BOOK 8.

LII. STRANGE REVELATIONS, AND MY GRANDFATHER HAS HIS LAST OUTBURST

LIII. THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING

LIV. MY RETURN TO ENGLAND

LV. I MEET MY FIRST PLAYFELLOW AND TAKE MY PUNISHMENT

LVI. CONCLUSION

THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND

BOOK 1.

I. I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION

II. AN ADVENTURE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT

III. DIPWELL FARM

IV. I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR

V. I HAVE A DEAR FRIEND

VI. A TALE OF A GOOSE

CHAPTER I

I AM A SUBJECT OF CONTENTION

One midnight of a winter month the sleepers in Riversley Grange were

awakened by a ringing of the outer bell and blows upon the great hall-

doors. Squire Beltham was master there: the other members of the

household were, his daughter Dorothy Beltham; a married daughter Mrs.

Richmond; Benjamin Sewis, an old half-caste butler; various domestic

servants; and a little boy, christened Harry Lepel Richmond, the squire's

grandson. Riversley Grange lay in a rich watered hollow of the Hampshire

heath-country; a lonely circle of enclosed brook and pasture, within view

of some of its dependent farms, but out of hail of them or any dwelling

except the stables and the head-gardener's cottage. Traditions of

audacious highwaymen, together with the gloomy surrounding fir-scenery,

kept it alive to fears of solitude and the night; and there was that in

the determined violence of the knocks and repeated bell-peals which

assured all those who had ever listened in the servants' hall to

prognostications of a possible night attack, that the robbers had come at

last most awfully. A crowd of maids gathered along the upper corridor of

the main body of the building: two or three footmen hung lower down, bold

in attitude. Suddenly the noise ended, and soon after the voice of old

Sewis commanded them to scatter away to their beds; whereupon the footmen

took agile leaps to the post of danger, while the women, in whose bosoms

intense curiosity now supplanted terror, proceeded to a vacant room

overlooking the front entrance, and spied from the window.

Meanwhile Sewis stood by his master's bedside. The squire was a hunter,

of the old sort: a hard rider, deep drinker, and heavy slumberer. Before

venturing to shake his arm Sewis struck a light and flashed it over the

squire's eyelids to make the task of rousing him easier. At the first

touch the squire sprang up, swearing by his Lord Harry he had just

dreamed of fire, and muttering of buckets.

'Sewis! you're the man, are you: where has it broken out?'

'No, sir; no fire,' said Sewis; 'you be cool, sir.'

'Cool, sir! confound it, Sewis, haven't I heard a whole town of steeples

at work? I don't sleep so thick but I can hear, you dog! Fellow comes

here, gives me a start, tells me to be cool; what the deuce! nobody hurt,

then? all right!'

The squire had fallen back on his pillow and was relapsing to sleep.

Sewis spoke impressively: 'There's a gentleman downstairs; a gentleman

downstairs, sir. He has come rather late.'

'Gentleman downstairs come rather late.' The squire recapitulated the

intelligence to possess it thoroughly. 'Rather late, eh? Oh! Shove him

into a bed, and give him hot brandy and water, and be hanged to him!'

Sewis had the office of tempering a severely distasteful announcement to

the squire.

He resumed: 'The gentleman doesn't talk of staying. That is not his

business. It 's rather late for him to arrive.'

'Rather late!' roared the squire. 'Why, what's it o'clock?'

Reaching a hand to the watch over his head, he caught sight of the

unearthly hour. 'A quarter to two? Gentleman downstairs? Can't be that

infernal apothecary who broke 's engagement to dine with me last night?

By George, if it is I'll souse him; I'll drench him from head to heel as

though the rascal 'd been drawn through the duck-pond. Two o'clock in

the morning? Why, the man's drunk. Tell him I'm a magistrate, and I'll

commit him, deuce take him; give him fourteen days for a sot; another

fourteen for impudence. I've given a month 'fore now. Comes to me, a

Justice of the peace!--man 's mad! Tell him he's in peril of a lunatic

asylum. And doesn't talk of staying? Lift him out o' the house on the

top o' your boot, Sewis, and say it 's mine; you 've my leave.'

Sewis withdrew a step from the bedside. At a safe distance he fronted

his master steadily; almost admonishingly. 'It 's Mr. Richmond, sir,' he

said.

'Mr. . . .' The squire checked his breath. That was a name never

uttered at the Grange. 'The scoundrel?' he inquired harshly, half in a

tone of one assuring himself, and his rigid dropped jaw shut.

The fact had to be denied or affirmed instantly, and Sewis was silent.

Grasping his bedclothes in a lump, the squire cried:

'Downstairs? downstairs, Sewis? You've admitted him into my house?'

'No, sir.'

'You have!'

'He is not in the house, sir.'

'You have! How did you speak to him, then?'

'Out of my window, sir.'

'What place here is the scoundrel soiling now?'

'He is on the doorstep outside the house.'

'Outside, is he? and the door's locked?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Let him rot there!'

By this time the midnight visitor's patience had become exhausted. A

renewal of his clamour for immediate attention fell on the squire's ear,

amazing him to stupefaction at such challengeing insolence.

'Hand me my breeches,' he called to Sewis; 'I can't think brisk out of my

breeches.'

