The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

by George Meredith

1905


Contents

 BOOK 1.
 CHAPTER I. THE INMATES OF RAYNHAM ABBEY
 CHAPTER II. SHOWING HOW THE FATES SELECTED THE FOURTEENTH BIRTHDAY TO TRY THE STRENGTH OF THE SYSTEM
 CHAPTER III. THE MAGIAN CONFLICT
 CHAPTER IV. ARSON
 CHAPTER V. ADRIAN PLIES HIS HOOK
 CHAPTER VI. JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
 CHAPTER VII. DAPHNE'S BOWER
 CHAPTER VIII. THE BITTER CUP
 CHAPTER IX. A FINE DISTINCTION
 CHAPTER X. RICHARD PASSES THROUGH HIS PRELIMINARY ORDEAL, AND IS THE OCCASION OF AN APHORISM
 CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH THE LAST ACT OF THE BAKEWELL COMEDY IS CLOSED IN A LETTER




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I


Some years ago a book was published under the title of "The Pilgrim's
Scrip." It consisted of a selection of original aphorisms by an
anonymous gentleman, who in this bashful manner gave a bruised heart to
the world.

He made no pretension to novelty. "Our new thoughts have thrilled dead
bosoms," he wrote; by which avowal it may be seen that youth had
manifestly gone from him, since he had ceased to be jealous of the
ancients. There was a half-sigh floating through his pages for those
days of intellectual coxcombry, when ideas come to us affecting the
embraces of virgins, and swear to us they are ours alone, and no one
else have they ever visited: and we believe them.

For an example of his ideas of the sex he said:

"I expect that Woman will be the last thing civilized by Man."

Some excitement was produced in the bosoms of ladies by so monstrous a
scorn of them.

One adventurous person betook herself to the Heralds' College, and
there ascertained that a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves, which stood
on the title-page of the book, formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy
Bearne Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain Western county
folding Thames: a man of wealth and honour, and a somewhat lamentable
history.

The outline of the baronet's story was by no means new. He had a wife,
and he had a friend. His marriage was for love; his wife was a beauty;
his friend was a sort of poet. His wife had his whole heart, and his
friend all his confidence. When he selected Denzil Somers from among
his college chums, it was not on account of any similarity of
disposition between them, but from his intense worship of genius, which
made him overlook the absence of principle in his associate for the
sake of such brilliant promise. Denzil had a small patrimony to lead
off with, and that he dissipated before he left college; thenceforth he
was dependent upon his admirer, with whom he lived, filling a nominal
post of bailiff to the estates, and launching forth verse of some
satiric and sentimental quality; for being inclined to vice, and
occasionally, and in a quiet way, practising it, he was of course a
sentimentalist and a satirist, entitled to lash the Age and complain of
human nature. His earlier poems, published under the pseudonym of
Diaper Sandoe, were so pure and bloodless in their love passages, and
at the same time so biting in their moral tone, that his reputation was
great among the virtuous, who form the larger portion of the English
book-buying public. Election-seasons called him to ballad-poetry on
behalf of the Tory party. Diaper possessed undoubted fluency, but did
tittle, though Sir Austin was ever expecting much of him.

A languishing, inexperienced woman, whose husband in mental and in
moral stature is more than the ordinary height above her, and who, now
that her first romantic admiration of his lofty bearing has worn off,
and her fretful little refinements of taste and sentiment are not
instinctively responded to, is thrown into no wholesome household
collision with a fluent man, fluent in prose and rhyme. Lady Feverel,
when she first entered on her duties at Raynham, was jealous of her
husband's friend. By degrees she tolerated him. In time he touched his
guitar in her chamber, and they played Rizzio and Mary together.

"For I am not the first who found
The name of Mary fatal!"


says a subsequent sentimental alliterative love-poem of Diaper's.

Such was the outline of the story. But the baronet could fill it up. He
had opened his soul to these two. He had been noble Love to the one,
and to the other perfect Friendship. He had bid them be brother and
sister whom he loved, and live a Golden Age with him at Raynham. In
fact, he had been prodigal of the excellences of his nature, which it
is not good to be, and, like Timon, he became bankrupt, and fell upon
bitterness.

The faithless lady was of no particular family; an orphan daughter of
an admiral who educated her on his half-pay, and her conduct struck but
at the man whose name she bore.

After five years of marriage, and twelve of friendship, Sir Austin was
left to his loneliness with nothing to ease his heart of love upon save
a little baby boy in a cradle. He forgave the man: he put him aside as
poor for his wrath. The woman he could not forgive; she had sinned
every way. Simple ingratitude to a benefactor was a pardonable
transgression, for he was not one to recount and crush the culprit
under the heap of his good deeds. But her he had raised to be his
equal, and he judged her as his equal. She had blackened the world's
fair aspect for him.

In the presence of that world, so different to him now, he preserved
his wonted demeanor, and made his features a flexible mask. Mrs. Doria
Forey, his widowed sister, said that Austin might have retired from his
Parliamentary career for a time, and given up gaieties and that kind of
thing; her opinion, founded on observation of him in public and
private, was, that the light thing who had taken flight was but a
feather on her brother's Feverel-heart, and his ordinary course of life
would be resumed. There are times when common men cannot bear the
weight of just so much. Hippias Feverel, one of his brothers, thought
him immensely improved by his misfortune, if the loss of such a person
could be so designated; and seeing that Hippias received in consequence
free quarters at Raynham, and possession of the wing of the Abbey she
had inhabited, it is profitable to know his thoughts. If the baronet
had given two or three blazing dinners in the great hall he would have
deceived people generally, as he did his relatives and intimates. He
was too sick for that: fit only for passive acting.

The nursemaid waking in the night beheld a solitary figure darkening a
lamp above her little sleeping charge, and became so used to the sight
as never to wake with a start. One night she was strangely aroused by a
sound of sobbing. The baronet stood beside the cot in his long black
cloak and travelling cap. His fingers shaded a lamp, and reddened
against the fitful darkness that ever and anon went leaping up the
wall. She could hardly believe her senses to see the austere gentleman,
dead silent, dropping tear upon tear before her eyes. She lay
stone-still in a trance of terror and mournfulness, mechanically
counting the tears as they fell, one by one. The hidden face, the fall
and flash of those heavy drops in the light of the lamp he held, the
upright, awful figure, agitated at regular intervals like a piece of
clockwork by the low murderous catch of his breath: it was so piteous
to her poor human nature that her heart began wildly palpitating.
Involuntarily the poor girl cried out to him, "Oh, sir!" and fell
a-weeping. Sir Austin turned the lamp on her pillow, and harshly bade
her go to sleep, striding from the room forthwith. He dismissed her
with a purse the next day.

Once, when he was seven years old, the little fellow woke up at night
to see a lady bending over him. He talked of this the next day, but it
was treated as a dream; until in the course of the day his uncle
Algernon was driven home from Lobourne cricket-ground with a broken
leg. Then it was recollected that there was a family ghost; and, though
no member of the family believed in the ghost, none would have given up
a circumstance that testified to its existence; for to possess a ghost
is a distinction above titles.

Algernon Feverel lost his leg, and ceased to be a gentleman in the
Guards. Of the other uncles of young Richard, Cuthbert, the sailor,
perished in a spirited boat expedition against a slaving negro chief up
the Niger. Some of the gallant lieutenant's trophies of war decorated
the little boy's play-shed at Raynham, and he bequeathed his sword to
Richard, whose hero he was. The diplomatist and beau, Vivian, ended his
flutterings from flower to flower by making an improper marriage, as is
the fate of many a beau, and was struck out of the list of visitors.
Algernon generally occupied the baronet's disused town-house, a
wretched being, dividing his time between horse and card exercise:
possessed, it was said, of the absurd notion that a man who has lost
his balance by losing his leg may regain it by sticking to the bottle.
At least, whenever he and his brother Hippias got together, they never
failed to try whether one leg, or two, stood the bottle best. Much of a
puritan as Sir Austin was in his habits, he was too good a host, and
too thorough a gentleman, to impose them upon his guests. The brothers,
and other relatives, might do as they would while they did not disgrace
the name, and then it was final: they must depart to behold his
countenance no more.

Algernon Feverel was a simple man, who felt, subsequent to his
misfortune, as he had perhaps dimly fancied it before, that his career
lay in his legs, and was now irrevocably cut short. He taught the boy
boxing, and shooting, and the arts of fence, and superintended the
direction of his animal vigour with a melancholy vivacity. The
remaining energies of Algernon's mind were devoted to animadversions on
swift bowling. He preached it over the county, struggling through
laborious literary compositions, addressed to sporting newspapers, on
the Decline of Cricket. It was Algernon who witnessed and chronicled
young Richard's first fight, which was with young Tom Blaize of
Belthorpe Farm, three years the boy's senior.

Hippias Feverel was once thought to be the genius of the family. It was
his ill luck to have strong appetites and a weak stomach; and, as one
is not altogether fit for the battle of life who is engaged in a
perpetual contention with his dinner, Hippias forsook his prospects at
the Bar, and, in the embraces of dyspepsia, compiled his ponderous work
on the Fairy Mythology of Europe. He had little to do with the Hope of
Raynham beyond what he endured from his juvenile tricks.

A venerable lady, known as Great-Aunt Grantley, who had money to
bequeath to the heir, occupied with Hippias the background of the house
and shared her candles with him. These two were seldom seen till the
dinner hour, for which they were all day preparing, and probably all
night remembering, for the Eighteenth Century was an admirable
trencherman, and cast age aside while there was a dish on the table.

Mrs. Doris Foray was the eldest of the three sisters of the baronet, a
florid affable woman, with fine teeth, exceedingly fine light wavy
hair, a Norman nose, and a reputation for understanding men; and that,
with these practical creatures, always means the art of managing them.
She had married an expectant younger son of a good family, who deceased
before the fulfilment of his prospects; and, casting about in her mind
the future chances of her little daughter and sole child, Clare, she
marked down a probability. The far sight, the deep determination, the
resolute perseverance of her sex, where a daughter is to be provided
for and a man to be overthrown, instigated her to invite herself to
Raynham, where, with that daughter, she fixed herself.

The other two Feverel ladies were the wife of Colonel Wentworth and the
widow of Mr. Justice Harley: and the only thing remarkable about them
was that they were mothers of sons of some distinction.

Austin Wentworth's story was of that wretched character which to be
comprehended, that justice should be dealt him, must be told out and
openly; which no one dares now do.

For a fault in early youth, redeemed by him nobly, according to his
light, he was condemned to undergo the world's harsh judgment: not for
the fault—for its atonement.

"—Married his mother's housemaid," whispered Mrs. Doria, with a ghastly
look, and a shudder at young men of republican sentiments, which he was
reputed to entertain. "'The compensation for Injustice,' says the
'Pilgrim's Scrip,' is, that in that dark Ordeal we gather the worthiest
around us."

And the baronet's fair friend, Lady Blandish, and some few true men and
women, held Austin Wentworth high.

He did not live with his wife; and Sir Austin, whose mind was bent on
the future of our species, reproached him with being barren to
posterity, while knaves were propagating.

The principal characteristic of the second nephew, Adrian Harley, was
his sagacity. He was essentially the wise youth, both in counsel and in
action.

"In action," the "Pilgrim's Scrip" observes, "Wisdom goes by
majorities."

Adrian had an instinct for the majority, and, as the world invariably
found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of wise youth was
acquiesced in without irony.

The wise youth, then, had the world with him, but no friends. Nor did
he wish for those troublesome appendages of success. He caused himself
to be required by people who could serve him; feared by such as could
injure. Not that he went out of the way to secure his end, or risked
the expense of a plot. He did the work as easily as he ate his daily
bread. Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have scourged
out of his garden, certainly: an epicurean of our modern notions. To
satisfy his appetites without rashly staking his character, was the
wise youth's problem for life. He had no intimates except Gibbon and
Horace, and the society of these fine aristocrats of literature helped
him to accept humanity as it had been, and was; a supreme ironic
procession, with laughter of Gods in the background. Why not laughter
of mortals also? Adrian had his laugh in his comfortable corner. He
possessed peculiar attributes of a heathen God. He was a disposer of
men: he was polished, luxurious, and happy—at their cost. He lived in
eminent self-content, as one lying on soft cloud, lapt in sunshine. Nor
Jove, nor Apollo, cast eye upon the maids of earth with cooler fire of
selection, or pursued them in the covert with more sacred impunity. And
he enjoyed his reputation for virtue as something additional. Stolen
fruits are said to be sweet; undeserved rewards are exquisite.

The best of it was, that Adrian made no pretences. He did not solicit
the favourable judgment of the world. Nature and he attempted no other
concealment than the ordinary mask men wear. And yet the world would
proclaim him moral, as well as wise, and the pleasing converse every
way of his disgraced cousin Austin.

In a word, Adrian Harley had mastered his philosophy at the early age
of one-and-twenty. Many would be glad to say the same at that age
twice- told: they carry in their breasts a burden with which Adrian's
was not loaded. Mrs. Doria was nearly right about his heart. A singular
mishap (at his birth, possibly, or before it) had unseated that organ,
and shaken it down to his stomach, where it was a much lighter, nay, an
inspiring weight, and encouraged him merrily onward. Throned there it
looked on little that did not arrive to gratify it. Already that region
was a trifle prominent in the person of the wise youth, and carried, as
it were, the flag of his philosophical tenets in front of him. He was
charming after dinner, with men or with women: delightfully sarcastic:
perhaps a little too unscrupulous in his moral tone, but that his moral
reputation belied him, and it must be set down to generosity of
disposition.

Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's intellectual
favourites, chosen from mankind to superintend the education of his son
at Raynham. Adrian had been destined for the Church. He did not enter
into Orders. He and the baronet had a conference together one day, and
from that time Adrian became a fixture in the Abbey. His father died in
his promising son's college term, bequeathing him nothing but his legal
complexion, and Adrian became stipendiary officer in his uncle's
household.

A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the only comrade of his age
that he ever saw, was Master Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir Austin's
solicitor, a boy without a character.

A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither to
go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered that the schools
were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by parental
vigilance be kept pretty secure from the Serpent until Eve sided with
him: a period that might be deferred, he said. He had a system of
education for his son. How it worked we shall see.




CHAPTER II


October, shone royally on Richard's fourteenth birthday. The brown
beechwoods and golden birches glowed to a brilliant sun. Banks of
moveless cloud hung about the horizon, mounded to the west, where slept
the wind. Promise of a great day for Raynham, as it proved to be,
though not in the manner marked out.

Already archery-booths and cricketing-tents were rising on the lower
grounds towards the river, whither the lads of Bursley and Lobourne, in
boats and in carts, shouting for a day of ale and honour, jogged
merrily to match themselves anew, and pluck at the lining laurel from
each other's brows, line manly Britons. The whole park was beginning to
be astir and resound with holiday cries. Sir Austin Feverel, a thorough
good Tory, was no game-preserver, and could be popular whenever he
chose, which Sir Males Papworth, on the other side of the river, a
fast-handed Whig and terror to poachers, never could be. Half the
village of Lobourne was seen trooping through the avenues of the park.
Fiddlers and gipsies clamoured at the gates for admission: white
smocks, and slate, surmounted by hats of serious brim, and now and then
a scarlet cloak, smacking of the old country, dotted the grassy sweeps
to the levels.

And all the time the star of these festivities was receding further and
further, and eclipsing himself with his reluctant serf Ripton, who kept
asking what they were to do and where they were going, and how late it
was in the day, and suggesting that the lads of Lobourne would be
calling out for them, and Sir Austin requiring their presence, without
getting any attention paid to his misery or remonstrances. For Richard
had been requested by his father to submit to medical examination like
a boor enlisting for a soldier, and he was in great wrath.

