The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v6
G >>
George Meredith >> The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v6
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7
A rather plainer view of my father's position, as I inclined to think,
was afforded to me one morning at his breakfast-table, by a conversation
between him and Jorian DeWitt, who brought me a twisted pink note from
Mdlle. Chassediane, the which he delivered with the air of a dog made to
disgorge a bone, and he was very cool to me indeed. The cutlets of
Alphonse were subject to snappish criticism. 'I assume,' he said, 'the
fellow knew I was coming?'
'He saw it in my handwriting of yesterday,' replied my father. 'But be
just to him, acknowledge that he is one of the few that perform their
daily duties with a tender conscience.'
'This English climate has bedevilled the fellow! He peppers his dishes
like a mongrel Indian reared on mangoes.'
'Ring him up, ring him up, Jorian. All I beg of you is not to disgust
him with life, for he quits any service in the world to come to me, and,
in fact, he suits me.'
'Exactly so: you spoil him.'
My father shrugged. 'The state of the case is, that your stomach is
growing delicate, friend Jorian.'
'The actual state of the case being, that my palate was never keener, and
consequently my stomach knows its business.'
'You should have tried the cold turbot with oil and capers.'
'Your man had better stick to buttered eggs, in my opinion.'
'Say, porridge!'
'No, I'll be hanged if I think he's equal to a bowl of porridge.'
'Careme might have confessed to the same!'
'With this difference,' cried Jorian in a heat, 'that he would never have
allowed the thought of any of your barbarous messes to occur to a man at
table. Let me tell you, Roy, you astonish me: up till now I have never
known you guilty of the bad taste of defending a bad dish on your own
board.'
'Then you will the more readily pardon me, Jorian.'
'Oh, I pardon you,' Jorian sneered, tripped to the carpet by such ignoble
mildness. 'A breakfast is no great loss.'
My father assured him he would have a serious conversation with Alphonse,
for whom he apologized by saying that Alphonse had not, to his knowledge,
served as hospital cook anywhere, and was therefore quite possibly not
sufficiently solicitous for appetites and digestions of invalids.
Jorian threw back his head as though to discharge a spiteful sarcasm with
good aim; but turning to me, said, 'Harry, the thing must be done; your
father must marry. Notoriety is the season for a pick and choice of the
wealthiest and the loveliest. I refuse to act the part of warming-pan
any longer; I refuse point blank. It's not a personal feeling on my
part; my advice is that of a disinterested friend, and I tell you
candidly, Roy, set aside the absurd exhibition of my dancing attendance
on that last rose of Guildhall,--egad, the alderman went like Summer, and
left us the very picture of a fruity Autumn,--I say you can't keep her
hanging on the tree of fond expectation for ever. She'll drop.'
'Catch her, Jorian; you are on guard.'
'Upwards of three hundred thousand, if a penny, Roy Richmond! Who? I?
I am not a fortune-hunter.'
'Nor am I, friend Jorian.'
'No, it 's because you're not thorough: you 'll fall between the stools.'
My father remarked that he should visit this upon Mr. Alphonse.
'You shook off that fine Welsh girl, and she was in your hand--the act of
a madman!' Jorian continued. 'You're getting older: the day will come
when you're a flat excitement. You know the first Lady Edbury spoilt one
of your best chances when you had the market. Now you're trifling with
the second. She's the head of the Light Brigade, but you might fix her
down, if she's not too much in debt. You 're not at the end of your run,
I dare say. Only, my good Roy, let me tell you, in life you mustn't wait
for the prize of the race till you touch the goal--if you prefer
metaphor. You generally come forward about every seven years or so.
Add on another seven, and women'll begin to think. You can't beat Time,
mon Roy.'
'So,' said my father, 'I touch the goal, and women begin to think, and I
can't beat time to them. Jorian, your mind is in a state of confusion.
I do not marry.'
'Then, Roy Richmond, hear what a friend says . . .'
'I do not marry, Jorian, and you know my reasons.'
'Sentiments!'
'They are a part of my life.'
'Just as I remarked, you are not thorough. You have genius and courage
out of proportion, and you are a dead failure, Roy; because, no sooner
have you got all Covent Garden before you for the fourth or fifth time,
than in go your hands into your pockets, and you say--No, there's an
apple I can't have, so I'll none of these; and, by the way, the apple
must be tolerably withered by this time. And you know perfectly well
(for you don't lack common sense at a shaking, Roy Richmond), that you're
guilty of simple madness in refusing to make the best of your situation.