Sewis held the garment ready. The squire jumped from the bed, fuming

speechlessly, chafing at gaiters and braces, cravat and coat, and allowed

his buttons to be fitted neatly on his calves; the hammering at the hall-

door and plucking at the bell going on without intermission. He wore the

aspect of one who assumes a forced composure under the infliction of

outrages on his character in a Court of Law, where he must of necessity

listen and lock his boiling replies within his indignant bosom.

'Now, Sewis, now my horsewhip,' he remarked, as if it had been a simple

adjunct of his equipment.

'Your hat, sir?'

'My horsewhip, I said.'

'Your hat is in the hall,' Sewis observed gravely.

'I asked you for my horsewhip.'

'That is not to be found anywhere,' said Sewis.

The squire was diverted from his objurgations against this piece of

servitorial defiance by his daughter Dorothy's timid appeal for

permission to come in. Sewis left the room. Presently the squire

descended, fully clad, and breathing sharply from his nostrils. Servants

were warned off out of hearing; none but Sewis stood by.

The squire himself unbolted the door, and threw it open to the limit of

the chain.

'Who's there?' he demanded.

A response followed promptly from outside: 'I take you to be Mr. Harry

Lepel Beltham. Correct me if I err. Accept my apologies for disturbing

you at a late hour of the night, I pray.'

'Your name?'

'Is plain Augustus Fitz-George Roy Richmond at this moment, Mr. Beltham.

You will recognize me better by opening your door entirely: voices are

deceptive. You were born a gentleman, Mr. Beltham, and will not reduce

me to request you to behave like one. I am now in the position, as it

were, of addressing a badger in his den. It is on both sides

unsatisfactory. It reflects egregious discredit upon you, the

householder.'

The squire hastily bade Sewis see that the passages to the sleeping

apartments were barred, and flung the great chain loose. He was acting

under strong control of his temper.

It was a quiet grey night, and as the doors flew open, a largely-built

man, dressed in a high-collared great-coat and fashionable hat of the

time, stood clearly defined to view. He carried a light cane, with the

point of the silver handle against his under lip. There was nothing

formidable in his appearance, and his manner was affectedly affable. He

lifted his hat as soon as he found himself face to face with the squire,

disclosing a partially bald head, though his whiskering was luxuriant,

and a robust condition of manhood was indicated by his erect attitude and

the immense swell of his furred great-coat at the chest. His features

were exceedingly frank and cheerful. From his superior height, he was

enabled to look down quite royally on the man whose repose he had

disturbed.

The following conversation passed between them.

'You now behold who it is, Mr. Beltham, that acknowledges to the

misfortune of arousing you at an unseemly hour--unbetimes, as our gossips

in mother Saxon might say--and with profound regret, sir, though my habit

is to take it lightly.'

'Have you any accomplices lurking about here?'

'I am alone.'

'What 's your business?'

'I have no business.'

'You have no business to be here, no. I ask you what 's the object of

your visit?'

'Permit me first to speak of the cause of my protracted arrival, sir.

The ridicule of casting it on the post-boys will strike you, Mr. Beltham,

as it does me. Nevertheless, I must do it; I have no resource. Owing to

a rascal of the genus, incontinent in liquor, I have this night walked

seven miles from Ewling. My complaint against him is not on my own

account.'

'What brought you here at all?'

'Can you ask me?'

'I ask you what brought you to my house at all?'

'True, I might have slept at Ewling.'

'Why didn't you?'

'For the reason, Mr. Beltham, which brought me here originally. I could

not wait-not a single minute. So far advanced to the neighbourhood, I

would not be retarded, and I came on. I crave your excuses for the hour

of my arrival. The grounds for my coming at all you will very well

understand, and you will applaud me when I declare to you that I come to

her penitent; to exculpate myself, certainly, but despising self-

justification. I love my wife, Mr. Beltham. Yes; hear me out, sir. I

can point to my unhappy star, and say, blame that more than me. That

star of my birth and most disastrous fortunes should plead on my behalf

to you; to my wife at least it will.'

'You've come to see my daughter Marian, have you?'

'My wife, sir.'

'You don't cross my threshold while I live.'

'You compel her to come out to me?'

'She stays where she is, poor wretch, till the grave takes her. You've

done your worst; be off.'

'Mr. Beltham, I am not to be restrained from the sight of my wife.'

'Scamp!'

'By no scurrilous epithets from a man I am bound to respect will I be

deterred or exasperated.'

'Damned scamp, I say!' The squire having exploded his wrath gave it free

way. 'I've stopped my tongue all this while before a scoundrel 'd

corkscrew the best-bottled temper right or left, go where you will one

end o' the world to the other, by God! And here 's a scoundrel stinks of

villany, and I've proclaimed him 'ware my gates as a common trespasser,

and deserves hanging if ever rook did nailed hard and fast to my barn

doors! comes here for my daughter, when he got her by stealing her,

scenting his carcase, and talking 'bout his birth, singing what not sort

o' foreign mewin' stuff, and she found him out a liar and a beast, by

God! And she turned home. My doors are open to my flesh and blood. And

here she halts, I say, 'gainst the law, if the law's against me. She's

crazed: you've made her mad; she knows none of us, not even her boy. Be

off; you've done your worst; the light's gone clean out in her; and hear

me, you Richmond, or Roy, or whatever you call yourself, I tell you I

thank the Lord she has lost her senses. See her or not, you 've no hold

on her, and see her you shan't while I go by the name of a man.'