He was flying as though he would have flown from the shameful thought
of what had been asked of him. By-and-by he communicated his sentiments
to Ripton, who said they were those of a girl: an offensive remark,
remembering which, Richard, after they had borrowed a couple of guns at
the bailiff's farm, and Ripton had fired badly, called his friend a
fool.

Feeling that circumstances were making him look wonderfully like one,
Ripton lifted his head and retorted defiantly, "I'm not!"

This angry contradiction, so very uncalled for, annoyed Richard, who
was still smarting at the loss of the birds, owing to Ripton's bad
shot, and was really the injured party. He, therefore bestowed the
abusive epithet on Ripton anew, and with increase of emphasis.

"You shan't call me so, then, whether I am or not," says Ripton, and
sucks his lips.

This was becoming personal. Richard sent up his brows, and stared at
his defier an instant. He then informed him that he certainly should
call him so, and would not object to call him so twenty times.

"Do it, and see!" returns Ripton, rocking on his feet, and breathing
quick.

With a gravity of which only boys and other barbarians are capable,
Richard went through the entire number, stressing the epithet to
increase the defiance and avoid monotony, as he progressed, while
Ripton bobbed his head every time in assent, as it were, to his
comrade's accuracy, and as a record for his profound humiliation. The
dog they had with them gazed at the extraordinary performance with
interrogating wags of the tail.

Twenty times, duly and deliberately, Richard repeated the obnoxious
word.

At the twentieth solemn iteration of Ripton's capital shortcoming,
Ripton delivered a smart back-hander on Richard's mouth, and squared
precipitately; perhaps sorry when the deed was done, for he was a kind-
hearted lad, and as Richard simply bowed in acknowledgment of the blow
he thought he had gone too far. He did not know the young gentleman he
was dealing with. Richard was extremely cool.

"Shall we fight here?" he said.

"Anywhere you like," replied Ripton.

"A little more into the wood, I think. We may be interrupted." And
Richard led the way with a courteous reserve that somewhat chilled
Ripton's ardour for the contest. On the skirts of the wood, Richard
threw off his jacket and waistcoat, and, quite collected, waited for
Ripton to do the same. The latter boy was flushed and restless; older
and broader, but not so tight-limbed and well-set. The Gods, sole
witnesses of their battle, betted dead against him. Richard had mounted
the white cockade of the Feverels, and there was a look in him that
asked for tough work to extinguish. His brows, slightly lined upward at
the temples, converging to a knot about the well-set straight nose; his
full grey eyes, open nostrils, and planted feet, and a gentlemanly air
of calm and alertness, formed a spirited picture of a young combatant.
As for Ripton, he was all abroad, and fought in school-boy style—that
is, he rushed at the foe head foremost, and struck like a windmill. He
was a lumpy boy. When he did hit, he made himself felt; but he was at
the mercy of science. To see him come dashing in, blinking and puffing
and whirling his arms abroad while the felling blow went straight
between them, you perceived that he was fighting a fight of
desperation, and knew it. For the dreaded alternative glared him in the
face that, if he yielded, he must look like what he had been twenty
times calumniously called; and he would die rather than yield, and
swing his windmill till he dropped. Poor boy! he dropped frequently.
The gallant fellow fought for appearances, and down he went. The Gods
favour one of two parties. Prince Turnus was a noble youth; but he had
not Pallas at his elbow. Ripton was a capital boy; he had no science.
He could not prove he was not a fool! When one comes to think of it,
Ripton did choose the only possible way, and we should all of us have
considerable difficulty in proving the negative by any other. Ripton
came on the unerring fist again and again; and if it was true, as he
said in short colloquial gasps, that he required as much beating as an
egg to be beaten thoroughly, a fortunate interruption alone saved our
friend from resembling that substance. The boys heard summoning voices,
and beheld Mr. Morton of Poer Hall and Austin Wentworth stepping
towards them.

A truce was sounded, jackets were caught up, guns shouldered, and off
they trotted in concert through the depths of the wood, not stopping
till that and half-a-dozen fields and a larch plantation were well
behind them.

When they halted to take breath, there was a mutual study of faces.
Ripton's was much discoloured, and looked fiercer with its natural war-
paint than the boy felt. Nevertheless, he squared up dauntlessly on the
new ground, and Richard, whose wrath was appeased, could not refrain
from asking him whether he had not really had enough.

"Never!" shouts the noble enemy.

"Well, look here," said Richard, appealing to common sense, "I'm tired
of knocking you down. I'll say you're not a fool, if you'll give me
your hand."

Ripton demurred an instant to consult with honour, who bade him catch
at his chance.

He held out his hand. "There!" and the boys grasped hands and were fast
friends. Ripton had gained his point, and Richard decidedly had the
best of it. So, they were on equal ground. Both, could claim a victory,
which was all the better for their friendship.

Ripton washed his face and comforted his nose at a brook, and was now
ready to follow his friend wherever he chose to lead. They continued to
beat about for birds. The birds on the Raynham estates were found
singularly cunning, and repeatedly eluded the aim of these prime shots,
so they pushed their expedition into the lands of their neighbors, in
search of a stupider race, happily oblivious of the laws and conditions
of trespass; unconscious, too, that they were poaching on the demesne
of the notorious Farmer Blaize, the free-trade farmer under the shield
of the Papworths, no worshipper of the Griffin between two
Wheatsheaves; destined to be much allied with Richard's fortunes from
beginning to end. Farmer Blaize hated poachers, and, especially young
chaps poaching, who did it mostly from impudence. He heard the
audacious shots popping right and left, and going forth to have a
glimpse at the intruders, and observing their size, swore he would
teach my gentlemen a thing, lords or no lords.

Richard had brought down a beautiful cock-pheasant, and was exulting
over it, when the farmer's portentous figure burst upon them, cracking
an avenging horsewhip. His salute was ironical.

"Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?"

"Just bagged a splendid bird!" radiant Richard informed him.

"Oh!" Farmer Blaize gave an admonitory flick of the whip.

"Just let me clap eye on't, then."

"Say, please," interposed Ripton, who was not blind to doubtful
aspects.

Farmer Blaize threw up his chin, and grinned grimly.

"Please to you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn't much mind
what come t'yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do. Tall
ye what 'tis'!" He changed his banter to business, "That bird's mine!
Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young scoundrels! I
know ye!" And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and uttered contempt
of the name of Feverel.

Richard opened his eyes.

If you wants to be horsewhipped, you'll stay where y'are!" continued
the farmer. "Giles Blaize never stands nonsense!"

"Then we'll stay," quoth Richard.

"Good! so be't! If you will have't, have't, my men!"

As a preparatory measure, Farmer Blaize seized a wing of the bird, on
which both boys flung themselves desperately, and secured it minus the
pinion.

"That's your game," cried the farmer. "Here's a taste of horsewhip for
ye. I never stands nonsense!" and sweetch went the mighty whip, well
swayed. The boys tried to close with him. He kept his distance and
lashed without mercy. Black blood was made by Farmer Blaize that day!
The boys wriggled, in spite of themselves. It was like a relentless
serpent coiling, and biting, and stinging their young veins to madness.
Probably they felt the disgrace of the contortions they were made to go
through more than the pain, but the pain was fierce, for the farmer
laid about from a practised arm, and did not consider that he had done
enough till he was well breathed and his ruddy jowl inflamed. He
paused, to receive the remainder of the cock-pheasant in his face.

"Take your beastly bird," cried Richard.

"Money, my lads, and interest," roared the farmer, lashing out again.

Shameful as it was to retreat, there was but that course open to them.
They decided to surrender the field.

"Look! you big brute," Richard shook his gun, hoarse with passion, "I'd
have shot you, if I'd been loaded. Mind if I come across you when I'm
loaded, you coward, I'll fire!" The un-English nature of this threat
exasperated Farmer Blaize, and he pressed the pursuit in time to bestow
a few farewell stripes as they were escaping tight-breeched into
neutral territory. At the hedge they parleyed a minute, the farmer to
inquire if they had had a mortal good tanning and were satisfied, for
when they wanted a further instalment of the same they were to come for
it to Belthorpe Farm, and there it was in pickle: the boys meantime
exploding in menaces and threats of vengeance, on which the farmer
contemptuously turned his back. Ripton had already stocked an armful of
flints for the enjoyment of a little skirmishing. Richard, however,
knocked them all out, saying, "No! Gentlemen don't fling stones; leave
that to the blackguards."

"Just one shy at him!" pleaded Ripton, with his eye on Farmer Blaize's
broad mark, and his whole mind drunken with a sudden revelation of the
advantages of light troops in opposition to heavies.

"No," said Richard, imperatively, "no stones," and marched briskly
away. Ripton followed with a sigh. His leader's magnanimity was wholly
beyond him. A good spanking mark at the farmer would have relieved
Master Ripton; it would have done nothing to console Richard Feverel
for the ignominy he had been compelled to submit to. Ripton was
familiar with the rod, a monster much despoiled of his terrors by
intimacy. Birch- fever was past with this boy. The horrible sense of
shame, self- loathing, universal hatred, impotent vengeance, as if the
spirit were steeped in abysmal blackness, which comes upon a courageous
and sensitive youth condemned for the first time to taste this piece of
fleshly bitterness, and suffer what he feels is a defilement, Ripton
had weathered and forgotten. He was seasoned wood, and took the world
pretty wisely; not reckless of castigation, as some boys become, nor
oversensitive as to dishonour, as his friend and comrade beside him
was.

Richard's blood was poisoned. He had the fever on him severely. He
would not allow stone-flinging, because it was a habit of his to
discountenance it. Mere gentlemanly considerations has scarce shielded
Farmer Blaize, and certain very ungentlemanly schemes were coming to
ghastly heads in the tumult of his brain; rejected solely from their
glaring impracticability even to his young intelligence. A sweeping and
consummate vengeance for the indignity alone should satisfy him.
Something tremendous must be done; and done without delay. At one
moment he thought of killing all the farmer's cattle; next of killing
him; challenging him to single combat with the arms, and according to
the fashion of gentlemen. But the farmer was a coward; he would refuse.
Then he, Richard Feverel, would stand by the farmer's bedside, and
rouse him; rouse him to fight with powder and ball in his own chamber,
in the cowardly midnight, where he might tremble, but dare not refuse.

"Lord!" cried simple Ripton, while these hopeful plots were raging in
his comrade's brain, now sparkling for immediate execution, and anon
lapsing disdainfully dark in their chances of fulfilment, "how I wish
you'd have let me notch him, Ricky! I'm a safe shot. I never miss. I
should feel quite jolly if I'd spanked him once. We should have had the
beat of him at that game. I say!" and a sharp thought drew Ripton's
ideas nearer home, "I wonder whether my nose is as bad as he says!
Where can I see myself?"

To these exclamations Richard was deaf, and he trudged steadily
forward, facing but one object.

After tearing through innumerable hedges, leaping fences, jumping
dykes, penetrating brambly copses, and getting dirty, ragged, and
tired, Ripton awoke from his dream of Farmer Blaize and a blue nose to
the vivid consciousness of hunger; and this grew with the rapidity of
light upon him, till in the course of another minute he was enduring
the extremes of famine, and ventured to question his leader whither he
was being conducted. Raynham was out of sight. They were a long way
down the valley, miles from Lobourne, in a country of sour pools,
yellow brooks, rank pasturage, desolate heath. Solitary cows were seen;
the smoke of a mud cottage; a cart piled with peat; a donkey grazing at
leisure, oblivious of an unkind world; geese by a horse-pond, gabbling
as in the first loneliness of creation; uncooked things that a
famishing boy cannot possibly care for, and must despise. Ripton was in
despair.

"Where are you going to?" he inquired with a voice of the last time of
asking, and halted resolutely.

Richard now broke his silence to reply, "Anywhere."

"Anywhere!" Ripton took up the moody word. "But ain't you awfully
hungry?" he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total emptiness
of his stomach.

"No," was Richard's brief response.

"Not hungry!" Ripton's amazement lent him increased vehemence. "Why,
you haven't had anything to eat since breakfast! Not hungry? I declare
I'm starving. I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and cheese!"

Richard sneered: not for reasons that would have actuated a similar
demonstration of the philosopher.

"Come," cried Ripton, "at all events, tell us where you're going to
stop."

Richard faced about to make a querulous retort. The injured and hapless
visage that met his eye disarmed him. The lad's nose, though not
exactly of the dreaded hue, was really becoming discoloured. To upbraid
him would be cruel. Richard lifted his head, surveyed the position, and
exclaiming "Here!" dropped down on a withered bank, leaving Ripton to
contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move was a worse
perplexity.




CHAPTER III


Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not written
or formally taught, but intuitively understood by all, and invariably
acted upon by the loyal and the true. The race is not nearly civilized,
we must remember. Thus, not to follow your leader whithersoever he may
think proper to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end of
it frowns dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a
comrade on the road, and return home without him: these are tricks
which no boy of spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any
description of mortal grief in consequence. Better so than have his own
conscience denouncing him sneak. Some boys who behave boldly enough are
not troubled by this conscience, and the eyes and the lips of their
fellows have to supply the deficiency. They do it with just as
haunting, and even more horrible pertinacity, than the inner voice, and
the result, if the probation be not very severe and searching, is the
same. The leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host: the comrade
is sworn to serve. Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal. The idea
of turning off and forsaking his friend never once crossed his mind,
though his condition was desperate, and his friend's behaviour that of
a Bedlamite. He announced several times impatiently that they would be
too late for dinner. His friend did not budge. Dinner seemed nothing to
him. There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old dog's nose, as if
incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger was. Ripton took
half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung himself down beside
the taciturn boy, accepting his fate.

Now, the chance that works for certain purposes sent a smart shower
from the sinking sun, and the wet sent two strangers for shelter in the
lane behind the hedge where the boys reclined. One was a travelling
tinker, who lit a pipe and spread a tawny umbrella. The other was a
burly young countryman, pipeless and tentless. They saluted with a nod,
and began recounting for each other's benefit the daylong-doings of the
weather, as it had affected their individual experience and followed
their prophecies. Both had anticipated and foretold a bit of rain
before night, and therefore both welcomed the wet with satisfaction. A
monotonous betweenwhiles kind of talk they kept droning, in harmony
with the still hum of the air. From the weather theme they fell upon
the blessings of tobacco; how it was the poor man's friend, his
company, his consolation, his comfort, his refuge at night, his first
thought in the morning.

"Better than a wife!" chuckled the tinker. "No curtain-lecturin' with a
pipe. Your pipe an't a shrew."

"That be it!" the other chimed in. "Your pipe doan't mak' ye out wi'
all the cash Saturday evenin'."

"Take one," said the tinker, in the enthusiasm of the moment, handing a
grimy short clay. Speed-the-Plough filled from the tinker's pouch, and
continued his praises.

"Penny a day, and there y'are, primed! Better than a wife? Ha, ha!"

"And you can get rid of it, if ye wants for to, and when ye wants,"
added tinker.

"So ye can!" Speed-the-Plough took him up. "And ye doan't want for to.
Leastways, t'other case. I means pipe."

"And," continued tinker, comprehending him perfectly, it don't bring
repentance after it."

"Not nohow, master, it doan't! And"—Speed-the-Plough cocked his eye—
"it doan't eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan't."

Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher, which
the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up the subject
by saying the best thing that could be said, the two smoked for some
time in silence to the drip and patter of the shower.

Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar
hedge. He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her,
every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation;
and he thought that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at
full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the
tinker's pots, smoking, profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed to
be taken up alternately by the grey puffs from their mouths.

It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, "Times is bad!"

His companion assented, "Sure-ly!"

"But it somehow comes round right," resumed the tinker. "Why, look
here. Where's the good o' moping? I sees it all come round right and
tight. Now I travels about. I've got my beat. 'Casion calls me t'other
day to Newcastle!—Eh?"

"Coals!" ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.

"Coals!" echoed the tinker. "You ask what I goes there for, mayhap?
Never you mind. One sees a mort o' life in my trade. Not for coals it
isn't. And I don't carry 'em there, neither. Anyhow, I comes back.
London's my mark. Says I, I'll see a bit o' the sea, and steps aboard a
collier. We were as nigh wrecked as the prophet Paul."

"—A—who's him?" the other wished to know.

"Read your Bible," said the tinker. "We pitched and tossed—'tain't that
game at sea 'tis on land, I can tell ye! I thinks, down we're a-going—
say your prayers, Bob Tiles! That was a night, to be sure! But God's
above the devil, and here I am, ye see." Speed-the-Plough lurched round
on his elbow and regarded him indifferently. "D'ye call that doctrin'?
He bean't al'ays, or I shoo'n't be scrapin' my heels wi' nothin' to do,
and, what's warse, nothin' to eat. Why, look heer. Luck's luck, and bad
luck's the con-trary. Varmer Bollop, t'other day, has's rick burnt
down. Next night his gran'ry's burnt. What do he tak' and go and do? He
takes and goes and hangs unsel', and turns us out of his employ. God
warn't above the devil then, I thinks, or I can't make out the
reckonin'."

The tinker cleared his throat, and said it was a bad case.

"And a darn'd bad case. I'll tak' my oath on't!" cried
Speed-the-Plough. "Well, look heer! Heer's another darn'd bad case. I
threshed for Varmer Blaize Blaize o' Beltharpe afore I goes to Varmer
Bollop. Varmer Blaize misses pilkins. He swears our chaps steals
pilkins. 'Twarn't me steals 'em. What do he tak' and go and do? He
takes and tarns us off, me and another, neck and crop, to scuffle about
and starve, for all he keers. God warn't above the devil then, I
thinks. Not nohow, as I can see!"

The tinker shook his head, and said that was a bad case also.

"And you can't mend it," added Speed-the-Plough. "It's bad, and there
it be. But I'll tell ye what, master. Bad wants payin' for." He nodded
and winked mysteriously. "Bad has its wages as well's honest work, I'm
thinkin'. Varmer Bollop I don't owe no grudge to: Varmer Blaize I do.
And I shud like to stick a Lucifer in his rick some dry windy night."
Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye villainously. "He wants hittin' in
the wind,—jest where the pocket is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and he'll
cry out 'O Lor'!' Varmer Blaize will. You won't get the better o'
Varmer Blaize by no means, as I makes out, if ye doan't hit into him
jest there."

The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from his mouth, and
said that would be taking the devil's side of a bad case. Speed-the-
Plough observed energetically that, if Farmer Blaize was on the other,
he should be on that side.

There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with him. The hope of
Raynham had lent a careless half-compelled attention to the foregoing
dialogue, wherein a common labourer and a travelling tinker had
propounded and discussed one of the most ancient theories of
transmundane dominion and influence on mundane affairs. He now started
to his feet, and came tearing through the briar hedge, calling out for
one of them to direct them the nearest road to Bursley. The tinker was
kindling preparations for his tea, under the tawny umbrella. A loaf was
set forth, oh which Ripton's eyes, stuck in the edge, fastened
ravenously. Speed-the-Plough volunteered information that Bursley was a
good three mile from where they stood, and a good eight mile from
Lobourne.

"I'll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow," said
Richard to the tinker.

"It's a bargain;" quoth the tinker, "eh, missus?"

His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.

The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had just succeeded in
freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as a hedgehog, collared the
loaf.

"Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake," said the tinker to
his companion. "Come! we'll to Bursley after 'em, and talk it out over
a pot o' beer." Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a short time
they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley, while a
horizontal blaze shot across the autumn and from the Western edge of
the rain-cloud.




CHAPTER IV


Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham, and
Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None had seen them save Austin
Wentworth and Mr. Morton. The baronet sat construing their account of
the flight of the lads when they were hailed, and resolved it into an
act of rebellion on the part of his son. At dinner he drank the young
heir's health in ominous silence. Adrian Harley stood up in his place
to propose the health. His speech was a fine piece of rhetoric. He
warmed in it till, after the Ciceronic model, inanimate objects were
personified, and Richard's table-napkin and vacant chair were invoked
to follow the steps of a peerless father, and uphold with his dignity
the honour of the Feverels. Austin Wentworth, whom a soldier's death
compelled to take his father's place in support of the toast, was tame
after such magniloquence. But the reply, the thanks which young Richard
should have delivered in person were not forthcoming. Adrian's oratory
had given but a momentary life to napkin and chair. The company of
honoured friends, and aunts and uncles, remotest cousins, were glad to
disperse and seek amusement in music and tea. Sir Austin did his utmost
to be hospitable cheerful, and requested them to dance. If he had
desired them to laugh he would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a
manner.

"How triste!" said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne's curate, as that most
enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with professional
stiffness.

"One who does not suffer can hardly assent," the curate answered,
basking in her beams.

"Ah, you are good!" exclaimed the lady. "Look at my Clare. She will not
dance on her cousin's birthday with anyone but him. What are we to do
to enliven these people?"

"Alas, madam! you cannot do for all what you do for one," the curate
sighed, and wherever she wandered in discourse, drew her back with
silken strings to gaze on his enamoured soul.

He was the only gratified stranger present. The others had designs on
the young heir. Lady Attenbury of Longford House had brought her
highly- polished specimen of market-ware, the Lady Juliana Jaye, for a
first introduction to him, thinking he had arrived at an age to
estimate and pine for her black eyes and pretty pert mouth. The Lady
Juliana had to pair off with a dapper Papworth, and her mama was
subjected to the gallantries of Sir Miles, who talked land and
steam-engines to her till she was sick, and had to be impertinent in
self-defence. Lady Blandish, the delightful widow, sat apart with
Adrian, and enjoyed his sarcasms on the company. By ten at night the
poor show ended, and the rooms were dark, dark as the prognostics
multitudinously hinted by the disappointed and chilled guests
concerning the probable future of the hope of Raynham. Little Clare
kissed her mama, curtsied to the lingering curate, and went to bed like
a very good girl. Immediately the maid had departed, little Clare
deliberately exchanged night, attire for that of day. She was noted as
an obedient child. Her light was allowed to burn in her room for
half-an-hour, to counteract her fears of the dark. She took the light,
and stole on tiptoe to Richard's room. No Richard was there. She peeped
in further and further. A trifling agitation of the curtains shot her
back through the door and along the passage to her own bedchamber with
extreme expedition. She was not much alarmed, but feeling guilty she
was on her guard. In a short time she was prowling about the passages
again. Richard had slighted and offended the little lady, and was to be
asked whether he did not repent such conduct toward his cousin; not to
be asked whether he had forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from
her; for, if he did not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never
remind him of it, and to-night should be his last chance of a
reconciliation. Thus she meditated, sitting on a stair, and presently
heard Richard's voice below in the hall, shouting for supper.

"Master Richard has returned," old Benson the butler tolled out
intelligence to Sir Austin.

"Well?" said the baronet.

"He complains of being hungry," the butler hesitated, with a look of
solemn disgust.

"Let him eat."

Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that the boy had
called for wine. It was an unprecedented thing. Sir Austin's brows were
portending an arch, but Adrian suggested that he wanted possibly to
drink his birthday, and claret was conceded.

The boys were in the vortex of a partridge-pie when Adrian strolled in
to them. They had now changed characters. Richard was uproarious. He
drank a health with every glass; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes
brilliant. Ripton looked very much like a rogue on the tremble of
detection, but his honest hunger and the partridge-pie shielded him
awhile from Adrian's scrutinizing glance. Adrian saw there was matter
for study, if it were only on Master Ripton's betraying nose, and sat
down to hear and mark.

"Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?" he began his quiet banter,
and provoked a loud peal of laughter from Richard.

"Ha, ha! I say, Rip: 'Havin' good sport, gentlemen, are ye?' You
remember the farmer! Your health, parson! We haven't had our sport yet.
We're going to have some first-rate sport. Oh, well! we haven't much
show of birds. We shot for pleasure, and returned them to the
proprietors. You're fond of game, parson! Ripton is a dead shot in what
Cousin Austin calls the Kingdom of 'would-have-done' and 'might-have-
been.' Up went the birds, and cries Rip, 'I've forgotten to load!' Oh,
ho!—Rip! some more claret.—Do just leave that nose of yours alone.—
Your health, Ripton Thompson! The birds hadn't the decency to wait for
him, and so, parson, it's their fault, and not Rip's, you haven't a
dozen brace at your feet. What have you been doing at home, Cousin
Rady?"

"Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark. The day
without you, my dear boy, must be dull, you know."

"'He speaks: can I trust what he says is sincere?
There's an edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer.'


"Sandoe's poems! You know the couplet, Mr. Rady. Why shouldn't I quote
Sandoe? You know you like him, Rady. But, if you've missed me, I'm
sorry. Rip and I have had a beautiful day. We've made new
acquaintances. We've seen the world. I'm the monkey that has seen the
world, and I'm going to tell you all about it. First, there's a
gentleman who takes a rifle for a fowling-piece. Next, there's a farmer
who warns everybody, gentleman and beggar, off his premises. Next,
there's a tinker and a ploughman, who think that God is always fighting
with the devil which shall command the kingdoms of the earth. The
tinker's for God, and the ploughman"—

"I'll drink your health, Ricky," said Adrian, interrupting.

"Oh, I forgot, parson;—I mean no harm, Adrian. I'm only telling what
I've heard."

"No harm, my dear boy," returned Adrian. "I'm perfectly aware that
Zoroaster is not dead. You have been listening to a common creed. Drink
the Fire-worshippers, if you will."

"Here's to Zoroaster, then!" cried Richard. "I say, Rippy! we'll drink
the Fire-worshippers to-night won't we?"

A fearful conspiratorial frown, that would not have disgraced Guido
Fawkes, was darted back from the, plastic features of Master Ripton.

Richard gave his lungs loud play.

"Why, what did you say about Blaizes, Rippy? Didn't you say it was
fun?"

Another hideous and silencing frown was Ripton's answer. Adrian matched
the innocent youths, and knew that there was talking under the table.
"See," thought he, "this boy has tasted his first scraggy morsel of
life today, and already he talks like an old stager, and has, if I
mistake not, been acting too. My respected chief," he apostrophized Sir
Austin, "combustibles are only the more dangerous for compression. This
boy will be ravenous for Earth when he is let loose, and very soon make
his share of it look as foolish as yonder game-pie!"—a prophecy Adrian
kept to himself.

Uncle Algernon shambled in to see his nephew before the supper was
finished, and his more genial presence brought out a little of the
plot.

"Look here, uncle!" said Richard. "Would you let a churlish old brute
of a farmer strike you without making him suffer for it?"

"I fancy I should return the compliment, my lad," replied his uncle.

"Of course you would! So would I. And he shall suffer for it." The boy
looked savage, and his uncle patted him down.

"I've boxed his son; I'll box him," said Richard, shouting for more
wine.

"What, boy! Is it old Blaize has been putting you up!"

"Never mind, uncle!" The boy nodded mysteriously.

'Look there!' Adrian read on Ripton's face, he says 'never mind,' and
lets it out!

"Did we beat to-day, uncle?"

"Yes, boy; and we'd beat them any day they bowl fair. I'd beat them on
one leg. There's only Watkins and Featherdene among them worth a
farthing."

"We beat!" cries Richard. "Then we'll have some more wine, and drink
their healths."

The bell was rung; wine ordered. Presently comes in heavy Benson, to
say supplies are cut off. One bottle, and no more. The Captain
whistled: Adrian shrugged.

The bottle, however, was procured by Adrian subsequently. He liked
studying intoxicated urchins.

One subject was at Richard's heart, about which he was reserved in the
midst of his riot. Too proud to inquire how his father had taken his
absence, he burned to hear whether he was in disgrace. He led to it
repeatedly, and it was constantly evaded by Algernon and Adrian. At
last, when the boy declared a desire to wish his father good-night,
Adrian had to tell him that he was to go straight to bed from the
supper- table. Young Richard's face fell at that, and his gaiety
forsook him. He marched to his room without another word.

Adrian gave Sir Austin an able version of his son's behaviour and
adventures; dwelling upon this sudden taciturnity when he heard of his
father's resolution not to see him. The wise youth saw that his chief
was mollified behind his moveless mask, and went to bed, and Horace,
leaving Sir Austin in his study. Long hours the baronet sat alone. The
house had not its usual influx of Feverels that day. Austin Wentworth
was staying at Poer Hall, and had only come over for an hour. At
midnight the house breathed sleep. Sir Austin put on his cloak and cap,
and took the lamp to make his rounds. He apprehended nothing special,
but with a mind never at rest he constituted himself the sentinel of
Raynham. He passed the chamber where the Great-Aunt Grantley lay, who
was to swell Richard's fortune, and so perform her chief business on
earth. By her door he murmured, "Good creature! you sleep with a sense
of duty done," and paced on, reflecting, "She has not made money a
demon of discord," and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's
somnolent door, and to them the world might have subscribed.

A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks
Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's footfall, and truly that was a
strange object to see.—Where is the fortress that has not one weak
gate? where the man who is sound at each particular angle? Ay,
meditates the recumbent cynic, more or less mad is not every mother's
son? Favourable circumstances—good air, good company, two or three good
rules rigidly adhered to—keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the
world fly into a passion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode for it?

Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely toward the
chamber where his son was lying in the left wing of the Abbey. At the
end of the gallery which led to it he discovered a dim light. Doubting
it an illusion, Sir Austin accelerated his pace. This wing had
aforetime a bad character. Notwithstanding what years had done to
polish it into fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to tradition, and
preserved certain stories of ghosts seen there, that effectually
blackened it in the susceptible minds of new house-maids and
under-crooks, whose fears would not allow the sinner to wash his sins.
Sir Austin had heard of the tales circulated by his domestics
underground. He cherished his own belief, but discouraged theirs, and
it was treason at Raynham to be caught traducing the left wing. As the
baronet advanced, the fact of a light burning was clear to him. A
slight descent brought him into the passage, and he beheld a poor human
candle standing outside his son's chamber. At the same moment a door
closed hastily. He entered Richard's room. The boy was absent. The bed
was unpressed: no clothes about: nothing to show that he had been there
that night. Sir Austin felt vaguely apprehensive. Has he gone to my
room to await me? thought the father's heart. Something like a tear
quivered in his arid eyes as he meditated and hoped this might be so.
His own sleeping-room faced that of his son. He strode to it with a
quick heart. It was empty. Alarm dislodged anger from his jealous
heart, and dread of evil put a thousand questions to him that were
answered in air. After pacing up and down his room he determined to go
and ask the boy Thompson, as he called Ripton, what was known to him.

