CHAPTER XXV

Let it be some apology for the damage caused by the careering hero, and a

consolation to the quiet wretches, dragged along with him at his

chariot-wheels, that he is generally the last to know when he has made an

actual start; such a mere creature is he, like the rest of us, albeit the

head of our fates. By this you perceive the true hero, whether he be a

prince or a pot-boy, that he does not plot; Fortune does all for him. He

may be compared to one to whom, in an electric circle, it is given to

carry the battery.

We caper and grimace at his will; yet not his the will, not his the

power. 'Tis all Fortune's, whose puppet he is. She deals her

dispensations through him. Yea, though our capers be never so comical, he

laughs not. Intent upon his own business, the true hero asks little

services of us here and there; thinks it quite natural that they should

be acceded to, and sees nothing ridiculous in the lamentable contortions

we must go through to fulfil them. Probably he is the elect of Fortune,

because of that notable faculty of being intent upon his own business:

"Which is," says The Pilgrim's Scrip, "with men to be valued equal to

that force which in water makes a stream." This prelude was necessary to

the present chapter of Richard's history.

It happened that in the turn of the year, and while old earth was busy

with her flowers, the fresh wind blew, the little bird sang, and Hippias

Feverel, the Dyspepsy, amazed, felt the Spring move within him. He

communicated his delightful new sensations to the baronet, his brother,

whose constant exclamation with regard to him, was: "Poor Hippias! All

his machinery is bare!" and had no hope that he would ever be in a

condition to defend it from view. Nevertheless Hippias had that hope, and

so he told his brother, making great exposure of his machinery to effect

the explanation. He spoke of all his physical experiences exultingly, and

with wonder. The achievement of common efforts, not usually blazoned, he

celebrated as triumphs, and, of course, had Adrian on his back very

quickly. But he could bear him, or anything, now. It was such ineffable

relief to find himself looking out upon the world of mortals instead of

into the black phantasmal abysses of his own complicated frightful

structure. "My mind doesn't so much seem to haunt itself, now," said

Hippias, nodding shortly and peering out of intense puckers to convey a

glimpse of what hellish sufferings his had been: "I feel as if I had come

aboveground."

A poor Dyspepsy may talk as he will, but he is the one who never gets

sympathy, or experiences compassion: and it is he whose groaning

petitions for charity do at last rout that Christian virtue. Lady

Blandish, a charitable soul, could not listen to Hippias, though she had

a heart for little mice and flies, and Sir Austin had also small patience

with his brother's gleam of health, which was just enough to make his

disease visible. He remembered his early follies and excesses, and bent

his ear to him as one man does to another who complains of having to pay

a debt legally incurred.

"I think," said Adrian, seeing how the communications of Hippias were

received, "that when our Nemesis takes lodgings in the stomach, it's best

to act the Spartan, smile hard, and be silent."

Richard alone was decently kind to Hippias; whether from opposition, or

real affection, could not be said, as the young man was mysterious. He

advised his uncle to take exercise, walked with him, cultivated cheerful

impressions in him, and pointed out innocent pursuits. He made Hippias

visit with him some of the poor old folk of the village, who bewailed the

loss of his cousin Austin Wentworth, and did his best to waken him up,

and give the outer world a stronger hold on him. He succeeded in nothing

but in winning his uncle's gratitude. The season bloomed scarce longer

than a week for Hippias, and then began to languish. The poor Dyspepsy's

eager grasp at beatification relaxed: he went underground again. He

announced that he felt "spongy things"--one of the more constant throes

of his malady. His bitter face recurred: he chewed the cud of horrid

hallucinations. He told Richard he must give up going about with him:

people telling of their ailments made him so uncomfortable--the birds

were so noisy, pairing--the rude bare soil sickened him.

Richard treated him with a gravity equal to his father's. He asked what

the doctors said.

"Oh! the doctors!" cried Hippias with vehement scepticism. "No man of

sense believes in medicine for chronic disorder. Do you happen to have

heard of any new remedy then, Richard? No? They advertise a great many

cures for indigestion, I assure you, my dear boy. I wonder whether one

can rely upon the authenticity of those signatures? I see no reason why

there should be no cure for such a disease?--Eh? And it's just one of the

things a quack, as they call them, would hit upon sooner than one who is

in the beaten track. Do you know, Richard, my dear boy, I've often

thought that if we could by any means appropriate to our use some of the

extraordinary digestive power that a boa constrictor has in his gastric

juices, there is really no manner of reason why we should not comfortably

dispose of as much of an ox as our stomachs will hold, and one might eat

French dishes without the wretchedness of thinking what's to follow. And

this makes me think that those fellows may, after all, have got some

truth in them: some secret that, of course, they require to be paid for.

