The Adventures of Harry Richmond, v7

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'What was that you said to Kiomi?' I questioned Eveleen, who was quickly
beside me.

She replied, accurately or not: 'I told her our men'd give her as good as
she gave me, let her wait and see.'

Therewith she pouted; or, to sketch her with precision, 'snouted' would
better convey the vivacity of her ugly flash of features. It was an
error in me to think her heartless. She talked of her aunt Kiomi
affectionately, for a gipsy girl, whose modulated tones are all addressed
to the soft public. Eveleen spoke with the pride of bated breath of the
ferocious unforgivingness of their men. Perhaps if she had known that I
traced the good repute of the tribes for purity to the sweeter instincts
of the women, she would have eulogized her sex to amuse me. Gipsy girls,
like other people, are fond of showing off; but it would have been a
victory of education to have helped her to feel the distinction of the
feminine sense of shame half as awfully and warmly as she did the
inscrutable iron despotism of the males. She hinted that the mistake of
which I had been the victim would be rectified.

'Tell your men I'll hunt them down like rats if I hear of it,' said I.

While we were conversing my father arrived. Eveleen, not knowing him,
would have had me accept the friendly covering of a mat.

'Here 's a big one! he's a clergyman,' she muttered to herself, and ran
to him and set up a gipsy whine, fronting me up to the last step while
she advanced; she only yielded ground to my outcry.

My father bent over me. Kiomi had prepared him for what he saw. I
quieted his alarm by talking currently and easily. Julia Bulsted had
despatched a messenger to inform him of my mysterious disappearance; but
he, as his way was, revelling in large conjectures, had half imagined me
seized by a gust of passion, and bound for Germany. 'Without my
luggage?' I laughed.

'Ay, without your luggage, Richie,' he answered seriously. His conceit
of a better knowledge of me than others possessed, had buoyed him up.
'For I knew,' he said, 'we two do nothing like the herd of men.
I thought you were off to her, my boy. Now!' he looked at me, and this
look of dismay was a perfect mirror. I was not a presentable object.

He stretched his limbs on the heather and kept hold of my hand, looking
and talking watchfully, doctor-like, doubting me to be as sound in body
as I assured him I was, despite aches and pains. Eveleen hung near.

'These people have been kind to you?' he said.

'No, the biggest brutes on the earth,' said I.

'Oh! you say that, when I spotted you out in the dark where you might
have lied to be eaten, and carried you and washed your bloody face, and
watched you, and never slept, I didn't, to mother you and wet your head!'
cried the girl.

My father beckoned to her and thanked her appreciably in the yellow
tongue.

'So these scoundrels of the high road fell upon you and robbed you,
Richie?'

I nodded.

'You let him think they robbed you, and you had your purse to give me a
gold guinea out of it!' Eveleen cried, and finding herself in the wrong
track, volubly resumed: 'That they didn't, for they hadn't time, whether
they meant to, and the night black as a coal, whoever they were.'

The mystery of my not having sent word to Bulsted or to Riversley
perplexed my father.

'Comfortable here!' he echoed me, disconsolately, and glanced at the
heath, the tent, the black circle of the broth-pot, and the wild girl.

CHAPTER XLVII

MY FATHER ACTS THE CHARMER AGAIN

Kiomi's mother was seen in a turn of the gravel-cutting, bearing
purchases from Durstan village. She took the new circumstances in with a
single cast up of her wary eyelids; and her, and her skill in surgery and
art in medicine, I praised to lull her fears, which procured me the
denomination of old friend, as well as handsome gentleman: she went so
far as to add, in a fit of natural warmth, nice fellow; and it is the
truth, that this term effected wonders in flattering me: it seemed to
reveal to me how simple it was for Harry Richmond, one whom gipsies could
think a nice fellow, to be the lord of Janet's affections--to be her
husband. My heart throbbed; yet she was within range of a mile and a
half, and I did not wish to be taken to her. I did wish to smell the
piney air about the lake-palace; but the thought of Ottilia caused me no
quick pulsations.

