The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 20

"I call that study!"

The confidential clerk rose, and bowed obsequious senility.

"Is it like this every day, Beazley?" Mr. Thompson asked with parental pride.

"Ahem!" the old clerk replied, "he is like this every day, sir. I could not ask more of a mouse."

Sir Austin stepped forward to the desk. His proximity roused one of Ripton's senses, which blew a call to the others. Down went the lid of the desk. Dismay, and the ardours of study, flashed together in Ripton's face. He slouched from his perch with the air of one who means rather to defend his position than welcome a superior, the right hand in his waistcoat pocket fumbling a key, the left catching at his vacant stool.

Sir Austin put two fingers on the youth's shoulder, and said, leaning his head a little on one side, in a way habitual to him, "I am glad to find my son's old comrade thus profitably occupied. I know what study is myself. But beware of prosecuting it too excitedly! Come! you must not be offended at our interruption; you will soon take up the thread again. Besides, you know, you must get accustomed to the visits of your client."

So condescending and kindly did this speech sound to Mr. Thompson, that, seeing Ripton still preserve his appearance of disorder and sneaking defiance, he thought fit to nod and frown at the youth, and desired him to inform the baronet what particular part of Blackstone he was absorbed in mastering at that moment.

Ripton hesitated an instant, and blundered out, with dubious articulation, "The Law of Gravelkind."

"What Law?" said Sir Austin, perplexed.

"Gravelkind," again rumbled Ripton's voice.

Sir Austin turned to Mr. Thompson for an explanation. The old lawyer was shaking his law-box.

"Singular!" he exclaimed. "He will make that mistake! What law, sir?"

Ripton read his error in the sternly painful expression of his father's face, and corrected himself. "Gavelkind, sir."

"Ah!" said Mr. Thompson, with a sigh of relief. "Gravelkind, indeed!

Gavelkind! An old Kentish"----He was going to expound, but Sir Austin a.s.sured him he knew it, and a very absurd law it was, adding, "I should like to look at your son's notes, or remarks on the judiciousness of that family arrangement, if he has any."

"You were making notes, or referring to them, as we entered," said Mr. Thompson to the sucking lawyer; "a very good plan, which I have always enjoined on you. Were you not?"

Ripton stammered that he was afraid he had not any notes to show, worth seeing.

"What were you doing then, sir?"

"Making notes," muttered Ripton, looking incarnate subterfuge.

"Exhibit!"

Ripton glanced at his desk and then at his father; at Sir Austin, and at the confidential clerk. He took out his key. It would not fit the hole.

"Exhibit!" was peremptorily called again.

In his praiseworthy efforts to accommodate the keyhole, Ripton discovered that the desk was already unlocked. Mr. Thompson marched to it, and held the lid aloft. A book was lying open within, which Ripton immediately hustled among a ma.s.s of papers and tossed into a dark corner, not before the glimpse of a coloured frontispiece was caught by Sir Austin's eye.

The baronet smiled, and said, "You study Heraldry, too? Are you fond of the science?"

Ripton replied that he was very fond of it--extremely attached, and threw a further pile of papers into the dark corner.

The notes had been less conspicuously placed, and the search for them was tedious and vain. Papers, not legal, or the fruits of study, were found, that made Mr. Thompson more intimate with the condition of his son's exchequer; nothing in the shape of a remark on the Law of Gavelkind.

Mr. Thompson suggested to his son that they might be among those sc.r.a.ps he had thrown carelessly into the dark corner. Ripton, though he consented to inspect them, was positive they were not there.

"What have we here?" said Mr. Thompson, seizing a neatly folded paper addressed to the Editor of a law publication, as Ripton brought them forth, one by one. Forthwith Mr. Thompson fixed his spectacles and read aloud:

"_To the Editor of the 'Jurist.'_

"Sir,--In your recent observations on the great case of Crim"----

Mr. Thompson hem'd! and stopped short, like a man who comes unexpectedly upon a snake in his path. Mr. Beazley's feet shuffled.

Sir Austin changed the position of an arm.

"It's on the other side, I think," gasped Ripton.

Mr. Thompson confidently turned over, and intoned with emphasis.

"To Absalom, the son of David, the little Jew usurer of Bond Court, Whitecross Gutters, for his introduction to Venus, I O U Five pounds, when I can pay.

"Signed: RIPTON THOMPSON."

Underneath this fict.i.tious legal instrument was discreetly appended:

"(Mem. Doc.u.ment not binding.)"

There was a pause: an awful under-breath of sanctified wonderment and reproach pa.s.sed round the office. Sir Austin a.s.sumed an att.i.tude. Mr. Thompson shed a glance of severity on his confidential clerk, who parried by throwing up his hands.

Ripton, now fairly bewildered, stuffed another paper under his father's nose, hoping the outside perhaps would satisfy him: it was marked "Legal Considerations." Mr. Thompson had no idea of sparing or shielding his son. In fact, like many men whose self-love is wounded by their offspring, he felt vindictive, and was ready to sacrifice him up to a certain point, for the good of both. He therefore opened the paper, expecting something worse than what he had hitherto seen, despite its formal heading, and he was not disappointed.

The "Legal Considerations" related to the Case regarding which Ripton had conceived it imperative upon him to address a letter to the Editor of the "Jurist," and was indeed a great case, and an ancient; revived apparently for the special purpose of displaying the forensic abilities of the Junior Counsel for the Plaintiff, Mr.

Ripton Thompson, whose a.s.sistance the Attorney-General, in his opening statement, congratulated himself on securing, a rather unusual thing, due probably to the eminence and renown of that youthful gentleman at the Bar of his country. So much was seen from the copy of a report purporting to be extracted from a newspaper, and prefixed to the Junior Counsel's remarks, or Legal Considerations, on the conduct of the Case, the admissibility and non-admissibility of certain evidence, and the ultimate decision of the judges.

Mr. Thompson, senior, lifted the paper high, with the spirit of one prepared to do execution on the criminal, and in the voice of a town-crier, varied by a bitter accentuation and satiric sing-song tone, deliberately read:

"Vulcan _v._ Mars.

"The Attorney-General, a.s.sisted by Mr. Ripton Thompson, appeared on behalf of the Plaintiff. Mr. Serjeant Cupid, Q.C., and Mr. Capital Opportunity, for the Defendant."

"Oh!" snapped Mr. Thompson, senior, peering venom at the unfortunate Ripton over his spectacles, "your notes are on that issue, sir! Thus you employ your time, sir!"

With another side-shot at the confidential clerk, who retired immediately behind a strong entrenchment of shrugs, Mr. Thompson was pushed by the devil of his rancour to continue reading:

"This Case is too well known to require more than a partial summary of particulars"....

"Ahem! we will skip the particulars, however partial," said Mr.

Thompson. "Ah!--what do you mean here, sir,--but enough! I think we may be excused your Legal Considerations on such a Case. This is how you employ your law-studies, sir! You put them to this purpose? Mr.

Beazley! you will henceforward sit alone. I must have this young man under my own eye. Sir Austin! permit me to apologize to you for subjecting you to a scene so disagreeable. It was a father's duty not to spare him."

Mr. Thompson wiped his forehead, as Brutus might have done after pa.s.sing judgment on the scion of his house.

"These papers," he went on, fluttering Ripton's precious lucubrations in a waving judicial hand, "I shall retain. The day will come when he will regard them with shame. And it shall be his penance, his punishment, to do so! Stop!" he cried, as Ripton was noiselessly shutting his desk, "have you more of them, sir; of a similar description? Rout them out! Let us know you at your worst.