressionable countryman of
ours. Goodness gracious, my boy! when I heard your English shout, it
went to my marrow. Could they expect me to look down on my own flesh and
blood, on my son--my son Richmond--after a separation of years, and
continue a statue? Nay, I followed my paternal impulse. Grant that the
show was spoilt, does the Markgrafin insist on my having a bronze heart
to carry on her pastime? Why, naturally, I deplore a failure, let the
cause be what it will. Whose regrets can eclipse those of the principal
actor? Quotha! as our old Plays have it. Regrets? Did I not for
fifteen minutes and more of mortal time sit in view of a multitude,
motionless, I ask you, like a chiselled block of stone,--and the compact
was one quarter of an hour, and no farther? That was my stipulation. I
told her--I can hold out one quarter of an hour: I pledged myself to it.
Who, then, is to blame? I was exposed to view twenty-three minutes, odd
seconds. Is there not some ancient story of a monstrous wretch baked in
his own bull? My situation was as bad. If I recollect aright, he could
roar; no such relief was allowed to me. And I give you my word, Richie,
lads both, that while that most infernal Count Fretzel was pouring forth
his execrable humdrum, I positively envied the privilege of an old
palsied fellow, chief boatman of the forest lake, for, thinks I, hang
him! he can nod his head and I can not. Let me assure you, twenty
minutes of an ordeal like that,--one posture, mind you, no raising of
your eyelids, taking your breath mechanically, and your heart beating--
jumping like an enraged balletdancer boxed in your bosom--a literal
description, upon my honour; and not only jumping, jumping every now and
then, I may say, with a toe in your throat: I was half-choked:--well, I
say, twenty minutes, twenty-seven minutes and a half of that, getting on,
in fact, to half-an-hour, it is superhuman!--by heavens, it is heroical!
And observe my reward: I have a son--my only one. I have been divided
from him for years; I am establishing his fortune; I know he is provided
with comforts: Richie, you remember the woman Waddy? A faithful soul!
She obtained my consent at last--previously I had objections; in fact,
your address was withheld from the woman--to call at your school. She
saw Rippenger, a girl of considerable attractions. She heard you were
located at Riversley: I say, I know the boy is comfortably provided for;
but we have been separated since he was a little creature with curls on
his forehead, scarce breeched '
I protested:
'Papa, I have been in jacket and trousers I don't know how long.'
'Let me pursue,' said my father. 'And to show you, Richie, it is a
golden age ever when you and I are together, and ever shall be till we
lose our manly spirit, and we cling to that,--till we lose our princely
spirit, which we never will abandon--perish rather!--I drink to you, and
challenge you; and, mind you, old Hock wine has charms. If Burgundy is
the emperor of wines, Hock is the empress. For youngsters, perhaps, I
should except the Hock that gets what they would fancy a trifle pique,
turned with age, so as to lose in their opinion its empress flavour.'
Temple said modestly: 'I should call that the margravine of wines.'
My father beamed on him with great approving splendour. 'Join us, Mr.
Temple; you are a man of wit, and may possibly find this specimen worthy
of you. This wine has a history. You are drinking wine with blood in
it. Well, I was saying, the darling of my heart has been torn from me; I
am in a foreign land; foreign, that is, by birth, and on the whole
foreign. Yes!--I am the cynosure of eyes; I am in a singular posture, a
singular situation; I hear a cry in the tongue of my native land, and
what I presume is my boy's name: I look, I behold him, I follow a
parent's impulse. On my soul! none but a fish-father could have stood
against it.
Well, for this my reward is--and I should have stepped from a cathedral
spire just the same, if I had been mounted on it--that I, I,--and the
woman knows all my secret--I have to submit to the foul tirade of a
vixen.
She drew language, I protest, from the slums. And I entreat you, Mr.