My father remained an hour. He could not perceive the drift of my
objection to go either to Bulsted or to Riversley, and desire that my
misadventure should be unknown at those places. However, he obeyed me,
as I could always trust him to do scrupulously, and told a tale at
Bulsted. In the afternoon he returned in a carriage to convey me to the
seaside. When I was raised I fainted, and saw the last of the camp on
Durstan much as I had come to it first. Sickness and swimming of the
head continued for several days. I was persecuted with the sensation of
the carriage journey, and an iteration of my father's that ran: 'My son's
inanimate body in my arms,' or 'Clasping the lifeless body of my sole
son, Harry Richmond,' and other variations. I said nothing about it.
He told me aghast that I had spat blood. A battery of eight fists,
having it in the end all its own way, leaves a deeper indentation on its
target than a pistol-shot that passes free of the vital chords. My
convalescence in Germany was a melody compared with this. I ought to
have stopped in the tent, according to the wise old mother's advice,
given sincerely, for prudence counselled her to strike her canvas and be
gone. There I should have lain, interested in the progress of a bee, the
course of a beetle or a cloud, a spider's business, and the shaking of
the gorse and the heather, until good health had grown out of
thoughtlessness. The very sight of my father was as a hive of humming
troubles.

His intense anxiety about me reflected in my mind the endless worry I had
concerning him. It was the intellect which condemned him when he wore a
joyful air, and the sensations when he waxed over-solicitous. Whether or
not the sentences were just, the judges should have sometimes shifted
places. I was unable to divine why he fevered me so much. Must I say
it?--He had ceased to entertain me. Instead of a comic I found him a
tragic spectacle; and his exuberant anticipations, his bursting hopes
that fed their forcing-bed with the blight and decay of their
predecessors, his transient fits of despair after a touch at my pulses,
and exclamation of 'Oh, Richie, Richie, if only I had my boy up and
well!'--assuming that nothing but my tardy recovery stood in the way of
our contentment--were examples of downright unreason such as
contemplation through the comic glass would have excused; the tragic
could not. I knew, nevertheless, that to the rest of the world he was a
progressive comedy: and the knowledge made him seem more tragic still.
He clearly could not learn from misfortune; he was not to be contained.
Money I gave him freely, holding the money at my disposal his own; I
chafed at his unteachable spirit, surely one of the most tragical things
in life; and the proof of my love for him was that I thought it so,
though I should have been kinder had he amused me, as in the old days.

Conceive to yourself the keeping watch over a fountain choked in its
spouting, incessantly labouring to spin a jet into the air; now for a
moment glittering and towering in a column, and once more straining to
mount. My father appeared to me in that and other images. He would have
had me believe him shooting to his zenith, victorious at last. I
likewise was to reap a victory of the highest kind from the attack of the
mysterious ruffians; so much; he said, he thought he could assure me of.
He chattered of an intimidated Government, and Dettermain and Newson;
duchesses, dukes, most friendly; innumerable invitations to country
castles; and among other things one which really showed him to be capable
of conceiving ideas and working from an initiative. But this, too,
though it accomplished a temporary service, he rendered illusory to me by
his unhappy manner of regarding it as an instance of his now permanent
social authority. He had instituted what he called his JURY OF HONOUR
COURT, composed of the select gentlemen of the realm, ostensibly to weigh
the causes of disputes between members of their class, and decree the
method of settlement: but actually, my father admitted, to put a stop to
the affair between Edbury and me.