Mr. Richmond succeeded in preserving an air of serious deliberation under

the torrent of this tremendous outburst, which was marked by scarce a

pause in the delivery.

He said, 'My wife deranged! I might presume it too truly an inherited

disease. Do you trifle with me, sir? Her reason unseated! and can you

pretend to the right of dividing us? If this be as you say--Oh! ten

thousand times the stronger my claim, my absolute claim, to cherish her.

Make way for me, Mr. Beltham. I solicit humbly the holiest privilege

sorrow can crave of humanity. My wife! my wife! Make way for me, sir.'

His figure was bent to advance. The squire shouted an order to Sewis to

run round to the stables and slip the dogs loose.

'Is it your final decision?' Mr. Richmond asked.

'Damn your fine words! Yes, it is. I keep my flock clear of a foul

sheep.'

'Mr. Beltham, I implore you, be merciful. I submit to any conditions:

only let me see her. I will walk the park till morning, but say that an

interview shall be granted in the morning. Frankly, sir, it is not my

intention to employ force: I throw myself utterly on your mercy. I love

the woman; I have much to repent of. I see her, and I go; but once I

must see her. So far I also speak positively.'

'Speak as positively as you like,' said the squire.

'By the laws of nature and the laws of man, Marian Richmond is mine to

support and comfort, and none can hinder me, Mr. Beltham; none, if I

resolve to take her to myself.'

'Can't they!' said the squire.

'A curse be on him, heaven's lightnings descend on him, who keeps husband

from wife in calamity!'

The squire whistled for his dogs.

As if wounded to the quick by this cold-blooded action, Mr. Richmond

stood to his fullest height.

'Nor, sir, on my application during to-morrow's daylight shall I see

her?'

'Nor, sir, on your application'--the squire drawled in uncontrollable

mimicking contempt of the other's florid forms of speech, ending in his

own style,--'no, you won't.'

'You claim a paternal right to refuse me: my wife is your child. Good.

I wish to see my son.'

On that point the squire was equally decided. 'You can't. He's asleep.'

'I insist.'

'Nonsense: I tell you he's a-bed and asleep.'

'I repeat, I insist.'

'When the boy's fast asleep, man!'

'The boy is my flesh and blood. You have spoken for your daughter--

I speak for my son. I will see him, though I have to batter at your

doors till sunrise.'

Some minutes later the boy was taken out of his bed by his aunt Dorothy,

who dressed him by the dark window-light, crying bitterly, while she

said, ' Hush, hush!' and fastened on his small garments between tender

huggings of his body and kissings of his cheeks. He was told that he had

nothing to be afraid of. A gentleman wanted to see him: nothing more.

Whether the gentleman was a good gentleman, and not a robber, he could

not learn but his aunt Dorothy, having wrapped him warm in shawl and

comforter, and tremblingly tied his hat-strings under his chin, assured

him, with convulsive caresses, that it would soon be over, and he would

soon be lying again snug and happy in his dear little bed. She handed

him to Sewis on the stairs, keeping his fingers for an instant to kiss

them: after which, old Sewis, the lord of the pantry, where all sweet

things were stored, deposited him on the floor of the hall, and he found

himself facing the man of the night. It appeared to him that the

stranger was of enormous size, like the giants of fairy books: for as he

stood a little out of the doorway there was a peep of night sky and trees

behind him, and the trees looked very much smaller, and hardly any sky

was to be seen except over his shoulders.

The squire seized one of the boy's hands to present him and retain him at

the same time: but the stranger plucked him from his grandfather's hold,

and swinging him high, exclaimed, 'Here he is! This is Harry Richmond.

He has grown a grenadier.'

'Kiss the little chap and back to bed with him,' growled the squire.

The boy was heartily kissed and asked if he had forgotten his papa. He

replied that he had no papa: he had a mama and a grandpapa. The stranger

gave a deep groan.

'You see what you have done; you have cut me off from my own,' he said

terribly to the squire; but tried immediately to soothe the urchin with

nursery talk and the pats on the shoulder which encourage a little boy to

grow fast and tall. 'Four years of separation,' he resumed, 'and my son

taught to think that he has no father. By heavens! it is infamous, it

is a curst piece of inhumanity. Mr. Beltham, if I do not see my wife, I

carry off my son.'

'You may ask till you're hoarse, you shall never see her in this house

while I am here to command,' said the squire.

'Very well; then Harry Richmond changes homes. I take him. The affair

is concluded.'

'You take him from his mother?' the squire sang out.

'You swear to me she has lost her wits; she cannot suffer. I can. I

shall not expect from you, Mr. Beltham, the minutest particle of

comprehension of a father's feelings. You are earthy; you are an

animal.'

The squire saw that he was about to lift the boy, and said, 'Stop, never

mind that. Stop, look at the case. You can call again to-morrow, and

you can see me and talk it over.'

'Shall I see my wife?'

'No, you shan't.'

'You remain faithful to your word, sir, do you?'

'I do.'

'Then I do similarly.'

'What! Stop! Not to take a child like that out of a comfortable house

at night in Winter, man?'