We distrust each other in this world too much, Richard. I've felt

inclined once or twice--but it's absurd!--If it only alleviated a few of

my sufferings I should be satisfied. I've no hesitation in saying that I

should be quite satisfied if it only did away with one or two, and left

me free to eat and drink as other people do. Not that I mean to try them.

It's only a fancy--Eh? What a thing health is, my dear boy! Ah! if I were

like you! I was in love once!"

"Were you!" said Richard, coolly regarding him.

"I've forgotten what I felt!" Hippias sighed. "You've very much improved,

my dear boy."

"So people say," quoth Richard.

Hippias looked at him anxiously: "If I go to town and get the doctor's

opinion about trying a new course--Eh, Richard? will you come with me? I

should like your company. We could see London together, you know. Enjoy

ourselves," and Hippias rubbed his hands.

Richard smiled at the feeble glimmer of enjoyment promised by his uncle's

eyes, and said he thought it better they should stay where they were--an

answer that might mean anything. Hippias immediately became possessed by

the beguiling project. He went to the baronet, and put the matter before

him, instancing doctors as the object of his journey, not quacks, of

course; and requesting leave to take Richard. Sir Austin was getting

uneasy about his son's manner. It was not natural. His heart seemed to be

frozen: he had no confidences: he appeared to have no ambition--to have

lost the virtues of youth with the poison that had passed out of him. He

was disposed to try what effect a little travelling might have on him,

and had himself once or twice hinted to Richard that it would be good for

him to move about, the young man quietly replying that he did not wish to

quit Raynham at all, which was too strict a fulfilment of his father's

original views in educating him there entirely. On the day that Hippias

made his proposal, Adrian, seconded by Lady Blandish, also made one. The

sweet Spring season stirred in Adrian as well as in others: not to

pastoral measures: to the joys of the operatic world and bravura glories.

He also suggested that it would be advisable to carry Richard to town for

a term, and let him know his position, and some freedom. Sir Austin

weighed the two proposals. He was pretty certain that Richard's passion

was consumed, and that the youth was now only under the burden of its

ashes. He had found against his heart, at the Bellingham inn: a great

lock of golden hair. He had taken it, and the lover, after feeling about

for it with faint hands, never asked for it. This precious lock (Miss

Davenport had thrust it into his hand at Belthorpe as Lucy's last gift),

what sighs and tears it had weathered! The baronet laid it in Richard's

sight one day, and beheld him take it up, turn it over, and drop it down

again calmly, as if he were handling any common curiosity. It pacified

him on that score. The young man's love was dead. Dr. Clifford said

rightly: he wanted distractions. The baronet determined that Richard

should go. Hippias and Adrian then pressed their several suits as to

which should have him. Hippias, when he could forget himself, did not

lack sense. He observed that Adrian was not at present a proper companion

for Richard, and would teach him to look on life from the false point.

"You don't understand a young philosopher," said the baronet.

"A young philosopher's an old fool!" returned Hippias, not thinking that

his growl had begotten a phrase.

His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:

"Excellent! worthy of your best days! You're wrong, though, in applying

it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done has been to

bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and sees. I think,

however," the baronet added, "he may want faith in the better qualities

of men." And this reflection inclined him not to let his son be alone

with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who saw which way his father's

wishes tended, and decided so to please him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian

extremely. He said to his chief:

"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we derive

any advantage from the family name being made notorious for twenty years

of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our constitutional

tendency to stomachic distension before we fortunately encountered

Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have been huge, but I would rather

society were not intimate with them under their several headings." Adrian

enumerated some of the most abhorrent. "You know him, sir. If he

conceives a duty, he will do it in the face of every decency--all the

more obstinate because the conception is rare. If he feels a little brisk

the morning after the pill, he sends the letter that makes us famous! We

go down to posterity with heightened characteristics, to say nothing of a

contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned inside-out to

the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery made bare to

them."

Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to Dr.

Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in about two

weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a prospective Summer

campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to depart, and the day came.

Madame the Eighteenth Century called him to her chamber and put into his

hand a fifty-pound note, as her contribution toward his pocket-expenses.

