The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Volume 6

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.

On the door-step of the hotel, when they returned, stood Mrs. Berry. Her wish to speak a few words with the baronet reverentially communicated, she was ushered upstairs into his room.

Mrs. Berry compressed her person in the chair she was beckoned to occupy.

"Well' ma'am, you have something to say," observed the baronet, for she seemed loth to commence.

"Wishin' I hadn't—" Mrs. Berry took him up, and mindful of the good rule to begin at the beginning, pursued: "I dare say, Sir Austin, you don't remember me, and I little thought when last we parted our meeting 'd be like this. Twenty year don't go over one without showin' it, no more than twenty ox. It's a might o' time,—twenty year! Leastways not quite twenty, it ain't."

"Round figures are best," Adrian remarked.

"In them round figures a be-loved son have growed up, and got himself married!" said Mrs. Berry, diving straight into the case.

Sir Austin then learnt that he had before him the culprit who had assisted his son in that venture. It was a stretch of his patience to hear himself addressed on a family matter; but he was naturally courteous.

"He came to my house, Sir Austin, a stranger! If twenty year alters us as have knowed each other on the earth, how must they alter they that we parted with just come from heaven! And a heavenly babe he were! so sweet! so strong! so fat!"

Adrian laughed aloud.

Mrs. Berry bumped a curtsey to him in her chair, continuing: "I wished afore I spoke to say how thankful am I bound to be for my pension not cut short, as have offended so, but that I know Sir Austin Feverel, Raynham Abbey, ain't one o' them that likes to hear their good deeds pumlished. And a pension to me now, it's something more than it were. For a pension and pretty rosy cheeks in a maid, which I was—that's a bait many a man'll bite, that won't so a forsaken wife!"

"If you will speak to the point, ma'am, I will listen to you," the baronet interrupted her.

"It's the beginnin' that's the worst, and that's over, thank the Lord! So I'll speak, Sir Austin, and say my say:—Lord speed me! Believin' our idees o' matrimony to be sim'lar, then, I'll say, once married—married for life! Yes! I don't even like widows. For I can't stop at the grave. Not at the tomb I can't stop. My husband's my husband, and if I'm a body at the Resurrection, I say, speaking humbly, my Berry is the husband o' my body; and to think of two claimin' of me then—it makes me hot all over. Such is my notion of that state 'tween man and woman. No givin' in marriage, o' course I know; and if so I'm single."

The baronet suppressed a smile. "Really, my good woman, you wander very much."

"Beggin' pardon, Sir Austin; but I has my point before me all the same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men— unpertected. And it's a young marriage—but there's no fear for her, as far as she go. The fear's t'other way. There's that in a man—at the commencement—which make of him Lord knows what if you any way interferes: whereas a woman bides quiet! It's consolation catch her, which is what we mean by seduein'. Whereas a man—he's a savage!"

Sir Austin turned his face to Adrian, who was listening with huge delight.

"Well, ma'am, I see you have something in your mind, if you would only come to it quickly."

"Then here's my point, Sir Austin. I say you bred him so as there ain't another young gentleman like him in England, and proud he make me. And as for her, I'll risk sayin'—it's done, and no harm—you might search England through, and nowhere will ye find a maid that's his match like his own wife. Then there they be. Are they together as should be? O Lord no! Months they been divided. Then she all lonely and exposed, I went, and fetched her out of seducers' ways—which they may say what they like, but the inn'cent is most open to when they're healthy and confidin'—I fetch her, and—the liberty—boxed her safe in my own house. So much for that sweet! That you may do with women. But it's him—Mr. Richard—I am bold, I know, but there—I'm in for it, and the Lord'll help me! It's him, Sir Austin, in this great metropolis, warm from a young marriage. It's him, and—I say nothin' of her, and how sweet she bears it, and it's eating her at a time when Natur' should have no other trouble but the one that's goin' on it's him, and I ask—so bold—shall there—and a Christian gentlemen his father—shall there be a tug 'tween him as a son and him as a husband—soon to be somethin' else? I speak bold out—I'd have sons obey their fathers, but a priest's words spoke over them, which they're now in my ears, I say I ain't a doubt on earth— I'm sure there ain't one in heaven—which dooty's the holier of the two."

