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George Barr McCutcheon - "West Wind Drift"

Arthur W. Dunn - "Community Civics and Rural Life"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Volume 1."

Georg Ebers - "The Bride of the Nile, Volume 5."

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Complete




"Ah! you're very kind, Richard," interposed the wretch, moved at the face
of misery he beheld.

"Listen to me, Rip! I shall take her home to-night. Yes! If she's happier
away from me!--do you think me a brute, Ripton? Rather than have her shed
a tear, I'd!--I'll take her home to-night!"

Ripton suggested that it was sudden; adding from his larger experience,
people perhaps might talk.

The lover could not understand what they should talk about, but he said:
"If I give him who came for her yesterday the clue? If no one sees or
hears of me, what can they say? O Rip! I'll give her up. I'm wrecked for
ever! What of that? Yes--let them take her! The world in arms should
never have torn her from me, but when she cries--Yes! all's over. I'll
find him at once."

He searched in out-of-the-way corners for the hat of resolve. Ripton
looked on, wretcheder than ever.

The idea struck him:--"Suppose, Richard, she doesn't want to go?"

It was a moment when, perhaps, one who sided with parents and guardians
and the old wise world, might have inclined them to pursue their
righteous wretched course, and have given small Cupid a smack and sent
him home to his naughty Mother. Alas!(it is The Pilgrim's Scrip
interjecting) women are the born accomplices of mischief! In bustles Mrs.
Berry to clear away the refection, and finds the two knights helmed, and
sees, though 'tis dusk, that they wear doubtful brows, and guesses bad
things for her dear God Hymen in a twinkling.

"Dear! dear!" she exclaimed, "and neither of you eaten a scrap! And
there's my dear young lady off into the prettiest sleep you ever see!"

"Ha?" cried the lover, illuminated.

"Soft as a baby!" Mrs. Berry averred. "I went to look at her this very
moment, and there's not a bit of trouble in her breath. It come and it go
like the sweetest regular instrument ever made. The Black Ox haven't trod
on her foot yet! Most like it was the air of London. But only fancy, if
you had called in a doctor! Why, I shouldn't have let her take any of his
quackery. Now, there!"

Ripton attentively observed his chief, and saw him doff his hat with a
curious caution, and peer into its recess, from which, during Mrs.
Berry's speech, he drew forth a little glove--dropped there by some freak
of chance.

"Keep me, keep me, now you have me!" sang the little glove, and amused
the lover with a thousand conceits.

"When will she wake, do you think, Mrs. Berry?" he asked.

"Oh! we mustn't go for disturbing her," said the guileful good creature.
"Bless ye! let her sleep it out. And if you young gentlemen was to take
my advice, and go and take a walk for to get a appetite--everybody should
eat! it's their sacred duty, no matter what their feelings be! and I say
it who'm no chicken!--I'll frickashee this--which is a chicken--against
your return. I'm a cook, I can assure ye!"

The lover seized her two hands. "You're the best old soul in the world!"
he cried. Mrs. Berry appeared willing to kiss him. "We won't disturb her.
Let her sleep. Keep her in bed, Mrs. Berry. Will you? And we'll call to
inquire after her this evening, and come and see her to-morrow. I'm sure
you'll be kind to her. There! there!" Mrs. Berry was preparing to
whimper. "I trust her to you, you see. Good-bye, you dear old soul."

He smuggled a handful of gold into her keeping, and went to dine with his
uncles, happy and hungry.

Before they reached the hotel, they had agreed to draw Mrs. Berry into
their confidence, telling her (with embellishments) all save their names,
so that they might enjoy the counsel and assistance of that trump of a
woman, and yet have nothing to fear from her. Lucy was to receive the
name of Letitia, Ripton's youngest and best-looking sister. The heartless
fellow proposed it in cruel mockery of an old weakness of hers.

"Letitia!" mused Richard. "I like the name. Both begin with L. There's
something soft--womanlike--in the L.'s."

Material Ripton remarked that they looked like pounds on paper. The lover
roamed through his golden groves. "Lucy Feverel! that sounds better! I
wonder where Ralph is. I should like to help him. He's in love with my
cousin Clare. He'll never do anything till he marries. No man can. I'm
going to do a hundred things when it's over. We shall travel first. I
want to see the Alps. One doesn't know what the earth is till one has
seen the Alps. What a delight it will be to her! I fancy I see her eyes
gazing up at them.