You haven't to be taught what money means. With money--and a wife to
take care of it, mind you--you are pre-eminently the man for which you
want to be recognized. Without it--Harry 'll excuse me, I must speak
plainly--you're a sort of a spectacle of a bob-cherry, down on your luck,
up on your luck, and getting dead stale and never bitten; a familiar
curiosity'
Jorian added, 'Oh, by Jove! it's not nice to think of.' My father said:
'Harry, I am sure, will excuse you for talking, in your extreme
friendliness, of matters that he and I have not--and they interest us
deeply--yet thought fit to discuss. And you may take my word for it,
Jorian, that I will give Alphonse his medical dose. I am quite of your
opinion that the kings of cooks require it occasionally. Harry will
inform us of Mdlle. Chassediane's commands.'
The contents of the letter permitted me to read it aloud. She desired to
know how she could be amused on the Sunday.
'We will undertake it,' said my father. 'I depute the arrangements to
you, Jorian. Respect the prejudices, and avoid collisions, that is all.'
Captain DeWitt became by convenient stages cheerful, after the pink slip
of paper had been made common property, and from a seriously-advising
friend, in his state of spite, relapsed to the idle and shadow-like
associate, when pleased. I had to thank him for the gift of fresh
perceptions. Surely it would be as well if my father could get a woman
of fortune to take care of him!
We had at my request a consultation with Dettermain and Newson on the eve
of the journey to Riversley, Temple and Jorian DeWitt assisting. Strange
documentary evidence was unfolded and compared with the date of a royal
decree: affidavits of persons now dead; a ring, the ring; fans, and lace,
and handkerchiefs with notable initials; jewelry stamped 'To the Divine
Anastasia' from an adoring Christian name: old brown letters that
shrieked 'wife' when 'charmer' seemed to have palled; oaths of fidelity
ran through them like bass notes. Jorian held up the discoloured sheets
of ancient paper saying:
'Here you behold the mummy of the villain Love.' Such love as it was--the
love of the privileged butcher for the lamb. The burden of the letters,
put in epigram, was rattlesnake and bird. A narrative of Anastasia's
sister, Elizabeth, signed and sealed, with names of witnesses appended,
related in brief bald English the history of the events which had killed
her. It warmed pathetically when dwelling on the writer's necessity to
part with letters and papers of greater moment, that she might be enabled
to sustain and educate her sister's child. She named the certificate;
she swore to the tampering with witnesses. The number and exact
indication of the house where the ceremony took place was stated--a house
in Soho;--the date was given, and the incident on that night of the rape
of the beautiful Miss Armett by mad Lord Beaumaris at the theatre doors,
aided by masked ruffians, after Anastasia's performance of Zamira.
'There are witnesses I know to be still living, Mr. Temple,' my father
said, seeing the young student-at-law silent and observant. 'One of them
I have under my hand; I feed him. Listen to this.'
He read two or three insufferable sentences from one of the love-
epistles, and broke down. I was ushered aside by a member of the firm to
inspect an instrument prepared to bind me as surety for the costs of the
appeal. I signed it. We quitted the attorney's office convinced
(I speak of Temple and myself) that we had seen the shadow of something.
CHAPTER XL
MY FATHER'S MEETING WITH MY GRANDFATHER
My father's pleasure on the day of our journey to Bulsted was to drive me
out of London on a lofty open chariot, with which he made the circuit of
the fashionable districts, and caused innumerable heads to turn. I would
have preferred to go the way of other men, to be unnoticed, but I was
subject to an occasional glowing of undefined satisfaction in the
observance of the universally acknowledged harmony existing between his
pretensions, his tastes and habits, and his person. He contrived by I
know not what persuasiveness and simplicity of manner and speech to
banish from me the idea that he was engaged in playing a high stake; and
though I knew it, and he more than once admitted it, there was an ease
and mastery about him that afforded me some degree of positive comfort
still. I was still most securely attached to his fortunes. Supposing
the ghost of dead Hector to have hung over his body when the inflamed son
of Peleus whirled him at his chariot wheels round Troy, he would, with
his natural passions sobered by Erebus, have had some of my reflections
upon force and fate, and my partial sense of exhilaration in the
tremendous speed of the course during the whole of the period my father
termed his Grand Parade. I showed just such acquiescence or resistance
as were superinduced by the variations of the ground. Otherwise I was
spell-bound; and beyond interdicting any further public mention of my
name or the princess's, I did nothing to thwart him. It would have been
no light matter.