'Oh, the night is temperate and warm; he shall not remain in a house

where his father is dishonoured.'

'Stop! not a bit of it,' cried the squire. 'No one speaks of you.

I give you my word, you 're never mentioned by man, woman or child in the

house.'

'Silence concerning a father insinuates dishonour, Mr. Beltham.'

'Damn your fine speeches, and keep your blackguardly hands off that boy,'

the squire thundered. 'Mind, if you take him, he goes for good. He

doesn't get a penny from me if you have the bringing of him up. You've

done for him, if you decide that way. He may stand here a beggar in a

stolen coat like you, and I won't own him. Here, Harry, come to me; come

to your grandad.'

Mr. Richmond caught the boy just when he was turning to run.

'That gentleman,' he said, pointing to the squire, 'is your grandpapa.

I am your papa. You must learn at any cost to know and love your papa.

If I call for you to-morrow or next day they will have played tricks with

Harry Richmond, and hid him. Mr. Beltham, I request you, for the final

time, to accord me your promise observe, I accept your promise--that I

shall, at my demand, to-morrow or the next day, obtain an interview with

my wife.'

The squire coughed out an emphatic 'Never!' and fortified it with an oath

as he repeated it upon a fuller breath.

'Sir, I will condescend to entreat you to grant this permission,' said

Mr. Richmond, urgently.

'No, never: I won't!' rejoined the squire, red in the face from a fit of

angry coughing. 'I won't; but stop, put down that boy; listen to me, you

Richmond! I'll tell you what I'll do. I 'll--if you swear on a Bible,

like a cadger before a bench of magistrates, you'll never show your face

within a circuit o' ten miles hereabouts, and won't trouble the boy if

you meet him, or my daughter or me, or any one of us-hark ye, I'll do

this: let go the boy, and I'll give ye five hundred--I'll give ye a

cheque on my banker for a thousand pounds; and, hark me out, you do this,

you swear, as I said, on the servants' Bible, in the presence of my

butler and me, "Strike you dead as Ananias and t' other one if you don't

keep to it," do that now, here, on the spot, and I'll engage to see you

paid fifty pounds a year into the bargain. Stop! and I'll pay your

debts under two or three hundred. For God's sake, let go the boy! You

shall have fifty guineas on account this minute. Let go the boy! And

your son--there, I call him your son--your son, Harry Richmond, shall

inherit from me; he shall have Riversley and the best part of my

property, if not every bit of it. Is it a bargain? Will you swear?

Don't, and the boy's a beggar, he's a stranger here as much as you. Take

him, and by the Lord, you ruin him. There now, never mind, stay, down

with him. He's got a cold already; ought to be in his bed; let the boy

down!'

'You offer me money,' Mr. Richmond answered.

'That is one of the indignities belonging to a connection with a man like

you. You would have me sell my son. To see my afflicted wife I would

forfeit my heart's yearnings for my son; your money, sir, I toss to the

winds; and I am under the necessity of informing you that I despise and

loathe you. I shrink from the thought of exposing my son to your

besotted selfish example. The boy is mine; I have him, and he shall

traverse the wilderness with me. By heaven! his destiny is brilliant.

He shall be hailed for what he is, the rightful claimant of a place among

the proudest in the land; and mark me, Mr. Beltham, obstinate sensual old

man that you are! I take the boy, and I consecrate my life to the duty

of establishing him in his proper rank and station, and there, if you

live and I live, you shall behold him and bow your grovelling pig's head

to the earth, and bemoan the day, by heaven! when you,--a common country

squire, a man of no origin, a creature with whose blood we have mixed

ours--and he is stone-blind to the honour conferred on him--when you in

your besotted stupidity threatened to disinherit Harry Richmond.'

The door slammed violently on such further speech as he had in him to

utter. He seemed at first astonished; but finding the terrified boy

about to sob, he drew a pretty box from one of his pockets and thrust a

delicious sweetmeat between the whimpering lips. Then, after some

moments of irresolution, during which he struck his chest soundingly and

gazed down, talked alternately to himself and the boy, and cast his eyes

along the windows of the house, he at last dropped on one knee and

swaddled the boy in the folds of the shawl. Raising him in a business-

like way, he settled him on an arm and stepped briskly across gravel-walk

and lawn, like a horse to whose neck a smart touch of the whip has been

applied.

The soft mild night had a moon behind it somewhere; and here and there a

light-blue space of sky showed small rayless stars; the breeze smelt

fresh of roots and heath. It was more a May-night than one of February.

So strange an aspect had all these quiet hill-lines and larch and fir-

tree tops in the half-dark stillness, that the boy's terrors were

overlaid and almost subdued by his wonderment; he had never before been

out in the night, and he must have feared to cry in it, for his sobs were

not loud. On a rise of the park-road where a fir-plantation began, he

heard his name called faintly from the house by a woman's voice that he

knew to be his aunt Dorothy's. It came after him only once: 'Harry

Richmond'; but he was soon out of hearing, beyond the park, among the

hollows that run dipping for miles beside the great highroad toward

London. Sometimes his father whistled to him, or held him high and

nodded a salutation to him, as though they had just discovered one

another; and his perpetual accessibility to the influences of spicy

sugarplums, notwithstanding his grief, caused his father to prognosticate

hopefully of his future wisdom. So, when obedient to command he had

given his father a kiss, the boy fell asleep on his shoulder, ceasing to

know that he was a wandering infant: and, if I remember rightly, he

dreamed he was in a ship of cinnamon-wood upon a sea that rolled mighty,

but smooth immense broad waves, and tore thing from thing without a sound

or a hurt.