Sir Austin heard her to an end. Their views on the junction of the sexes were undoubtedly akin. To be lectured on his prime subject, however, was slightly disagreeable, and to be obliged mentally to assent to this old lady's doctrine was rather humiliating, when it could not be averred that he had latterly followed it out. He sat cross-legged and silent, a finger to his temple.

"One gets so addle-gated thinkin' many things," said Mrs. Berry, simply. "That's why we see wonder clever people goin' wrong—to my mind. I think it's al'ays the plan in a dielemmer to pray God and walk forward."

The keen-witted soft woman was tracking the baronet's thoughts, and she had absolutely run him down and taken an explanation out of his mouth, by which Mrs. Berry was to have been informed that he had acted from a principle of his own, and devolved a wisdom she could not be expected to comprehend.

Of course he became advised immediately that it would be waste of time to direct such an explanation to her inferior capacity.

He gave her his hand, saying, "My son has gone out of town to see his cousin, who is ill. He will return in two or three days, and then they will both come to me at Raynham."

Mrs. Berry took the tips of his fingers, and went half-way to the floor perpendicularly. "He pass her like a stranger in the park this evenin'," she faltered.

"Ah?" said the baronet. "Yes, well! they will be at Raynham before the week is over."

Mrs. Berry was not quite satisfied. "Not of his own accord he pass that sweet young wife of his like a stranger this day, Sir Austin!"

"I must beg you not to intrude further, ma'am."

Mrs. Berry bobbed her bunch of a body out of the room.

"All's well that ends well," she said to herself. "It's just bad inquirin' too close among men. We must take 'em somethin' like Providence—as they come. Thank heaven! I kep' back the baby."

In Mrs. Berry's eyes the baby was the victorious reserve.

Adrian asked his chief what he thought of that specimen of woman.

"I think I have not met a better in my life," said the baronet, mingling praise and sarcasm.

Clare lies in her bed as placid as in the days when she breathed; her white hands stretched their length along the sheets, at peace from head to feet. She needs iron no more. Richard is face to face with death for the first time. He sees the sculpture of clay—the spark gone.

Clare gave her mother the welcome of the dead. This child would have spoken nothing but kind commonplaces had she been alive. She was dead, and none knew her malady. On her fourth finger were two wedding-rings.

When hours of weeping had silenced the mother's anguish, she, for some comfort she saw in it, pointed out that strange thing to Richard, speaking low in the chamber of the dead; and then he learnt that it was his own lost ring Clare wore in the two worlds. He learnt from her husband that Clare's last request had been that neither of the rings should be removed. She had written it; she would not speak it.

"I beg of my husband, and all kind people who may have the care of me between this and the grave, to bury me with my hands untouched."

The tracing of the words showed the bodily torment she was suffering, as she wrote them on a scrap of paper found beside her pillow.

In wonder, as the dim idea grew from the waving of Clare's dead hand, Richard paced the house, and hung about the awful room; dreading to enter it, reluctant to quit it. The secret Clare had buried while she lived, arose with her death. He saw it play like flame across her marble features. The memory of her voice was like a knife at his nerves. His coldness to her started up accusingly: her meekness was bitter blame.

On the evening of the fourth day, her mother came to him in his bedroom, with a face so white that he asked himself if aught worse could happen to a mother than the loss of her child. Choking she said to him, "Read this," and thrust a leather-bound pocket-book trembling in his hand. She would not breathe to him what it was. She entreated him not to open it before her.

"Tell me," she said, "tell me what you think. John must not hear of it.

I have nobody to consult but you O Richard!"

"My Diary" was written in the round hand of Clare's childhood on the first page. The first name his eye encountered was his own.

"Richard's fourteenth birthday. I have worked him a purse and put it under his pillow, because he is going to have plenty of money. He does not notice me now because he has a friend now, and he is ugly, but Richard is not, and never will be."

The occurrences of that day were subsequently recorded, and a childish prayer to God for him set down. Step by step he saw her growing mind in his history. As she advanced in years she began to look back, and made much of little trivial remembrances, all bearing upon him.

"We went into the fields and gathered cowslips together, and pelted each other, and I told him he used to call them 'coals-sleeps' when he was a baby, and he was angry at my telling him, for he does not like to be told he was ever a baby."