Temple, with your "margravine of wines"--which was very neatly said, to
be sure--note you this curious point for the confusion of Radicals in
your after life; her Highness's pleasure was to lend her tongue to the
language--or something like it--of a besotted fish-wife; so! very well,
and just as it is the case with that particular old Hock you youngsters
would disapprove of, and we cunning oldsters know to contain more virtues
in maturity than a nunnery of May-blooming virgins, just so the very
faults of a royal lady-royal by birth and in temper a termagant--impart a
perfume! a flavour! You must age; you must live in Courts, you must
sound the human bosom, rightly to appreciate it. She is a woman of the
most malicious fine wit imaginable.
She is a generous woman, a magnanimous woman; wear her chains and she
will not brain you with her club. She is the light, the centre of every
society where she appears, like what shall I say? like the moon in a
bowl of old Rhenish. And you will drain that bowl to the bottom to seize
her, as it were--catch a correct idea of her; ay, and your brains are
drowned in the attempt. Yes, Richie; I was aware of your residence at
Riversley. Were you reminded of your wandering dada on Valentine's day?
Come, my boy, we have each of us a thousand things to relate. I may be
dull--I do not understand what started you on your journey in search of
me. An impulse? An accident? Say, a directing angel! We rest our legs
here till evening, and then we sup. You will be astonished to hear that
you have dined. 'Tis the fashion with the Germans. I promise you good
wine shall make it up to you for the return to school-habits. We sup,
and we pack our scanty baggage, and we start tonight. Brook no insult at
Courts if you are of material value: if not, it is unreservedly a
question whether you like kickings.'
My father paused, yawned and stretched, to be rid of the remainder of his
aches and stiffness. Out of a great yawn he said:
'Dear lads, I have fallen into the custom of the country; I crave your
permission that I may smoke. Wander, if you choose, within hail of me,
or sit by me, if you can bear it, and talk of your school-life, and your
studies. Your aunt Dorothy, Richie? She is well? I know not her like.
I could bear to hear of any misfortune but that she suffered pain.
My father smoked his cigar peacefully. He had laid a guitar on his
knees, and flipped a string, or chafed over all the strings, and plucked
and thrummed them as his mood varied. We chatted, and watched the going
down of the sun, and amused ourselves idly, fermenting as we were.
Anything that gave pleasure to us two boys pleased and at once occupied
my father. It was without aid from Temple's growing admiration of him
that I recovered my active belief and vivid delight in his presence. My
younger days sprang up beside me like brothers. No one talked, looked,
flashed, frowned, beamed, as he did! had such prompt liveliness as he!
such tenderness! No one was ever so versatile in playfulness. He took
the colour of the spirits of the people about him. His vivacious or
sedate man-of-the-world tone shifted to playfellow's fun in a twinkling.
I used as a little fellow to think him larger than he really was, but he
was of good size, inclined to be stout; his eyes were grey, rather
prominent, and his forehead sloped from arched eyebrows. So
conversational were his eyes and brows that he could persuade you to
imagine he was carrying on a dialogue without opening his mouth. His
voice was charmingly clear; his laughter confident, fresh, catching, the
outburst of his very self, as laughter should be. Other sounds of
laughter were like echoes.
Strange to say, I lost the links of my familiarity with him when he left
us on a short visit to his trunks and portmanteaux, and had to lean on
Temple, who tickled but rejoiced me by saying: 'Richie, your father is
just the one I should like to be secretary to.'
We thought it a pity to have to leave this nice foreign place
immediately. I liked the scenery, and the wine, and what I supposed to
be the habit of the gentlemen here to dress in silks. On my father's
return to us I asked him if we could not stay till morning.
'Till morning, then,' he said: 'and to England with the first lark.'
His complexion was ruddier; his valet had been at work to restore it; he
was getting the sanguine hue which coloured my recollection of him.
Wearing a black velvet cap and a Spanish furred cloak, he led us over the
villa. In Sarkeld he resided at the palace, and generally at the lake-
palace on the removal of the Court thither. The margravine had placed
the villa, which was her own property, at his disposal, the better to
work out their conspiracy.