CHAPTER II

AN ADVENTURE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT

That night stands up without any clear traces about it or near it, like

the brazen castle of romance round which the sea-tide flows. My father

must have borne me miles along the road; he must have procured food for

me; I have an idea of feeling a damp forehead and drinking new milk, and

by-and-by hearing a roar of voices or vehicles, and seeing a dog that

went alone through crowded streets without a master, doing as he pleased,

and stopping every other dog he met. He took his turning, and my father

and I took ours. We were in a house that, to my senses, had the smell of

dark corners, in a street where all the house-doors were painted black,

and shut with a bang. Italian organ-men and milk-men paraded the street

regularly, and made it sound hollow to their music. Milk, and no cows

anywhere; numbers of people, and no acquaintances among them; my thoughts

were occupied by the singularity of such things.

My father could soon make me forget that I was transplanted; he could act

dog, tame rabbit, fox, pony, and a whole nursery collection alive, but he

was sometimes absent for days, and I was not of a temper to be on

friendly terms with those who were unable to captivate my imagination as

he had done. When he was at home I rode him all round the room and

upstairs to bed, I lashed him with a whip till he frightened me, so real

was his barking; if I said 'Menagerie' he became a caravan of wild

beasts; I undid a button of his waistcoat, and it was a lion that made a

spring, roaring at me; I pulled his coat-tails and off I went tugging at

an old bear that swung a hind leg as he turned, in the queerest way, and

then sat up and beating his breast sent out a mew-moan. Our room was

richer to me than all the Grange while these performances were going

forward. His monkey was almost as wonderful as his bear, only he was too

big for it, and was obliged to aim at reality in his representation of

this animal by means of a number of breakages; a defect that brought our

landlady on the scene. The enchantment of my father's companionship

caused me to suffer proportionately in his absence. During that period

of solitude, my nursemaid had to order me to play, and I would stumble

about and squat in the middle of the floor, struck suddenly by the marvel

of the difference between my present and my other home. My father

entered into arrangements with a Punch and Judy man for him to pay me

regular morning visits opposite our window; yet here again his genius

defeated his kind intentions; for happening once to stand by my side

during the progress of the show, he made it so vivid to me by what he

said and did, that I saw no fun in it without him: I used to dread the

heralding crow of Punch if he was away, and cared no longer for wooden

heads being knocked ever so hard.

On Sundays we walked to the cathedral, and this was a day with a delight

of its own for me. He was never away on the Sunday. Both of us attired

in our best, we walked along the streets hand in hand; my father led me

before the cathedral monuments, talking in a low tone of British

victories, and commending the heroes to my undivided attention.

I understood very early that it was my duty to imitate them. While we

remained in the cathedral he talked of glory and Old England, and dropped

his voice in the middle of a murmured chant to introduce Nelson's name or

some other great man's and this recurred regularly. 'What are we for

now?' he would ask me as we left our house. I had to decide whether we

took a hero or an author, which I soon learnt to do with capricious

resolution. We were one Sunday for Shakespeare; another for Nelson or

Pitt. 'Nelson, papa,' was my most frequent rejoinder, and he never

dissented, but turned his steps toward Nelson's cathedral dome, and

uncovered his head there, and said: 'Nelson, then, to-day'; and we went

straight to his monument to perform the act of homage. I chose Nelson in

preference to the others because near bed-time in the evening my father

told me stories of our hero of the day, and neither Pitt nor Shakespeare

lost an eye, or an arm, or fought with a huge white bear on the ice to

make himself interesting. I named them occasionally out of compassion,

and to please my father, who said that they ought to have a turn. They

were, he told me, in the habit of paying him a visit, whenever I had

particularly neglected them, to learn the grounds for my disregard of

their claims, and they urged him to intercede with me, and imparted many

of their unpublished adventures, so that I should be tempted to give them

a chance on the following Sunday.

'Great Will,' my father called Shakespeare, and 'Slender Billy,' Pitt.

The scene where Great Will killed the deer, dragging Falstaff all over

the park after it by the light of Bardolph's nose, upon which they put an

extinguisher if they heard any of the keepers, and so left everybody

groping about and catching the wrong person, was the most wonderful

mixture of fun and tears. Great Will was extremely youthful, but

everybody in the park called him, 'Father William'; and when he wanted to

know which way the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory deceives

me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a handkerchief for it to be steeped in

the blood of the deer; Shylock ordered one pound of the carcase; Hamlet

(the fact was impressed on me) offered him a three-legged stool; and a

number of kings and knights and ladies lit their torches from Bardolph;

and away they flew, distracting the keepers and leaving Will and his

troop to the deer. That poor thing died from a different weapon at each

recital, though always with a flow of blood and a successful dash of his

antlers into Falstaff; and to hear Falstaff bellow! But it was mournful

to hear how sorry Great Will was over the animal he had slain. He spoke

like music. I found it pathetic in spite of my knowing that the whole

scene was lighted up by Bardolph's nose. When I was just bursting out

crying--for the deer's tongue was lolling out and quick pantings were at

his side; he had little ones at home--Great Will remembered his

engagement to sell Shylock a pound of the carcase; determined that no

Jew should eat of it, he bethought him that Falstaff could well spare a

pound, and he said the Jew would not see the difference: Falstaff only

got off by hard running and roaring out that he knew his unclean life

would make him taste like pork and thus let the Jew into the trick.