The chamber assigned to Master Ripton Thompson was at the northern
extremity of the passage, and overlooked Lobourne and the valley to the
West. The bed stood between the window and the door. Six Austin found
the door ajar, and the interior dark. To his surprise, the boy
Thompson's couch, as revealed by the rays of his lamp, was likewise
vacant. He was turning back when he fancied he heard the sibilation of
a whispering in the room. Sir Austin cloaked the lamp and trod silently
toward the window. The heads of his son Richard and the boy Thompson
were seen crouched against the glass, holding excited converse
together. Sir Austin listened, but he listened to a language of which
he possessed not the key. Their talk was of fire, and of delay: of
expected agrarian astonishment: of a farmer's huge wrath: of violence
exercised upon gentlemen, and of vengeance: talk that the boys jerked
out by fits, and that came as broken links of a chain impossible to
connect. But they awake curiosity. The baronet condescended to play the
spy upon his son.

Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable stars.

"How jolly I feel!" exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret; and then,
after a luxurious pause—"I think that fellow has pocketed his guinea,
and cut his lucky."

Richard allowed a long minute to pass, during which the baronet waited
anxiously for his voice, hardly recognizing it when he heard its
altered tones.

"If he has, I'll go; and I'll do it myself."

"You would?" returned Master Ripton. "Well, I'm hanged!—I say, if you
went to school, wouldn't you get into rows! Perhaps he hasn't found the
place where the box was stuck in. I think he funks it. I almost wish
you hadn't done it, upon my honour—eh? Look there! what was that? That
looked like something.—I say! do you think we shall ever be found out?"

Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation verb seriously.

"I don't think about it," said Richard, all his faculties bent on signs
from Lobourne.

"Well, but," Ripton persisted, "suppose we are found out?"

"If we are, I must pay for it."

Sir Austin breathed the better for this reply. He was beginning to
gather a clue to the dialogue. His son was engaged in a plot, and was,
moreover, the leader of the plot. He listened for further
enlightenment.

"What was the fellow's name?" inquired Ripton.

His companion answered, "Tom Bakewell."

"I'll tell you what," continued Ripton. "You let it all clean out to
your cousin and uncle at supper.—How capital claret is with partridge-
pie! What a lot I ate!—Didn't you see me frown?"

The young sensualist was in an ecstasy of gratitude to his late
refection, and the slightest word recalled him to it. Richard answered
him:

"Yes; and felt your kick. It doesn't matter. Rady's safe, and uncle
never blabs."

"Well, my plan is to keep it close. You're never safe if you don't.—I
never drank much claret before," Ripton was off again. "Won't I now,
though! claret's my wine. You know, it may come out any day, and then
we're done for," he rather incongruously appended.

Richard only took up the business-thread of his friend's rambling
chatter, and answered:

"You've got nothing to do with it, if we are."

"Haven't I, though! I didn't stick-in the box but I'm an accomplice,
that's clear. Besides," added Ripton, "do you think I should leave you
to bear it all on your shoulders? I ain't that sort of chap, Ricky, I
can tell you."

Sir Austin thought more highly of the boy Thompson. Still it looked a
detestable conspiracy, and the altered manner of his son impressed him
strangely. He was not the boy of yesterday. To Sir Austin it seemed as
if a gulf had suddenly opened between them. The boy had embarked, and
was on the waters of life in his own vessel. It was as vain to call him
back as to attempt to erase what Time has written with the Judgment
Blood! This child, for whom he had prayed nightly in such a fervour and
humbleness to God, the dangers were about him, the temptations thick on
him, and the devil on board piloting. If a day had done so much, what
would years do? Were prayers and all the watchfulness he had expended
of no avail?

A sensation of infinite melancholy overcame the poor gentleman—a
thought that he was fighting with a fate in this beloved boy.

He was half disposed to arrest the two conspirators on the spot, and
make them confess, and absolve themselves; but it seemed to him better
to keep an unseen eye over his son: Sir Austin's old system prevailed.

Adrian characterized this system well, in saying that Sir Austin wished
to be Providence to his son.

If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, one human being might almost
impersonate Providence to another. Alas! love, divine as it is, can do
no more than lighten the house it inhabits—must take its shape,
sometimes intensify its narrowness—can spiritualize, but not expel, the
old lifelong lodgers above-stairs and below.

Sir Austin decided to continue quiescent.

The valley still lay black beneath the large autumnal stars, and the
exclamations of the boys were becoming fevered and impatient. By-and-by
one insisted that he had seen a twinkle. The direction he gave was out
of their anticipations. Again the twinkle was announced. Both boys
started to their feet. It was a twinkle in the right direction now.

"He's done it!" cried Richard, in great heat. "Now you may say old
Blaize'll soon be old Blazes, Rip. I hope he's asleep."

"I'm sure he's snoring!—Look there! He's alight fast enough. He's dry.
He'll burn.—I say," Ripton re-assumed the serious intonation, "do you
think they'll ever suspect us?"

"What if they do? We must brunt it."

"Of course we will. But, I say! I wish you hadn't given them the scent,
though. I like to look innocent. I can't when I know people suspect me.
Lord! look there! Isn't it just beginning to flare up!"

The farmer's grounds were indeed gradually standing out in sombre
shadows.

"I'll fetch my telescope," said Richard. Ripton, somehow not liking to
be left alone, caught hold of him.

"No; don't go and lose the best of it. Here, I'll throw open the
window, and we can see."

The window was flung open, and the boys instantly stretched half their
bodies out of it; Ripton appearing to devour the rising flames with his
mouth: Richard with his eyes.

Opaque and statuesque stood the figure of the baronet behind them. The
wind was low. Dense masses of smoke hung amid the darting snakes of
fire, and a red malign light was on the neighbouring leafage. No
figures could be seen. Apparently the flames had nothing to contend
against, for they were making terrible strides into the darkness.

"Oh!" shouted Richard, overcome by excitement, "if I had my telescope!
We must have it! Let me go and fetch it! I Will!"

The boys struggled together, and Sir Austin stepped back. As he did so,
a cry was heard in the passage. He hurried out, closed the chamber, and
came upon little Clare lying senseless along the door.




CHAPTER V


In the morning that followed this night, great gossip was interchanged
between Raynham and Lobourne. The village told how Farmer Blaize, of
Belthorpe Farm, had his Pick feloniously set fire to; his stables had
caught fire, himself had been all but roasted alive in the attempt to
rescue his cattle, of which numbers had perished in the flames. Raynham
counterbalanced arson with an authentic ghost seen by Miss Clare in the
left wing of the Abbey—the ghost of a lady, dressed in deep mourning, a
scar on her forehead and a bloody handkerchief at her breast, frightful
to behold! and no wonder the child was frightened out of her wits, and
lay in a desperate state awaiting the arrival of the London doctors. It
was added that the servants had all threatened to leave in a body, and
that Sir Austin to appease them had promised to pull down the entire
left wing, like a gentleman; for no decent creature, said Lobourne,
could consent to live in a haunted house.

Rumour for the nonce had a stronger spice of truth than usual. Poor
little Clare lay ill, and the calamity that had befallen Farmer Blaize,
as regards his rick, was not much exaggerated. Sir Austin caused an
account of it be given him at breakfast, and appeared so scrupulously
anxious to hear the exact extent of injury sustained by the farmer that
heavy Benson went down to inspect the scene. Mr. Benson returned, and,
acting under Adrian's malicious advice, framed a formal report of the
catastrophe, in which the farmer's breeches figured, and certain
cooling applications to a part of the farmer's person. Sir Austin
perused it without a smile. He took occasion to have it read out before
the two boys, who listened very demurely, as to ordinary newspaper
incident; only when the report particularized the garments damaged, and
the unwonted distressing position Farmer Blaize was reduced to in his
bed, indecorous fit of sneezing laid hold of Master Ripton Thompson,
and Richard bit his lip and burst into loud laughter, Ripton joining
him, lost to consequences.

"I trust you feel for this poor man," said Sir Austin to his son,
somewhat sternly. He saw no sign of feeling.

It was a difficult task for Sir Austin to keep his old countenance
toward the hope of Raynham, knowing him the accomplice-incendiary, and
believing the deed to have been unprovoked and wanton. But he must do
so, he knew, to let the boy have a fair trial against himself. Be it
said, moreover, that the baronet's possession of his son's secret
flattered him. It allowed him to act, and in a measure to feel, like
Providence; enabled him to observe and provide for the movements of
creatures in the dark. He therefore treated the boy as he commonly did,
and Richard saw no change in his father to make him think he was
suspected.

The youngster's game was not so easy against Adrian. Adrian did not
shoot or fish. Voluntarily he did nothing to work off the destructive
nervous fluid, or whatever it may be, which is in man's nature; so that
two culprit boys once in his power were not likely to taste the gentle
hand of mercy; and Richard and Ripton paid for many a trout and
partridge spared. At every minute of the day Ripton was thrown into
sweats of suspicion that discovery was imminent, by some stray remark
or message from Adrian. He was as a fish with the hook in his gills,
mysteriously caught without having nibbled; and dive into what depths
he would he was sensible of a summoning force that compelled him
perpetually towards the gasping surface, which he seemed inevitably
approaching when the dinner- bell sounded. There the talk was all of
Farmer Blaize. If it dropped, Adrian revived it, and his caressing way
with Ripton was just such as a keen sportsman feels toward the creature
that had owned his skill, and is making its appearance for the world to
acknowledge the same. Sir Austin saw the manoeuvres, and admired
Adrian's shrewdness. But he had to check the young natural lawyer, for
the effect of so much masked examination upon Richard was growing
baneful. This fish also felt the hook in his gills, but this fish was
more of a pike, and lay in different waters, where there were old
stumps and black roots to wind about, and defy alike strong pulling and
delicate handling. In other words, Richard showed symptoms of a
disposition to take refuge in lies.

"You know the grounds, my dear boy," Adrian observed to him. "Tell me;
do you think it easy to get to the rick unperceived? I hear they
suspect one of the farmer's turned-off hands."

"I tell you I don't know the grounds," Richard sullenly replied.

"Not?" Adrian counterfeited courteous astonishment. "I thought Mr.
Thompson said you were over there yesterday?"

Ripton, glad to speak the truth, hurriedly assured Adrian that it was
not he had said so.

"Not? You had good sport, gentlemen, hadn't you?"

"Oh, yes!" mumbled the wretched victims, reddening as they remembered,
in Adrian's slightly drawled rusticity of tone, Farmer Blaize's first
address to them.

"I suppose you were among the Fire-worshippers last night, too?"
persisted Adrian. "In some countries, I hear, they manage their best
sport at night-time, and beat up for game with torches. It must be a
fine sight. After all, the country would be dull if we hadn't a rip
here and there to treat us to a little conflagration."

"A rip!" laughed Richard, to his friend's disgust and alarm at his
daring. "You don't mean this Rip, do you?"

"Mr. Thompson fire a rick? I should as soon suspect you, my dear boy.—
You are aware, young gentlemen, that it is rather a serious thing eh?
In this country, you know, the landlord has always been the pet of the
Laws. By the way," Adrian continued, as if diverging to another topic,
"you met two gentlemen of the road in your explorations yesterday,
Magians. Now, if I were a magistrate of the county, like Sir Miles
Papworth, my suspicions would light upon those gentlemen. A tinker and
a ploughman, I think you said, Mr. Thompson. Not? Well, say two
ploughmen."

"More likely two tinkers," said Richard.

"Oh! if you wish to exclude the ploughman—was he out of employ?"

Ripton, with Adrian's eyes inveterately fixed on him, stammered an
affirmative.

"The tinker, or the ploughman?"

"The ploughm—" Ingenuous Ripton looking about, as if to aid himself
whenever he was able to speak the truth, beheld Richard's face
blackening at him, and swallowed back half the word.

"The ploughman!" Adrian took him up cheerily. "Then we have here a
ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman out of employ, and a rick
burnt. The burning of a rick is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman
out of employ is a vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are
advancing to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only to
prove their proximity at a certain hour, and our ploughman voyages
beyond seas."

"Is it transportation for rick-burning?" inquired Ripton aghast.

Adrian spoke solemnly: "They shave your head. You are manacled. Your
diet is sour bread and cheese-parings. You work in strings of twenties
and thirties. ARSON is branded on your backs in an enormous A.
Theological works are the sole literary recreation of the
well-conducted and deserving. Consider the fate of this poor fellow,
and what an act of vengeance brings him to! Do you know his name?"

"How should I know his name?" said Richard, with an assumption of
innocence painful to see.

Sir Austin remarked that no doubt it would soon be known, and Adrian
perceived that he was to quiet his line, marvelling a little at the
baronet's blindness to what was so clear. He would not tell, for that
would ruin his influence with Richard; still he wanted some present
credit for his discernment and devotion. The boys got away from dinner,
and, after deep consultation, agreed upon a course of conduct, which
was to commiserate with Farmer Blaize loudly, and make themselves look
as much like the public as it was possible for two young malefactors to
look, one of whom already felt Adrian's enormous A devouring his back
with the fierceness of the Promethean eagle, and isolating him forever
from mankind. Adrian relished their novel tactics sharply, and led them
to lengths of lamentation for Farmer Blaize. Do what they might, the
hook was in their gills. The farmer's whip had reduced them to bodily
contortions; these were decorous compared with the spiritual writhings
they had to perform under Adrian's manipulation. Ripton was fast
becoming a coward, and Richard a liar, when next morning Austin
Wentworth came over from Poer Hall bringing news that one Mr. Thomas
Bakewell, yeoman, had been arrested on suspicion of the crime of Arson
and lodged in jail, awaiting the magisterial pleasure of Sir Miles
Papworth. Austin's eye rested on Richard as he spoke these terrible
tidings. The hope of Raynham returned his look, perfectly calm, and
had, moreover, the presence of mind not to look at Ripton.




CHAPTER VI


As soon as they could escape, the boys got together into an obscure
corner of the park, and there took counsel of their extremity.

"Whatever shall we do now?" asked Ripton of his leader.

Scorpion girt with fire was never in a more terrible prison-house than
poor Ripton, around whom the raging element he had assisted to create
seemed to be drawing momently narrower circles.

"There's only one chance," said Richard, coming to a dead halt, and
folding his arms resolutely.

His comrade inquired with the utmost eagerness what that chance might
be.

Richard fixed his eyes on a flint, and replied: "We must rescue that
fellow from jail."

Ripton gazed at his leader, and fell back with astonishment. "My dear
Ricky! but how are we to do it?"

Richard, still perusing his flint, replied: "We must manage to get a
file in to him and a rope. It can be done, I tell you. I don't care
what I pay. I don't care what I do. He must be got out."

"Bother that old Blaize!" exclaimed Ripton, taking off his cap to wipe
his frenzied forehead, and brought down his friend's reproof.

"Never mind old Blaize now. Talk about letting it out! Look at you. I'm
ashamed of you. You talk about Robin Hood and King Richard! Why, you
haven't an atom of courage. Why, you let it out every second of the
day. Whenever Rady begins speaking you start; I can see the
perspiration rolling down you. Are you afraid?—And then you contradict
yourself. You never keep to one story. Now, follow me. We must risk
everything to get him out. Mind that! And keep out of Adrian's way as
much as you can. And keep to one story."

With these sage directions the young leader marched his
companion-culprit down to inspect the jail where Tom Bakewell lay
groaning over the results of the super-mundane conflict, and the victim
of it that he was.

In Lobourne Austin Wentworth had the reputation of the poor man's
friend; a title he earned more largely ere he went to the reward God
alone can give to that supreme virtue. Dame Bakewell, the mother of
Tom, on hearing of her son's arrest, had run to comfort him and render
him what help she could; but this was only sighs and tears, and, oh
deary me! which only perplexed poor Tom, who bade her leave an unlucky
chap to his fate, and not make himself a thundering villain. Whereat
the dame begged him to take heart, and he should have a true comforter.
"And though it's a gentleman that's coming to you, Tom—for he never
refuses a poor body," said Mrs. Bakewell, "it's a true Christian, Tom!
and the Lord knows if the sight of him mayn't be the saving of you, for
he's light to look on, and a sermon to listen to, he is!"