We struck a station at a point half-way down to Bulsted, and found little
Kiomi there, thunder in her brows, carrying a bundle, and purchasing a
railway-ticket, not to travel in our direction. She gave me the singular
answer that she could not tell me where her people were; nor would she
tell me whither she was going, alone, and by rail. I chanced to speak of
Heriot. One of her sheet-lightning flashes shot out. 'He won't be at
Bulsted,' she said, as if that had a significance. I let her know we
were invited to Bulsted. 'Oh, she 's at home'; Kiomi blinked, and her
features twitched like whip-cord. I saw that she was possessed by one of
her furies. That girl's face had the art of making me forget beautiful
women, and what beauty was by comparison.
It happened that the squire came across us as we were rounding the slope
of larch and fir plantation near a part of the Riversley hollows, leading
to the upper heath-land, where, behind a semicircle of birches, Bulsted
lay. He was on horseback, and called hoarsely to the captain's coachman,
who was driving us, to pull up. 'Here, Harry,' he sang out to me, in the
same rough voice, 'I don't see why we should bother Captain William.
It's a bit of business, not pleasure. I've got the book in my pocket.
You ask--is it convenient to step into my bailiff's cottage hard by, and
run through it? Ten minutes 'll tell me all I want to know. I want it
done with. Ask.'
My father stood up and bowed, bareheaded.
My grandfather struck his hat and bobbed.
'Mr. Beltham, I trust I see you well.'
'Better, sir, when I've got rid of a damned unpleasant bit o' business.'
'I offer you my hearty assistance.'
'Do you? Then step down and come into my bailiff's.'
'I come, sir.'
My father alighted from the carriage. The squire cast his gouty leg to
be quit of his horse, but not in time to check my father's advances and
ejaculations of condolence.
'Gout, Mr. Beltham, is a little too much a proof to us of a long line of
ancestry.'
His hand and arm were raised in the form of a splint to support the
squire, who glared back over his cheekbone, horrified that he could not
escape the contact, and in too great pain from arthritic throes to
protest: he resembled a burglar surprised by justice. 'What infernal
nonsense . . , fellow talking now?' I heard him mutter between his
hoppings and dancings, with one foot in the stirrup and a toe to earth,
the enemy at his heel, and his inclination half bent upon swinging to the
saddle again.
I went to relieve him. 'Damn! . . . Oh, it's you,' said he.
The squire directed Uberly, acting as his groom, to walk his horse up and
down the turf fronting young Tom Eckerthy's cottage, and me to remain
where I was; then hobbled up to the door, followed at a leisurely march
by my father. The door opened. My father swept the old man in before
him, with a bow and flourish that admitted of no contradiction, and the
door closed on them. I caught a glimpse of Uberly screwing his wrinkles
in a queer grimace, while he worked his left eye and thumb expressively
at the cottage, by way of communicating his mind to Samuel, Captain
Bulsted's coachman; and I became quite of his opinion as to the nature of
the meeting, that it was comical and not likely to lead to much. I
thought of the princess and of my hope of her depending upon such an
interview as this. From that hour when I stepped on the sands of the
Continent to the day of my quitting them, I had been folded in a dream:
I had stretched my hands to the highest things of earth, and here now was
the retributive material money-question, like a keen scythe-blade!
The cottage-door continued shut. The heaths were darkening. I heard a
noise of wheels, and presently the unmistakable voice of Janet saying,
'That must be Harry.' She was driving my aunt Dorothy. Both of them
hushed at hearing that the momentous duel was in progress. Janet's first
thought was of the squire. 'I won't have him ride home in the dark,'
she said, and ordered Uberly to walk the horse home. The ladies had a
ladies' altercation before Janet would permit my aunt to yield her place
and proceed on foot, accompanied by me. Naturally the best driver of the
two kept the whip. I told Samuel to go on to Bulsted, with word that we
were coming: and Janet, nodding bluntly, agreed to direct my father as to
where he might expect to find me on the Riversley road. My aunt Dorothy
and I went ahead slowly: at her request I struck a pathway to avoid the
pony-carriage, which was soon audible; and when Janet, chattering to the
squire, had gone by, we turned back to intercept my father. He was
speechless at the sight of Dorothy Beltham. At his solicitation, she
consented to meet him next day; his account of the result of the
interview was unintelligible to her as well as to me. Even after leaving
her at the park-gates, I could get nothing definite from him, save that
all was well, and that the squire was eminently practical; but he
believed he had done an excellent evening's work. 'Yes,' said he,
rubbing his hands, 'excellent! making due allowances for the
emphatically commoner's mind we have to deal with.' And then to change
the subject he dilated on that strange story of the man who, an enormous
number of years back in the date of the world's history, carried his
little son on his shoulders one night when the winds were not so
boisterous, though we were deeper in Winter, along the identical road we
traversed, between the gorsemounds, across the heaths, with yonder
remembered fir-tree clump in sight and the waste-water visible to
footfarers rounding under the firs. At night-time he vowed, that as far
as nature permitted it, he had satisfied the squire--'completely
satisfied him, I mean,' he said, to give me sound sleep. 'No doubt of
it; no doubt of it, Richie.'