My father related all this with such a veritable matter-of-fact air, and

such liveliness--he sounded the chase and its cries, and showed King Lear

tottering, and Hamlet standing dark, and the vast substance of Falstaff--

that I followed the incidents excitedly, and really saw them, which was

better than understanding them. I required some help from him to see

that Hamlet's offer of a three-legged stool at a feverish moment of the

chase, was laughable. He taught me what to think of it by pitching Great

Will's voice high, and Hamlet's very low. By degrees I got some

unconscious knowledge of the characters of Shakespeare.

There never was so fascinating a father as mine for a boy anything under

eight or ten years old. He could guess on Saturday whether I should name

William Pitt on the Sunday; for, on those occasions, 'Slender Billy,' as

I hope I am not irreverent in calling him, made up for the dulness of his

high career with a raspberry-jam tart, for which, my father told me

solemnly, the illustrious Minister had in his day a passion. If I named

him, my father would say, 'W. P., otherwise S. B., was born in the year

so-and-so; now,' and he went to the cupboard, 'in the name of Politics,

take this and meditate upon him.' The shops being all shut on Sunday,

he certainly bought it, anticipating me unerringly, on the Saturday,

and, as soon as the tart appeared, we both shouted. I fancy I remember

his repeating a couplet,

'Billy Pitt took a cake and a raspberry jam,

When he heard they had taken Seringapatam.'

At any rate, the rumour of his having done so, at periods of strong

excitement, led to the inexplicable display of foresight on my father's

part.

My meditations upon Pitt were, under this influence, favourable to the

post of a Prime Minister, but it was merely appetite that induced me to

choose him; I never could imagine a grandeur in his office,

notwithstanding my father's eloquent talk of ruling a realm, shepherding

a people, hurling British thunderbolts. The day's discipline was, that

its selected hero should reign the undisputed monarch of it, so when I

was for Pitt, I had my tart as he used to have it, and no story, for he

had none, and I think my idea of the ruler of a realm presented him to me

as a sort of shadow about a pastrycook's shop. But I surprised people by

speaking of him. I made remarks to our landlady which caused her to

throw up her hands and exclaim that I was astonishing. She would always

add a mysterious word or two in the hearing of my nursemaid or any friend

of hers who looked into my room to see me. After my father had got me

forward with instructions on the piano, and exercises in early English

history and the book of the Peerage, I became the wonder of the house.

I was put up on a stool to play 'In my Cottage near a Wood,' or 'Cherry

Ripe,' and then, to show the range of my accomplishments, I was asked,

'And who married the Dowager Duchess of Dewlap?' and I answered, 'John

Gregg Wetherall, Esquire, and disgraced the family.' Then they asked me

how I accounted for her behaviour.

'It was because the Duke married a dairymaid,' I replied, always tossing

up my chin at that. My father had concocted the questions and prepared

me for the responses, but the effect was striking, both upon his visitors

and the landlady's. Gradually my ear grew accustomed to her invariable

whisper on these occasions. 'Blood Rile,' she said; and her friends all

said 'No!' like the run of a finger down a fiddlestring.

A gentleman of his acquaintance called on him one evening to take him out

for a walk. My father happened to be playing with me when this gentleman

entered our room: and he jumped up from his hands and knees, and abused

him for intruding on his privacy, but afterwards he introduced him to me

as Shylock's great-great-great-grandson, and said that Shylock was

satisfied with a pound, and his descendant wanted two hundred pounds,

or else all his body: and this, he said, came of the emigration of the

family from Venice to England. My father only seemed angry, for he went

off with Shylock's very great grandson arm-in-arm, exclaiming, 'To the

Rialto!' When I told Mrs. Waddy about the visitor, she said, 'Oh, dear!

oh, dear! then I'm afraid your sweet papa won't return very soon, my

pretty pet.' We waited a number of days, until Mrs. Waddy received a

letter from him. She came full-dressed into my room, requesting me to

give her twenty kisses for papa, and I looked on while she arranged her

blue bonnet at the glass. The bonnet would not fix in its place. At

last she sank down crying in a chair, and was all brown silk, and said

that how to appear before a parcel of dreadful men, and perhaps a live

duke into the bargain, was more than she knew, and more than could be

expected of a lone widow woman. 'Not for worlds!' she answered my

petition to accompany her. She would not, she said, have me go to my

papa there for anything on earth; my papa would perish at the sight of

me; I was not even to wish to go. And then she exclaimed, 'Oh, the

blessed child's poor papa!' and that people were cruel to him, and would

never take into account his lovely temper, and that everybody was his

enemy, when he ought to be sitting with the highest in the land. I had

realized the extremity of my forlorn state on a Sunday that passed empty

of my father, which felt like his having gone for ever. My nursemaid

came in to assist in settling Mrs. Waddy's bonnet above the six crisp

curls, and while they were about it I sat quiet, plucking now and then at

the brown silk, partly to beg to go with it, partly in jealousy and love

at the thought of its seeing him from whom I was so awfully separated.

