A DINNER-PARTY AT RICHMOND
A lady driving a pair of greys was noticed by Richard in his rides
and walks. She passed him rather obviously and often. She was very
handsome; a bold beauty, with shining black hair, red lips, and eyes
not afraid of men. The hair was brushed from her temples, leaving
one of those fine reckless outlines which the action of driving, and
the pace, admirably set off. She took his fancy. He liked the air of
petulant gallantry about her, and mused upon the picture, rare to
him, of a glorious dashing woman. He thought, too, she looked at
him. He was not at the time inclined to be vain, or he might have
been sure she did. Once it struck him she nodded slightly.
He asked Adrian one day in the park--who she was.
"I don't know her," said Adrian. "Probably a superior priestess of
Paphos."
"Now that's my idea of Bellona," Richard exclaimed. "Not the fury
they paint, but a spirited, dauntless, eager-looking creature like
that."
"Bellona?" returned the wise youth. "I don't think her hair was
black. Red, wasn't it? I shouldn't compare her to Bellona; though,
no doubt, she's as ready to spill blood. Look at her! She does seem
to scent carnage. I see your idea. No; I should liken her to Diana
emerged from the tutorship of Master Endymion, and at nice play
among the gods. Depend upon it--they tell us nothing of the
matter--Olympus shrouds the story--but you may be certain that when
she left the pretty shepherd she had greater vogue than Venus up
aloft."
Brayder joined them.
"See Mrs. Mount go by?" he said.
"Oh, that's Mrs. Mount!" cried Adrian.
"Who's Mrs. Mount?" Richard inquired.
"A sister to Miss Random, my dear boy."
"Like to know her?" drawled the Hon. Peter.
Richard replied indifferently, "No," and Mrs. Mount passed out of
sight and out of the conversation.
The young man wrote submissive letters to his father. "I have
remained here waiting to see you now five weeks," he wrote. "I have
written to you three letters, and you do not reply to them. Let me
tell you again how sincerely I desire and pray that you will come,
or permit me to come to you and throw myself at your feet, and beg
my forgiveness, and hers. She as earnestly implores it. Indeed, I am
very wretched, sir. Believe me, there is nothing I would not do to
regain your esteem and the love I fear I have unhappily forfeited. I
will remain another week in the hope of hearing from you, or seeing
you. I beg of you, sir, not to drive me mad. Whatever you ask of me
I will consent to."
"Nothing he would not do!" the baronet commented as he read. "There
is nothing he would not do! He will remain another week and give me
that final chance! And it is I who drive him mad! Already he is
beginning to cast his retribution on my shoulders."
Sir Austin had really gone down to Wales to be out of the way. A
Shaddock-Dogmatist does not meet misfortune without hearing of it,
and the author of THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP in trouble found London too
hot for him. He quitted London to take refuge among the mountains;
living there in solitary commune with a virgin Note-book.
Some indefinite scheme was in his head in this treatment of his son.
Had he construed it, it would have looked ugly; and it settled to a
vague principle that the young man should be tried and tested.
"Let him learn to deny himself something. Let him live with his
equals for a term. If he loves me he will read my wishes." Thus he
explained his principle to Lady Blandish.
The lady wrote: "You speak of a term. Till when? May I name one to
him? It is the dreadful _uncertainty_ that reduces him to despair.
That, and nothing else. Pray be explicit."
In return, he distantly indicated Richard's majority.
How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away
from his wife? Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she
worshipped.
When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in
deceiving and imposing upon others. Not only was Lady Blandish
mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody's
mind, and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother
from infancy, and had never known herself to be once wrong about
him, she confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin's
principle. "For principle he has," said Mrs. Doria; "he never acts
without one. But what it is, I cannot at present perceive. If he
would write, and command the boy to await his return, all would be
clear. He allows us to go and fetch him, and then leaves us all in a
quandary. It must be some woman's influence. That is the only way to
account for it."
"Singular!" interjected Adrian, "what pride women have in their sex!
Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow
I hand my charge over to your keeping. I can't hold him in an hour
longer. I've had to leash him with lies till my invention's
exhausted. I petition to have them put down to the chief's account,
but when the stream runs dry I can do no more. The last was, that I
had heard from him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready
for him on Tuesday proximate. 'So!' says my son, 'I'll wait till
then,' and from the gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I
doubt any human power's getting him to wait longer."
"We must, we must detain him," said Mrs. Doria. "If we do not, I am
convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever
repent. He will marry that woman, Adrian. Mark my words. Now with
any other young man!... But Richard's education! that ridiculous
System!... Has he no distraction? nothing to amuse him?"
"Poor boy! I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow."
The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.
"I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman."
"My dear aunt! Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?"
"Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?--If he had but a
profession!"
"What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the
profession of moral-scavenger, aunt? I assure you I have served a
month's apprenticeship with him. We sally forth on the tenth hour
of the night. A female passes. I hear him groan. 'Is _she_ one of
them, Adrian?' I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems
it the portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be. Another
groan; an evident internal, 'It cannot be--and yet!' ... that we
hear on the stage. Rollings of eyes: impious questionings of the
Creator of the universe; savage mutterings against brutal males; and
then we meet a second young person, and repeat the performance--of
which I am rather tired. It would be all very well, but he turns
upon me, and lectures me because I don't hire a house, and furnish
it for all the women one meets to live in in purity. Now that's too
much to ask of a quiet man. Master Thompson has latterly relieved
me, I'm happy to say."
Mrs. Doria thought her thoughts.
"Has Austin written to you since you were in town?"
"Not an Aphorism!" returned Adrian.
"I must see Richard to-morrow morning," Mrs. Doria ended the
colloquy by saying.
The result of her interview with her nephew was, that Richard made
no allusion to a departure on the Tuesday; and for many days
afterward he appeared to have an absorbing business on his hands:
but what it was Adrian did not then learn, and his admiration of
Mrs. Doria's genius for management rose to a very high pitch.
* * * * *
On a morning in October they had an early visitor in the person of
the Hon. Peter, whom they had not seen for a week or more.
"Gentlemen," he said, flourishing his cane in his most affable
manner, "I've come to propose to you to join us in a little
dinner-party at Richmond. Nobody's in town, you know. London's as
dead as a stock-fish. Nothing but the scrapings to offer you. But
the weather's fine: I flatter myself you'll find the company
agreeable. What says my friend Feverel?"
Richard begged to be excused.
"No, no: positively you must come," said the Hon. Peter. "I've had
some trouble to get them together to relieve the dulness of your
incarceration. Richmond's within the rules of your prison. You can
be back by night. Moonlight on the water--lovely woman. We've
engaged a city-barge to pull us back. Eight oars--I'm not sure it
isn't sixteen. Come--the word!"
Adrian was for going. Richard said he had an appointment with
Ripton.
"You're in for another rick, you two," said Adrian. "Arrange that we
go. You haven't seen the cockney's Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and
taste of peace, my son."
After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
aside the care that was on him, saying, "Very well. Just as you
like. We'll take old Rip with us."
Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly
declared he should be delighted to have Feverel's friend, and
offered to take them all down in his drag.
"If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide--eh,
Feverel, my boy?"
Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which
Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the
youth.
Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape,
bathed in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red
horizon haze. The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered.
It touched no link in the chain of his recollection. It was quiet,
and belonged to the spirit of the season.
Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in
rather an undervoice, as a thing to get over. They made their bow to
the first knot of ladies they encountered. Propriety was observed
strictly, even to severity. The general talk was of the weather.
Here and there a lady would seize a button-hole or any little bit of
the habiliments, of the man she was addressing; and if it came to
her to chide him, she did it with more than a forefinger. This,
however, was only here and there, and a privilege of intimacy.
Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may
be known by her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering
leaned against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart
Court, in whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and
Ripton, with a sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were
fine men, offering inanimate homage. The trim of their whiskerage,
the cut of their coats, the high-bred indolence in their aspect,
eclipsed Ripton's sense of self-esteem. But they kindly looked over
him. Occasionally one committed a momentary outrage on him with an
eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a voice of scathing scorn, "Who's
this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero to justify his humble
pretensions to existence and an identity in the shadow of him.
Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to say or do;
and the cold bath before dinner in strange company is one of the
instances. He had recognized his superb Bellona in the lady by the
garden window. For Brayder the men had nods and jokes, the ladies a
pretty playfulness. He was very busy, passing between the groups,
chatting, laughing, taking the feminine taps he received, and
sometimes returning them in sly whispers. Adrian sat down and
crossed his legs, looking amused and benignant.
"Whose dinner is it?" Ripton heard a mignonne beauty ask of a
cavalier.
"Mount's, I suppose," was the answer.
"Where is he? Why don't he come?"
"An affaire, I fancy."
"There he is again! How shamefully he treats Mrs. Mount!"
"She don't seem to cry over it."
Mrs. Mount was flashing her teeth and eyes with laughter at one of
her Court, who appeared to be Fool.
Dinner was announced. The ladies proclaimed extravagant appetites.
Brayder posted his three friends. Ripton found himself under the lee
of a dame with a bosom. On the other side of him was the mignonne.
Adrian was at the lower end of the table. Ladies were in profusion,
and he had his share. Brayder drew Richard from seat to seat. A
happy man had established himself next to Mrs. Mount. Him Brayder
hailed to take the head of the table. The happy man objected,
Brayder continued urgent, the lady tenderly insisted, the happy man
grimaced, dropped into the post of honour, strove to look placable.
Richard usurped his chair, and was not badly welcomed by his
neighbour.
Then the dinner commenced, and had all the attention of the company,
till the flying of the first champagne-cork gave the signal, and a
hum began to spread. Sparkling wine, that looseneth the tongue, and
displayeth the verity, hath also the quality of colouring it. The
ladies laughed high; Richard only thought them gay and natural. They
flung back in their chairs and laughed to tears; Ripton thought only
of the pleasure he had in their society. The champagne-corks
continued a regular file-firing.
"Where have you been lately? I haven't seen you in the park," said
Mrs. Mount to Richard.
"No," he replied, "I've not been there." The question seemed odd:
she spoke so simply that it did not impress him. He emptied his
glass, and had it filled again.
The Hon. Peter did most of the open talking, which related to
horses, yachting, opera, and sport generally: who was ruined, by
what horse, or by what woman. He told one or two of Richard's feats.
Fair smiles rewarded the hero.
"Do you bet?" said Mrs. Mount.
"Only on myself," returned Richard.
"Bravo!" cried his Bellona, and her eye sent a lingering delirious
sparkle across her brimming glass at him.
"I'm sure you're a safe one to back," she added, and seemed to scan
his points approvingly.
Richard's cheeks mounted bloom.
"Don't you adore champagne?" quoth the dame with a bosom to Ripton.
"Oh, yes!" answered Ripton, with more candour than accuracy, "I
always drink it."
"Do you indeed?" said the enraptured bosom, ogling him. "You would
be a friend, now! I hope you don't object to a lady joining you now
and then. Champagne's my folly."
A laugh was circling among the ladies of whom Adrian was the centre;
first low, and as he continued some narration, peals resounded, till
those excluded from the fun demanded the cue, and ladies leaned
behind gentlemen to take it up, and formed an electric chain of
laughter. Each one, as her ear received it, caught up her
handkerchief, and laughed, and looked shocked afterwards, or looked
shocked and then spouted laughter. The anecdote might have been
communicated to the bewildered cavaliers, but coming to a lady of a
demurer cast, she looked shocked without laughing, and reproved the
female table, in whose breasts it was consigned to burial: but here
and there a man's head was seen bent, and a lady's mouth moved,
though her face was not turned toward him, and a man's broad laugh
was presently heard, while the lady gazed unconsciously before her,
and preserved her gravity if she could escape any other lady's eyes;
failing in which, handkerchiefs were simultaneously seized, and a
second chime arose, till the tickling force subsided to a few chance
bursts.