'And oh, your dear blue eyes, that heavenward glance
With kindred beauty, banished humbleness,
Past weeping for mortality's distress--
Yet from your soul a tear hangs there in trance.
And fills, but does not fall;
Softly I hear it call
At heaven's gate, till Sister Seraphs press
To look on you their old love from the skies:
Those are the eyes of Seraphs bright on your blue eyes!

"Beautiful! These lines, Rip, were written by a man who was once a friend
of my father's. I intend to find him and make them friends again. You
don't care for poetry. It's no use your trying to swallow it, Rip!"

"It sounds very nice," said Ripton, modestly shutting his mouth.

"The Alps! Italy! Rome! and then I shall go to the East," the hero
continued. "She's ready to go anywhere with me, the dear brave heart! Oh,
the glorious golden East! I dream of the desert. I dream I'm chief of an
Arab tribe, and we fly all white in the moonlight on our mares, and hurry
to the rescue of my darling! And we push the spears, and we scatter them,
and I come to the tent where she crouches, and catch her to my saddle,
and away!--Rip! what a life!"

Ripton strove to imagine he could enjoy it.

"And then we shall come home, and I shall lead Austin's life, with her to
help me. First be virtuous, Rip! and then serve your country heart and
soul. A wise man told me that. I think I shall do something."

Sunshine and cloud, cloud and sunshine, passed over the lover. Now life
was a narrow ring; now the distances extended, were winged, flew
illimitably. An hour ago and food was hateful. Now he manfully refreshed
his nature, and joined in Algernon's encomiums on Miss Letitia Thompson.

Meantime Beauty slept, watched by the veteran volunteer of the hero's
band. Lucy awoke from dreams which seemed reality, to the reality which
was a dream. She awoke calling for some friend, "Margaret!" and heard one
say, "My name is Bessy Berry, my love! not Margaret." Then she asked
piteously where she was, and where was Margaret, her dear friend, and
Mrs. Berry whispered, "Sure you've got a dearer!"

"Ah!" sighed Lucy, sinking on her pillow, overwhelmed by the strangeness
of her state.

Mrs. Berry closed the frill of her nightgown and adjusted the bedclothes
quietly.

Her name was breathed.

"Yes, my love?" she said.

"Is he here?"

"He's gone, my dear."

"Gone?--Oh, where?" The young girl started up in disorder.

"Gone, to be back, my love! Ah! that young gentleman!" Mrs. Berry
chanted: "Not a morsel have he eat; not a drop have he drunk!"

"O Mrs. Berry! why did you not make him?" Lucy wept for the famine-struck
hero, who was just then feeding mightily.

Mrs. Berry explained that to make one eat who thought the darling of his
heart like to die, was a sheer impossibility for the cleverest of women;
and on this deep truth Lucy reflected, with her eyes wide at the candle.
She wanted one to pour her feelings out to. She slid her hand from under
the bedclothes, and took Mrs. Berry's, and kissed it. The good creature
required no further avowal of her secret, but forthwith leaned her
consummate bosom to the pillow, and petitioned heaven to bless them
both!--Then the little bride was alarmed, and wondered how Mrs. Berry
could have guessed it.

"Why," said Mrs. Berry, "your love is out of your eyes, and out of
everything ye do." And the little bride wondered more. She thought she
had been so very cautious not to betray it. The common woman in them made
cheer together after their own April fashion. Following which Mrs. Berry
probed for the sweet particulars of this beautiful love-match; but the
little bride's lips were locked. She only said her lover was above her in
station.

"And you're a Catholic, my dear!"

"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"

"And him a Protestant."

"Yes, Mrs. Berry!"

"Dear, dear!--And why shouldn't ye be?" she ejaculated, seeing sadness
return to the bridal babe. "So as you was born, so shall ye be! But
you'll have to make your arrangements about the children. The girls to
worship with yet, the boys with him. It's the same God, my dear! You
mustn't blush at it, though you do look so pretty. If my young gentleman
could see you now!"

"Please, Mrs. Berry!" Lucy murmured.

"Why, he will, you know, my dear!"

"Oh, please, Mrs. Berry!"

"And you that can't bear the thoughts of it! Well, I do wish there was
fathers and mothers on both sides and dock-ments signed, and bridesmaids,
and a breakfast! but love is love, and ever will be, in spite of them."

She made other and deeper dives into the little heart, but though she
drew up pearls, they were not of the kind she searched for. The one fact
that hung as a fruit upon her tree of Love, Lucy had given her; she would
not, in fealty to her lover, reveal its growth and history, however sadly
she yearned to pour out all to this dear old Mother Confessor.