Tom was not prepossessed by the prospect of a sermon, and looked a
sullen dog enough when Austin entered his cell. He was surprised at the
end of half-an-hour to find himself engaged in man-to-man conversation
with a gentleman and a Christian. When Austin rose to go Tom begged
permission to shake his hand.

"Take and tell young master up at the Abbey that I an't the chap to
peach. He'll know. He's a young gentleman as'll make any man do as he
wants 'em! He's a mortal wild young gentleman! And I'm a Ass! That's
where 'tis. But I an't a blackguard. Tell him that, sir!"

This was how it came that Austin eyed young Richard seriously while he
told the news at Raynham. The boy was shy of Austin more than of
Adrian. Why, he did not know; but he made it a hard task for Austin to
catch him alone, and turned sulky that instant. Austin was not clever
like Adrian: he seldom divined other people's ideas, and always went
the direct road to his object; so instead of beating about and setting
the boy on the alert at all points, crammed to the muzzle with lies, he
just said, "Tom Bakewell told me to let you know he does not intend to
peach on you," and left him.

Richard repeated the intelligence to Ripton, who cried aloud that Tom
was a brick.

"He shan't suffer for it," said Richard, and pondered on a thicker rope
and sharper file.

"But will your cousin tell?" was Ripton's reflection.

"He!" Richard's lip expressed contempt. "A ploughman refuses to peach,
and you ask if one of our family will?"

Ripton stood for the twentieth time reproved on this point.

The boys had examined the outer walls of the jail, and arrived at the
conclusion that Tom's escape might be managed if Tom had spirit, and
the rope and file could be anyway reached to him. But to do this,
somebody must gain admittance to his cell, and who was to be taken into
their confidence?

"Try your cousin," Ripton suggested, after much debate.

Richard, smiling, wished to know if he meant Adrian.

"No, no!" Ripton hurriedly reassured him. "Austin."

The same idea was knocking at Richard's head.

"Let's get the rope and file first," said he, and to Bursley they went
for those implements to defeat the law, Ripton procuring the file at
one shop and Richard the rope at another, with such masterly cunning
did they lay their measures for the avoidance of every possible chance
of detection. And better to assure this, in a wood outside Bursley
Richard stripped to his shirt and wound the rope round his body,
tasting the tortures of anchorites and penitential friars, that nothing
should be risked to make Tom's escape a certainty. Sir Austin saw the
marks at night as his son lay asleep, through the half-opened folds of
his bed- gown.

It was a severe stroke when, after all their stratagems and trouble,
Austin Wentworth refused the office the boys had zealously designed for
him. Time pressed. In a few days poor Tom would have to face the
redoubtable Sir Miles, and get committed, for rumours of overwhelming
evidence to convict him were rife about Lobourne, and Farmer Blaize's
wrath was unappeasable. Again and again young Richard begged his cousin
not to see him disgraced, and to help him in this extremity. Austin
smiled on him.

"My dear Ricky," said he, "there are two ways of getting out of a
scrape: a long way and a short way. When you've tried the roundabout
method, and failed, come to me, and I'll show you the straight route."

Richard was too entirely bent upon the roundabout method to consider
this advice more than empty words, and only ground his teeth at
Austin's unkind refusal.

He imparted to Ripton, at the eleventh hour, that they must do it
themselves, to which Ripton heavily assented.

On the day preceding poor Tom's doomed appearance before the
magistrate, Dame Bakewell had an interview with Austin, who went to
Raynham immediately, and sought Adrian's counsel upon what was to be
done. Homeric laughter and nothing else could be got out of Adrian when
he heard of the doings of these desperate boys: how they had entered
Dame Bakewell's smallest of retail shops, and purchased tea, sugar,
candles, and comfits of every description, till the shop was clear of
customers: how they had then hurried her into her little back-parlour,
where Richard had torn open his shirt and revealed the coils of rope,
and Ripton displayed the point of a file from a serpentine recess in
his jacket: how they had then told the astonished woman that the rope
she saw and the file she saw were instruments for the liberation of her
son; that there existed no other means on earth to save him, they, the
boys, having unsuccessfully attempted all: how upon that Richard had
tried with the utmost earnestness to persuade her to disrobe and wind
the rope round her own person: and Ripton had aired his eloquence to
induce her to secrete the file: how, when she resolutely objected to
the rope, both boys began backing the file, and in an evil hour, she
feared, said Dame Bakewell, she had rewarded the gracious permission
given her by Sir Miles Papworth to visit her son, by tempting Tom to
file the Law. Though, thanks be to the Lord! Dame Bakewell added, Tom
had turned up his nose at the file, and so she had told young Master
Richard, who swore very bad for a young gentleman.

"Boys are like monkeys," remarked Adrian, at the close of his
explosions, "the gravest actors of farcical nonsense that the world
possesses. May I never be where there are no boys! A couple of boys
left to themselves will furnish richer fun than any troop of trained
comedians. No: no Art arrives at the artlessness of nature in matters
of comedy. You can't simulate the ape. Your antics are dull. They
haven't the charming inconsequence of the natural animal. Lack at these
two! Think of the shifts they are put to all day long! They know I know
all about it, and yet their serenity of innocence is all but unruffled
in my presence. You're sorry to think about the end of the business,
Austin? So am I! I dread the idea of the curtain going down. Besides,
it will do Ricky a world of good. A practical lesson is the best
lesson."

"Sinks deepest," said Austin, "but whether he learns good or evil from
it is the question at stake."

Adrian stretched his length at ease.

"This will be his first nibble at experience, old Time's fruit, hateful
to the palate of youth! for which season only hath it any nourishment!
Experience! You know Coleridge's capital simile?—Mournful you call it?
Well! all wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore, coz, that the wise do
love the Comic Muse. Their own high food would kill them. You shall
find great poets, rare philosophers, night after night on the broad
grin before a row of yellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because
all's dark at home. The stage is the pastime of great minds. That's how
it comes that the stage is now down. An age of rampant little minds, my
dear Austin! How I hate that cant of yours about an Age of Work—you,
and your Mortons, and your parsons Brawnley, rank radicals all of you,
base materialists! What does Diaper Sandoe sing of your Age of Work?
Listen!

'An Age of betty tit for tat,
    An Age of busy gabble:
An Age that's like a brewer's vat,
    Fermenting for the rabble!

'An Age that's chaste in Love, but lax
    To virtuous abuses:
Whose gentlemen and ladies wax
    Too dainty for their uses.

'An Age that drives an Iron Horse,
    Of Time and Space defiant;
Exulting in a Giant's Force,
    And trembling at the Giant.

'An Age of Quaker hue and cut,
    By Mammon misbegotten;
See the mad Hamlet mouth and strut!
    And mark the Kings of Cotton!

'From this unrest, lo, early wreck'd,
    A Future staggers crazy,
Ophelia of the Ages, deck'd
    With woeful weed and daisy!'"


Murmuring, "Get your parson Brawnley to answer that!" Adrian changed
the resting-place of a leg, and smiled. The Age was an old battle-field
between him and Austin.

"My parson Brawnley, as you call him, has answered it," said Austin,
"not by hoping his best, which would probably leave the Age to go mad
to your satisfaction, but by doing it. And he has and will answer your
Diaper Sandoe in better verse, as he confutes him in a better life."

"You don't see Sandoe's depth," Adrian replied. "Consider that phrase,
'Ophelia of the Ages'! Is not Brawnley, like a dozen other leading
spirits—I think that's your term just the metaphysical Hamlet to drive
her mad? She, poor maid! asks for marriage and smiling babes, while my
lord lover stands questioning the Infinite, and rants to the
Impalpable."

Austin laughed. "Marriage and smiling babes she would have in
abundance, if Brawnley legislated. Wait till you know him. He will be
over at Poer Hall shortly, and you will see what a Man of the Age
means. But now, pray, consult with me about these boys."

"Oh, those boys!" Adrian tossed a hand. "Are there boys of the Age as
well as men? Not? Then boys are better than men: boys are for all Ages.
What do you think, Austin? They've been studying Latude's Escape. I
found the book open in Ricky's room, on the top of Jonathan Wild.
Jonathan preserved the secrets of his profession, and taught them
nothing. So they're going to make a Latude of Mr. Tom Bakewell. He's to
be Bastille Bakewell, whether he will or no. Let them. Let the wild
colt run free! We can't help them. We can only look on. We should spoil
the play."

Adrian always made a point of feeding the fretful beast Impatience with
pleasantries—a not congenial diet; and Austin, the most patient of
human beings, began to lose his self-control.

"You talk as if Time belonged to you, Adrian. We have but a few hours
left us. Work first, and joke afterwards. The boy's fate is being
decided now."

"So is everybody's, my dear Austin!" yawned the epicurean.

"Yes, but this boy is at present under our guardianship—under yours
especially."

"Not yet! not yet!" Adrian interjected languidly. "No getting into
scrapes when I have him. The leash, young hound! the collar, young
colt! I'm perfectly irresponsible at present."

"You may have something different to deal with when you are
responsible, if you think that."

"I take my young prince as I find him, coz: a Julian, or a Caracalla: a
Constantine, or a Nero. Then, if he will play the fiddle to a
conflagration, he shall play it well: if he must be a disputatious
apostate, at any rate he shall understand logic and men, and have the
habit of saying his prayers."

"Then you leave me to act alone?" said Austin, rising.

"Without a single curb!" Adrian gesticulated an acquiesced withdrawal.
"I'm sure you would not, still more certain you cannot, do harm. And be
mindful of my prophetic words: Whatever's done, old Blaize will have to
be bought off. There's the affair settled at once. I suppose I must go
to the chief to-night and settle it myself. We can't see this poor
devil condemned, though it's nonsense to talk of a boy being the prime
instigator."

Austin cast an eye at the complacent languor of the wise youth, his
cousin, and the little that he knew of his fellows told him he might
talk forever here, and not be comprehended. The wise youth's two ears
were stuffed with his own wisdom. One evil only Adrian dreaded, it was
clear —the action of the law.

As he was moving away, Adrian called out to him, "Stop, Austin! There!
don't be anxious! You invariably take the glum side. I've done
something. Never mind what. If you go down to Belthorpe, be civil, but
not obsequious. You remember the tactics of Scipio Africanus against
the Punic elephants? Well, don't say a word—in thine ear, coz: I've
turned Master Blaize's elephants. If they charge, 'twill bye a feint,
and back to the destruction of his serried ranks! You understand. Not?
Well, 'tis as well. Only, let none say that I sleep. If I must see him
to- night, I go down knowing he has not got us in his power." The wise
youth yawned, and stretched out a hand for any book that might be
within his reach. Austin left him to look about the grounds for
Richard.




CHAPTER VII


A little laurel-shaded temple of white marble looked out on the river
from a knoll bordering the Raynham beechwoods, and was dubbed by Adrian
Daphne's Bower. To this spot Richard had retired, and there Austin
found him with his head buried in his hands, a picture of desperation,
whose last shift has been defeated. He allowed Austin to greet him and
sit by him without lifting his head. Perhaps his eyes were not
presentable.

"Where's your friend?" Austin began.

"Gone!" was the answer, sounding cavernous from behind hair and
fingers. An explanation presently followed, that a summons had come for
him in the morning from Mr. Thompson; and that Mr. Ripton had departed
against his will.

In fact, Ripton had protested that he would defy his parent and remain
by his friend in the hour of adversity and at the post of danger. Sir
Austin signified his opinion that a boy should obey his parent, by
giving orders to Benson for Ripton's box to be packed and ready before
noon; and Ripton's alacrity in taking the baronet's view of filial duty
was as little feigned as his offer to Richard to throw filial duty to
the winds. He rejoiced that the Fates had agreed to remove him from the
very hot neighbourhood of Lobourne, while he grieved, like an honest
lad, to see his comrade left to face calamity alone. The boys parted
amicably, as they could hardly fail to do, when Ripton had sworn fealty
to the Feverals with a warmth that made him declare himself bond, and
due to appear at any stated hour and at any stated place to fight all
the farmers in England, on a mandate from the heir of the house.

"So you're left alone," said Austin, contemplating the boy's shapely
head. "I'm glad of it. We never know what's in us till we stand by
ourselves."

There appeared to be no answer forthcoming. Vanity, however, replied at
last, "He wasn't much support."

"Remember his good points now he's gone, Ricky."

"Oh! he was staunch," the boy grumbled.

"And a staunch friend is not always to be found. Now, have you tried
your own way of rectifying this business, Ricky?"

"I have done everything."

"And failed!"

There was a pause, and then the deep-toned evasion—

"Tom Bakewell's a coward!"

"I suppose, poor fellow," said Austin, in his kind way, "he doesn't
want to get into a deeper mess. I don't think he's a coward."

"He is a coward," cried Richard. "Do you think if I had a file I would
stay in prison? I'd be out the first night! And he might have had the
rope, too—a rope thick enough for a couple of men his size and weight.
Ripton and I and Ned Markham swung on it for an hour, and it didn't
give way. He's a coward, and deserves his fate. I've no compassion for
a coward."

"Nor I much," said Austin.

Richard had raised his head in the heat of his denunciation of poor
Tom. He would have hidden it had he known the thought in Austin's clear
eyes while he faced them.

"I never met a coward myself," Austin continued. "I have heard of one
or two. One let an innocent man die for him."

"How base!" exclaimed the boy.

"Yes, it was bad," Austin acquiesced.

"Bad!" Richard scorned the poor contempt. "How I would have spurned
him! He was a coward!"

"I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his excuse, and
tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the
confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed
some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own
theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her guilty
accuser."

"What a coward!" shouted Richard. "And he confessed it publicly?"

"You may read it yourself."

"He actually wrote it down, and printed it?"

"You have the book in your father's library. Would you have done so
much?"

Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told people.

"Then who is to call that man a coward?" said Austin. "He expiated his
cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not
cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think 'God does not see.' I
shall escape.' He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that
God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make his
heart bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to know myself an
impostor when men praised me."

Young Richard's eyes were wandering on Austin's gravely cheerful face.
A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.

"So I think you're wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward
because he refuses to try your means of escape," Austin resumed. "A
coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice. And, where the person
involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor
plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a coward."

Richard was dumb. Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a
fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he had
spent on those two saving instruments. If he avowed Tom's manly
behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position. Whereas, by
keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem
injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys
or men.

In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long. He had but a
blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young Richard.
Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher. A single instance, a
cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing
ancient or latent opposition. The born preacher we feel instinctively
to be our foe. He may do some good to the wretches that have been
struck down and lie gasping on the battlefield: he rouses antagonism in
the strong. Richard's nature, left to itself, wanted little more than
an indication of the proper track, and when he said, "Tell me what I
can do, Austin?" he had fought the best half of the battle. His voice
was subdued. Austin put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"You must go down to Farmer Blaize."

"Well!" said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.

"You'll know what to say to him when you're there."

The boy bit his lip and frowned. "Ask a favour of that big brute,
Austin? I can't!"

"Just tell him the whole case, and that you don't intend to stand by
and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of his
scrape."

"But, Austin," the boy pleaded, "I shall have to ask him to help off
Tom Bakewell! How can I ask him, when I hate him?"

Austin bade him go, and think nothing of the consequences till he got
there.

Richard groaned in soul.

"You've no pride, Austin."

"Perhaps not."

"You don't know what it is to ask a favour of a brute you hate."

Richard stuck to that view of the case, and stuck to it the faster the
more imperatively the urgency of a movement dawned upon him.