He did not want it, he said, but she told him he was a young man, and

would soon make that fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady did

not at all approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her

grandnephew to understand that, should he require more, he knew where to

apply, and secrets would be kept. His father presented him with a hundred

pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care for

money. "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.

Hippias had few injunctions to observe. They were to take up quarters at

the hotel, Algernon's general run of company at the house not being

altogether wholesome. The baronet particularly forewarned Hippias of the

imprudence of attempting to restrict the young man's movements, and

letting him imagine he was under surveillance. Richard having been, as it

were, pollarded by despotism, was now to grow up straight, and bloom

again, in complete independence, as far as he could feel. So did the sage

decree; and we may pause a moment to reflect how wise were his

previsions, and how successful they must have been, had not Fortune, the

great foe to human cleverness, turned against him, or he against himself.

The departure took place on a fine March morning. The bird of Winter sang

from the budding tree; in the blue sky sang the bird of Summer. Adrian

rode between Richard and Hippias to the Bellingham station, and vented

his disgust on them after his own humorous fashion, because it did not

rain and damp their ardour. In the rear came Lady Blandish and the

baronet, conversing on the calm summit of success.

"You have shaped him exactly to resemble yourself," she said, pointing

with her riding-whip to the grave stately figure of the young man.

"Outwardly, perhaps," he answered, and led to a discussion on Purity and

Strength, the lady saying that she preferred Purity.

"But you do not," said the baronet. "And there I admire the always true

instinct of women, that they all worship Strength in whatever form, and

seem to know it to be the child of heaven; whereas Purity is but a

characteristic, a garment, and can be spotted--how soon! For there are

questions in this life with which we must grapple or be lost, and when,

hunted by that cold eye of intense inner-consciousness, the clearest soul

becomes a cunning fox, if it have not courage to stand and do battle.

Strength indicates a boundless nature--like the Maker. Strength is a God

to you--Purity a toy. A pretty one, and you seem to be fond of playing

with it," he added, with unaccustomed slyness.

The lady listened, pleased at the sportive malice which showed that the

constraint on his mind had left him. It was for women to fight their

fight now; she only took part in it for amusement. This is how the ranks

of our enemies are thinned; no sooner do poor women put up a champion in

their midst than she betrays them.

"I see," she said archly, "we are the lovelier vessels; you claim the

more direct descent. Men are seedlings: Women--slips! Nay, you have said

so," she cried out at his gestured protestation, laughing.

"But I never printed it."

"Oh! what you speak answers for print with me."

Exquisite Blandish! He could not choose but love her.

"Tell me what are your plans?" she asked. "May a woman know?"

He replied, "I have none or you would share them. I shall study him in

the world. This indifference must wear off. I shall mark his inclinations

now, and he shall be what he inclines to. Occupation will be his prime

safety. His cousin Austin's plan of life appears most to his taste, and

he can serve the people that way as well as in Parliament, should he have

no stronger ambition. The clear duty of a man of any wealth is to serve

the people as he best can. He shall go among Austin's set, if he wishes

it, though personally I find no pleasure in rash imaginations, and

undigested schemes built upon the mere instinct of principles."

"Look at him now," said the lady. "He seems to care for nothing; not even

for the beauty of the day."

"Or Adrian's jokes," added the baronet.

Adrian could be seen to be trying zealously to torment a laugh, or a

confession of irritation, out of his hearers, stretching out his chin to

one, and to the other, with audible asides. Richard he treated as a new

instrument of destruction about to be let loose on the slumbering

metropolis; Hippias as one in an interesting condition; and he got so

much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the

mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal

insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's dull life at

Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional

joker.

"Oh! the Spring! the Spring!" he cried, as in scorn of his sallies they

exchanged their unmeaning remarks on the sweet weather across him. "You

seem both to be uncommonly excited by the operations of turtles, rooks,

and daws. Why can't you let them alone?"

'Wind bloweth,

Cock croweth,

Doodle-doo;

Hippy verteth,

Ricky sterteth,

Sing Cuckoo!'

There's an old native pastoral!--Why don't you write a Spring sonnet,

Ricky? The asparagus-beds are full of promise, I hear, and eke the

strawberry. Berries I fancy your Pegasus has a taste for. What kind of

berry was that I saw some verses of yours about once?--amatory verses to

some kind of berry--yewberry, blueberry, glueberry! Pretty verses,

decidedly warm. Lips, eyes, bosom, legs--legs? I don't think you gave her

any legs. No legs and no nose. That appears to be the poetic taste of the

day. It shall be admitted that you create the very beauties for a chaste

people.