'That was the origin of the notion, Richie. I carried it on. I dined
some of the best men of our day. I seized the opportunity when our
choicest "emperor" was rolling on wheels to propound my system. I
mention the names of Bramham DeWitt, Colonel Hibbert Segrave, Lord Alonzo
Carr, Admiral Loftus, the Earl of Luton, the Marquis of Hatchford, Jack
Hippony, Monterez Williams,--I think you know him?--and little Dick
Phillimore, son of a big-wig, a fellow of a capital wit and discretion;
I mention them as present to convince you we are not triflers, dear boy.
My argument ran, it is absurd to fight; also it is intolerable to be
compelled to submit to insult. As the case stands, we are under a
summary edict of the citizens, to whom chivalry is unknown. Well, well,
I delivered a short speech. Fighting, I said, resembled butting,--
a performance proper to creatures that grow horns instead of brains . .
not to allude to a multitude of telling remarks; and the question "Is man
a fighting animal?" my answer being that he is not born with spurs on
his heels or horns to his head and that those who insisted on fighting
should be examined by competent anatomists, "ologists" of some sort, to
decide whether they have the excrescences, and proclaim them . . .
touching on these lighter parts of my theme with extreme delicacy. But--
and here I dwelt on my point: Man, if not a fighting animal in his
glorious--I forgot what--is a sensitive one, and has the idea of honour.
"Hear," from Colonel Segrave, and Sir Weeton Slaterhe was one of the
party. In fine, Richie, I found myself wafted into a breathing oration.
I cannot, I confess it humbly, hear your "hear, hear," without going up
and off, inflated like a balloon. "Shall the arbitration of the
magistracy, indemnifications in money awarded by the Law-courts, succeed
in satisfying,"--but I declare to you, Richie, it was no platform speech.
I know your term--"the chaincable sentence." Nothing of the kind,
I assure you. Plain sense, as from gentlemen to gentlemen. We require,
I said, a protection that the polite world of Great Britain does not now
afford us against the aggressions of the knave, the fool, and the brute.
We establish a Court. We do hereby--no, no, not the "hereby"; quite
simply, Richie--pledge ourselves--I said some other word not "pledge" to
use our utmost authority and influence to exclude from our circles
persons refusing to make the reparation of an apology for wanton common
insults: we renounce intercourse with men declining, when guilty of
provoking the sentiment of hostility, to submit to the jurisdiction of
our Court. All I want you to see is the notion. We raise the shield
against the cowardly bully which the laws have raised against the bloody
one. "And gentlemen,"' my father resumed his oration, forgetting my
sober eye for a minute--'"Gentlemen, we are the ultimate Court of Appeal
for men who cherish their honour, yet abstain from fastening it like a
millstone round the neck of their common-sense." Credit me, Richie,
the proposition kindled. We cited Lord Edbury to appear before us,
and I tell you we extracted an ample apology to you from that young
nobleman. And let me add, one that I, that we, must impose it upon an
old son to accept. He does! Come, come. And you shall see, Richie,
society shall never repose an inert mass under my leadership. I cure it;
I shake it and cure it.'

He promenaded the room, repeating: 'I do not say I am possessed of a
panacea,' and bending to my chin as he passed; 'I maintain that I can and
do fulfil the duties of my station, which is my element, attained in the
teeth of considerable difficulties, as no other man could, be he prince
or Prime Minister. Not one,' he flourished, stepping onward. 'And mind
you, Richie, this,' he swung round, conscious as ever of the critic in
me, though witless to correct his pomp of style, 'this is not self-
glorification. I point you facts. I have a thousand schemes--projects.
I recognize the value of early misfortune. The particular misfortune of
princes born is that they know nothing of the world--babies! I grant
you, babies. Now, I do. I have it on my thumbnail. I know its wants.
And just as I succeeded in making you a member of our Parliament in
assembly, and the husband of an hereditary princess--hear me--so will I
make good my original determination to be in myself the fountain of our
social laws, and leader. I have never, I believe--to speak
conscientiously--failed in a thing I have once determined on.'

The single wish that I might be a boy again, to find pleasure in his
talk, was all that remained to combat the distaste I had for such
oppressive deliveries of a mind apparently as little capable of being
seated as a bladder charged with gas. I thanked him for getting rid of
Edbury, and a touch of remorse pricked me, it is true, on his turning
abruptly and saying: 'You see me in my nakedness, Richie. To you and my
valet, the heart, the body!' He was too sympathetic not to have a keen
apprehension of a state of hostility in one whom he loved. If I had
inclined to melt, however, his next remark would have been enough to
harden me: 'I have fought as many battles, and gained as startling
victories as Napoleon Buonaparte; he was an upstart.' The word gave
me a jerk.

Sometimes he would indulge me transparently in a political controversy,
confessing that my dialectical dexterity went far to make a Radical of
him. I had no other amusement, or I should have held my peace. I tried
every argument I could think of to prove to him that there was neither
honour, nor dignity, nor profit in aiming at titular distinctions not
forced upon us by the circumstances of our birth. He kept his position
with much sly fencing, approaching shrewdness; and, whatever I might say,
I could not deny that a vile old knockknee'd world, tugging its forelock
to the look of rank and chink of wealth, backed him, if he chose to be
insensible to radical dignity.