"Why," continued the boy, "I shall hardly be able to keep my fists off
him!"

"Surely you've punished him enough, boy?" said Austin.

"He struck me!" Richard's lip quivered. "He dared not come at me with
his hands. He struck me with a whip. He'll be telling everybody that he
horsewhipped me, and that I went down and begged his pardon. Begged his
pardon! A Feverel beg his pardon! Oh, if I had my will!"

"The man earns his bread, Ricky. You poached on his grounds. He turned
you off, and you fired his rick."

"And I'll pay him for his loss. And I won't do any more."

"Because you won't ask a favour of him?"

"No! I will not ask a favour of him."

Austin looked at the boy steadily. "You prefer to receive a favour from
poor Tom Bakewell?"

At Austin's enunciation of this obverse view of the matter Richard
raised his brow. Dimly a new light broke in upon him. "Favour from Tom
Bakewell, the ploughman? How do you mean, Austin?"

"To save yourself an unpleasantness you permit a country lad to
sacrifice himself for you? I confess I should not have so much pride."

"Pride!" shouted Richard, stung by the taunt, and set his sight hard at
the blue ridges of the hills.

Not knowing for the moment what else to do, Austin drew a picture of
Tom in prison, and repeated Tom's volunteer statement. The picture,
though his intentions were far from designing it so, had to Richard,
whose perception of humour was infinitely keener, a horrible chaw-bacon
smack about it. Visions of a grinning lout, open from ear to ear,
unkempt, coarse, splay-footed, rose before him and afflicted him with
the strangest sensations of disgust and comicality, mixed up with pity
and remorse—a sort of twisted pathos. There lay Tom; hobnail Tom! a
bacon- munching, reckless, beer-swilling animal! and yet a man; a dear
brave human heart notwithstanding; capable of devotion and
unselfishness. The boy's better spirit was touched, and it kindled his
imagination to realize the abject figure of poor clodpole Tom, and
surround it with a halo of mournful light. His soul was alive. Feelings
he had never known streamed in upon him as from an ethereal casement,
an unwonted tenderness, an embracing humour, a consciousness of some
ineffable glory, an irradiation of the features of humanity. All this
was in the bosom of the boy, and through it all the vision of an actual
hob-nail Tom, coarse, unkempt, open from ear to ear; whose presence was
a finger of shame to him and an oppression of clodpole; yet toward whom
he felt just then a loving-kindness beyond what he felt for any living
creature. He laughed at him, and wept over him. He prized him, while he
shrank from him. It was a genial strife of the angel in him with
constituents less divine; but the angel was uppermost and led the
van—extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured pride—pride
that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of gaping Tom, and
cry to Richard, in the very tone of Adrian's ironic voice, "Behold your
benefactor!"

Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he had stirred.
Little of it was perceptible in Richard's countenance. The lines of his
mouth were slightly drawn; his eyes hard set into the distance. He
remained thus many minutes. Finally he jumped to his legs, saying,
"I'll go at once to old Blaize and tell him."

Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of Daphne's
Bower, in the direction of Lobourne.




CHAPTER VIII


Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard Feverel as
that young gentleman expected him to be. The farmer, seated in his
easy- chair in the little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned
farm-house, with a long clay pipe on the table at his elbow, and a
veteran pointer at his feet, had already given audience to three
distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately,
according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object. In
the morning it was Sir Austin himself. Shortly after his departure,
arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about
Lobourne as the Captain, popular wherever he was known. Farmer Blaize
reclined m considerable elation. He had brought these great people to a
pretty low pitch. He had welcomed them hospitably, as a British yeoman
should; but not budged a foot in his demands: not to the baronet: not
to the Captain: not to good young Mr. Wentworth. For Farmer Blaize was
a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the baronet a frank confession
of the hold he had on the family, he determined to tighten his hold,
and only relax it in exchange for tangible advantages—compensation to
his pocket, his wounded person, and his still more wounded sentiments:
the total indemnity being, in round figures, three hundred pounds, and
a spoken apology from the prime offender, young Mister Richard. Even
then there was a reservation. Provided, the farmer said, nobody had
been tampering with any of his witnesses. In that ease Farmer Blaize
declared the money might go, and he would transport Tom Bakewell, as he
had sworn he would. And it goes hard, too, with an accomplice, by law,
added the farmer, knocking the ashes leisurely out of his pipe. He had
no wish to bring any disgrace anywhere; he respected the inmates of
Raynham Abbey, as in duty bound; he should be sorry to see them in
trouble. Only no tampering with his witnesses. He was a man for Law.
Rank was much: money was much: but Law was more. In this country Law
was above the sovereign. To tamper with the Law was treason to the
realm.

"I come to you direct," the baronet explained. "I tell you candidly
what way I discovered my son to be mixed up in this miserable affair. I
promise you indemnity for your loss, and an apology that shall, I
trust, satisfy your feelings, assuring you that to tamper with
witnesses is not the province of a Feverel. All I ask of you in return
is, not to press the prosecution. At present it rests with you. I am
bound to do all that lies in my power for this imprisoned man. How and
wherefore my son was prompted to suggest, or assist in, such an act, I
cannot explain, for I do not know."

"Hum!" said the farmer. "I think I do."

"You know the cause?" Sir Austin stared. "I beg you to confide it to
me."

"'Least, I can pretty nigh neighbour it with a gues," said the farmer.
" We an't good friends, Sir Austin, me and your son, just now—not to
say cordial. I, ye see, Sir Austin, I'm a man as don't like young
gentlemen a-poachin' on his grounds without his permission,—in special
when birds is plentiful on their own. It appear he do like it.
Consequently I has to flick this whip—as them fellers at the races: All
in this 'ere Ring's mine! as much as to say; and who's been hit, he's
had fair warnin'. I'm sorry for't, but that's just the case."

Sir Austin retired to communicate with his son, when he should find
him.

Algernon's interview passed off in ale and promises. He also assured
Farmer Blaize that no Feverel could be affected by his proviso.

No less did Austin Wentworth. The farmer was satisfied.

"Money's safe, I know," said he; "now for the 'pology!" and Farmer
Blaize thrust his legs further out, and his head further back.

The farmer naturally reflected that the three separate visits had been
conspired together. Still the baronet's frankness, and the baronet's
not having reserved himself for the third and final charge, puzzled
him. He was considering whether they were a deep, or a shallow lot,
when young Richard was announced.

A pretty little girl with the roses of thirteen springs in her cheeks,
and abundant beautiful bright tresses, tripped before the boy, and
loitered shyly by the farmer's arm-chair to steal a look at the
handsome new-comer. She was introduced to Richard as the farmer's
niece, Lucy Desborough, the daughter of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy,
and, what was better, though the farmer did not pronounce it so loudly,
a real good girl.

Neither the excellence of her character, nor her rank in life, tempted
Richard to inspect the little lady. He made an awkward bow, and sat
down.

The farmer's eyes twinkled. "Her father," he continued, "fought and
fell for his coontry. A man as fights for's coontry's a right to hould
up his head—ay! with any in the land. Desb'roughs o' Dorset! d'ye know
that family, Master Feverel?"

Richard did not know them, and, by his air, did not desire to become
acquainted with any offshoot of that family.

"She can make puddens and pies," the farmer went on, regardless of his
auditor's gloom. "She's a lady, as good as the best of 'em. I don't
care about their being Catholics—the Desb'roughs o' Dorset are
gentlemen. And she's good for the pianer, too! She strums to me of
evenin's. I'm for the old tunes: she's for the new. Gal-like! While
she's with me she shall be taught things use'l. She can parley-voo a
good 'un and foot it, as it goes; been in France a couple of year. I
prefer the singin' of 't to the talkin' of 't. Come, Luce! toon up—eh?
—Ye wun't? That song abort the Viffendeer—a female"—Farmer Blaize
volunteered the translation of the title—"who wears the—you guess what!
and marches along with the French sojers: a pretty brazen bit o' goods,
I sh'd fancy."

Mademoiselle Lucy corrected her uncle's French, but objected to do
more. The handsome cross boy had almost taken away her voice for
speech, as it was, and sing in his company she could not; so she stood,
a hand on her uncle's chair to stay herself from falling, while she
wriggled a dozen various shapes of refusal, and shook her head at the
farmer with fixed eyes.

"Aha!" laughed the farmer, dismissing her, "they soon learn the
difference 'twixt the young 'un and the old 'un. Go along, Luce! and
learn yer lessons for to-morrow."

Reluctantly the daughter of the Royal Navy glided away. Her uncle's
head followed her to the door, where she dallied to catch a last
impression of the young stranger's lowering face, and darted through.

Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. "She an't so fond of her uncle as
that, every day! Not that she an't a good nurse—the kindest little soul
you'd meet of a winter's walk! She'll read t' ye, and make drinks, and
sing, too, if ye likes it, and she won't be tired. A obstinate good
'un, she be! Bless her!"

The farmer may have designed, by these eulogies of his niece, to give
his visitor time to recover his composure, and establish a common
topic. His diversion only irritated and confused our shame-eaten youth.
Richard's intention had been to come to the farmer's threshold: to
summon the farmer thither, and in a loud and haughty tone then and
there to take upon himself the whole burden of the charge against Tom
Bakewell. He had strayed, during his passage to Belthorpe, somewhat
back to his old nature; and his being compelled to enter the house of
his enemy, sit in his chair, and endure an introduction to his family,
was more than he bargained for. He commenced blinking hard in
preparation for the horrible dose to which delay and the farmer's
cordiality added inconceivable bitters. Farmer Blaize was quite at his
ease; nowise in a hurry. He spoke of the weather and the harvest: of
recent doings up at the Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing;
hoped that no future Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw
and heard Arson in it all. He blinked harder as he neared the cup. In a
moment of silence, he seized it with a gasp.

"Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire
to your rick the other night."

An odd consternation formed about the farmer's mouth. He changed his
posture, and said, "Ay? that's what ye're come to tell me sir?"

"Yes!" said Richard, firmly.

"And that be all?"

"Yes!" Richard reiterated.

The farmer again changed his posture. "Then, my lad, ye've come to tell
me a lie!"

Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush
of ire he had kindled.

"You dare to call me a liar!" cried Richard, starting up.

"I say," the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his thigh
thereto, "that's a lie!"

Richard held out his clenched fist. "You have twice insulted me. You
have struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have
apologized—I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that fellow
in prison. Yes! I would have degraded myself that another man should
not suffer for my deed"—

"Quite proper!" interposed the farmer.

"And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You're a coward,
sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own house."

"Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master," said the farmer, indicating
the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. "Sit ye down. Don't
ye be hasty. If ye hadn't been hasty t'other day, we sh'd a been
friends yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh'd be sorry to reckon you out a
liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o' your name. I respects yer father
though we're opp'site politics. I'm willin' to think well o' you. What
I say is, that as you say an't the trewth. Mind! I don't like you none
the worse for't. But it an't what is. That's all! You knows it as
well's I!"

Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily reseated
himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his late interview
with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely that a towering
passion is hardly the justification for a wrong course of conduct.

"Come," continued the farmer, not unkindly, "what else have you to
say?"

Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at
Richard's lips again! Alas, poor human nature! that empties to the
dregs a dozen of these evil drinks, to evade the single one which
Destiny, less cruel, had insisted upon.

The boy blinked and tossed it off.

"I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for your
striking me."

Farmer Blaize nodded.

"And now ye've done, young gentleman?"

Still another cupful!

"I should be very much obliged," Richard formally began, but his
stomach was turned; he could but sip and sip, and gather a distaste
which threatened to make the penitential act impossible. "Very much
obliged," he repeated: "much obliged, if you would be so kind," and it
struck him that had he spoken this at first he would have given it a
wording more persuasive with the farmer and more worthy of his own
pride: more honest, in fact: for a sense of the dishonesty of what he
was saying caused him to cringe and simulate humility to deceive the
farmer, and the more he said the less he felt his words, and, feeling
them less, he inflated them more. "So kind," he stammered, "so kind"
(fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so kind!) "as to do me the
favour" (me the favour!) "to exert yourself" (it's all to please
Austin) "to endeavour to—hem! to" (there's no saying it!)—

The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.

"What I came to ask is, whether you would have the kindness to try what
you could do" (what an infamous shame to have to beg like this!) "do to
save—do to ensure—whether you would have the kindness" It seemed out of
all human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and more
abhorrent. To proclaim one's iniquity, to apologize for one's
wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the
offended party—that was beyond the self-abasement any Feverel could
consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable battle is against itself,
drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time,
"Behold your Benefactor!" and, with the words burning in his ears,
Richard swallowed the dose:

"Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,—if you don't mind—will you help me
to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?"

To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for the boy,
though he could not quite see why he did not take the gate at the first
offer.

"Oh!" said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request. "Hum! ha!
we'll see about it t'morrow. But if he's innocent, you know, we shan't
mak'n guilty."

"It was I did it!" Richard declared.

The farmer's half-amused expression sharpened a bit.

"So, young gentleman! and you're sorry for the night's work?"

"I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your losses."

"Thank'ee," said the farmer drily.

"And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don't care what the
amount is."

Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. "Bribery," one
motion expressed: "Corruption," the other.

"Now," said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on his knees,
while he counted the case at his fingers' ends, "excuse the liberty,
but wishin' to know where this 'ere money's to come from, I sh'd like
jest t'ask if so be Sir Austin know o' this?"

"My father knows nothing of it," replied Richard.

The farmer flung back in his chair. "Lie number Two," said his
shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being plotted at, and not
dealt with openly.

"And ye've the money ready, young gentleman?"

"I shall ask my father for it."

"And he'll hand't out?"

"Certainly he will!"

Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting his father into
his counsels.

"A good three hundred pounds, ye know?" the farmer suggested.

No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of the sum,
affected young Richard, who said boldly, "He will not object when I
tell him I want that sum."

It was natural Farmer Blaize should be a trifle suspicious that a
youth's guarantee would hardly be given for his father's readiness to
disburse such a thumping bill, unless he had previously received his
father's sanction and authority.

"Hum!" said he, "why not 'a told him before?"

The farmer threw an objectionable shrewdness into his query, that
caused Richard to compress his mouth and glance high.

Farmer Blaize was positive 'twas a lie.

"Hum! Ye still hold to't you fired the rick?" he asked.

"The blame is mine!" quoth Richard, with the loftiness of a patriot of
old Rome.

"Na, na!" the straightforward Briton put him aside. "Ye did't, or ye
didn't do't. Did ye do't, or no?"

Thrust in a corner, Richard said, "I did it."

Farmer Blaize reached his hand to the bell. It was answered in an
instant by little Lucy, who received orders to fetch in a dependent at
Belthorpe going by the name of the Bantam, and made her exit as she had
entered, with her eyes on the young stranger.

"Now," said the farmer, "these be my principles. I'm a plain man, Mr.
Feverel. Above board with me, and you'll find me handsome. Try to
circumvent me, and I'm a ugly customer. I'll show you I've no
animosity. Your father pays—you apologize. That's enough for me! Let
Tom Bakewell fight't out with the Law, and I'll look on. The Law wasn't
on the spot, I suppose? so the Law ain't much witness. But I am.
Leastwise the Bantam is. I tell you, young gentleman, the Bantam saw't!
It's no moral use whatever your denyin' that ev'dence. And where's the
good, sir, I ask? What comes of 't? Whether it be you, or whether it be
Tom Bakewell—ain't all one? If I holds back, ain't it sim'lar? It's the
trewth I want! And here't comes," added the farmer, as Miss Lucy
ushered in the Bantam, who presented a curious figure for that rare
divinity to enliven.