'O might I lie where leans her lute!'

and offend no moral community. That's not a bad image of yours, my dear

boy:

'Her shape is like an antelope

Upon the Eastern hills.'

But as a candid critic, I would ask you if the likeness can be considered

correct when you give her no legs? You will see at the ballet that you

are in error about women at present, Richard. That admirable institution

which our venerable elders have imported from Gallia for the instruction

of our gaping youth, will edify and astonish you. I assure you I used,

from reading The Pilgrim's Scrip, to imagine all sorts of things about

them, till I was taken there, and learnt that they are very like us after

all, and then they ceased to trouble me. Mystery is the great danger to

youth, my son! Mystery is woman's redoubtable weapon, O Richard of the

Ordeal! I'm aware that you've had your lessons in anatomy, but nothing

will persuade you that an anatomical figure means flesh and blood. You

can't realize the fact. Do you intend to publish when you're in town?

It'll be better not to put your name. Having one's name to a volume of

poems is as bad as to an advertising pill."

"I will send you an early copy, Adrian, when I publish," quoth Richard.

"Hark at that old blackbird, uncle."

"Yes!" Hippias quavered; looking up from the usual subject of his

contemplation, and trying to take an interest in him, "fine old fellow!"

"What a chuckle he gives out before he flies! Not unlike July

nightingales. You know that bird I told you of--the blackbird that had

its mate shot, and used to come to sing to old Dame Bakewell's bird from

the tree opposite. A rascal knocked it over the day before yesterday, and

the dame says her bird hasn't sung a note since."

"Extraordinary!" Hippias muttered abstractedly. "I remember the verses."

"But where's your moral?" interposed the wrathful Adrian. "Where's

constancy rewarded?

'The ouzel-cock so black of hue,

With orange-tawny bill;

The rascal with his aim so true;

The Poet's little quill!'

"Where's the moral of that? except that all's game to the poet! Certainly

we have a noble example of the devotedness of the female, who for three

entire days refuses to make herself heard, on account of a defunct male.

I suppose that's what Ricky dwells on."

"As you please, my dear Adrian," says Richard, and points out larch-buds

to his uncle, as they ride by the young green wood.

The wise youth was driven to extremity. Such a lapse from his pupil's

heroics to this last verge of Arcadian coolness, Adrian could not believe

in. "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his turn, and pretending

to interpret his fits of song:

"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my

Fiesco?--Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train has

started--jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be winners yet!

"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"

"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a manner

mildly affable.

Adrian shrugged. "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he

emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for

which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into

Bellingham.

There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and gala

waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had

preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound for

London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet:

"The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;" but he paid no

heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look

took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the

nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could

supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was not stiffened by the

eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady

Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's adieux

across the palings. He shook hands with each of them in the same kindly

cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on his style of doing

it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into one of

the carriages.

Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at war

with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern life;

and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant

watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active forties,

cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he but

sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this, and smile

wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System incarnate, wave a

serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor morbidly unwilling to try

his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At present, I am aware, an

audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on

incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will come

to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work: who, as

it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds of

March when they do not blow. To them will nothing be trivial, seeing that

they will have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on around us,

whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes. And

they will perceive, moreover, that in real life all hangs together: the

train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon the field of

thousands. They will see the links of things as they pass, and wonder

not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter came out of that

small one.

Such an audience, then, will participate in the baronet's gratification

at his son's demeanour, wherein he noted the calm bearing of experience

not gained in the usual wanton way: and will not be without some excited

apprehension at his twinge of astonishment, when, just as the train went

sliding into swiftness, he beheld the grave, cold, self-possessed young

man throw himself back in the carriage violently laughing. Science was at

a loss to account for that. Sir Austin checked his mind from inquiring,

that he might keep suspicion at a distance, but he thought it odd, and

the jarring sensation that ran along his nerves at the sight, remained

with him as he rode home.

Lady Blandish's tender womanly intuition bade her say: "You see it was

the very thing he wanted. He has got his natural spirits already."

"It was," Adrian put in his word, "the exact thing he wanted. His spirits

have returned miraculously."

"Something amused him," said the baronet, with an eye on the puffing

train.