What nonsense it is that my father writes about women! thought
Richard. He says they can't laugh, and don't understand humour. It
comes, he reflected, of his shutting himself from the world. And the
idea that he was seeing the world, and feeling wiser, flattered him.
He talked fluently to his dangerous Bellona. He gave her some
reminiscences of Adrian's whimsies.
"Oh!" said she, "that's your tutor, is it!" She eyed the young man
as if she thought he must go far and fast.
Ripton felt a push. "Look at that," said the bosom, fuming utter
disgust. He was directed to see a manly arm round the waist of the
mignonne. "Now that's what I don't like in company," the bosom
inflated to observe with sufficient emphasis. "She always will allow
it with everybody. Give her a nudge."
Ripton protested that he dared not; upon which she said, "Then I
will"; and inclined her sumptuous bust across his lap, breathing
wine in his face, and gave the nudge. The mignonne turned an
inquiring eye on Ripton; a mischievous spark shot from it. She
laughed, and said: "Aren't you satisfied with the old bird?"
"Impudence!" muttered the bosom, growing grander and redder.
"Do, do fill her glass, and keep her quiet--she drinks port when
there's no more champagne," said the mignonne.
The bosom revenged herself by whispering to Ripton scandal of the
mignonne, and between them he was enabled to form a correcter
estimate of the company, and quite recovered from his original awe:
so much so as to feel a touch of jealousy at seeing his lively
little neighbour still held in absolute possession.
Mrs. Mount did not come out much; but there was a deferential manner
in the bearing of the men toward her, which those haughty creatures
accord not save to clever women; and she contrived to hold the talk
with three or four at the head of the table while she still had
passages aside with Richard.
The port and claret went very well after the champagne. The ladies
here did not ignominiously surrender the field to the gentlemen;
they maintained their position with honour. Silver was seen far out
on Thames. The wine ebbed, and the laughter. Sentiment and cigars
took up the wondrous tale.
"Oh, what a lovely night!" said the ladies, looking above.
"Charming," said the gentlemen, looking below.
The faint-smelling cool Autumn air was pleasant after the feast.
Fragrant weeds burned bright about the garden.
"We are split into couples," said Adrian to Richard, who was
standing alone, eying the landscape. "'Tis the influence of the
moon! Apparently we are in Cyprus. How has my son enjoyed himself?
How likes he the society of Aspasia? I feel like a wise Greek
to-night."
Adrian was jolly, and rolled comfortably as he talked. Ripton had
been carried off by the sentimental bosom. He came up to them and
whispered: "By Jove, Ricky! do you know what sort of women these
are?"
Richard said he thought them a nice sort.
"Puritan!" exclaimed Adrian, slapping Ripton on the back. "Why
didn't you get tipsy, sir? Don't you ever intoxicate yourself except
at lawful marriages? Reveal to us what you have done with the portly
dame?"
Ripton endured his bantering that he might hang about Richard, and
watch over him. He was jealous of his innocent Beauty's husband
being in proximity with such women. Murmuring couples passed them to
and fro.
"By Jove, Ricky!" Ripton favoured his friend with another hard
whisper, "there's a woman smoking!"
"And why not, O Riptonus?" said Adrian. "Art unaware that woman
cosmopolitan is woman consummate? and dost grumble to pay the small
price for the splendid gem?"
"Well, I don't like women to smoke," said plain Ripton.
"Why mayn't they do what men do?" the hero cried impetuously. "I
hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness. It's that makes the ruin
and horrors I see. Why mayn't they do what men do? I like the women
who are brave enough not to be hypocrites. By heaven! if these women
are bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who
are all show, and deceive you in the end."