CHAPTER IX


In build of body, gait and stature, Giles Jinkson, the Bantam, was a
tolerably fair representative of the Punic elephant, whose part, with
diverse anticipations, the generals of the Blaize and Feverel forces,
from opposing ranks, expected him to play. Giles, surnamed the Bantam,
on account of some forgotten sally of his youth or infancy, moved and
looked elephantine. It sufficed that Giles was well fed to assure that
Giles was faithful—if uncorrupted. The farm which supplied to him
ungrudging provender had all his vast capacity for work in willing
exercise: the farmer who held the farm his instinct reverenced as the
fountain source of beef and bacon, to say nothing of beer, which was
plentiful at Belthorpe, and good. This Farmer Blaize well knew, and he
reckoned consequently that here was an animal always to be relied on—a
sort of human composition out of dog, horse, and bull, a cut above each
of these quadrupeds in usefulness, and costing proportionately more,
but on the whole worth the money, and therefore invaluable, as
everything worth its money must be to a wise man. When the stealing of
grain had been made known at Belthorpe, the Bantam, a fellow-thresher
with Tom Bakewell, had shared with him the shadow of the guilt. Farmer
Blaize, if he hesitated which to suspect, did not debate a second as to
which he would discard; and, when the Bantam said he had seen Tom
secreting pilkins in a sack, Farmer Blaize chose to believe him, and
off went poor Tom, told to rejoice in the clemency that spared his
appearance at Sessions.

The Bantam's small sleepy orbits saw many things, and just at the right
moment, it seemed. He was certainly the first to give the clue at
Belthorpe on the night of the conflagration, and he may, therefore,
have seen poor Tom retreating stealthily from the scene, as he averred
he did. Lobourne had its say on the subject. Rustic Lobourne hinted
broadly at a young woman in the case, and, moreover, told a tale of how
these fellow- threshers had, in noble rivalry, one day turned upon each
other to see which of the two threshed the best; whereof the Bantam
still bore marks, and malice, it was said. However, there he stood, and
tugged his forelocks to the company, and if Truth really had concealed
herself in him she must have been hard set to find her unlikeliest
hiding-place.

"Now," said the farmer, marshalling forth his elephant with the
confidence of one who delivers his ace of trumps, "tell this young
gentleman what ye saw on the night of the fire, Bantam!"

The Bantam jerked a bit of a bow to his patron, and then swung round,
fully obscuring him from Richard.

Richard fixed his eyes on the floor, while the Bantam in rudest Doric
commenced his narrative. Knowing what was to come, and thoroughly
nerved to confute the main incident, Richard barely listened to his
barbarous locution: but when the recital arrived at the point where the
Bantam affirmed he had seen "T'm Baak'll wi's owen hoies," Richard
faced him, and was amazed to find himself being mutely addressed by a
series of intensely significant grimaces, signs, and winks.

"What do you mean? Why are you making those faces at me?" cried the boy
indignantly.

Farmer Blaize leaned round the Bantam to have a look at him, and beheld
the stolidest mask ever given to man.

"Bain't makin' no faces at nobody," growled the sulky elephant.

The farmer commanded him to face about and finish.

"A see T'm Baak'll," the Bantam recommenced, and again the contortions
of a horrible wink were directed at Richard. The boy might well believe
this churl was lying, and he did, and was emboldened to exclaim—

"You never saw Tom Bakewell set fire to that rick!"

The Bantam swore to it, grimacing an accompaniment.

"I tell you," said Richard, "I put the lucifers there myself!"

The suborned elephant was staggered. He meant to telegraph to the young
gentleman that he was loyal and true to certain gold pieces that had
been given him, and that in the right place and at the right time he
should prove so. Why was he thus suspected? Why was he not understood?

"A thowt I see 'un, then," muttered the Bantam, trying a middle course.

This brought down on him the farmer, who roared, "Thought! Ye thought!
What d'ye mean? Speak out, and don't be thinkin'. Thought? What the
devil's that?"

"How could he see who it was on a pitch-dark night?" Richard put in.

"Thought!" the farmer bellowed louder. "Thought—Devil take ye, when ye
took ye oath on't. Hulloa! What are ye screwin' yer eye at Mr. Feverel
for?—I say, young gentleman, have you spoke to this chap before now?"

"I?" replied Richard. "I have not seen him before."

Farmer Blaize grasped the two arms of the chair he sat on, and glared
his doubts.

"Come," said he to the Bantam, "speak out, and ha' done wi't. Say what
ye saw, and none o' yer thoughts. Damn yer thoughts! Ye saw Tom
Bakewell fire that there rick!" The farmer pointed at some musk-pots in
the window. "What business ha' you to be a-thinkin'? You're a witness?
Thinkin' an't ev'dence. What'll ye say to morrow before magistrate!
Mind! what you says today, you'll stick by to-morrow."

Thus adjured, the Bantam hitched his breech. What on earth the young
gentleman meant he was at a loss to speculate. He could not believe
that the young gentleman wanted to be transported, but if he had been
paid to help that, why, he would. And considering that this day's
evidence rather bound him down to the morrow's, he determined, after
much ploughing and harrowing through obstinate shocks of hair, to be
not altogether positive as to the person. It is possible that he became
thereby more a mansion of truth than he previously had been; for the
night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see your hand before
your face; and though, as he expressed it, you might be mortal sure of
a man, you could not identify him upon oath, and the party he had taken
for Tom Bakewell, and could have sworn to, might have been the young
gentleman present, especially as he was ready to swear it upon oath.

So ended the Bantam.

No sooner had he ceased, than Farmer Blaize jumped up from his chair,
and made a fine effort to lift him out of the room from the point of
his toe. He failed, and sank back groaning with the pain of the
exertion and disappointment.

"They're liars, every one!" he cried. "Liars, perj'rers, bribers, and
c'rrupters!—Stop!" to the Bantam, who was slinking away. "You've done
for yerself already! You swore to it!"

"A din't!" said the Bantam, doggedly.

"You swore to't!" the farmer vociferated afresh.

The Bantam played a tune upon the handle of the door, and still
affirmed that he did not; a double contradiction at which the farmer
absolutely raged in his chair, and was hoarse, as he called out a third
time that the Bantam had sworn to it.

"Noa!" said the Bantam, ducking his poll. "Noa!" he repeated in a lower
note; and then, while a sombre grin betokening idiotic enjoyment of his
profound casuistical quibble worked at his jaw:

"Not up'n o-ath!" he added, with a twitch of the shoulder and an
angular jerk of the elbow.

Farmer Blaize looked vacantly at Richard, as if to ask him what he
thought of England's peasantry after the sample they had there. Richard
would have preferred not to laugh, but his dignity gave way to his
sense of the ludicrous, and he let fly a shout. The farmer was in no
laughing mood. He turned a wide eye back to the door, "Lucky for'm," he
exclaimed, seeing the Bantam had vanished, for his fingers itched to
break that stubborn head. He grew very puffy, and addressed Richard
solemnly:

"Now, look ye here, Mr. Feverel! You've been a-tampering with my
witness. It's no use denyin'! I say y' 'ave, sir! You, or some of ye. I
don't care about no Feverel! My witness there has been bribed. The
Bantam's been bribed," and he shivered his pipe with an energetic thump
on the table—"bribed! I knows it! I could swear to't!"—

"Upon oath?" Richard inquired, with a grave face.

"Ay, upon oath!" said the farmer, not observing the impertinence.

"I'd take my Bible oath on't! He's been corrupted, my principal
witness! Oh! it's dam cunnin', but it won't do the trick. I'll
transport Tom Bakewell, sure as a gun. He shall travel, that man shall.
Sorry for you, Mr. Feverel—sorry you haven't seen how to treat me
proper—you, or yours. Money won't do everything—no! it won't. It'll
c'rrupt a witness, but it won't clear a felon. I'd ha' 'soused you,
sir! You're a boy and'll learn better. I asked no more than payment and
apology; and that I'd ha' taken content—always provided my witnesses
weren't tampered with. Now you must stand yer luck, all o' ye."

Richard stood up and replied, "Very well, Mr. Blaize."

"And if," continued the farmer, "Tom Bakewell don't drag you into't
after 'm, why, you're safe, as I hope ye'll be, sincere!"

"It was not in consideration of my own safety that I sought this
interview with you," said Richard, head erect.

"Grant ye that," the farmer responded. "Grant ye that! Yer bold enough,
young gentleman—comes of the blood that should be! If y' had only ha'
spoke trewth!—I believe yer father—believe every word he said. I do
wish I could ha' said as much for Sir Austin's son and heir."

"What!" cried Richard, with an astonishment hardly to be feigned, "you
have seen my father?"

But Farmer Blaize had now such a scent for lies that he could detect
them where they did not exist, and mumbled gruffly,

"Ay, we knows all about that!"

The boy's perplexity saved him from being irritated. Who could have
told his father? An old fear of his father came upon him, and a touch
of an old inclination to revolt.

"My father knows of this?" said he, very loudly, and staring, as he
spoke, right through the farmer. "Who has played me false? Who would
betray me to him? It was Austin! No one knew it but Austin. Yes, and it
was Austin who persuaded me to come here and submit to these
indignities. Why couldn't he be open with me? I shall never trust him
again!"

"And why not you with me, young gentleman?" said the farmer. "I sh'd
trust you if ye had."

Richard did not see the analogy. He bowed stiffly and bade him good
afternoon.

Farmer Blaize pulled the bell. "Company the young gentleman out, Lucy,"
he waved to the little damsel in the doorway. "Do the honours. And, Mr.
Richard, ye might ha' made a friend o' me, sir, and it's not too late
so to do. I'm not cruel, but I hate lies. I whipped my boy Tom, bigger
than you, for not bein' above board, only yesterday,—ay! made 'un stand
within swing o' this chair, and take's measure. Now, if ye'll come down
to me, and speak trewth before the trial—if it's only five minutes
before't; or if Sir Austin, who's a gentleman, 'll say there's been no
tamperin' with any o' my witnesses, his word for't—well and good! I'll
do my best to help off Tom Bakewell. And I'm glad, young gentleman,
you've got a conscience about a poor man, though he's a villain. Good
afternoon, sir."

Richard marched hastily out of the room, and through the garden, never
so much as deigning a glance at his wistful little guide, who hung at
the garden gate to watch him up the lane, wondering a world of fancies
about the handsome proud boy.




CHAPTER X


To have determined upon an act something akin to heroism in its way,
and to have fulfilled it by lying heartily, and so subverting the whole
structure built by good resolution, seems a sad downfall if we forget
what human nature, in its green weedy spring, is composed of. Young
Richard had quitted his cousin Austin fully resolved to do his penance
and drink the bitter cup; and he had drunk it; drained many cups to the
dregs; and it was to no purpose. Still they floated before him,
brimmed, trebly bitter. Away from Austin's influence, he was almost the
same boy who had slipped the guinea into Tom Bakewell's hand, and the
lucifers into Farmer Blaize's rick. For good seed is long ripening; a
good boy is not made in a minute. Enough that the seed was in him. He
chafed on his road to Raynham at the scene he had just endured, and the
figure of Belthorpe's fat tenant burnt like hot copper on the tablet of
his brain, insufferably condescending, and, what was worse, in the
right. Richard, obscured as his mind's eye was by wounded pride, saw
that clearly, and hated his enemy for it the more.

Heavy Benson's tongue was knelling dinner as Richard arrived at the
Abbey. He hurried up to his room to dress. Accident, or design, had
laid the book of Sir Austin's aphorisms open on the dressing-table.
Hastily combing his hair, Richard glanced down and read—

 "The Dog returneth to his vomit: the Liar must eat his Lie."

Underneath was interjected in pencil: "The Devil's mouthful!"

Young Richard ran downstairs feeling that his father had struck him in
the face.

Sir Austin marked the scarlet stain on his son's cheekbones. He sought
the youth's eye, but Richard would not look, and sat conning his plate,
an abject copy of Adrian's succulent air at that employment. How could
he pretend to the relish of an epicure when he was painfully
endeavouring to masticate The Devil's mouthful?

Heavy Benson sat upon the wretched dinner. Hippias usually the silent
member, as if awakened by the unnatural stillness, became sprightly,
like the goatsucker owl at night and spoke much of his book, his
digestion, and his dreams, and was spared both by Algernon and Adrian.
One inconsequent dream he related, about fancying himself quite young
and rich, and finding himself suddenly in a field cropping razors
around him, when, just as he had, by steps dainty as those of a French
dancing- master, reached the middle, he to his dismay beheld a path
clear of the blood, thirsty steel-crop, which he might have taken at
first had he looked narrowly; and there he was.

Hippias's brethren regarded him with eyes that plainly said they wished
he had remained there. Sir Austin, however, drew forth his note-book,
and jotted down a reflection. A composer of aphorisms can pluck
blossoms even from a razor-prop. Was not Hippias's dream the very
counterpart of Richard's position? He, had he looked narrowly, might
have taken the clear path: he, too, had been making dainty steps till
he was surrounded by the grinning blades. And from that text Sir Austin
preached to his son when they were alone. Little Clare was still too
unwell to be permitted to attend the dessert, and father and son were
soon closeted together.

It was a strange meeting. They seemed to have been separated so long.
The father took his son's hand; they sat without a word passing between
them. Silence said most. The boy did not understand his father: his
father frequently thwarted him: at times he thought his father foolish:
but that paternal pressure of his hand was eloquent to him of how
warmly he was beloved. He tried once or twice to steal his hand away,
conscious it was melting him. The spirit of his pride, and old
rebellion, whispered him to be hard, unbending, resolute. Hard he had
entered his father's study: hard he had met his father's eyes. He could
not meet them now. His father sat beside him gently; with a manner that
was almost meekness, so he loved this boy. The poor gentleman's lips
moved. He was praying internally to God for him.

By degrees an emotion awoke in the boy's bosom. Love is that blessed
wand which wins the waters from the hardness of the heart. Richard
fought against it, for the dignity of old rebellion. The tears would
come; hot and struggling over the dams of pride. Shamefully fast they
began to fall. He could no longer conceal them, or check the sobs. Sir
Austin drew him nearer and nearer, till the beloved head was on his
breast.

An hour afterwards, Adrian Harley, Austin Wentworth, and Algernon
Feverel were summoned to the baronet's study.

Adrian came last. There was a style of affable omnipotence about the
wise youth as he slung himself into a chair, and made an arch of the
points of his fingers, through which to gaze on his blundering kinsmen.
Careless as one may be whose sagacity has foreseen, and whose
benevolent efforts have forestalled, the point of danger at the
threshold, Adrian crossed his legs, and only intruded on their
introductory remarks so far as to hum half audibly at intervals

 "Ripton and Richard were two pretty men,"

in parody of the old ballad. Young Richard's red eyes, and the
baronet's ruffled demeanour, told him that an explanation had taken
place, and a reconciliation. That was well. The baronet would now pay
cheerfully. Adrian summed and considered these matters, and barely
listened when the baronet called attention to what he had to say: which
was elaborately to inform all present, what all present very well knew,
that a rick had been fired, that his son was implicated as an accessory
to the fact, that the perpetrator was now imprisoned, and that
Richard's family were, as it seemed to him, bound in honour to do their
utmost to effect the man's release.

Then the baronet stated that he had himself been down to Belthorpe, his
son likewise: and that he had found every disposition in Blaize to meet
his wishes.