"Probably something his uncle said or did," Lady Blandish suggested, and

led off at a gallop.

Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard's

laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed

on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells

in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express

his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the

Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which

unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,

"Hippy verteth,

Sing cuckoo!"

in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized

him.

"Hippy verteth!"

Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so

immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.

"Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy," said Hippias, and

was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest "ha! ha!"

"Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?" cried Richard.

"I really don't know," Hippias chuckled.

"Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!"

They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias not

only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like any

blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and

anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at

him--he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his

own transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes, now

and then, that it might not last, and that he must go underground again,

lent him a look of pathos and humour which tickled his youthful companion

irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.

"I tell you what, uncle," said Richard, "I think travelling's a capital

thing."

"The best thing in the world, my dear boy," Hippias returned. "It makes

me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before, instead of

chaining myself to a task. We're quite different beings in a minute. I

am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?"

"Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend to

make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride on a

railway every day."

Hippias remarked: "They say it rather injures the digestion."

"Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow."

"Perhaps I shall do something yet," sighed Hippias, alluding to the vast

literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. "I hope I shall have a good

night to-night."

"Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?"

"Ugh!" Hippias grunted, "I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment you get

into bed!"

"The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment I wake. Health's

everything!"

"Health's everything!" echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.

"And if you'll put yourself in my hands," Richard continued, "you shall

do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing 'Jolly!' like

Adrian's blackbird. You shall, upon my honour, uncle!"

He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery--no less than

twelve a day--that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness

almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his own.

"Mind," quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, "mind your dishes are

not too savoury!"

"Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart to

all, but give it to none!" exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters,

"Yes! yes!" and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his not

following that maxim earlier.

"Love ruins us, my dear boy," he said, thinking to preach Richard a

lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:

"The love of Monsieur Francatelli,

It was the ruin of--et coetera."

Hippias blinked, exclaiming, "Really, my dear boy! I never saw you so

excited."

"It's the railway! It's the fun, uncle!"

"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden Bride!

Keep her if you can. That's a pretty fable of your father's. I gave him

the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my ideas!"

"Here's the idea in verse, uncle:

'O sunless walkers by the tide!

O have you seen the Golden Bride!

They say that she is fair beyond

All women; faithful, and more fond!

"You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by the

brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:

Faithful she is, but she forsakes:

And fond, yet endless woe she makes:

And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd;

To know her not till she is lost!'

"Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the

fabulist pursues:

'She hath a palace in the West:

Bright Hesper lights her to her rest:

And him the Morning Star awakes

Whom to her charmed arms she takes.

So lives he till he sees, alas!

The maids of baser metal pass.'

"And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with

one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy

Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds

her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina,

till he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less obscure

become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her radiance shines

forth, my uncle."

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

says Hippias.

"We will, uncle!--Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in the

fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!

'She claims the whole, and not the part--

The coin of an unused heart!

To gain his Golden Bride again,

He hunts with melancholy men,'

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

"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias

interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a

Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion.

I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."

"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard. "You shall ride in the park with

me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden Bride. You know

that little poem of Sandoe's?

'She rides in the park on a prancing bay,

She and her squires together;

Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey,

And toss with the tossing feather.

'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride

Is the beautiful face as it passes;

The cockneys nod to each other aside,

The coxcombs lift their glasses.

'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach

The ice-wall that guards her securely;

You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each,

As the heart that can image her purely.'

"Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they quarrelled.

He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?

'True, Madam, you may think to part

Conditions by a glacier-ridge,

But Beauty's for the largest heart,

And all abysses Love can bridge!

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

"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never seen

one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go parading your

admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the

subject when he thinks fit."

"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he

murmured to a pleased ear:

"Beauty's for the largest heart!"

The flow of their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of

passengers at a station. Richard examined their faces with pleasure. All

faces pleased him. Human nature sat tributary at the feet of him and his

Golden Bride. As he could not well talk his thoughts before them, he

looked out at the windows, and enjoyed the changing landscape, projecting

all sorts of delights for his old friend Ripton, and musing hazily on the

wondrous things he was to do in the world; of the great service he was to

be to his fellow-creatures. In the midst of his reveries he was landed in

London. Tom Bakewell stood at the carriage door. A glance told Richard

that his squire had something curious on his mind; and he gave Tom the

word to speak out. Tom edged his master out of hearing, and began

sputtering a laugh.

