The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, v6

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"I was unwell to-night, Mrs. Berry. I wanted him not to see my face.
Look! there's the book open ready for him when the candles come in. And
now, you dear kind darling old thing, let me kiss you for coming to me.
I do love you. Talk of other things."

"So we will," said Mrs. Berry softening to Lucy's caresses. "So let us.
A nobleman, indeed, alone with a young wife in the dark, and she sich a
beauty! I say this shall be put a stop to now and henceforth, on the
spot it shall! He won't meneuvele Bessy Berry with his arts. There! I
drop him. I'm dyin' for a cup o' tea, my dear."

Lucy got up to ring the bell, and as Mrs. Berry, incapable of quite
dropping him, was continuing to say: "Let him go and boast I kiss him; he
ain't nothin' to be 'shamed of in a chaste woman's kiss--unawares--which
men don't get too often in their lives, I can assure 'em;"--her eye
surveyed Lucy's figure.

Lo, when Lucy returned to her, Mrs. Berry surrounded her with her arms,
and drew her into feminine depths. "Oh, you blessed!" she cried in most
meaning tone, "you good, lovin', proper little wife, you!"

"What is it, Mrs. Berry!" lisps Lucy, opening the most innocent blue
eyes.

"As if I couldn't see, you pet! It was my flurry blinded me, or I'd 'a
marked ye the fast shock. Thinkin' to deceive me!"

Mrs. Berry's eyes spoke generations. Lucy's wavered; she coloured all
over, and hid her face on the bounteous breast that mounted to her.

"You're a sweet one," murmured the soft woman, patting her back, and
rocking her. "You're a rose, you are! and a bud on your stalk. Haven't
told a word to your husband, my dear?" she asked quickly.

Lucy shook her head, looking sly and shy.

"That's right. We'll give him a surprise; let it come all at once on
him, and thinks he--losin' breath 'I'm a father!' Nor a hint even you
haven't give him?"

Lucy kissed her, to indicate it was quite a secret.

"Oh! you are a sweet one," said Bessy Berry, and rocked her more closely
and lovingly.

Then these two had a whispered conversation, from which let all of male
persuasion retire a space nothing under one mile.

Returning, after a due interval, we see Mrs. Berry counting on her
fingers' ends. Concluding the sum, she cries prophetically: "Now this
right everything--a baby in the balance! Now I say this angel-infant
come from on high. It's God's messenger, my love! and it's not wrong to
say so. He thinks you worthy, or you wouldn't 'a had one--not for all
the tryin' in the world, you wouldn't, and some tries hard enough, poor
creatures! Now let us rejice and make merry! I'm for cryin' and
laughin', one and the same. This is the blessed seal of matrimony, which
Berry never stamp on me. It's be hoped it's a boy. Make that man a
grandfather, and his grandchild a son, and you got him safe. Oh! this
is what I call happiness, and I'll have my tea a little stronger in
consequence. I declare I could get tipsy to know this joyful news."

So Mrs. Berry carolled. She had her tea a little stronger. She ate and
she drank; she rejoiced and made merry. The bliss of the chaste was
hers.

Says Lucy demurely: "Now you know why I read History, and that sort of
books."

"Do I?" replies Berry. "Belike I do. Since what you done's so good, my
darlin', I'm agreeable to anything. A fig for all the lords! They can't
come anigh a baby. You may read Voyages and Travels, my dear, and
Romances, and Tales of Love and War. You cut the riddle in your own dear
way, and that's all I cares for."

"No, but you don't understand," persists Lucy. "I only read sensible
books, and talk of serious things, because I'm sure... because I have
heard say...dear Mrs. Berry! don't you understand now?"

Mrs. Berry smacked her knees. "Only to think of her bein' that
thoughtful! and she a Catholic, too! Never tell me that people of one
religion ain't as good as another, after that. Why, you want to make him
a historian, to be sure! And that rake of a lord who've been comin' here
playin' at wolf, you been and made him--unbeknown to himself--sort o'
tutor to the unborn blessed! Ha! ha! say that little women ain't got art
ekal to the cunningest of 'em. Oh! I understand. Why, to be sure,
didn't I know a lady, a widow of a clergyman: he was a postermost child,
and afore his birth that women read nothin' but Blair's 'Grave' over and
over again, from the end to the beginnin';--that's a serious book!--very
hard readin'!--and at four years of age that child that come of it reelly
was the piousest infant!--he was like a little curate. His eyes was up;
he talked so solemn." Mrs. Berry imitated the little curate's appearance
and manner of speaking. "So she got her wish, for one!"