He won Julia's heart straight off, and Captain Bulsted's profound
admiration. 'Now I know the man I've always been adoring since you were
so high, Harry,' said she. Captain Bulsted sighed: 'Your husband bows to
your high good taste, my dear.' They relished him sincerely, and between
them and him I suffered myself to be dandled once more into a state of
credulity, until I saw my aunt Dorothy in the afternoon subsequent to the
appointed meeting. His deep respect and esteem for her had stayed him
from answering any of her questions falsely. To that extent he had been
veracious. It appeared, that driven hard by the squire, who would have
no waving of flags and lighting of fireworks in a matter of business, and
whose 'commoner's mind' chafed sturdily at a hint of the necessity for
lavish outlays where there was a princess to win, he had rallied on the
fiction that many of the cheques, standing for the bulk of the sums
expended, were moneys borrowed by him of me, which he designed to repay,
and was prepared to repay instantly--could in fact, the squire demanding
it, repay, as it were, on the spot; for behold, these borrowed moneys
were not spent; they were moneys invested in undertakings, put out to
high rates of interest; moneys that perhaps it would not be adviseable to
call in without a season of delay; still, if Mr. Beltham, acting for his
grandson and heir, insisted, it should be done. The moneys had been
borrowed purely to invest them with profit on my behalf: a gentleman's
word of honour was pledged to it.
The squire grimly gave him a couple of months to make it good.
Dorothy Beltham and my father were together for about an hour at
Eckerthy's farm. She let my father kiss her hand when he was bending to
take his farewell of her, but held her face away. He was in manifest
distress, hardly master of his voice, begged me to come to him soon, and
bowing, with 'God bless you, madam, my friend on earth!' turned his heel,
bearing his elastic frame lamentably. A sad or a culprit air did not
befit him: one reckoned up his foibles and errors when seeing him under a
partly beaten aspect. At least, I did; not my dear aunt, who was
compassionate of him, however thoroughly she condemned his ruinous
extravagance, and the shifts and evasions it put him to. She feared,
that instead of mending the difficulty, he had postponed merely to
exaggerate it in the squire's mind; and she was now of opinion that the
bringing him down to meet the squire was very bad policy, likely to
result in danger to my happiness; for, if the money should not be
forthcoming on the date named, all my father's faults would be
transferred to me as his accomplice, both in the original wastefulness
and the subterfuges invented to conceal it. I recollected that a sum of
money had really been sunk in Prince Ernest's coal-mine. My aunt said
she hoped for the best.
Mounting the heaths, we looked back on the long yellow road, where the
carriage conveying my father to the railway-station was visible, and
talked of him, and of the elements of antique tragedy in his history,
which were at that period, let me say, precisely what my incessant mental
efforts were strained to expel from the idea of our human life. The
individual's freedom was my tenet of faith; but pity pleaded for him that
he was well-nigh irresponsible, was shamefully sinned against at his
birth, one who could charge the Gods with vindictiveness, and complain of
the persecution of natal Furies. My aunt Dorothy advised me to take him
under my charge, and sell his house and furniture, make him live in
bachelor chambers with his faithful waiting-woman and a single
manservant.
'He will want money even to do that,' I remarked.
She murmured, 'Is there not some annual income paid to him?'
Her quick delicacy made her redden in alluding so closely to his personal
affairs, and I loved her for the nice feeling. 'It was not much,' I
said. The miserable attempt to repair the wrongs done to him with this
small annuity angered me--and I remembered, little pleased, the foolish
expectations he founded on this secret acknowledgement of the justice of
his claims. 'We won't talk of it,' I pursued. 'I wish he had never
touched it. I shall interdict him.'
'You would let him pay his debts with it, Harry?'
'I am not sure, aunty, that he does not incur a greater debt by accepting
it.'
'One's wish would be, that he might not ever be in need of it.'
'Ay, or never be caring to find the key of it.'
'That must be waste of time,' she said.
I meant something else, but it was useless to tell her so.