Mrs. Waddy took fresh kisses off my lips, assuring me that my father

would have them in twenty minutes, and I was to sit and count the time.

My nursemaid let her out. I pretended to be absorbed in counting, till I

saw Mrs. Waddy pass by the window. My heart gave a leap of pain. I

found the street-door open and no one in the passage, and I ran out,

thinking that Mrs. Waddy would be obliged to take me if she discovered me

by her side in the street.

I was by no means disconcerted at not seeing her immediately. Running

on from one street to another, I took the turnings with unhesitating

boldness, as if I had a destination in view. I must have been out near

an hour before I understood that Mrs. Waddy had eluded me; so I resolved

to enjoy the shop-windows with the luxurious freedom of one whose

speculations on those glorious things all up for show are no longer

distracted by the run of time and a nursemaid. Little more than a glance

was enough, now that I knew I could stay as long as I liked. If I

stopped at all, it was rather to exhibit the bravado of liberty than to

distinguish any particular shop with my preference: all were equally

beautiful; so were the carriages; so were the people. Ladies frequently

turned to look at me, perhaps because I had no covering on my head; but

they did not interest me in the least. I should have been willing to ask

them or any one where the Peerage lived, only my mind was quite full, and

I did not care. I felt sure that a great deal of walking would

ultimately bring me to St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey; to anything else

I was indifferent.

Toward sunset my frame was struck as with an arrow by the sensations of

hunger on passing a cook's-shop. I faltered along, hoping to reach a

second one, without knowing why I had dragged my limbs from the first.

There was a boy in ragged breeches, no taller than myself, standing

tiptoe by the window of a very large and brilliant pastry-cook's.

He persuaded me to go into the shop and ask for a cake. I thought it

perfectly natural to do so, being hungry; but when I reached the counter

and felt the size of the shop, I was abashed, and had to repeat the

nature of my petition twice to the young woman presiding there.

'Give you a cake, little boy?' she said. 'We don't give cakes, we sell

them.'

'Because I am hungry,' said I, pursuing my request.

Another young woman came, laughing and shaking lots of ringlets.

'Don't you see he's not a common boy? he doesn't whine,' she remarked,

and handed me a stale bun, saying, 'Here, Master Charles, and you needn't

say thank you.'

'My name is Harry Richmond, and I thank you very much,' I replied.

I heard her say, as I went out, 'You can see he's a gentleman's son.'

The ragged boy was awaiting me eagerly. 'Gemini! you're a lucky one,'

he cried; 'here, come along, curly-poll.' I believe that I meant to share

the bun with him, but of course he could not be aware of my beneficent

intentions: so he treated me as he thought I was for treating him, and

making one snatch at the bun, ran off cramming it into his mouth. I

stood looking at any hand. I learnt in that instant what thieving was,

and begging, and hunger, for I would have perished rather than have asked

for another cake, and as I yearned for it in absolute want of food, the

boy's ungenerous treatment of me came down in a cloud on my reason. I

found myself being led through the crush of people, by an old gentleman,

to whom I must have related an extraordinary rigmarole. He shook his

head, saying that I was unintelligible; but the questions he put to me,

'Why had I no hat on in the open street?--Where did my mother live?--

What was I doing out alone in London?' were so many incitements to

autobiographical composition to an infant mind, and I tumbled out my

history afresh each time that he spoke. He led me into a square,

stooping his head to listen all the while; but when I perceived that we

had quitted the region of shops I made myself quite intelligible by

stopping short and crying: 'I am so hungry.' He nodded and said, 'It 's

no use cross-examining an empty stomach. You'll do me the favour to dine

with me, my little man. We'll talk over your affairs by-and-by.'

My alarm at having left the savoury street of shops was not soothed until

I found myself sitting at table with him, and a nice young lady, and an

old one who wore a cap, and made loud remarks on my garments and

everything I did. I was introduced to them as the little boy dropped

from the sky. The old gentleman would not allow me to be questioned

before I had eaten. It was a memorable feast. I had soup, fish, meat,

and pastry, and, for the first time in my life, a glass of wine. How

they laughed to see me blink and cough after I had swallowed half the

glass like water. At once my tongue was unloosed. I seemed to rise

right above the roofs of London, beneath which I had been but a wandering

atom a few minutes ago. I talked of my wonderful father, and Great Will,

and Pitt, and the Peerage. I amazed them with my knowledge. When I

finished a long recital of Great Will's chase of the deer, by saying that

I did not care about politics (I meant, in my own mind, that Pitt was

dull in comparison), they laughed enormously, as if I had fired them off.

'Do you know what you are, sir?' said the old gentleman; he had frowning

eyebrows and a merry mouth 'you're a comical character.'

I felt interested in him, and asked him what he was. He informed me that

he was a lawyer, and ready to be pantaloon to my clown, if I would engage

him.

'Are you in the Peerage?' said I.

'Not yet,' he replied.

'Well, then,' said I, 'I know nothing about you.'

The young lady screamed with laughter. 'Oh, you funny little boy; you

killing little creature!' she said, and coming round to me, lifted me out

of my chair, and wanted to know if I knew how to kiss.