But at this lady Lucy laughed.

They chattered on happily till bedtime. Lucy arranged for Mrs. Berry to
sleep with her. "If it's not dreadful to ye, my sweet, sleepin' beside a
woman," said Mrs. Berry. "I know it were to me shortly after my Berry,
and I felt it. It don't somehow seem nat'ral after matrimony--a woman in
your bed! I was obliged to have somebody, for the cold sheets do give ye
the creeps when you've been used to that that's different."

Upstairs they went together, Lucy not sharing these objections. Then
Lucy opened certain drawers, and exhibited pretty caps, and laced linen,
all adapted for a very small body, all the work of her own hands: and
Mrs. Berry praised them and her. "You been guessing a boy--woman-like,"
she said. Then they cooed, and kissed, and undressed by the fire, and
knelt at the bedside, with their arms about each other, praying; both
praying for the unborn child; and Mrs. Berry pressed Lucy's waist the
moment she was about to breathe the petition to heaven to shield and
bless that coming life; and thereat Lucy closed to her, and felt a strong
love for her. Then Lucy got into bed first, leaving Berry to put out the
light, and before she did so, Berry leaned over her, and eyed her
roguishly, saying, "I never see ye like this, but I'm half in love with
ye myself, you blushin' beauty! Sweet's your eyes, and your hair do take
one so--lyin' back. I'd never forgive my father if he kep me away from
ye four-and-twenty hours just. Husband o' that!" Berry pointed at the
young wife's loveliness. "Ye look so ripe with kisses, and there they
are a-languishin'!--... You never look so but in your bed, ye beauty!--
just as it ought to be." Lucy had to pretend to rise to put out the
light before Berry would give up her amorous chaste soliloquy. Then they
lay in bed, and Mrs. Berry fondled her, and arranged for their departure
to-morrow, and reviewed Richard's emotions when he came to hear he was
going to be made a father by her, and hinted at Lucy's delicious shivers
when Richard was again in his rightful place, which she, Bessy Berry, now
usurped; and all sorts of amorous sweet things; enough to make one fancy
the adage subverted, that stolen fruits are sweetest; she drew such
glowing pictures of bliss within the law and the limits of the
conscience, till at last, worn out, Lucy murmured "Peepy, dear Berry,"
and the soft woman gradually ceased her chirp.

Bessy Berry did not sleep. She lay thinking of the sweet brave heart
beside her, and listening to Lucy's breath as it came and went; squeezing
the fair sleeper's hand now and then, to ease her love as her reflections
warmed. A storm of wind came howling over the Hampshire hills, and
sprang white foam on the water, and shook the bare trees. It passed,
leaving a thin cloth of snow on the wintry land. The moon shone
brilliantly. Berry heard the house-dog bark. His bark was savage and
persistent. She was roused by the noise. By and by she fancied she
heard a movement in the house; then it seemed to her that the house-door
opened. She cocked her ears, and could almost make out voices in the
midnight stillness. She slipped from the bed, locked and bolted the door
of the room, assured herself of Lucy's unconsciousness, and went on
tiptoe to the window. The trees all stood white to the north; the ground
glittered; the cold was keen. Berry wrapped her fat arms across her
bosom, and peeped as close over into the garden as the situation of the
window permitted. Berry was a soft, not a timid, woman: and it happened
this night that her thoughts were above the fears of the dark. She was
sure of the voices; curiosity without a shade of alarm held her on the
watch; and gathering bundles of her day-apparel round her neck and
shoulders, she silenced the chattering of her teeth as well as she could,
and remained stationary. The low hum of the voices came to a break;
something was said in a louder tone; the house-door quietly shut; a man
walked out of the garden into the road. He paused opposite her window,
and Berry let the blind go back to its place, and peeped from behind an
edge of it. He was in the shadow of the house, so that it was impossible
to discern much of his figure. After some minutes he walked rapidly
away, and Berry returned to the bed an icicle, from which Lucy's limbs
sensitively shrank.

Next morning Mrs. Berry asked Tom Bakewell if he had been disturbed in
the night. Tom, the mysterious, said he had slept like a top. Mrs.
Berry went into the garden. The snow was partially melted; all save one
spot, just under the portal, and there she saw the print of a man's foot.
By some strange guidance it occurred to her to go and find one of
Richard's boots. She did so, and, unperceived, she measured the sole of
the boot in that solitary footmark. There could be no doubt that it
fitted. She tried it from heel to toe a dozen times.