He remembered the incident, and remembered his stupid scorn of her meek affection. Little Clare! how she lived before him in her white dress and pink ribbons, and soft dark eyes! Upstairs she was lying dead. He read on:

"Mama says there is no one in the world like Richard, and I am sure there is not, not in the whole world. He says he is going to be a great General and going to the wars. If he does I shall dress myself as a boy and go after him, and he will not know me till I am wounded. Oh I pray he will never, never be wounded. I wonder what I should feel if Richard was ever to die."

Upstairs Clare was lying dead.

"Lady Blandish said there was a likeness between Richard and me. Richard said I hope I do not hang down my head as she does. He is angry with me because I do not look people in the face and speak out, but I know I am not looking after earthworms."

Yes. He had told her that. A shiver seized him at the recollection.

Then it came to a period when the words: "Richard kissed me," stood by themselves, and marked a day in her life.

Afterwards it was solemnly discovered that Richard wrote poetry. He read one of his old forgotten compositions penned when he had that ambition.

"Thy truth to me is truerThan horse, or dog, or blade;Thy vows to me are fewerThan ever maiden made.Thou steppest from thy splendourTo make my life a song:My bosom shall be tenderAs thine has risen strong."

All the verses were transcribed. "It is he who is the humble knight," Clare explained at the close, "and his lady, is a Queen. Any Queen would throw her crown away for him."

It came to that period when Clare left Raynham with her mother.

"Richard was not sorry to lose me. He only loves boys and men. Something tells me I shall never see Raynham again. He was dressed in blue. He said Good-bye, Clare, and kissed me on the cheek. Richard never kisses me on the mouth. He did not know I went to his bed and kissed him while he was asleep. He sleeps with one arm under his head, and the other out on the bed. I moved away a bit of his hair that was over his eyes. I wanted to cut it. I have one piece. I do not let anybody see I am unhappy, not even mama. She says I want iron. I am sure I do not. I like to write my name. Clare Doria Forey. Richard's is Richard Doria Feverel."

His breast rose convulsively. Clare Doria Forey! He knew the music of that name. He had heard it somewhere. It sounded faint and mellow now behind the hills of death.

He could not read for tears. It was midnight. The hour seemed to belong to her. The awful stillness and the darkness were Clare's. Clare's voice clear and cold from the grave possessed it.

Painfully, with blinded eyes, he looked over the breathless pages. She spoke of his marriage, and her finding the ring.

"I knew it was his. I knew he was going to be married that morning. I saw him stand by the altar when they laughed at breakfast. His wife must be so beautiful! Richard's wife! Perhaps he will love me better now he is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful. If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God hears poor sinners' prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do. They say I am good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me, God!"

Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.

"I have seen Richard. Richard despises me," was the next entry.

But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible conclusion.

"I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should not have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth was on mine."

Further: "I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than endure it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would do? I think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so kind, and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of my God the more I pray."

Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words in earnest? Did she lie there dead—he shrouded the thought.

He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.

"A quarter to one o'clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow. I shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the fields together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children, but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he said—if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I made a vow to wear it for ever and ever… "It is not mama's fault. She does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward, nor am I. He hates cowards.

"I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead he will hear what I say.

"I heard just now Richard call distinctly—Clare, come out to me. Surely he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very cold."

The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if her hand had lost mastery over the pen.

"I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I am not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words. 'Clari,' and 'Don Ricardo,' and his laugh. He used to be full of fun. Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been happier. I must have died. God never looks on me.

"It is past two o'clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard."

With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not over- communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of existence left half the number of pages white.

Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay, the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved—to him she had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with strange tidings—it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to have been speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that still heart.

He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine, hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent fold. Death in life it sounded.

The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed. She knelt by his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in common. They prayed God to forgive her.

Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.

After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them together.

"Richard," she said, "the worst is over for me. I have no one to love but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this… Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare my brother what I suffer."

He answered the broken spirit: "I have killed one. She sees me as I am. I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt. Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head that—No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me. If I find it I shall come to claim her. If not, God help us all!"

She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he went forth.

CHAPTER XLI

A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely behind.

"Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I'm not a man of fashion, happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are you?"

That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.

Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had been in the wilderness five years.

