For three weeks Richard had to remain in town and endure the teachings of the System in a new atmosphere. He had to sit and listen to men of science who came to renew their intimacy with his father, and whom of all men his father wished him to respect and study; practically scientific men being, in the baronet's estimation, the only minds thoroughly mated and enviable. He had to endure an introduction to the Grandisons, and meet the eyes of his kind, haunted as he was by the Foolish Young Fellow. The idea that he might by any chance be identified with him held the poor youth in silent subjection. And it was horrible. For it was a continued outrage on the fair image he had in his heart. The notion of the world laughing at him because he loved sweet Lucy stung him to momentary frenzies, and developed premature misanthropy in his spirit. Also the System desired to show him whither young women of the parish lead us, and he was dragged about at night-time to see the sons and daughters of darkness, after the fashion prescribed to Mr. Thompson; how they danced and ogled down the high road of perdition. But from this sight possibly the teacher learnt more than his pupil, since we find him seriously asking his meditative hours, in the Note-book: ``Wherefore Wild Oats are only of one gender?'' a question certainly not suggested to him at Raynham; and again—- ``Whether men might not be attaching too rigid an importance? . . .'' to a subject with a dotted tail apparently, for he gives it no other in the Note-book. But, as I apprehend, he had come to plead in behalf of women here, and had deducted something from positive observation. To Richard the scenes he witnessed were strange wild pictures, likely if anything to have increased his misanthropy, but for his love.
Mrs. Grandison appeared to be in raptures with the son of a System. What her daughters thought of a young gentleman who did nothing but frown and bite his lips in their company may be imagined. With Carola, however, he got on better.
Riding in the park one morning, Carola beheld her intended galloping furiously down the Row, and left her sister Clementina's side to waylay him. He pulled up smartly, and this young person's frank accost was—-
``I say! are you afraid of girls?''
He stared at her and did his salute laughing, upon which she said—-
``No, I see you're not. My sisters all say you are. I should think you were not afraid of anything. A man afraid of girls! I never heard the like!''
``Well!'' said Richard, ``at all events I'm not afraid of you. Are you a girl?''
Carola immediately became pensive.
``Yes,'' she sighed, striping her pony's ears with her whip, ``I'm afraid I am! I used to keep hoping once that I wasn't. I'm afraid it's no use.'' She seriously shook her curls, and looked up at him. Richard shouted with laughter.
``But what do you want to be?'' he asked, scrutinizing the comical young person.
``A boy, to be sure!'' said Carola, and pouted proudly, as if the wish had raised her out of her sex. At this Richard laughed again and took to the young woman. They trotted on in company. Within five minutes he had all the secrets of the family.
``When I like anybody,'' said Carola, ``I always speak out everything I know.''
``Yes, I do. What do you think they call your father?—- The Griffin! That's what they call him. I don't know why. I like him. Do you know who gave me this pony? He did, to be sure! He bought it the day after my birthday. He's fonder of me than you are. I like fathers better than mothers. My pa and ma don't agree. I say! what may I call you?''
Richard gave her permission to call him what she pleased.
``Well, then, Richard—-if you don't really mind. What a nice fellow you are, and we all thought you so nasty! I was going to say, I wish they'd let us ride our ponies stride-ways?''
Richard, with all the muscles of his face in play, lamented the severe restriction.
``It's so much handier,'' Carola continued. ``Look at this! all one side!—-I used to when I was little, though. Not here, you know,—-in the country. And ma knew of it. She didn't interfere. She wanted me to be a boy. If I call you Richard, you'll call me Carl, won't you? That's the German for Charles. In the country the boys call me Charley. Can't I ride slapping?''
``Capital!'' said Richard. ``Let's have a gallop.''
After a short heat, Carola slackened her pace to recommence:
``Do you know why none of my sisters'll have you? Because they've all got lovers themselves—-all but me. And they have letters from them, too, and write back. I shouldn't know what to say. Ma would let us have you, but she wouldn't let us have anybody else.''
``Yes,'' Carola nodded. ``Ma says you are going to be a hero. One of us is to be married to you. Do you call me good-looking?''
Richard complimented her by saying he thought she would grow to be a very handsome chap.
Carola assured him she could not think it. ``My nose turns up, and my cheeks are so red. Pa calls them cabbage-roses. I don't mind the `roses,' but I can't bear the `cabbage'! Why is it you laugh so?''
``Because you're such a funny fellow, Carl.''
``Am I? Do you like funny fellows?''
``Of course I do. The funny fellows are always my best friends.''