Her conduct drove Mrs. Berry from the rosy to the autumnal view of
matrimony, generally heralded by the announcement that it is a lottery.

"And when you see your ticket," said Mrs. Berry, "you shan't know whether
it's a prize or a blank. And, Lord knows! some go on thinking it's a
prize when it turns on 'em and tears 'em. I'm one of the blanks, my dear!
I drew a blank in Berry. He was a black Berry to me, my dear! Smile away!
he truly was, and I a-prizin' him as proud as you can conceive! My dear!"
Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron. "We hadn't been a three
months man and wife, when that man--it wasn't the honeymoon, which some
can't say--that man--Yes! he kicked me. His wedded wife he kicked! Ah!"
she sighed to Lucy's large eyes, "I could have borne that. A blow don't
touch the heart," the poor creature tapped her sensitive side. "I went on
loving of him, for I'm a soft one. Tall as a Grenadier he is, and when
out of service grows his moustache. I used to call him my body-guardsman
like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools we women are. For, take my
word for it, my dear, there's nothing here below so vain as a man! That I
know. But I didn't deserve it.... I'm a superior cook .... I did not
deserve that noways." Mrs. Berry thumped her knee, and accentuated up her
climax: "I mended his linen. I saw to his adornments--he called his
clothes, the bad man! I was a servant to him, my dear! and there--it was
nine months--nine months from the day he swear to protect and cherish and
that--nine calendar months, and my gentleman is off with another woman!
Bone of his bone!--pish!" exclaimed Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over
vividly. "Here's my ring. A pretty ornament! What do it mean? I'm for
tearin' it off my finger a dozen times in the day. It's a symbol? I call
it a tomfoolery for the dead-alive to wear it, that's a widow and not a
widow, and haven't got a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I've
looked, my dear, and"--she spread out her arms--"Johnson haven't got a
name for me!"

At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into sobs. Lucy spoke
gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of Autumn have
no warning for April. The little bride, for all her tender pity, felt
happier when she had heard her landlady's moving tale of the wickedness
of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one hero who was
hers. Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she fell, shot by
one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.

"O Mrs. Berry! I'm so young! Think of me--only just seventeen!"

Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. "Young, my dear!
Nonsense! There's no so much harm in being young, here and there. I knew
an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married close over
fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man began,
she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore. They'd stare!
Bless you! the grandmother could have married over and over again. It was
her daughter's fault, not hers, you know."

"She was three years younger," mused Lucy.

"She married beneath her, my dear. Ran off with her father's bailiff's
son. 'Ah, Berry!' she'd say, 'if I hadn't been foolish, I should be my
lady now--not Granny!' Her father never forgave her--left all his estates
out of the family."

"Did her husband always love her?" Lucy preferred to know.

"In his way, my dear, he did," said Mrs. Berry, coming upon her
matrimonial wisdom. "He couldn't help himself. If he left off, he began
again. She was so clever, and did make him so comfortable. Cook! there
wasn't such another cook out of a Alderman's kitchen; no, indeed! And she
a born lady! That tells ye it's the duty of all women! She had her saying
'When the parlour fire gets low, put coals on the ketchen fire!' and a
good saying it is to treasure. Such is man! no use in havin' their hearts
if ye don't have their stomachs."

Perceiving that she grew abstruse, Mrs. Berry added briskly: "You know
nothing about that yet, my dear. Only mind me and mark me: don't neglect
your cookery. Kissing don't last: cookery do!"

Here, with an aphorism worthy a place in The Pilgrim'S Scrip, she broke
off to go posseting for her dear invalid. Lucy was quite well; very eager
to be allowed to rise and be ready when the knock should come. Mrs.
Berry, in her loving considerateness for the little bride, positively
commanded her to lie down, and be quiet, and submit to be nursed and
cherished. For Mrs. Berry well knew that ten minutes alone with the hero
could only be had while the little bride was in that unattainable
position.