"Dash'd if I can help it, sir!" he said. "That young Tom! He've come to

town dressed that spicy! and he don't know his way about no more than a

stag. He's come to fetch somebody from another rail, and he don't know

how to get there, and he ain't sure about which rail 'tis. Look at him,

Mr. Richard! There he goes."

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

"Who has he come for?" Richard asked.

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

Tom, bursting to be perfectly intelligible.

"Is it for her, Tom?"

"Miss Lucy, sir."

Richard turned away, and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out

of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him

into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left,

always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to

appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in the conveyance, Hippias

could not persuade him to drive off. He made the excuse that he did not

wish to start till there was a clear road. At last young Tom cast anchor

by a policeman, and, doubtless at the official's suggestion, bashfully

took seat in a cab, and was shot into the whirlpool of London. Richard

then angrily asked his driver what he was waiting for.

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

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

drive fast.

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

Hippias assured him there was something the matter with him.

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

They say, that when the skill and care of men rescue a drowned wretch

from extinction, and warm the flickering spirit into steady flame, such

pain it is, the blood forcing its way along the dry channels, and the

heavily-ticking nerves, and the sullen heart--the struggle of life and

death in him--grim death relaxing his gripe; such pain it is, he cries

out no thanks to them that pull him by inches from the depths of the dead

river. And he who has thought a love extinct, and is surprised by the old

fires, and the old tyranny, he rebels, and strives to fight clear of the

cloud of forgotten sensations that settle on him; such pain it is, the

old sweet music reviving through his frame, and the charm of his passion

filing him afresh. Still was fair Lucy the one woman to Richard. He had

forbidden her name but from an instinct of self-defence. Must the maids

of baser metal dominate him anew, it is in Lucy's shape. Thinking of her

now so near him--his darling! all her graces, her sweetness, her truth;

for, despite his bitter blame of her, he knew her true--swam in a

thousand visions before his eyes; visions pathetic, and full of glory,

that now wrung his heart, and now elated it. As well might a ship attempt

to calm the sea, as this young man the violent emotion that began to rage

in his breast. "I shall not see her!" he said to himself exultingly, and

at the same instant thought, how black was every corner of the earth but

that one spot where Lucy stood! how utterly cheerless the place he was

going to! Then he determined to bear it; to live in darkness; there was a

refuge in the idea of a voluntary martyrdom. "For if I chose I could see

her--this day within an hour!--I could see her, and touch her hand, and,

oh, heaven!--But I do not choose." And a great wave swelled through him,

and was crushed down only to swell again more stormily.

Then Tom Bakewell's words recurred to him that young Tom Blaize was

uncertain where to go for her, and that she might be thrown on this

Babylon alone. And flying from point to point, it struck him that they

had known at Raynham of her return, and had sent him to town to be out of

the way--they had been miserably plotting against him once more. "They

shall see what right they have to fear me. I'll shame them!" was the

first turn taken by his wrathful feelings, as he resolved to go, and see

her safe, and calmly return to his uncle, whom he sincerely believed not

to be one of the conspirators. Nevertheless, after forming that resolve,

he sat still, as if there were something fatal in the wheels that bore

him away from it--perhaps because he knew, as some do when passion is

lord, that his intelligence juggled with him; though none the less keenly

did he feel his wrongs and suspicions. His Golden Bride was waning fast.

But when Hippias ejaculated to cheer him: "We shall soon be there!" the

spell broke. Richard stopped the cab, saying he wanted to speak to Tom,

and would ride with him the rest of the journey. He knew well enough

which line of railway his Lucy must come by. He had studied every town

and station on the line. Before his uncle could express more than a mute

remonstrance, he jumped out and hailed Tom Bakewell, who came behind with

the boxes and baggage in a companion cab, his head a yard beyond the

window to make sure of his ark of safety, the vehicle preceding.

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

very street!"

Within a minute the stalwart Berry, despatched by the baronet to arrange

everything for their comfort, had opened the door, and made his bow.

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

"Behind--among the boxes, fool!" Hippias growled, as he received Berry's

muscular assistance to alight. "Lunch ready--eh!"

"Luncheon was ordered precise at two o'clock, sir--been in attendance one

quarter of an hour. Heah!" Berry sang out to the second cab, which, with

its pyramid of luggage, remained stationary some thirty paces distant. At

his voice the majestic pile deliberately turned its back on them, and

went off in a contrary direction.