CHAPTER XLI
COMMENCEMENT OF THE SPLENDOURS AND PERPLEXITIES OF MY FATHER'S
GRAND PARADE
Janet, in reply to our inquiries as to the condition of the squire's
temper, pointed out in the newspaper a notification of a grand public
Ball to be given by my father, the first of a series of three, and said
that the squire had seen it and shrugged. She thought there was no
positive cause for alarm, even though my father should fail of his word;
but expressed her view decidedly, that it was an unfortunate move to
bring him between the squire and me, and so she blamed Captain Bulsted.
This was partly for the reason that the captain and his wife, charmed by
my father, were for advocating his merits at the squire's table: our
ingenuity was ludicrously taxed to mystify him on the subject of their
extravagant eulogies. They told him they had been invited, and were
going to the great London Balls.
'Subscription Balls?' asked the squire.
'No, sir,' rejoined the captain.
'Tradesmen's Balls, d' ye call 'em, then?'
'No, sir; they are Balls given by a distinguished gentleman.'
'Take care it's not another name for tradesmen's Balls, William.'
'I do not attend tradesmen's Balls, sir.'
'Take care o' that, William.'
The captain was very angry. 'What,' said he, turning to us, 'what does
the squire mean by telling an officer of the Royal Navy that he is
conducting his wife to a tradesmen's Ball?'
Julia threatened malicious doings for the insult. She and the squire had
a controversy upon the explication of the word gentleman, she describing
my father's appearance and manners to the life. 'Now listen to me,
squire. A gentleman, I say, is one you'd say, if he wasn't born a duke,
he ought to have been, and more shame to the title! He turns the key of
a lady's heart with a twinkle of his eye. He 's never mean--what he has
is yours. He's a true friend; and if he doesn't keep his word, you know
in a jiffy it's the fault of affairs; and stands about five feet eleven:
he's a full-blown man': and so forth.
The squire listened, and perspired at finding the object of his
abhorrence crowned thus in the unassailable realms of the abstract.
Julia might have done it more elegantly; but her husband was rapturous
over her skill in portraiture, and he added: 'That's a gentleman, squire;
and that 's a man pretty sure to be abused by half the world.'
'Three-quarters, William,' said the squire; 'there's about the
computation for your gentleman's creditors, I suspect.'
'Ay, sir; well,' returned the captain, to whom this kind of fencing in
the dark was an affliction, 'we make it up in quality--in quality.'
'I 'll be bound you do,' said the squire; 'and so you will so long as
you 're only asked to dance to the other poor devils' fiddling.'
Captain Bulsted bowed. 'The last word to you, squire.'
The squire nodded. 'I 'll hand it to your wife, William.'
Julia took it graciously. 'A perfect gentleman! perfect! confound his
enemies!'
'Why, ma'am, you might keep from swearing,' the squire bawled.
'La! squire,' said she, 'why, don't you know the National Anthem?'
'National Anthem, ma'am! and a fellow, a velvet-tongued--confound him,
if you like.'
'And where's my last word, if you please?' Julia jumped up, and dropped a
provoking curtsey.
'You silly old grandada!' said Janet, going round to him; 'don't you see
the cunning woman wants to dress you in our garments, and means to boast
of it to us while you're finishing your wine?'
The old man fondled her. I could have done the same, she bent over him
with such homely sweetness. 'One comfort, you won't go to these
gingerbread Balls,' he said.
'I'm not invited,' she moaned comically.
'No; nor shan't be, while I can keep you out of bad company.'
'But, grandada, I do like dancing.
'Dance away, my dear; I've no objection.'
'But where's the music?'
'Oh, you can always have music.'
'But where are my partners?'
The squire pointed at me.
'You don't want more than one at a time, eh?' He corrected his error:
'No, the fellow's engaged in another quadrille. Mind you, Miss Janet,
he shall dance to your tune yet. D' ye hear, sir?' The irritation
excited by Captain Bulsted and Julia broke out in fury. 'Who's that
fellow danced when Rome was burning?'
'The Emperor Nero,' said Janet. 'He killed Harry's friend Seneca in the
eighty-somethingth year of his age; an old man, and--hush, grandada!'
She could not check him.
'Hark you, Mr. Harry; dance your hardest up in town with your rips and
reps, and the lot of ye; all very fine while the burning goes on: you
won't see the fun of dancing on the ashes. A nice king of Rome Nero was
next morning! By the Lord, if I couldn't swear you'll be down on your
knees to an innocent fresh-hearted girl 's worth five hundred of the crew
you're for partnering now while you've a penny for the piper.'
Pages:
1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7