``Why, now, that's just like me,'' exclaimed Carola. ``We're just alike. I hate people who mope. I thought you moped at first. I suppose you were only a little put out—-weren't you?''
``Only a little,'' sighed poor Richard.
``I declare if you don't talk exactly like my sister Clem! —-She's moping in love you know,—-Richard!''
``You don't hear me. Why are you so sad in a minute? Why do you call me `old friend'?''
``Because''—-he bent down and put his hand on her neck —-``because, because—-well! why?—-I suppose it's because I like you better than any of my new friends.''
``Do you?'' cried the joyful Carola, clapping her hands. ``That's right! I'm so glad. Mind you always do, Richard!—-won't you? And I will you. Are you fond of theatres?''
Richard informed her he had never been to one in his life, which caused lively astonishment to Miss Carl.
``Then you don't know what a beautiful lady is if you've never been to a theatre,'' she said authoritatively.
``I'm afraid I do!'' replied the lover.
``There you are again—-just like Clem!—-Are you in love, too? Oh, I hope it isn't with Clem! She'll never have you. I heard her say she'd die first. I did indeed!—-It's a secret—-his name's Walter. I've seen her letters: Lieutenant Papworth, in the Hussars. She begins them—-`Dearest, dearest Walter!'—-and they take her hours to write—-I shouldn't write like that. I should say, `Dear Richard! I love you. I hope we shall be married soon. Your faithful Carl.' That would do—-wouldn't it?''
Richard looked down upon her with something like veritable affection. Almost every turn in the artless little maid's prattle touched a new mood in him, and beguiled away his melancholy.
``That would just do,'' he said. ``All we want is to be married soon!''
Carola flushed up and was quiet. Clementina cantered to join them, bowing distantly to Richard, as if anything like familiarity involved the fate of her adored hussar.
After this conversation with the daughter of a System, Richard informed his father that he thought girls were very like boys.
``I think they are,'' said his father. ``I am beginning to think that the subsequent immense distinction is less one of sex than of education. They are drilled into hypocrites.''
``When they much prefer riding strideways,'' said Richard, and repeated some of his young friend's remarks, which his father evidently thought charming, and chuckled over frequently. A girl so like a boy was quite his ideal of a girl.
Certain sweet little notes from Lucy sustained the lover during the first two weeks of exile. Suddenly they ceased; and now Richard fell into such despondency that his father in alarm had to take measures to hasten their return to Raynham. At the close of the third week Berry laid a pair of letters, bearing the Raynham post-mark, on the breakfast-table, and, after reading one attentively, the baronet asked his son if he was inclined to quit the metropolis.
``For Raynham, sir?'' cried Richard, and relapsed, saying, ``As you will!'' aware that he had given a glimpse of the Foolish Young Fellow.
Berry accordingly received orders to make arrangements for their instant return to Raynham.
The letter Sir Austin lifted his head from to bespeak his son's wishes was a composition of the wise youth Adrian's, and ran thus:
``Benson is doggedly recovering. He requires great indemnities. Happy when a faithful fool is the main sufferer in a household! I quite agree with you that a faithful fool is the best servant of great schemes. Benson is now a piece of history. I tell him that this is indemnity enough, and that the sweet Muse usually insists upon gentlemen being half-flayed before she will condescend to notice them; but Benson, I regret to say, ignobly rejects the comfort so fine a reflection should offer, and had rather keep his skin and live opaque. Heroism seems partly a matter of training. Faithful folly is Benson's nature: the rest has been thrust upon him.
``The young person has resigned the neighbourhood. I had an interview with the fair Papist myself, and also with the man Blaize. They were both very sensible, though one swore and the other sighed. She is pretty. I hope she does not paint. As to her appearance she would affect Adam more than me; but, as I did not see her as Eve was seen, I cannot tell how the likeness may be. I can affirm that her legs are strong, for she walks to Bellingham twice a week to take her Scarlet bath, when, having confessed and been made clean by the Romish unction, she walks back the brisker, of which my Protestant muscular system is yet aware. It was on the road to Bellingham I engaged her. She is well in the matter of hair. Madam Godiva might challenge her, it would be a fair match. Has it never struck you that Woman is nearer the _vegetable_ than Man?—- Mr. Blaize intends her for his son—-a junction that every lover of fairy mythology must desire to see consummated. Young Tom is heir to all the _agre'mens_ of the Beast. The maids of Lobourne say (I hear) that he is a very Proculus among them. Possibly the envious men say it for the maids. Beauty does not speak bad grammar—-and altogether she is better out of the way. Allow me to congratulate you on having found Richard's unripe half in good condition, and rosy. I shall be glad to see the original man again, to whom his Tutor's salute and benediction.''