"Bravo!" shouted Adrian. "There speaks the regenerator."
Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader. He had no argument. He
still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far
away, lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.
THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP remarks that: "Young men take joy in nothing so
much as the thinking women Angels: and nothing sours men of
experience more than knowing that all are not quite so."
The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random
extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of
feminine goodness Richard's young bride had inspired in the breast
of the youth. It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust
in our nature.
Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness. He wandered
about the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and
threw himself down among some bushes on the slope of the hill. Lying
there, and meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.
"What does he want?" said a woman's voice. "It's another of his
villainies, I know. Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I
have to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him."
"Tragic!" said the Hon. Peter. "Haven't you revenged yourself,
Bella, pretty often? Best deal openly. This is a commercial
transaction. You ask for money, and you are to have it--on the
conditions: double the sum, and debts paid."
"He applies to me!"
"You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you. I
think Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows. He's
not easily hoodwinked, you know. He resigns himself to his fate, and
follows other game."
"Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?"
"My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk. I didn't say
seduce. Hold him in--play with him. Amuse him."
"I don't understand half-measures."
"Women seldom do."
"How I hate you, Brayder!"
"I thank your ladyship."
The two walked farther. Ripton had heard some little of the
colloquy. He left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of
something dark to the people he loved, though he had no idea of what
the Hon. Peter's stipulation involved.
On the voyage back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by
Mrs. Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of
parasites got on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the
oars; softly the moonlight curled around them; softly the banks
glided by. The ladies were in a state of high sentiment. They sang
without request. All deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate
interpreter of their emotions. After good wine, and plenty thereof,
fair throats will make men of taste swallow that remarkable
composer. Eyes, lips, hearts; darts and smarts and sighs; beauty,
duty; bosom, blossom; false one, farewell! To this pathetic strain
they melted. Mrs. Mount, though strongly requested, declined to
sing. She preserved her state. Under the tall aspens of
Brentford-ait, and on they swept, the white moon in their wake.
Richard's hand lay open by his side. Mrs. Mount's little white hand
by misadventure fell into it. It was not pressed, or soothed for its
fall, or made intimate with eloquent fingers. It lay there like a
bit of snow on the cold ground. A yellow leaf wavering down from the
aspens struck Richard's cheek, and he drew away the very hand to
throw back his hair and smooth his face, and then folded his arms,
unconscious of offence. He was thinking ambitiously of his life: his
blood was untroubled, his brain calmly working.
"Which is the more perilous?" is a problem put by the PILGRIM: "To
meet the temptings of Eve, or to pique her?"
Mrs. Mount stared at the young man as at a curiosity, and turned to
flirt with one of her Court. The Guardsmen were mostly sentimental.
One or two rattled, and one was such a good-humoured fellow that
Adrian could not make him ridiculous. The others seemed to give
themselves up to a silent waxing in length of limb. However far they
sat removed, everybody was entangled in their legs. Pursuing his
studies, Adrian came to the conclusion, that the same close
intellectual and moral affinity which he had discovered to exist
between our nobility and our yeomanry, is to be observed between the
Guardsman class, and that of the corps de ballet: they both live by
the strength of their legs, where also their wits, if they do not
altogether reside there, are principally developed: both are volage;
wine, tobacco, and the moon, influence both alike; and admitting the
one marked difference that does exist, it is, after all, pretty
nearly the same thing to be coquetting and sinning on two legs as on
the point of a toe.
A long Guardsman with a deep bass voice sang a doleful song about
the twining tendrils of the heart ruthlessly torn, but required
urgent persuasions and heavy trumpeting of his lungs to get to the
end: before he had accomplished it, Adrian had contrived to raise a
laugh in his neighbourhood, so that the company was divided, and the
camp split: jollity returned to one-half, while sentiment held the
other. Ripton, blotted behind the bosom, was only lucky in securing
a higher degree of heat than was possible for the rest. "Are you
cold?" she would ask, smiling charitably.