'It would have been mine!' said my father, bending suddenly to my ear,
and humming his philosophical 'heigho,' as he stepped on in minuet
fashion. We went through apartments rich with gilded oak and pine
panellings: in one was a rough pattern of a wooden horse opposite a
mirror; by no means a figure of a horse, but apparently a number of
pieces contributed by a carpenter's workshop, having a rueful seat in the
middle. My father had practised the attitude of Prince Albrecht
Wohlgemuth on it. 'She timed me five and twenty minutes there only
yesterday,' he said; and he now supposed he had sat the bronze horse as a
statue in public view exactly thirty-seven minutes and a quarter. Tubs
full of colouring liquid to soak the garments of the prince, pots of
paint, and paint and plaster brushes, hinted the magnitude of the
preparations.
'Here,' said my father in another apartment, 'I was this morning
apparelled at seven o'clock: and I would have staked my right arm up to
the collar-bone on the success of the undertaking!'
'Weren't they sure to have found it out in the end, papa?' I inquired.
'I am not so certain of that,' he rejoined: 'I cannot quaff consolation
from that source. I should have been covered up after exhibition; I
should have been pronounced imperfect in my fitting-apparatus; the
sculptor would have claimed me, and I should have been enjoying the
fruits of a brave and harmless conspiracy to do honour to an illustrious
prince, while he would have been moulding and casting an indubitable
bronze statue in my image. A fig for rumours! We show ourself; we are
caught from sight; we are again on show. Now this being successfully
done, do you see, Royalty declines to listen to vulgar tattle.
Presumably, Richie, it was suspected by the Court that the margravine had
many months ago commanded the statue at her own cost, and had set her
mind on winning back the money. The wonder of it was my magnificent
resemblance to the defunct. I sat some three hours before the old
warrior's portraits in the dining-saloon of the lake-palace. Accord me
one good spell of meditation over a tolerable sketch, I warrant myself to
represent him to the life, provided that he was a personage: I incline to
stipulate for handsome as well. On my word of honour as a man and a
gentleman, I pity the margravine--my poor good Frau Feldmarschall! Now,
here, Richie,'--my father opened a side-door out of an elegant little
room into a spacious dark place, 'here is her cabinet-theatre, where we
act German and French comediettas in Spring and Autumn. I have
superintended it during the two or more years of my stay at the Court.
Humph! 'tis over.'
He abruptly closed the door. His dress belonged to the part of a Spanish
nobleman, personated by him in a Play called The Hidalgo Enraged, he
said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the melancholy door, behind
which gay scenes had sparkled.
'Papa!' said I sadly, for consolation.
'You're change for a sovereign to the amount of four hundred and forty-
nine thousand shillings every time you speak!' cried he, kissing my
forehead.
He sparkled in good earnest on hearing that I had made acquaintance with
the little Princess Ottilia. What I thought of her, how she looked at
me, what I said to her, what words she answered, how the acquaintance
began, who were observers of it,--I had to repair my omission to mention
her by furnishing a precise description of the circumstances, describing
her face and style, repeating her pretty English.
My father nodded: he thought I exaggerated that foreign English of hers;
but, as I said, I was new to it and noticed it. He admitted the greater
keenness of attention awakened by novelty.
'Only,' said he, 'I rather wonder--' and here he smiled at me
inquiringly. ''Tis true,' he added, 'a boy of fourteen or fifteen--
ay, Richie, have your fun out. A youngster saw the comic side of her.
Do you know, that child has a remarkable character? Her disposition is
totally unfathomable. You are a deep reader of English poetry, I hope,;
she adores it, and the English Navy. She informed me that if she had
been the English people she would have made Nelson king. The Royal
family of England might see objections to that, I told her. Cries she:
"Oh! anything for a sea-hero." You will find these young princes and
princesses astonishingly revolutionary when they entertain brains. Now
at present, just at present, an English naval officer, and a poet, stand
higher in the esteem of that young Princess Ottilia than dukes, kings, or
emperors. So you have seen her!' my father ejaculated musingly, and
hummed, and said: 'By the way, we must be careful not to offend our
grandpapa Beltham, Richie. Good acres--good anchorage; good coffers--
good harbourage. Regarding poetry, my dear boy, you ought to be writing
it, for I do--the diversion of leisure hours, impromptus. In poetry, I
would scorn anything but impromptus. I was saying, Richie, that if
tremendous misfortune withholds from you your legitimate prestige, you
must have the substantial element. 'Tis your springboard to vault by,
and cushions on the other side if you make a miss and fall. 'Tis the
essence if you have not the odour.'