The other letter was from Lady Blandish, a lady's letter, and said:
``I have fulfilled your commission to the best of my ability, and heartily sad it has made me. She is indeed very much above her station—-pity that it is so! She is almost beautiful —-_quite_ beautiful at times, and not in _any way_ what you have been led to fancy. The poor child had no story to tell. I have again seen her, and talked with her for an hour as kindly as I could. I could gather nothing more than we know. It is just a woman's history as it invariably commences (not with _all_—-Is it fortunate for us, or the reverse?) Richard is the god of her idolatry. She will renounce him, and sacrifice herself for his sake. Are we so bad? She asked me what she was to do. She would do whatever was imposed upon her—-all but pretend to love another, and that she never would, and, I believe, _never will._ You know I am sentimental, and I confess we dropped a _few tears_ together. Her uncle has sent her for the winter to the institution —-where it appears she was educated, and where they are very fond of her and want to keep her, which it would be a good thing if they were to do. The man is a good sort of man. She was entrusted to him by her father, and he never interferes with her religion, and is very scrupulous about all that pertains to it, though, as he says, he is a Christian himself. In the Spring (but the poor child does not know this) she is to come back, and be married to his lout of a son. I am _determined_ to prevent that. May I not reckon on your promise to aid me? When you see her, I am sure you will. It would be sacrilege to look on and permit such a thing. You know, they are _cousins._ She asked me, where in the world was there one like Richard? What could I answer? They were your own words, and spoken with a depth of conviction! I hope he is really calm. I shudder to think of him when he comes, and discovers what I have been doing. I hope I have been really doing right! A good deed, you say, never dies; but we cannot always know—-I must rely on you. Yes, it is, I should think, easy to suffer martyrdom when one is sure of one's cause! but then one _must_ be sure of it. I have done nothing lately but to repeat to myself that saying of yours, No. 54, C. 7, P.S.; and it has consoled me, I cannot say why, except that all wisdom consoles, whether it applies directly or not:
`` `_For this reason so many fall from God, who have attained to Him; that they cling to Him with their Weakness, not with their Strength._'
``I like to know of what you were thinking when you composed this or that saying—-what _suggested_ it. May not one be admitted to inspect the machinery of wisdom? I feel curious to know how thoughts—-_real_ thoughts—-are born. Not that I hope to win the secret. Here is the beginning of one (but we poor women can never put together even two of the three ideas which you say go to form a thought): `When a wise man makes a false step, will he not go farther than a fool?' It has just flitted through me.
``I cannot get on with Gibbon, so wait your return to recommence the readings. I dislike the _sneering essence_ of his writings. I keep referring to his face, until the dislike seems to become personal. How different is it with Wordsworth! And yet I cannot escape from the thought that he is always solemnly thinking of himself (but I _do_ reverence him). But this is curious; Byron was a greater egoist, and yet I do not feel the same with him. He reminds me of a beast of the desert, savage and beautiful; and the former is what one would imagine a superior donkey reclaimed from the heathen to be—-a _very_ superior donkey, I mean, with great power of speech and great natural complacency, and whose stubbornness you must admire as part of his mission. The worst is that no one will imagine anything sublime in a superior donkey, so my simile is unfair and false. Is it not strange? I love Wordsworth best, and yet Byron has the greater power over me. How is that?'' (``Because,'' Sir Austin wrote beside the query in pencil, ``women are cowards, and succumb to Irony and Passion, rather than yield their hearts to Excellence and Nature's Inspiration.'')
``I have finished Boiardo and have taken up Berni. The latter offends me. I suppose we women do not really care for humour. You are right in saying we have none ourselves, and `cackle' instead of laugh. It is true (of me, at least) that `Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat man.' I want to know what he _illustrates._ And Don Quixote—-what end can be served in making a noble mind ridiculous?—-I hear you say—-practical! So it is. We are very narrow, I know. But we like wit—-practical again! Or in your words (when I really _think_ they generally come to my aid—-perhaps it is that it is often all _your thought_); we `prefer the rapier thrust, to the broad embrace, of Intelligence.' By the way, is there a characteristic in Mrs. Grandison? Or is she only _good?_ If so, how tired you must be! I hope Richard really is beginning to take an interest in the child. I sincerely trust that this young creature _is not so good as her mother._ I wish indeed the experiment were well `launched through the surf,' as you do us the honour to term it.
``Heigho! I have given up a season to you. What is to be my reward?''
Something, no doubt, the baronet had in store for her, and possibly the lady's instinct made her meditate on the day when Richard should be ``launched through the surf'' in earnest.