"_I_ am," said the mignonne, as if to excuse her conduct.
"You always appear to be," the fat one sniffed and snapped.
"Won't you warm two, Mrs. Mortimer?" said the naughty little woman.
Disdain prevented any further notice of her. Those familiar with the
ladies enjoyed their sparring, which was frequent. The mignonne was
heard to whisper: "That poor fellow will certainly be stewed."
Very prettily the ladies took and gave warmth, for the air on the
water was chill and misty. Adrian had beside him the demure one who
had stopped the circulation of his anecdote. She in nowise objected
to the fair exchange, but said "Hush!" betweenwhiles.
Past Kew and Hammersmith, on the cool smooth water; across Putney
reach; through Battersea bridge; and the City grew around them, and
the shadows of great mill-factories slept athwart the moonlight.
All the ladies prattled sweetly of a charming day when they alighted
on land. Several cavaliers crushed for the honour of conducting Mrs.
Mount to her home.
"My brougham's here; I shall go alone," said Mrs. Mount. "Some one
arrange my shawl."
She turned her back to Richard, who had a view of a delicate neck as
he manipulated with the bearing of a mailed knight.
"Which way are you going?" she asked carelessly, and, to his reply
as to the direction, said: "Then I can give you a lift," and she
took his arm with a matter-of-course air, and walked up the stairs
with him.
Ripton saw what had happened. He was going to follow: the portly
dame retained him, and desired him to get her a cab.
"Oh, you happy fellow!" said the bright-eyed mignonne, passing by.
Ripton procured the cab, and stuffed it full without having to get
into it himself.
"Try and let him come in too?" said the persecuting creature, again
passing.
"Take liberties with your men--you shan't with me," retorted the
angry bosom, and drove off.
"So she's been and gone and run away and left him after all his
trouble!" cried the pert little thing, peering into Ripton's eyes.
"Now you'll never be so foolish as to pin your faith to fat women
again. There! he shall be made happy another time." She gave his
nose a comical tap, and tripped away with her possessor.
Ripton rather forgot his friend for some minutes: Random thoughts
laid hold of him. Cabs and carriages rattled past. He was sure he
had been among members of the nobility that day, though when they
went by him now they only recognized him with an effort of the
eyelids. He began to think of the day with exultation, as an event.
Recollections of the mignonne were captivating. "Blue eyes--just
what I like! And such a little impudent nose, and red lips,
pouting--the very thing I like! And her hair? darkish, I think--say
brown. And so saucy, and light on her feet. And kind she is, or she
wouldn't have talked to me like that." Thus, with a groaning soul,
he pictured her. His reason voluntarily consigned her to the
aristocracy as a natural appanage: but he did amorously wish that
Fortune had made a lord of him.
Then his mind reverted to Mrs. Mount, and the strange bits of the
conversation he had heard on the hill. He was not one to suspect
anybody positively. He was timid of fixing a suspicion. It hovered
indefinitely, and clouded people, without stirring him to any
resolve. Still the attentions of the lady toward Richard were queer.
He endeavoured to imagine they were in the nature of things, because
Richard was so handsome that any woman must take to him. "But he's
married," said Ripton, "and he mustn't go near these people if he's
married." Not a high morality, perhaps: better than none at all:
better for the world were it practised more. He thought of Richard
along with that sparkling dame, alone with her. The adorable beauty
of his dear bride, her pure heavenly face, swam before him. Thinking
of her, he lost sight of the mignonne who had made him giddy.
He walked to Richard's hotel, and up and down the street there,
hoping every minute to hear his step; sometimes fancying he might
have returned and gone to bed. Two o'clock struck. Ripton could not
go away. He was sure he should not sleep if he did. At last the cold
sent him homeward, and leaving the street, on the moonlight side of
Piccadilly he met his friend patrolling with his head up and that
swing of the feet proper to men who are chanting verses.
"Old Rip!" cried Richard, cheerily. "What on earth are you doing
here at this hour of the morning?"