'In my time,' said he, 'all young gentlemen were born Tories. The doctor
no more expected to see a Radical come into the world from a good family
than a radish. But I discern you, my dear boy. Our reigning Families
must now be active; they require the discipline I have undergone; and I
also dine at aldermen's tables, and lay a foundation-stone--as Jorian
says--with the facility of a hen-mother: that should not suffice them.
'Tis not sufficient for me. I lay my stone, eat my dinner, make my
complimentary speech--and that is all that is expected of us; but I am
fully aware we should do more. We must lead, or we are lost. Ay, and--
to quote you a Lord Mayor's barge is a pretty piece of gilt for the
festive and luxurious to run up the river Thames in and mark their swans.
I am convinced there is something deep in that. But what am I to do?
Would you have me frown upon the people? Richie, it is prudent--
I maintain it righteous, nay, it is, I affirm positively, sovereign
wisdom--to cultivate every flower in the British bosom. Riposte me--have
you too many? Say yes, and you pass my guard. You cannot. I fence you
there. This British loyalty is, in my estimation, absolutely beautiful.
We grow to a head in our old England. The people have an eye! I need no
introduction to them. We reciprocate a highly cordial feeling when they
line the streets and roads with respectful salutations, and I acknowledge
their demonstrative goodwill. These things make us a nation. By heaven,
Richie, you are, on this occasion, if your dad may tell you so, wrong.
I ask pardon for my bluntness; but I put it to you, could we, not
travelling as personages in our well-beloved country, count on civility
to greet us everywhere? Assuredly not. My position is, that by
consenting to their honest enthusiasm, we the identical effect you are
perpetually crying out for--we civilize them, we civilize them.
Goodness!--a Great Britain without Royalty!'

He launched on a series of desolate images. In the end, he at least
persuaded himself that he had an idea in his anxiety to cultivate the
primary British sentiment.

We moved from town to town along the South coast; but it was vain to hope
we might be taken for simple people. Nor was he altogether to blame,
except in allowing the national instinct for 'worship and reverence' to
air itself unrebuked. I fled to the island. Temple ran down to meet me
there, and I heard that Janet had written to him for news of me. He
entered our hotel a private person; when he passed out, hats flew off
before him. The modest little fellow went along a double line of
attentive observers on the pier, and came back, asking me in astonishment
who he was supposed to be.

'I petitioned for privacy here!' exclaimed my father. It accounted for
the mystery.

Temple knew my feelings, and did but glance at me.

Close upon Temple's arrival we had a strange couple of visitors.
'Mistress Dolly Disher and her husband,' my father introduced them. She
called him by one of his Christian names inadvertently at times. The
husband was a confectioner, a satisfied shade of a man who reserved the
exercise of his will for his business, we learnt; she, a bustling, fresh-
faced woman of forty-five, with still expressive dark eyes, and, I
guessed, the ideal remainder of a passion in her bosom. The guess was no
great hazard. She was soon sitting beside me, telling me of the 'years'
she had known my father, and of the most affectionate friend and perfect
gentleman he was of the ladies who had been in love with him; 'no
wonder': and of his sorrows and struggles, and his beautiful voice, and
hearts that bled for him; and of one at least who prayed and trusted he
would be successful at last.

Temple and the pallid confectioner spent the day on board a yacht with my
father. Mrs. Dolly stayed to nurse me and persuade me to swallow
medicine. She talked of her youth, when, as a fashionable bootmaker's
daughter, she permitted no bills to be sent in to Mr. Richmond, alleging,
as a sufficient reason for it to her father, that their family came from
Richmond in Yorkshire. Eventually, the bills were always paid. She had
not been able to manage her husband so well; and the consequence was,
that (she breathed low) an execution was out; 'though I tell him,'
she said tremulously, 'he 's sure to be paid in the long run, if only
he'll wait. But no; he is you cannot think how obstinate in his
business. And my girl Augusta waiting for Mr. Roy Richmond, the wish of
our hearts! to assist at her wedding; and can we ask it, and have an
execution hanging over him? And for all my husband's a guest here, he's
as likely as not to set the officers at work, do what I will, to-morrow
or any day. Your father invited us, Mr. Harry. I forced my husband to
come, hoping against hope; for your papa gave the orders, relying on me,
as he believed he might, and my husband undertook them, all through me.
There it stops; he hears reports, and he takes fright: in goes the bill:
then it's law, and last Oh! I'm ashamed.'

Mr. Disher's bill was for supplying suppers to the Balls. He received my
cheque for the amount in full, observing that he had been confident his
wife was correct when she said it would be paid, but a tradesman's
business was to hasten the day of payment; and, for a penance, he himself
would pacify the lawyers.