He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There are ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much less to others. Why did he twice throw a look into the glass in the act of passing it? Why did he for a moment stand with erect head facing it? His eyes for the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey-gathered brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had traced over the circles half up his high straight forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose over his forehead and fell away in the fashion of Richard's plume. His general appearance showed the tints of years; but none of their weight, and nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential self through the mask we wear. Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he presented to the lady's discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had not a suspicion. But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women can, when it pleases them, and when their feelings are not quite boiling under the noonday sun, seize all the sides of a character, and put their fingers on its weak point. He was cognizant of the total absence of the humorous in himself (the want that most shut him out from his fellows), and perhaps the clear-thoughted intensely self-examining gentleman filmily conceived, Me also, in common with the poet, she gazes on as one of the superior—-grey beasts!
He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that great-mindedness, and could at times snatch very luminous glances at the broad reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow compass holds up for us to see ourselves in when we will. Unhappily, the faculty of laughter, which is due to this gift, was denied him; and having once seen, he, like the companion of friend Balaam, could go no farther. For a good wind of laughter had relieved him of much of the blight of self-deception, and oddness, and extravagance; had given a healthier view of our atmosphere of life; but he had it not.
Journeying back to Bellingham in the train, with the heated brain and brilliant eye of his son beside him, Sir Austin tried hard to feel infallible, as a man with a System should feel; and because he could not do so, after much mental conflict, he descended to entertain a personal antagonism to the young woman who had stepped in between his experiment and success. He did not think kindly of her. Lady Blandish's encomiums of her behaviour and her beauty annoyed him. Forgetful that he had in a measure forfeited his rights to it, he took the common ground of fathers, and demanded, ``Why he was not justified in doing all that lay in his power to prevent his son from casting himself away upon the first creature with a pretty face he encountered?'' Deliberating thus, he lost the tenderness he should have had for his experiment—-the living, burning youth at his elbow, and his excessive love for him took a rigorous tone. It appeared to him politic, reasonable, and just, that the uncle of this young woman, who had so long nursed the prudent scheme of marrying her to his son, should not only not be thwarted in his object but encouraged and even assisted. At least, not thwarted. Sir Austin had no glass before him while these ideas hardened in his mind, and he had rather forgotten the letter of Lady Blandish.
Father and son were alone in the railway carriage. Both were too pre-occupied to speak. As they neared Bellingham, the dark was filling the hollows of the country. Over the pine-hills beyond the station a last rosy streak lingered across a green sky. Richard eyed it while they flew along. It caught him forward: it seemed full of the spirit of his love, and brought tears of mournful longing to his eyelids. The sad beauty of that one spot in the heavens seemed to call out to his soul to swear to his Lucy's truth to him: was like the sorrowful visage of his fleur-de-luce, as he called her, appealing to him for faith. That tremulous tender way she had of half-closing and catching light on the nether-lids, when sometimes she looked up in her lover's face—-a look so mystic-sweet it had grown to be the fountain of his dreams: he saw it yonder, and his blood thrilled.
Know you those wand-like touches of I know not what, before which our grosser being melts, and we, much as we hope to be in the Awaking, stand etherealized, trembling with new joy? They come but rarely; rarely even in love, when we fondly think them revelations. Mere sensations they are, doubtless: and we rank for them no higher in the spiritual scale than so many translucent glorious _polypi_ that quiver on the shores, the hues of heaven running through them. Yet in the harvest of our days it is something for the animal to have had such mere fleshly polypian experiences to look back upon, and they give him an horizon-pale seas of luring splendour. One who has had them (when they do not bound him) may find the Isles of Bliss sooner than another. Sensual faith in the upper glories is something. ``Let us remember,'' says =The Pilgrim's Scrip,= ``that Nature, though heathenish, reaches at her best to the footstool of the Highest. She is not all dust, but a living portion of the spheres. In aspiration it is our error to despise her, forgetting that through Nature only can we _ascend._ Cherished, trained, and purified, she is then partly worthy the divine mate who is to make her wholly so. St. Simeon saw the Hog in Nature, and took Nature for the Hog.''
It was one of these strange bodily exaltations which thrilled the young man, he knew not how it was, for his sadness and his forebodings vanished. The soft wand touched him. At that moment, had Sir Austin spoken openly, Richard might have fallen upon his heart. He could not. He chose to feel injured on the common ground of fathers, and to pursue his System by plotting. Lady Blandish had revived his jealousy of the creature who menaced it, and jealousy of a System is unreflecting and vindictive as jealousy of woman.
Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about the Bellingham station. Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the chest. Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master, he went into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had received private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his young master's mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of firs uninclosed on the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his retainer's zest for conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the part most favoured with shelter and concealment, found him furtively whiffing tobacco.
``What news, Tom?—-Is she well? Is she ill? Is she safe?''
Tom smuggled his pipe into his pocket. He sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old agriculural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract thought or sudden difficulty.
``No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard,'' he whinnied with a deprecating false grin, as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action. ``You're looking uncommon well, sir.''
``D'you hear, Tom?'' cried Richard imperatively. ``I haven't had a letter for a week! How is she? Where is she?''
Tom stepped back to Cassandra's hind-quarters, and round to her fore-feet, pretending to be spying after furze-thorns. Between anger and alarm at Tom's hesitation to answer honestly, a quality that served for patience restrained his master; but Tom saw that this trifling would not do, and he got up from the mare's loins, and said, holding forth both hands open, ``There, sir! I don't mind saying it. I know I ought for to have powsted a letter, tell'n you all of it as much as I'd come to hear—-but there, Mr. Richard, I do writ so shocken bad, and that's the truth, I wasn't the man for't. Well, sir,'' Tom warmed to speak out now he had began, ``I should a' stopped her. I know that, sir. I know'd how it'd knock you down. But I ain't a scholar! I ain't what you thinks or hopes for—-bain't a bit of a hero. I never can do anything 'less it's in company. I can't do't by myself. _I'm_ no hero. I know very well Lord Nelson 'd a done it,'' continued Tom, remembering, doubtless, many a lecture on the darling hero of Britain. ``_He'd_ 'a done it. So'd the Duke o' Wellington, or any o' them Peninsular War chaps. But I hadn't the spirit to step in and say—-You shan't take her away. I thought about 't, but there—-I couldn't! There's no more mistakes between us now, Mr. Richard. You see, I ain't a bit better than any other chap.''
Thus Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very hard at Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once rather than fix him in that owl-like way.
``Go on, Tom!'' said Richard huskily. ``Yes? She's gone! Well?''
Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained. Hereat the tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks. Tom said he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a terrible sum—-that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please his young master on his return. ``Likewise something in Lat'n,'' added Tom. ``Nom'tive Mouser!—-'nough to make ye mad, sir!'' he exclaimed with pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.
Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly along with young Tom Blaize. ``She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,'' said Tom, ``and cryin' don't spoil them.'' For which his hand was violently wrenched.
Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much as to say, Good-bye, Tom!
``And though she couldn't see me,'' said Tom, ``I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like me.''
Tom was at high-pressure sentiment—-what with his education for a hero and his master's love-stricken state.
``You saw no more of her, Tom?''
``No, sir. That was the last!'' said Tom, imitating the forlornness of his master's voice.
``That was the last you saw of her, Tom?''
``Well, sir, I saw nothin' more.''
``You didn't go to the corner of the road to see———?''
``Dash'd if I thought o' doing that, sir!''
``And so she went out of sight, Torn?''
``Clean gone, that she were, sir!''
``Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have they taken her to?''
These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven rather than to Tom.
``Why didn't she write?'' they were resumed. ``Why did she leave? She's mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her way? Why did she leave without writing?——— Tom!''
``Yes, sir,'' said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to the word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the change of tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again, ``Where have they taken her to?'' and this was even more perplexing to Tom than his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down the corners of his mouth hard, and glance up queerly.
``She _had_ been crying—-you saw that, Tom?''
``No mistake about that, Mr. Richard. Cryin' all night and all day, I sh'd say.''
``And she was crying when you saw her?''
``She look'd as if she'd just done for a moment, sir,'' Tom insinuated.
Richard paused to discover whether his instinct had caught a new view from these facts. He was in a cage, always knocking against the same bars, fly as he might.
Her tears were the stars in his black night. He clung to them as golden orbs. Inexplicable as they were, they were at least pledges of love. She could not have been too miserable to please him.
``Tom!'' he said, ``I'll follow her at once.''
``Better wait,'' Tom advised, ``till I search out where the young lady is—-hadn't you, sir?''
The hues of sunset had left the West. No light was there but the steadfast pale eye of twilight. Thither he was drawn: thither he must go. He had not listened to Tom's sound sense, but it appeared to guide him, for he mounted Cassandra, saying: ``Tell them something, Tom. I shan't be home to dinner,'' and rode off toward the forsaken home of light over Belthorpe, wherein he saw the wan hand of his Lucy, waving farewell, receding as he advanced. His jewel was stolen,—-he must gaze upon the empty box.
