JUVENILE STRATAGEMS
As soon as they could escape, the boys got away 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 momentary 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. Look
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 petty 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 for ever 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 be 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.