Ripton muttered of his pleasure at meeting him. "I wanted to shake
your hand before I went home."
Richard smiled on him in an amused kindly way. "That all? You may
shake my hand any day, like a true man as you are, old Rip! I've
been speaking about you. Do you know, that--Mrs. Mount--never saw
you all the time at Richmond, or in the boat!"
"Oh!" Ripton said, well assured that he was a dwarf: "you saw her
safe home?"
"Yes. I've been there for the last couple of hours--talking. She
talks capitally: she's wonderfully clever. She's very like a man,
only much nicer. I like her."
"But, Richard, excuse me--I'm sure I don't mean to offend you--but
now you're married ... perhaps you couldn't help seeing her home,
but I think you really indeed oughtn't to have gone upstairs."
Ripton delivered this opinion with a modest impressiveness.
"What do you mean?" said Richard. "You don't suppose I care for any
woman but my little darling down there." He laughed.
"No; of course not. That's absurd. What I mean is, that people
perhaps will--you know, they do--they say all manner of things, and
that makes unhappiness, and ... I do wish you were going home
to-morrow, Ricky. I mean, to your dear wife." Ripton blushed and
looked away as he spoke.
The hero gave one of his scornful glances. "So you're anxious about
my reputation. I hate that way of looking on women. Because they
have been once misled--look how much weaker they are!--because the
world has given them an ill fame, you would treat them as
contagious, and keep away from them for the sake of your character!"
"It would be different with me," quoth Ripton.
"How?" asked the hero.
"Because I'm worse than you," was all the logical explanation Ripton
was capable of.
"I do hope you will go home soon," he added.
"Yes," said Richard, "and I, so do I hope so. But I've work to do
now. I dare not, I cannot, leave it. Lucy would be the last to ask
me;--you saw her letter yesterday. Now listen to me, Rip. I want to
make you be just to women."
Then he read Ripton a lecture on erring women, speaking of them as
if he had known them and studied them for years. Clever, beautiful,
but betrayed by love, it was the first duty of all true men to
cherish and redeem them. "We turn them into curses, Rip; these
divine creatures." And the world suffered for it. That--that was the
root of all the evil in the world!
"I don't feel anger or horror at these poor women, Rip! It's
strange. I knew what they were when we came home in the boat. But I
do--it tears my heart to see a young girl given over to an old
man--a man she doesn't love. That's shame!--Don't speak of it."
Forgetting to contest the premise, that all betrayed women are
betrayed by love, Ripton was quite silenced. He, like most young
men, had pondered somewhat on this matter, and was inclined to be
sentimental when he was not hungry. They walked in the moonlight by
the railings of the park. Richard harangued at leisure, while
Ripton's teeth chattered. Chivalry might be dead, but still there
was something to do, went the strain. The lady of the day had not
been thrown in the hero's path without an object, he said; and he
was sadly right there. He did not express the thing clearly;
nevertheless Ripton understood him to mean, he intended to rescue
that lady from further transgressions, and show a certain scorn of
the world. That lady, and then other ladies unknown, were to be
rescued. Ripton was to help. He and Ripton were to be the knights of
this enterprise. When appealed to, Ripton acquiesced, and shivered.
Not only were they to be knights, they would have to be Titans, for
the powers of the world, the spurious ruling Social Gods, would have
to be defied and overthrown. And Titan number one flung up his
handsome bold face as if to challenge base Jove on the spot; and
Titan number two strained the upper button of his coat to meet
across his pocket-handkerchief on his chest, and warmed his fingers
under his coat-tails. The moon had fallen from her high seat and was
in the mists of the West, when he was allowed to seek his blankets,
and the cold acting on his friend's eloquence made Ripton's flesh
very contrite. The poor fellow had thinner blood than the hero; but
his heart was good. By the time he had got a little warmth about
him, his heart gratefully strove to encourage him in the conception
of becoming a knight and a Titan; and so striving Ripton fell asleep
and dreamed.