I followed my father's meaning as the shadow of a bird follows it in
sunlight; it made no stronger an impression than a flying shadow on the
grass; still I could verify subsequently that I had penetrated him--I had
caught the outline of his meaning--though I was little accustomed to his
manner of communicating his ideas: I had no notion of what he touched on
with the words, prestige, essence, and odour.
My efforts to gather the reason for his having left me neglected at
school were fruitless. 'Business, business! sad necessity! hurry,
worry-the-hounds!' was his nearest approach to an explicit answer; and
seeing I grieved his kind eyes, I abstained. Nor did I like to defend
Mr. Rippenger for expecting to be paid. We came to that point once or
twice, when so sharply wronged did he appear, and vehement and indignant,
that I banished thoughts which marred my luxurious contentment in hearing
him talk and sing, and behave in his old ways and new habits.
Plain velvet was his dress at dinner. We had a yellow Hock. Temple's
meditative face over it, to discover the margravine, or something, in its
flavour, was a picture. It was an evening of incessant talking; no
telling of events straightforwardly, but all by fits--all here and there.
My father talked of Turkey, so I learnt he had been in that country;
Temple of the routine of our life at Riversley; I of Kiomi, the gipsy
girl; then we two of Captain Jasper Welsh; my father of the Princess
Ottilia. When I alluded to the margravine, he had a word to say of Mrs.
Waddy; so I learnt she had been in continual correspondence with him, and
had cried heavily about me, poor soul. Temple laughed out a recollection
of Captain Bulsted's 'hic, haec, hoc'; I jumped Janet Ilchester up on the
table; my father expatiated on the comfort of a volume of Shakespeare to
an exiled Englishman. We drank to one another, and heartily to the
statue. My father related the history of the margravine's plot in duck-
and-drake skips, and backward to his first introduction to her at some
Austrian Baths among the mountains. She wanted amusement--he provided
it; she never let him quit her sight from that moment.
'And now,' he said, 'she has lost me!' He drew out of his pocket-book a
number of designs for the statue of Prince Albrecht, to which the
margravine's initials were appended, and shuffled them, and sighed, and
said:'Most complete arrangements! most complete! No body of men were
ever so well drilled as those fellows up at Bella Vista--could not have
been! And at the climax, in steps the darling boy for whom I laboured
and sweated, and down we topple incontinently! Nothing would have shaken
me but the apparition of my son! I was proof against everything but
that! I sat invincible for close upon an hour--call it an hour! Not a
muscle of me moved: I repeat, the heart in my bosom capered like an
independent organ; had it all its own way, leaving me mine, until Mr.
Temple, take my word for it, there is a guiding hand in some families;
believe it, and be serene in adversity. The change of life at a merry
Court to life in a London alley will exercise our faith. But the
essential thing is that Richie has been introduced here, and I intend him
to play a part here. The grandson and heir of one of the richest
commoners in England--I am not saying commoner as a term of reproach--
possessed of a property that turns itself over and doubles itself every
ten years, may--mind you, may--on such a solid foundation as that!--and
as to birth, your Highness has only to grant us a private interview.'
Temple was dazed by this mystifying address to him; nor could I
understand it.
'Why, papa, you always wished for me to go into Parliament,' said I.
'I do,' he replied, 'and I wish you to lead the London great world. Such
topics are for by-and-by. Adieu to them!' He kissed his wafting finger-
tips.
We fell upon our random talk again with a merry rattle.
I had to give him a specimen of my piano-playing and singing.
He shook his head. 'The cricketer and the scholar have been developed at
the expense of the musician; and music, Richie, music unlocks the chamber
of satinrose.'
Late at night we separated. Temple and I slept in companion-rooms.