CHAPTER XL

Sir Austin Feverel had come to town with the serenity of a philosopher
who says, 'Tis now time; and the satisfaction of a man who has not
arrived thereat without a struggle. He had almost forgiven his son. His
deep love for him had well-nigh shaken loose from wounded pride and more
tenacious vanity. Stirrings of a remote sympathy for the creature who
had robbed him of his son and hewed at his System, were in his heart of
hearts. This he knew; and in his own mind he took credit for his
softness. But the world must not suppose him soft; the world must think
he was still acting on his System. Otherwise what would his long absence
signify?--Something highly unphilosophical. So, though love was strong,
and was moving him to a straightforward course, the last tug of vanity
drew him still aslant.

The Aphorist read himself so well, that to juggle with himself was a
necessity. As he wished the world to see him, he beheld himself: one who
entirely put aside mere personal feelings: one in whom parental duty,
based on the science of life, was paramount: a Scientific Humanist, in
short.

He was, therefore, rather surprised at a coldness in Lady Blandish's
manner when he did appear. "At last!" said the lady, in a sad way that
sounded reproachfully. Now the Scientific Humanist had, of course,
nothing to reproach himself with.

But where was Richard?

Adrian positively averred he was not with his wife.

"If he had gone," said the baronet, "he would have anticipated me by a
few hours."

This, when repeated to Lady Blandish, should have propitiated her, and
shown his great forgiveness. She, however, sighed, and looked at him
wistfully.

Their converse was not happy and deeply intimate. Philosophy did not
seem to catch her mind; and fine phrases encountered a rueful assent,
more flattering to their grandeur than to their influence.

Days went by. Richard did not present himself. Sir Austin's pitch of
self-command was to await the youth without signs of impatience.

Seeing this, the lady told him her fears for Richard, and mentioned the
rumour of him that was about.

"If," said the baronet, "this person, his wife, is what you paint her, I
do not share your fears for him. I think too well of him. If she is one
to inspire the sacredness of that union, I think too well of him. It is
impossible."

The lady saw one thing to be done.

"Call her to you," she said. "Have her with you at Raynham. Recognize
her. It is the disunion and doubt that so confuses him and drives him
wild. I confess to you I hoped he had gone to her. It seems not. If
she is with you his way will be clear. Will you do that?"

Science is notoriously of slow movement. Lady Blandish's proposition was
far too hasty for Sir Austin. Women, rapid by nature, have no idea of
science.

"We shall see her there in time, Emmeline. At present let it be between
me and my son."

He spoke loftily. In truth it offended him to be asked to do anything,
when he had just brought himself to do so much.

A month elapsed, and Richard appeared on the scene.

The meeting between him and his father was not what his father had
expected and had crooned over in the Welsh mountains. Richard shook his
hand respectfully, and inquired after his health with the common social
solicitude. He then said: "During your absence, sir, I have taken the
liberty, without consulting you, to do something in which you are more
deeply concerned than myself. I have taken upon myself to find out my
mother and place her under my care. I trust you will not think I have
done wrong. I acted as I thought best."

Sir Austin replied: "You are of an age, Richard, to judge for yourself in
such a case. I would have you simply beware of deceiving yourself in
imagining that you considered any one but yourself in acting as you did."

"I have not deceived myself, sir," said Richard, and the interview was
over. Both hated an exposure of the feelings, and in that both were
satisfied: but the baronet, as one who loves, hoped and looked for tones
indicative of trouble and delight in the deep heart; and Richard gave him
none of those. The young man did not even face him as he spoke: if their
eyes met by chance, Richard's were defiantly cold. His whole bearing was
changed.

"This rash marriage has altered him," said the very just man of science
in life: and that meant: "it has debased him."

He pursued his reflections. "I see in him the desperate maturity of a
suddenly-ripened nature: and but for my faith that good work is never
lost, what should I think of the toil of my years? Lost, perhaps to me!
lost to him! It may show itself in his children."

The Philosopher, we may conceive, has contentment in benefiting embryos:
but it was a somewhat bitter prospect to Sir Austin. Bitterly he felt
the injury to himself.

One little incident spoke well of Richard. A poor woman called at the
hotel while he was missing. The baronet saw her, and she told him a tale
that threw Christian light on one part of Richard's nature. But this
might gratify the father in Sir Austin; it did not touch the man of
science. A Feverel, his son, would not do less, he thought. He sat down
deliberately to study his son.

No definite observations enlightened him. Richard ate and drank; joked
and laughed. He was generally before Adrian in calling for a fresh
bottle. He talked easily of current topics; his gaiety did not sound
forced. In all he did, nevertheless, there was not the air of a youth
who sees a future before him. Sir Austin put that down. It might be
carelessness, and wanton blood, for no one could say he had much on his
mind. The man of science was not reckoning that Richard also might have
learned to act and wear a mask. Dead subjects--this is to say, people
not on their guard--he could penetrate and dissect. It is by a rare
chance, as scientific men well know, that one has an opportunity of
examining the structure of the living.

However, that rare chance was granted to Sir Austin. They were engaged
to dine with Mrs. Doria at the Foreys', and walked down to her in the
afternoon, father and son arm-in-arm, Adrian beside them. Previously the
offended father had condescended to inform his son that it would shortly
be time for him to return to his wife, indicating that arrangements would
ultimately be ordered to receive her at Raynham. Richard had replied
nothing; which might mean excess of gratitude, or hypocrisy in concealing
his pleasure, or any one of the thousand shifts by which gratified human
nature expresses itself when all is made to run smooth with it. Now Mrs.
Berry had her surprise ready charged for the young husband. She had Lucy
in her own house waiting for him. Every day she expected him to call and
be overcome by the rapturous surprise, and every day, knowing his habit
of frequenting the park, she marched Lucy thither, under the plea that
Master Richard, whom she had already christened, should have an airing.

The round of the red winter sun was behind the bare Kensington chestnuts,
when these two parties met. Happily for Lucy and the hope she bore in
her bosom, she was perversely admiring a fair horsewoman galloping by at
the moment. Mrs. Berry plucked at her gown once or twice, to prepare her
eyes for the shock, but Lucy's head was still half averted, and thinks
Mrs. Berry, "Twon't hurt her if she go into his arms head foremost."
They were close; Mrs. Berry performed the bob preliminary. Richard held
her silent with a terrible face; he grasped her arm, and put her behind
him. Other people intervened. Lucy saw nothing to account for Berry's
excessive flutter. Berry threw it on the air and some breakfast bacon,
which, she said, she knew in the morning while she ate it, was bad for
the bile, and which probably was the cause of her bursting into tears,
much to Lucy's astonishment.

"What you ate makes you cry, Mrs. Berry?"

"It's all--" Mrs. Berry pressed at her heart and leaned sideways, "it's
all stomach, my dear. Don't ye mind," and becoming aware of her
unfashionable behaviour, she trailed off to the shelter of the elms.

"You have a singular manner with old ladies," said Sir Austin to his son,
after Berry had been swept aside.

Scarcely courteous. She behaved like a mad woman, certainly."--Are you
ill, my son?"

Richard was death-pale, his strong form smitten through with weakness.
The baronet sought Adrian's eye. Adrian had seen Lucy as they passed,
and he had a glimpse of Richard's countenance while disposing of Berry.
Had Lucy recognized them, he would have gone to her unhesitatingly. As
she did not, he thought it well, under the circumstances, to leave
matters as they were. He answered the baronet's look with a shrug.

"Are you ill, Richard?" Sir Austin again asked his son.

"Come on, sir! come on!" cried Richard.

His father's further meditations, as they stepped briskly to the Foreys',
gave poor ferry a character which one who lectures on matrimony, and has
kissed but three men in her life, shrieks to hear the very title of.

"Richard will go to his wife to-morrow," Sir Austin said to Adrian some
time before they went in to dinner.

Adrian asked him if he had chanced to see a young fair-haired lady by the
side of the old one Richard had treated so peculiarly; and to the
baronet's acknowledgment that he remembered to have observed such a
person, Adrian said: "That was his wife, sir."

Sir Austin could not dissect the living subject. As if a bullet had torn
open the young man's skull, and some blast of battle laid his palpitating
organization bare, he watched every motion of his brain and his heart;
and with the grief and terror of one whose mental habit was ever to
pierce to extremes. Not altogether conscious that he had hitherto played
with life, he felt that he was suddenly plunged into the stormful reality
of it. He projected to speak plainly to his son on all points that
night.

"Richard is very gay," Mrs. Doris, whispered her brother.

"All will be right with him to-morrow," he replied; for the game had been
in his hands so long, so long had he been the God of the machine, that
having once resolved to speak plainly and to act, he was to a certain
extent secure, bad as the thing to mend might be.

"I notice he has rather a wild laugh--I don't exactly like his eyes,"
said Mrs. Doria.