The lamp which ultimately was sure to be lifted up to illumine the acts
of this secretive race began slowly to dispread its rays; and, as
statement followed statement, they saw that all had known of the
business: that all had been down to Belthorpe: all save the wise youth
Adrian, who, with due deference and a sarcastic shrug, objected to the
proceeding, as putting them in the hands of the man Blaize. His wisdom
shone forth in an oration so persuasive and aphoristic that had it not
been based on a plea against honour, it would have made Sir Austin
waver. But its basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better
aphorism of his own to confute him with.

"Expediency is man's wisdom, Adrian Harley. Doing right is God's."

Adrian curbed his desire to ask Sir Austin whether an attempt to
counteract the just working of the law was doing right. The direct
application of an aphorism was unpopular at Raynham.

"I am to understand then," said he, "that Blaize consents not to press
the prosecution."

"Of course he won't," Algernon remarked. "Confound him! he'll have his
money, and what does he want besides?"

"These agricultural gentlemen are delicate customers to deal with.
However, if he really consents"—

"I have his promise," said the baronet, fondling his son.

Young Richard looked up to his father, as if he wished to speak. He
said nothing, and Sir Austin took it as a mute reply to his caresses;
and caressed him the more. Adrian perceived a reserve in the boy's
manner, and as he was not quite satisfied that his chief should suppose
him to have been the only idle, and not the most acute and vigilant
member of the family, he commenced a cross-examination of him by asking
who had last spoken with the tenant of Belthorpe?

"I think I saw him last," murmured Richard, and relinquished his
father's hand.

Adrian fastened on his prey. "And left him with a distinct and
satisfactory assurance of his amicable intentions?"

"No," said Richard.

"Not?" the Feverels joined in astounded chorus.

Richard sidled away from his father, and repeated a shamefaced "No."

"Was he hostile?" inquired Adrian, smoothing his palms, and smiling.

"Yes," the boy confessed.

Here was quite another view of their position. Adrian, generally
patient of results, triumphed strongly at having evoked it, and turned
upon Austin Wentworth, reproving him for inducing the boy to go down to
Belthorpe. Austin looked grieved. He feared that Richard had faded in
his good resolve.

"I thought it his duty to go," he observed.

"It was!" said the baronet, emphatically.

"And you see what comes of it, sir," Adrian struck in. "These
agricultural gentlemen, I repeat, are delicate customers to deal with.
For my part I would prefer being in the hands of a policeman. We are
decidedly collared by Blaize. What were his words, Ricky? Give it in
his own Doric."

"He said he would transport Tom Bakewell."

Adrian smoothed his palms, and smiled again. Then they could afford to
defy Mr. Blaize, he informed them significantly, and made once more a
mysterious allusion to the Punic elephant, bidding his relatives be at
peace. They were attaching, in his opinion, too much importance to
Richard's complicity. The man was a fool, and a very extraordinary
arsonite, to have an accomplice at all. It was a thing unknown in the
annals of rick-burning. But one would be severer than law itself to say
that a boy of fourteen had instigated to crime a full-grown man. At
that rate the boy was 'father of the man' with a vengeance, and one
might hear next that 'the baby was father of the boy.' They would find
common sense a more benevolent ruler than poetical metaphysics.

When he had done, Austin, with his customary directness, asked him what
he meant.

"I confess, Adrian," said the baronet, hearing him expostulate with
Austin's stupidity, "I for one am at a loss. I have heard that this
man, Bakewell, chooses voluntarily not to inculpate my son. Seldom have
I heard anything that so gratified me. It is a view of innate nobleness
in the rustic's character which many a gentleman might take example
from. We are bound to do our utmost for the man." And, saying that he
should pay a second visit to Belthorpe, to inquire into the reasons for
the farmer's sudden exposition of vindictiveness, Sir Austin rose.

Before he left the room, Algernon asked Richard if the farmer had
vouchsafed any reasons, and the boy then spoke of the tampering with
the witnesses, and the Bantam's "Not upon oath!" which caused Adrian to
choke with laughter. Even the baronet smiled at so cunning a
distinction as that involved in swearing a thing, and not swearing it
upon oath.

"How little," he exclaimed, "does one yeoman know another! To elevate a
distinction into a difference is the natural action of their minds. I
will point that out to Blaize. He shall see that the idea is native
born."

Richard saw his father go forth. Adrian, too, was ill at ease.

"This trotting down to Belthorpe spoils all," said he. "The affair
would pass over to-morrow—Blaize has no witnesses. The old rascal is
only standing out for more money."

"No, he isn't," Richard corrected him. "It's not that. I'm sure he
believes his witnesses have been tampered with, as he calls it."

"What if they have, boy?" Adrian put it boldly. "The ground is cut from
under his feet."

"Blaize told me that if my father would give his word there had been
nothing of the sort, he would take it. My father will give his word."

"Then," said Adrian, "you had better stop him from going down."

Austin looked at Adrian keenly, and questioned him whether he thought
the farmer was justified in his suspicions. The wise youth was not to
be entrapped. He had only been given to understand that the witnesses
were tolerably unstable, and, like the Bantam, ready to swear lustily,
but not upon the Book. How given to understand, he chose not to
explain, but he reiterated that the chief should not be allowed to go
down to Belthorpe.

Sir Austin was in the lane leading to the farm when he heard steps of
some one running behind him. It was dark, and he shook off the hand
that laid hold of his cloak, roughly, not recognizing his son.

"It's I, sir," said Richard panting. "Pardon me. You mustn't go in
there."

"Why not?" said the baronet, putting his arm about him.

"Not now," continued the boy. "I will tell you all to-night. I must see
the farmer myself. It was my fault, sir. I-I lied to him—the Liar must
eat his Lie. Oh, forgive me for disgracing you, sir. I did it—I hope I
did it to save Tom Bakewell. Let me go in alone, and speak the truth."

"Go, and I will wait for you here," said his father.

The wind that bowed the old elms, and shivered the dead leaves in the
air, had a voice and a meaning for the baronet during that half-hour's
lonely pacing up and down under the darkness, awaiting his boy's
return. The solemn gladness of his heart gave nature a tongue. Through
the desolation flying overhead—the wailing of the Mother of Plenty
across the bare-swept land—he caught intelligible signs of the
beneficent order of the universe, from a heart newly confirmed in its
grasp of the principle of human goodness, as manifested in the dear
child who had just left him; confirmed in its belief in the ultimate
victory of good within us, without which nature has neither music nor
meaning, and is rock, stone, tree, and nothing more.

In the dark, the dead leaves beating on his face, he had a word for his
note-book: "There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness: from that
uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we see that this world is well
designed."




CHAPTER XI


Of all the chief actors in the Bakewell Comedy, Master Ripton Thompson
awaited the fearful morning which was to decide Tom's fate, in
dolefullest mood, and suffered the gravest mental terrors. Adrian, on
parting with him, had taken casual occasion to speak of the position of
the criminal in modern Europe, assuring him that International Treaty
now did what Universal Empire had aforetime done, and that among
Atlantic barbarians now, as among the Scythians of old, an offender
would find precarious refuge and an emissary haunting him.

In the paternal home, under the roofs of Law, and removed from the
influence of his conscienceless young chief, the staggering nature of
the act he had put his hand to, its awful felonious aspect, overwhelmed
Ripton. He saw it now for the first time. "Why, it's next to murder!"
he cried out to his amazed soul, and wandered about the house with a
prickly skin. Thoughts of America, and commencing life afresh as an
innocent gentleman, had crossed his disordered brain. He wrote to his
friend Richard, proposing to collect disposable funds, and embark, in
case of Tom's breaking his word, or of accidental discovery. He dared
not confide the secret to his family, as his leader had sternly
enjoined him to avoid any weakness of that kind; and, being by nature
honest and communicative, the restriction was painful, and melancholy
fell upon the boy. Mama Thompson attributed it to love.

The daughters of parchment rallied him concerning Miss Clare Forey. His
hourly letters to Raynham, and silence as to everything and everybody
there, his nervousness, and unwonted propensity to sudden inflammation
of the cheeks, were set down for sure signs of the passion. Miss
Letitia Thompson, the pretty and least parchmenty one, destined by her
Papa for the heir of Raynham, and perfectly aware of her brilliant
future, up to which she had, since Ripton's departure, dressed and
grimaced, and studied cadences (the latter with such success, though
not yet fifteen, that she languished to her maid, and melted the small
factotum footman)— Miss Letty, whose insatiable thirst for intimations
about the young heir Ripton could not satisfy, tormented him daily in
revenge, and once, quite unconsciously, gave the lad a fearful turn;
for after dinner, when Mr. Thompson read the paper by the fire,
preparatory to sleeping at his accustomed post, and Mama Thompson and
her submissive female brood sat tasking the swift intricacies of the
needle, and emulating them with the tongue, Miss Letty stole behind
Ripton's chair, and introduced between him and his book the Latin
initial letter, large and illuminated, of the theme she supposed to be
absorbing him, as it did herself. The unexpected vision of this
accusing Captain of the Alphabet, this resplendent and haunting A.
fronting him bodily, threw Ripton straight back in his chair, while
Guilt, with her ancient indecision what colours to assume on detection,
flew from red to white, from white to red, across his fallen chaps.
Letty laughed triumphantly. Amor, the word she had in mind, certainly
has a connection with Arson.

But the delivery of a letter into Master Ripton's hands, furnished her
with other and likelier appearances to study. For scarce had Ripton
plunged his head into the missive than he gave way to violent
transports, such as the healthy-minded little damsel, for all her
languishing cadences, deemed she really could express were a downright
declaration to be made to her. The boy did not stop at table. Quickly
recollecting the presence of his family, he rushed to his own room. And
now the girl's ingenuity was taxed to gain possession of that letter.
She succeeded, of course, she being a huntress with few scruples and
the game unguarded. With the eyes of amazement she read this foreign
matter:

"Dear Ripton,—If Tom had been committed I would have shot old Blaize.
Do you know my father was behind us that night when Clare saw the ghost
and heard all we said before the fire burst out. It is no use trying to
conceal anything from him. Well as you are in an awful state I will
tell you all about it. After you left Ripton I had a conversation with
Austin and he persuaded me to go down to old Blaize and ask him to help
off Tom. I went for I would have done anything for Tom after what he
said to Austin and I defied the old churl to do his worst. Then he said
if my father paid the money and nobody had tampered with his witnesses
he would not mind if Tom did get off and he had his chief witness in
called the Bantam very like his master I think and the Bantam began
winking at me tremendously as you say, and said he had sworn he saw Tom
Bakewell but not upon oath. He meant not on the Bible. He could swear
to it but not on the Bible. I burst out laughing and you should have
seen the rage old Blaize was in. It was splendid fun. Then we had a
consultation at home Austin Rady my father Uncle Algernon who has come
down to us again and your friend in prosperity and adversity R.D.F. My
father said he would go down to old Blaize and give him the word of a
gentleman we had not tampered with his witnesses and when he was gone
we were all talking and Rady says he must not see the farmer. I am as
certain as I live that it was Rady bribed the Bantam. Well I ran and
caught up my father and told him not to go in to old Blaize but I would
and eat my words and tell him the truth. He waited for me in the lane.
Never mind what passed between me and old Blaize. He made me beg and
pray of him not to press it against Tom and then to complete it he
brought in a little girl a niece of his and says to me, she's your best
friend after all and told me to thank her. A little girl twelve years
of age. What business had she to mix herself up in my matters. Depend
upon it Ripton, wherever there is mischief there are girls I think. She
had the insolence to notice my face, and ask me not to be unhappy. I
was polite of course but I would not look at her. Well the morning came
and Tom was had up before Sir Miles Papworth. It was Sir Miles gout
gave us the time or Tom would have been had up before we could do
anything. Adrian did not want me to go but my father said I should
accompany him and held my hand all the time. I shall be careful about
getting into these scrapes again. When you have done anything
honourable you do not mind but getting among policemen and magistrates
makes you ashamed of yourself. Sir Miles was very attentive to my
father and me and dead against Tom. We sat beside him and Tom was
brought in, Sir Miles told my father that if there was one thing that
showed a low villain it was rick-burning. What do you think of that. I
looked him straight in the face and he said to me he was doing me a
service in getting Tom committed and clearing the country of such
fellows and Rady began laughing. I hate Rady. My father said his son
was not in haste to inherit and have estates of his own to watch and
Sir Miles laughed too. I thought we were discovered at first. Then they
began the examination of Tom. The Tinker was the first witness and he
proved that Tom had spoken against old Blaize and said something about
burning his rick. I wished I had stood in the lane to Bursley with him
alone. Our country lawyer we engaged for Tom cross-questioned him and
then he said he was not ready to swear to the exact words that had
passed between him and Tom. I should think not. Then came another who
swore he had seen Tom lurking about the farmer's grounds that night.
Then came the Bantam and I saw him look at Rady. I was tremendously
excited and my father kept pressing my hand. Just fancy my being
brought to feel that a word from that fellow would make me miserable
for life and he must perjure himself to help me. That comes of giving
way to passion. My father says when we do that we are calling in the
devil as doctor. Well the Bantam was told to state what he had seen and
the moment he began Rady who was close by me began to shake and he was
laughing I knew though his face was as grave as Sir Miles. You never
heard such a rigmarole but I could not laugh. He said he thought he was
certain he had seen somebody by the rick and it was Tom Bakewell who
was the only man he knew who had a grudge against Farmer Blaize and if
the object had been a little bigger he would not mind swearing to Tom
and would swear to him for he was dead certain it was Tom only what he
saw looked smaller and it was pitch-dark at the time. He was asked what
time it was he saw the person steal away from the rick and then he
began to scratch his head and said supper-time. Then they asked what
time he had supper and he said nine o'clock by the clock and we proved
that at nine o'clock Tom was drinking in the ale- house with the Tinker
at Bursley and Sir Miles swore and said he was afraid he could not
commit Tom and when he heard that Tom looked up at me and I say he is a
noble fellow and no one shall sneer at Tom while I live. Mind that.
Well Sir Miles asked us to dine with him and Tom was safe and I am to
have him and educate him if I like for my servant and I will. And I
will give money to his mother and make her rich and he shall never
repent he knew me. I say Rip. The Bantam must have seen me. It was when
I went to stick in the lucifers. As we were all going home from Sir
Miles's at night he has lots of red-faced daughters but I did not dance
with them though they had music and were full of fun and I did not care
to I was so delighted and almost let it out. When we left and rode home
Rady said to my father the Bantam was not such a fool as he was thought
and my father said one must be in a state of great personal exaltation
to apply that epithet to any man and Rady shut his mouth and I gave my
pony a clap of the heel for joy. I think my father suspects what Rady
did and does not approve of it. And he need not have done it after all
and might have spoilt it. I have been obliged to order him not to call
me Ricky for he stops short at Rick so that everybody knows what he
means. My dear Austin is going to South America. My pony is in capital
condition. My father is the cleverest and best man in the world. Clare
is a little better. I am quite happy. I hope we shall meet soon my dear
Old Rip and we will not get into any more tremendous scrapes will we.—I
remain, Your sworn friend, "RICHARD DORIA FEVEREL."

"P.S. I am to have a nice River Yacht. Good-bye, Rip. Mind you learn to
box. Mind you are not to show this to any of your friends on pain of my
displeasure.

"N.B. Lady B. was so angry when I told her that I had not come to her
before. She would do anything in the world for me. I like her next best
to my father and Austin. Good-bye old Rip."

Poor little Letitia, after three perusals of this ingenuous epistle,
where the laws of punctuation were so disregarded, resigned it to one
of the pockets of her brother Ripton's best jacket, deeply smitten with
the careless composer. And so ended the last act of the Bakewell
Comedy, in which the curtain closes with Sir Austin's pointing out to
his friends the beneficial action of the System in it from beginning to
end.