Deadly drowsy, the dear little fellow sat on the edge of my bed
chattering of his wonder. My dreams led me wandering with a ship's diver
under the sea, where we walked in a light of pearls and exploded old
wrecks. I was assuring the glassy man that it was almost as clear
beneath the waves as above, when I awoke to see my father standing over
me in daylight; and in an ecstasy I burst into sobs.
'Here, Richie'--he pressed fresh violets on my nostrils-- 'you have had a
morning visitor. Quick out of bed, and you will see the little fairy
crossing the meadow.'
I leapt to the window in time to have in view the little Princess
Ottilia, followed by her faithful gaunt groom, before she was lost in the
shadow of the fir-trees.
CHAPTER XIX
OUR RETURN HOMEWARD
We started for England at noon, much against my secret wishes; but my
father would not afford the margravine time to repent of her violent
language and injustice toward him. Reflection increased his indignation.
Anything that went wrong on the first stages of the journey caused him to
recapitulate her epithets and reply to them proudly. He confided to me
in Cologne Cathedral that the entire course of his life was a grand plot,
resembling an unfinished piece of architecture, which might, at a future
day, prove the wonder of the world: and he had, therefore, packed two
dozen of hoar old (uralt: he used comical German) Hock for a present to
my grandfather Beltham, in the hope of its being found acceptable.
'For, Richie,' said he, 'you may not know--and it is not to win your
thanks I inform you of it--that I labour unremittingly in my son's
interests. I have established him, on his majority, in Germany, at a
Court. My object now is to establish him in England. Promise me that it
shall be the decided endeavour of your energies and talents to rise to
the height I point out to you? You promise, I perceive,' he added, sharp
in detecting the unpleasant predicament of a boy who is asked to speak
priggishly. So then I could easily promise with a firm voice. He
dropped certain explosive hints, which reminded me of the funny ideas of
my state and greatness I had when a child. I shrugged at them; I cared
nothing for revelations to come by-and-by. My object was to unite my
father and grandfather on terms of friendship.
This was the view that now absorbed and fixed my mind. To have him a
frequent visitor at Riversley, if not a resident in the house, enlivening
them all, while I, perhaps, trifled a cavalry sabre, became one of my
settled dreams. The difficult part of the scheme appeared to me the
obtaining of my father's consent. I mentioned it, and he said
immediately that he must have his freedom. 'Now, for instance,' said he,
'what is my desire at this moment? I have always a big one perched on a
rock in the distance; but I speak of my present desire. And let it be
supposed that the squire is one of us: we are returning to England.
Well, I want to show you a stork's nest. We are not far enough South for
the stork to build here. It is a fact, Richie, that I do want to show
you the bird for luck, and as a feature of the country. And in me, a
desire to do a thing partakes of the impetus of steam.
Well, you see we are jogging home to England. I resist myself for duty's
sake: that I can do. But if the squire were here with his yea and his
nay, by heavens! I should be off to the top of the Rhine like a tornado.
I submit to circumstances: I cannot, and I will not, be dictated to by
men.'
'That seems to me rather unreasonable,' I remonstrated.
'It is; I am ashamed of it,' he answered. 'Do as you will, Richie; set
me down at Riversley, but under no slight, mark you. I keep my honour
intact, like a bottled cordial; my unfailing comfort in adversity! I
hand it to you, my son, on my death-bed, and say, "You have there the
essence of my life. Never has it been known of me that I swallowed an
insult."'
'Then, papa, I shall have a talk with the squire.'
'Make good your ground in the castle,' said he. 'I string a guitar
outside. You toss me a key from the walls. If there is room, and I have
leisure, I enter. If not, you know I am paving your way in other
quarters. Riversley, my boy, is an excellent foothold and fortress:
Riversley is not the world. At Riversley I should have to wear a double
face, and, egad! a double stomach-bag, like young Jack feeding with the
giant--one full of ambition, the other of provender. That place is our
touchstone to discover whether we have prudence. We have, I hope. And
we will have, Mr. Temple, a pleasant day or two in Paris.'
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