Thanks to her strategy, as she thought, her object was gained. The night
did not pass before she learnt, from the hero's own mouth, that Mr.
Richards, the father of the hero, and a stern lawyer, was adverse to his
union with this young lady he loved, because of a ward of his, heiress to
an immense property, whom he desired his son to espouse; and because his
darling Letitia was a Catholic--Letitia, the sole daughter of a brave
naval officer deceased, and in the hands of a savage uncle, who wanted to
sacrifice this beauty to a brute of a son. Mrs. Berry listened
credulously to the emphatic narrative, and spoke to the effect that the
wickedness of old people formed the excuse for the wildness of young
ones. The ceremonious administration of oaths of secrecy and devotion
over, she was enrolled in the hero's band, which now numbered three, and
entered upon the duties with feminine energy, for there are no
conspirators like women. Ripton's lieutenancy became a sinecure, his rank
merely titular. He had never been married--he knew nothing about
licences, except that they must be obtained, and were not difficult--he
had not an idea that so many days' warning must be given to the clergyman
of the parish where one of the parties was resident. How should he? All
his forethought was comprised in the ring, and whenever the discussion of
arrangements for the great event grew particularly hot and important, he
would say, with a shrewd nod: "We mustn't forget the ring, you know, Mrs.
Berry!" and the new member was only prevented by natural complacence from
shouting: "Oh, drat ye! and your ring too." Mrs. Berry had acted
conspicuously in fifteen marriages, by banns, and by licence, and to have
such an obvious requisite dinned in her ears was exasperating. They could
not have contracted alliance with an auxiliary more invaluable, an
authority so profound; and they acknowledged it to themselves. The hero
marched like an automaton at her bidding; Lieutenant Thompson was
rejoiced to perform services as errand-boy in the enterprise.

"It's in hopes you'll be happier than me, I do it," said the devout and
charitable Berry. "Marriages is made in heaven, they say; and if that's
the case, I say they don't take much account of us below!"

Her own woeful experiences had been given to the hero in exchange for his
story of cruel parents.

Richard vowed to her that he would henceforth hold it a duty to hunt out
the wanderer from wedded bonds, and bring him back bound and suppliant.

"Oh, he'll come!" said Mrs. Berry, pursing prophetic wrinkles: "he'll
come of his own accord. Never anywhere will he meet such a cook as Bessy
Berry! And he know her value in his heart of hearts. And I do believe,
when he do come, I shall be opening these arms to him again, and not
slapping his impidence in the face--I'm that soft! I always was--in
matrimony, Mr. Richards!"

As when nations are secretly preparing for war, the docks and arsenals
hammer night and day, and busy contractors measure time by inches, and
the air hums around: for leagues as it were myriads of bees, so the house
and neighbourhood of the matrimonial soft one resounded in the heroic
style, and knew little of the changes of light decreed by Creation. Mrs.
Berry was the general of the hour. Down to Doctors' Commons she expedited
the hero, instructing him how boldly to face the Law, and fib: for that
the Law never could mist a fib and a bold face. Down the hero went, and
proclaimed his presence. And lo! the Law danced to him its sedatest
lovely bear's-dance. Think ye the Lawless susceptible to him than flesh
and blood? With a beautiful confidence it put the few familiar questions
to him, and nodded to his replies: then stamped the bond, and took the
fee. It must be an old vagabond at heart that can permit the irrevocable
to go so cheap, even to a hero. For only mark him when he is petitioned
by heroes and heroines to undo what he does so easily! That small archway
of Doctors' Commons seems the eye of a needle, through which the lean
purse has a way, somehow, of slipping more readily than the portly; but
once through, all are camels alike, the lean purse an especially big
camel. Dispensing tremendous marriage as it does, the Law can have no
conscience.

"I hadn't the slightest difficulty," said the exulting hero.

"Of course not!" returns Mrs. Berry. "It's as easy, if ye're in earnest,
as buying a plum bun."

Likewise the ambassador of the hero went to claim the promise of the
Church to be in attendance on a certain spot, on a certain day, and there
hear oath of eternal fealty, and gird him about with all its forces:
which the Church, receiving a wink from the Law, obsequiously engaged to
do, for less than the price of a plum-cake.

Meantime, while craftsmen and skilled women, directed by Mrs. Berry, were
toiling to deck the day at hand, Raynham and Belthorpe slept,--the former
soundly; and one day was as another to them. Regularly every morning a
letter arrived from Richard to his father, containing observations on the
phenomena of London; remarks (mainly cynical) on the speeches and acts of
Parliament; and reasons for not having yet been able to call on the
Grandisons. They were certainly rather monotonous and spiritless. The
baronet did not complain. That cold dutiful tone assured him there was no
internal trouble or distraction. "The letters of a healthful physique!"
he said to Lady Blandish, with sure insight. Complacently he sat and
smiled, little witting that his son's ordeal was imminent, and that his
son's ordeal was to be his own. Hippias wrote that his nephew was killing
him by making appointments which he never kept, and altogether neglecting
him in the most shameless way, so that his ganglionic centre was in a ten
times worse state than when he left Raynham. He wrote very bitterly, but
it was hard to feel compassion for his offended stomach.