"You will see a change in him to-morrow," the man of science remarked.

It was reserved for Mrs. Doria herself to experience that change. In the
middle of the dinner a telegraphic message from her son-in-law, worthy
John Todhunter, reached the house, stating that Clare was alarmingly ill,
bidding her come instantly. She cast about for some one to accompany
her, and fixed on Richard. Before he would give his consent for Richard
to go, Sir Austin desired to speak with him apart, and in that interview
he said to his son: "My dear Richard! it was my intention that we should
come to an understanding together this night. But the time is short--
poor Helen cannot spare many minutes. Let me then say that you deceived
me, and that I forgive you. We fix our seal on the past. You will bring
your wife to me when you return." And very cheerfully the baronet looked
down on the generous future he thus founded.

"Will you have her at Raynham at once, sir?" said Richard.

"Yes, my son, when you bring her."

"Are you mocking me, sir?"

"Pray, what do you mean?"

"I ask you to receive her at once."

"Well! the delay cannot be long. I do not apprehend that you will be
kept from your happiness many days."

"I think it will be some time, sir!" said Richard, sighing deeply.

"And what mental freak is this that can induce you to postpone it and
play with your first duty?"

"What is my first duty, sir?"

"Since you are married, to be with your wife."

"I have heard that from an old woman called Berry!" said Richard to
himself, not intending irony.

"Will you receive her at once?" he asked resolutely.

The baronet was clouded by his son's reception of his graciousness. His
grateful prospect had formerly been Richard's marriage--the culmination
of his System. Richard had destroyed his participation in that. He now
looked for a pretty scene in recompense:--Richard leading up his wife to
him, and both being welcomed by him paternally, and so held one
ostentatious minute in his embrace.

He said: "Before you return, I demur to receiving her."

"Very well, sir," replied his son, and stood as if he had spoken all.

"Really you tempt me to fancy you already regret your rash proceeding!"
the baronet exclaimed; and the next moment it pained him he had uttered
the words, Richard's eyes were so sorrowfully fierce. It pained him, but
he divined in that look a history, and he could not refrain from glancing
acutely and asking: "Do you?"

"Regret it, sir?" The question aroused one of those struggles in the
young man's breast which a passionate storm of tears may still, and which
sink like leaden death into the soul when tears come not. Richard's eyes
had the light of the desert.

"Do you?" his father repeated. "You tempt me--I almost fear you do." At
the thought--for he expressed his mind--the pity that he had for Richard
was not pure gold.

"Ask me what I think of her, sir! Ask me what she is! Ask me what it is
to have taken one of God's precious angels and chained her to misery!
Ask me what it is to have plunged a sword into her heart, and to stand
over her and see such a creature bleeding! Do I regret that? Why, yes,
I do! Would you?"

His eyes flew hard at his father under the ridge of his eyebrows.

Sir Austin winced and reddened. Did he understand? There is ever in the
mind's eye a certain wilfulness. We see and understand; we see and won't
understand.

"Tell me why you passed by her as you did this afternoon," he said
gravely: and in the same voice Richard answered: "I passed her because I
could not do otherwise."

"Your wife, Richard?"

"Yes! my wife!"

"If she had seen you, Richard?"

"God spared her that!"

Mrs. Doria, bustling in practical haste, and bearing Richard's hat and
greatcoat in her energetic hands, came between them at this juncture.
Dimples of commiseration were in her cheeks while she kissed her
brother's perplexed forehead. She forgot her trouble about Clare,
deploring his fatuity.

Sir Austin was forced to let his son depart. As of old, he took counsel
with Adrian, and the wise youth was soothing. "Somebody has kissed him,
sir, and the chaste boy can't get over it." This absurd suggestion did
more to appease the baronet than if Adrian had given a veritable
reasonable key to Richard's conduct. It set him thinking that it might
be a prudish strain in the young man's mind, due to the System in
difficulties.

"I may have been wrong in one thing," he said, with an air of the utmost
doubt of it. "I, perhaps, was wrong in allowing him so much liberty
during his probation."

Adrian pointed out to him that he had distinctly commanded it.

"Yes, yes; that is on me."

His was an order of mind that would accept the most burdensome charges,
and by some species of moral usury make a profit out of them.

Clare was little talked of. Adrian attributed the employment of the
telegraph to John Todhunter's uxorious distress at a toothache, or
possibly the first symptoms of an heir to his house.

"That child's mind has disease in it... She is not sound," said the
baronet.

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