The Ordeal of Richard Feverel Part 36

'Faithful she is, but she forsakes: And fond, yet endless woe she makes: And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd; To know her not till she is lost!'

Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the fabulist pursues--

'She hath a palace in the West: Bright Hesper lights her to her rest: And him the Morning Star awakes Whom to her charmed arms she takes.

'So lives he till he sees, alas!

The maids of baser metal pa.s.s.'

And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Bra.s.sy Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina, till he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less obscure become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her radiance shines forth, my uncle!"

"Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you've got her," says Hippias.

"We will, uncle! Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in the fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!

'She claims the whole, and not the part-- The coin of an unused heart!

To gain his Golden Bride again, He hunts with melancholy men,'

--and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!"

"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion. I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."

"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard. "You shall ride in the park with me every day to get an appet.i.te. You and I and the Golden Bride. You know that little poem of Sandoe's?

'She rides in the park on a prancing bay, She and her squires together; Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey, And toss with the tossing feather.

'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride Is the beautiful face as it pa.s.ses; The c.o.c.kneys nod to each other aside, The c.o.xcombs lift their gla.s.ses.

'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach The ice-wall that guards her securely; You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each, As the heart that can image her purely.'

Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?

'True, Madam, you may think to part Conditions by a glacier-ridge, But Beauty's for the largest heart, And all abysses Love can bridge!'"

Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words.

"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never seen one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go parading your admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the subject when he thinks fit."

"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he murmured to a pleased ear:

"Beauty's for the largest heart!"

The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of pa.s.sengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure.

All faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and his Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before them, he looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape, projecting all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing hazily on the wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great service he was to be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his reveries he was landed in London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage door. A glance told Richard that his squire had something curious on his mind, and he gave Tom the word to speak out. Tom edged his master out of hearing, and began sputtering a laugh.

"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said. "That young Tom! He've come to town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more than a stag. He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis. Look at him, Mr. Richard! There he goes."

Young Tom appeared to have the weight of all London on his beaver.

"Who has he come for?" Richard asked.

"Don't you know, sir? You don't like me to mention the name,"

mumbled Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.

"Is it for her, Tom?"

"Miss Lucy, sir."

Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in the conveyance, Hippias could not persuade him to drive off. He made the excuse that he did not wish to start till there was a clear road. At last young Tom cast anchor by a policeman, and, doubtless at the official's suggestion, bashfully took seat in a cab, and was shot into the whirlpool of London. Richard then angrily asked his driver what he was waiting for.

"Are you ill, my boy?" said Hippias. "Where's your colour?"

He laughed oddly, and made a random answer that he hoped the fellow would drive fast.

"I hate slow motion after being in the railway," he said.

Hippias a.s.sured him there was something the matter with him.

"Nothing, uncle! nothing!" said Richard, looking fiercely candid.

They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart--the struggle of life and death in him--grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his pa.s.sion fixing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one woman to Richard. He had forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence. Must the maids of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy's shape.

Thinking of her now so near him--his darling! all her graces, her sweetness, her truth; for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her true--swam in a thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic, and full of glory, that now wrung his heart, and now elated it. As well might a ship attempt to calm the sea, as this young man the violent emotion that began to rage in his breast. "I shall not see her!" he said to himself exultingly, and at the same instant thought, how black was every corner of the earth but that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless the place he was going to! Then he determined to bear it; to live in darkness; there was a refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom. "For if I chose I could see her--this day within an hour!--I could see her, and touch her hand, and, oh, heaven!--But I do not choose." And a great wave swelled through him, and was crushed down only to swell again more stormily.

Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this Babylon alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that they had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of the way--they had been miserably plotting against him once more. "They shall see what right they have to fear me. I'll shame them!" was the first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and see her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not to be one of the conspirators.

Nevertheless, after forming that resolve, he sat still, as if there was something fatal in the wheels that bore him away from it--perhaps because he knew, as some do when pa.s.sion is lord, that his intelligence juggled with him; though none the less keenly did he feel his wrongs and suspicions. His Golden Bride was waning fast.

But when Hippias e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed to cheer him: "We shall soon be there!"

the spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to speak to Tom, and would ride with him the rest of the journey. He knew well enough which line of railway his Lucy must come by. He had studied every town and station on the line. Before his uncle could express more than a mute remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom Bakewell, who came behind with the boxes and baggage in a companion cab, his head a yard beyond the window to make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle preceding.

"What an extraordinary, impetuous boy it is," said Hippias. "We're in the very street!"

Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to arrange everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his bow.

"Mr. Richard, sir?--evaporated?" was Berry's modulated inquiry.

"Behind--among the boxes, fool!" Hippias growled, as he received Berry's muscular a.s.sistance to alight. "Lunch ready--eh!"

"Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir--been in attendance one quarter of an hour. Heah!" Berry sang out to the second cab, which, with its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces distant. At his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on them, and went off in a contrary direction.

CHAPTER XXVI

RECORDS THE RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF THE HERO

On the stroke of the hour when Ripton Thompson was accustomed to consult his good watch for practical purposes, and sniff freedom and the forthcoming dinner, a burglarious foot entered the clerk's office where he sat, and a man of a scowling countenance, who looked a villain, and whom he was afraid he knew, slid a letter into his hands, nodding that it would be prudent for him to read, and be silent. Ripton obeyed in alarm. Apparently the contents of the letter relieved his conscience; for he reached down his hat, and told Mr. Beazley to inform his father that he had business of pressing importance in the West, and should meet him at the station.

Mr. Beazley zealously waited upon the paternal Thompson without delay, and together making their observations from the window, they beheld a cab of many boxes, into which Ripton darted and was followed by one in groom's dress. It was Sat.u.r.day, the day when Ripton gave up his law-readings, magnanimously to bestow himself upon his family, and Mr. Thompson liked to have his son's arm as he walked down to the station; but that third gla.s.s of Port which always stood for his second, and the groom's suggestion of aristocratic acquaintances, prevented Mr. Thompson from interfering: so Ripton was permitted to depart.

In the cab Ripton made a study of the letter he held. It had the preciseness of an imperial mandate.