On hearing of the settlement of Mr. Disher's claim, my father ahem'd,
speechless, which was a sign of his swallowing vexation. He remarked
that I had, no doubt with the best intentions, encroached on his liberty.
'I do not like to have my debts disturbed.' He put it to me, whether a
man, carrying out a life-long plan, would not be disconcerted by the
friendliest intervention. This payment to Disher he pronounced fatal in
policy. 'You have struck a heavy blow to my credit, Richie. Good little
Mistress Dolly brought the man down here--no select addition to our
society--and we were doing our utmost to endure him, as the ladies say,
for the very purpose . . . but the error stands committed! For the
future, friend Disher will infallibly expect payments within the year.
Credit for suppers is the guarantee of unlimited entertainments. And I
was inspiring him with absolute confidence for next year's campaign.
Money, you are aware, is no longer a question to terrify me. I hold
proofs that I have conclusively frightened Government, and you know it.
But this regards the manipulation of the man Disher. He will now dictate
to me. A refresher of a few hundreds would have been impolitic to this
kind of man; but the entire sum! and to a creditor in arms! You reverse
the proper situations of gentleman and tradesman. My supperman, in
particular, should be taught to understand that he is bound up in my
success. Something frightened him; he proceeded at law; and now we have
shown him that he has frightened us. An execution? My dear boy, I have
danced an execution five years running, and ordered, consecutively, at
the same house. Like other matters, an execution depends upon how you
treat it. The odds are that we have mortally offended Mistress Dolly.'
He apologized for dwelling on the subject, with the plea that it was an
essential part of his machinery of action, and the usual comparison of
'the sagacious General' whose forethought omitted no minutiae. I had to
listen.

The lady professed to be hurt. The payment, however, put an end to the
visit of this couple. Politic or not, it was a large sum to disburse,
and once more my attention became fixed on the probable display of
figures in my bankers' book. Bonds and bills were falling due: the
current expenses were exhausting. I tried to face the evil, and take a
line of conduct, staggering, as I did on my feet. Had I been well
enough, I believe I should have gone to my grandfather, to throw myself
on his good-nature; such was the brain's wise counsel: but I was all
nerves and alarms, insomuch that I interdicted Temple's writing to Janet,
lest it should bring on me letters from my aunt Dorothy, full of advice
that could no longer be followed, well-meant cautions that might as well
be addressed to the mile-posts behind me. Moreover, Janet would be
flying on the wind to me, and I had a craving for soft arms and the look
of her eyebrows, that warned me to keep her off if I intended to act as
became a man of good faith.

Fair weather, sunny green sea-water speckled with yachts shooting and
bounding, and sending me the sharp sense of life there is in dashed-up
fountains of silvery salt-spray, would have quickened my blood sooner but
for this hot-bed of fruitless adventure, tricksy precepts, and wisdom
turned imp, in which my father had again planted me. To pity him seemed
a childish affectation. His praise of my good looks pleased me, for on
that point he was fitted to be a judge, and I was still fancying I had
lost them on the heath. Troops of the satellites of his grand parade
surrounded him. I saw him walk down the pier like one breaking up a
levee. At times he appeared to me a commanding phantasm in the midst of
phantasm figures of great ladies and their lords, whose names he told off
on his return like a drover counting his herd; but within range of his
eye and voice the reality of him grew overpowering. It seduced me, and,
despite reason, I began to feel warm under his compliments. He was like
wine. Gaiety sprang under his feet. Sitting at my window, I thirsted to
see him when he was out of sight, and had touches of the passion of my
boyhood.

I listened credulously, too, as in the old days, when he repeated, 'You
will find I am a magician, and very soon, Richie, mark me.' His manner
hinted that there was a surprise in store. 'You have not been on the
brink of the grave for nothing.' He resembled wine in the other
conditions attached to its rare qualities. Oh for the choice of having
only a little of him, instead of having him on my heart! The unfilial
wish attacked me frequently: he could be, and was, so ravishing to
strangers and light acquaintances. Did by chance a likeness exist
between us? My sick fancy rushed to the Belthams for a denial. There
did, of some sort, I knew; and the thought partitioned my dreamy ideas,
of which the noblest, taking advantage of my physical weakness, compelled
me to confess that it was a vain delusion for one such as I to hope for
Ottilia. This looking at the roots of yourself, if you are possessed of
a nobler half that will do it, is a sound corrective of an excessive
ambition. Unfortunately it would seem that young men can do it only in
sickness. With the use of my legs, and open-air breathing, I became
compact, and as hungry and zealous on behalf of my individuality, as
proud of it as I had ever been: prouder and hungrier.

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