On the other hand, young Tom Blaize was not forthcoming, and had
despatched no tidings whatever. Farmer Blaize smoked his pipe evening
after evening, vastly disturbed. London was a large place--young Tom
might be lost in it, he thought; and young Tom had his weaknesses. A wolf
at Belthorpe, he was likely to be a sheep in London, as yokels have
proved. But what had become of Lucy? This consideration almost sent
Farmer Blaize off to London direct, and he would have gone had not his
pipe enlightened him. A young fellow might play truant and get into a
scrape, but a young man and a young woman were sure to be heard of,
unless they were acting in complicity. Why, of course, young Tom had
behaved like a man, the rascal! and married her outright there, while he
had the chance. It was a long guess. Still it was the only reasonable way
of accounting for his extraordinary silence, and therefore the farmer
held to it that he had done the deed. He argued as modern men do who
think the hero, the upsetter of ordinary calculations, is gone from us.
So, after despatching a letter to a friend in town to be on the outlook
for son Tom, he continued awhile to smoke his pipe, rather elated than
not, and mused on the shrewd manner he should adopt when Master Honeymoon
did appear.

Toward the middle of the second week of Richard's absence, Tom Bakewell
came to Raynham for Cassandra, and privately handed a letter to the
Eighteenth Century, containing a request for money, and a round sum. The
Eighteenth Century was as good as her word, and gave Tom a letter in
return, enclosing a cheque on her bankers, amply providing to keep the
heroic engine in motion at a moderate pace. Tom went back, and Raynham
and Lobourne slept and dreamed not of the morrow. The System, wedded to
Time, slept, and knew not how he had been outraged--anticipated by seven
pregnant seasons. For Time had heard the hero swear to that legalizing
instrument, and had also registered an oath. Ah me! venerable Hebrew
Time! he is unforgiving. Half the confusion and fever of the world comes
of this vendetta he declares against the hapless innocents who have once
done him a wrong. They cannot escape him. They will never outlive it. The
father of jokes, he is himself no joke; which it seems the business of
men to discover.

The days roll round. He is their servant now. Mrs. Berry has a new satin
gown, a beautiful bonnet, a gold brooch, and sweet gloves, presented to
her by the hero, wherein to stand by his bride at the altar to-morrow;
and, instead of being an old wary hen, she is as much a chicken as any of
the party, such has been the magic of these articles. Fathers she sees
accepting the facts produced for them by their children; a world content
to be carved out as it pleases the hero.

At last Time brings the bridal eve, and is blest as a benefactor. The
final arrangements are made; the bridegroom does depart; and Mrs. Berry
lights the little bride to her bed. Lucy stops on the landing where there
is an old clock eccentrically correct that night. 'Tis the palpitating
pause before the gates of her transfiguration. Mrs. Berry sees her put
her rosy finger on the One about to strike, and touch all the hours
successively till she comes to the Twelve that shall sound "Wife" in her
ears on the morrow, moving her lips the while, and looking round archly
solemn when she has done; and that sight so catches at Mrs. Berry's heart
that, not guessing Time to be the poor child's enemy, she endangers her
candle by folding Lucy warmly in her arms, whimpering; "Bless you for a
darling! you innocent lamb! You shall be happy! You shall!"

Old Time gazes grimly ahead.




CHAPTER XXIX

Although it blew hard when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of
that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his
fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls
with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they stand
on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken. The shores
they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness. There they have
dreamed: here they must act. There lie youth and irresolution: here
manhood and purpose. They are veritably in another land: a moral Acheron
divides their life. Their memories scarce seem their own! The
Philosophical Geography (about to be published) observes that each man
has, one time or other, a little Rubicon--a clear or a foul water to
cross. It is asked him: "Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind
thee?" And "I will," firmly pronounced, speeds him over. The above-named
manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater number of
caresses rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are
those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim
back to the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may be
a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day's march even:
and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the features of
the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail before her, either in heart or
in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither and sicken to
what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon big or small, clear or foul, it
is the same: you shall not return. On--or to Acheron!--I subscribe to
that saying of The Pilgrim's Scrip: