DAPHNE'S BOWER
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 Feverels 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;
hob-nail 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.