"The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton is to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a cycle's notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out; Demos and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see, your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five years, and you will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an equality made perfect by universal prostration."

Austin indulged him in a laugh. "I want to hear about ourselves. How is old Ricky?"

"You know of his—what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed to jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?—a very charming little woman she makes, by the way—presentable! quite old Anacreon's rose in milk. Well! everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It continued to flourish in spite. It's in a consumption now, though—emaciated, lean, raw, spectral! I've this morning escaped from Raynham to avoid the sight of it. I have brought our genial uncle Hippias to town—a delightful companion! I said to him: 'We've had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers, 'there's a time when you come to think the Spring old.' You should have heard how he trained out the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my sap just to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's guard ourselves there, and go and order dinner."

"But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?" said Austin.

"Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!"

"A child? Richard has one?" Austin's clear eyes shone with pleasure.

"I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages. He has one: one as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It bore the marriage—the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby, 'twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy. I assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a consummate cure, or a happy release."

By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and smiled sadly.

"How has Ricky turned out?" he asked. "What sort of a character has he?"

"The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it. Character? he has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it. Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the maiden days of Ops! He was going to reform the world, after your fashion, Austin,—you have something to answer for. Unfortunately he began with the feminine side of it. Cupid proud of Phoebus newly slain, or Pluto wishing to people his kingdom, if you like, put it into the soft head of one of the guileless grateful creatures to kiss him for his good work. Oh, horror! he never expected that. Conceive the System in the flesh, and you have our Richard. The consequence is, that this male Peri refuses to enter his Paradise, though the gates are open for him, the trumpets blow, and the fair unspotted one awaits him fruitful within. We heard of him last that he was trying the German waters—preparatory to his undertaking the release of Italy from the subjugation of the Teuton. Let's hope they'll wash him. He is in the company of Lady Judith Felle— your old friend, the ardent female Radical who married the decrepit to carry out her principles. They always marry English lords, or foreign princes: I admire their tactics."

"Judith is bad for him in such a state. I like her, but she was always too sentimental," said Austin.

"Sentiment made her marry the old lord, I suppose? I like her for her sentiment, Austin. Sentimental people are sure to live long and die fat. Feeling, that's the slayer, coz. Sentiment! 'tis the cajolery of existence: the soft bloom which whoso weareth, he or she is enviable. Would that I had more!"

"You're not much changed, Adrian."

"I'm not a Radical, Austin."

Further inquiries, responded to in Adrian's figurative speech, instructed Austin that the baronet was waiting for his son, in a posture of statuesque offended paternity, before he would receive his daughter-in- law and grandson. That was what Adrian meant by the efforts of the System to swallow the baby.

"We're in a tangle," said the wise youth. "Time will extricate us, I presume, or what is the venerable signor good for?"

Austin mused some minutes, and asked for Lucy's place of residence.

"We'll go to her by and by," said Adrian.

"I shall go and see her now," said Austin.

"Well, we'll go and order the dinner first, coz."

"Give me her address."

"Really, Austin, you carry matters with too long a beard," Adrian objected. "Don't you care what you eat?" he roared hoarsely, looking humorously hurt. "I daresay not. A slice out of him that's handy—sauce du ciel! Go, batten on the baby, cannibal. Dinner at seven."

Adrian gave him his own address, and Lucy's, and strolled off to do the better thing.

Overnight Mrs. Berry had observed a long stranger in her tea-cup. Posting him on her fingers and starting him with a smack, he had vaulted lightly and thereby indicated that he was positively coming the next day. She forgot him in the bustle of her duties and the absorption of her faculties in thoughts of the incomparable stranger Lucy had presented to the world, till a knock at the street-door reminded her. "There he is!" she cried, as she ran to open to him. "There's my stranger come!" Never was a woman's faith in omens so justified. The stranger desired to see Mrs. Richard Feverel. He said his name was Mr. Austin Wentworth. Mrs. Berry clasped her hands, exclaiming, "Come at last!" and ran bolt out of the house to look up and down the street. Presently she returned with many excuses for her rudeness, saying: "I expected to see her comin' home, Mr. Wentworth. Every day twice a day she go out to give her blessed angel an airing. No leavin' the child with nursemaids for her! She is a mother! and good milk, too, thank the Lord! though her heart's so low."