'Oh, yes; I've been taught that,' said I, giving the salute without

waiting for the invitation; 'but,' I added, 'I don't care about it much.'

She was indignant, and told me she was going to be offended, so I let her

understand that I liked being kissed and played with in the morning

before I was up, and if she would come to my house ever so early, she

would find me lying next the wall and ready for her.

'And who lies outside?' she asked.

'That's my papa,' I was beginning to say, but broke the words with a sob,

for I seemed to be separated from him now by the sea itself.

They petted me tenderly. My story was extracted by alternate leading

questions from the old gentleman and timely caresses from the ladies.

I could tell them everything except the name of the street where I lived.

My midnight excursion from the house of my grandfather excited them

chiefly; also my having a mother alive who perpetually fanned her face

and wore a ball-dress and a wreath; things that I remembered of my

mother. The ladies observed that it was clear I was a romantic child.

I noticed that the old gentleman said 'Humph,' very often, and his

eyebrows were like a rook's nest in a tree when I spoke of my father

walking away with Shylock's descendant and not since returning to me.

A big book was fetched out of his library, in which he read my

grandfather's name. I heard him mention it aloud. I had been placed on

a stool beside a tea-tray near the fire, and there I saw the old red

house of Riversley, and my mother dressed in white, and my aunt Dorothy;

and they all complained that I had ceased to love them, and must go to

bed, to which I had no objection. Somebody carried me up and undressed

me, and promised me a great game of kissing in the morning.

The next day in the strange house I heard that the old gentleman had sent

one of his clerks down to my grandfather at Riversley, and communicated

with the constables in London; and, by-and-by, Mrs. Waddy arrived, having

likewise visited those authorities, one of whom supported her claims upon

me. But the old gentleman wished to keep me until his messenger returned

from Riversley. He made all sorts of pretexts. In the end, he insisted

on seeing my father, and Mrs. Waddy, after much hesitation, and even

weeping, furnished the address: upon hearing which, spoken aside to him,

he said, 'I thought so.' Mrs. Waddy entreated him to be respectful to my

father, who was, she declared, his superior, and, begging everybody's

pardon present, the superior of us all, through no sin of his own, that

caused him to be so unfortunate; and a real Christian and pattern, in

spite of outsides, though as true a gentleman as ever walked, and by

rights should be amongst the highest. She repeated 'amongst the highest'

reprovingly, with the ears of barley in her blue bonnet shaking, and her

hands clasped tight in her lap. Old Mr. Bannerbridge (that was the old

gentleman's name) came back very late from his visit to my father, so

late that he said it would be cruel to let me go out in the street after

my bed-time. Mrs. Waddy consented to my remaining, on the condition of

my being surrendered to her at nine o'clock, and no later, the following

morning.

I was assured by Mr. Bannerbridge that my father's health and appetite

were excellent; he gave me a number of unsatisfying messages, all the

rest concerning his interview he whispered to his daughter and his

sister, Miss Bannerbridge, who said they hoped they would have news from

Hampshire very early, so that the poor child might be taken away by the

friends of his infancy. I could understand that my father was

disapproved of by them, and that I was a kind of shuttlecock flying

between two battledores; but why they pitied me I could not understand.

There was a great battle about me when Mrs. Waddy appeared punctual to

her appointed hour. The victory was hers, and I, her prize, passed a

whole day in different conveyances, the last of which landed us miles

away from London, at the gates of an old drooping, mossed and streaked

farmhouse, that was like a wall-flower in colour.

CHAPTER III

DIPWELL FARM

In rain or in sunshine this old farmhouse had a constant resemblance to a

wall-flower; and it had the same moist earthy smell, except in the

kitchen, where John and Martha Thresher lived, apart from their

furniture. All the fresh eggs, and the butter stamped, with three bees,

and the pots of honey, the fowls, and the hare lifted out of the hamper

by his hind legs, and the country loaves smelling heavenly, which used to

come to Mrs. Waddy's address in London, and appear on my father's table,

were products of Dipwell farm, and presents from her sister, Martha

Thresher. On receiving this information I felt at home in a moment, and

asked right off, 'How long am I to stay here?--Am I going away tomorrow?-

-What's going to be done with me?' The women found these questions of a

youthful wanderer touching. Between kissings and promises of hens to

feed, and eggs that were to come of it, I settled into contentment. A

strong impression was made on me by Mrs. Waddy's saying, 'Here, Master

Harry, your own papa will come for you; and you may be sure he will, for

I have his word he will, and he's not one to break it, unless his

country's against him; and for his darling boy he'd march against

cannons. So here you'll sit and wait for him, won't you?' I sat down

immediately, looking up. Mrs. Waddy and Mrs. Thresher raised their

hands. I had given them some extraordinary proof of my love for my

father. The impression I received was, that sitting was the thing to

conjure him to me.

'Where his heart's not concerned,' Mrs. Waddy remarked of me

flatteringly, 'he's shrewd as a little schoolmaster.'

'He've a bird's-nesting eye,' said Mrs. Thresher, whose face I was

studying.

John Thresher wagered I would be a man before either of them reached that

goal. But whenever he spoke he suffered correction on account of his

English.

'More than his eating and his drinking, that child's father worrits about

his learning to speak the language of a British gentleman,' Mrs. Waddy

exclaimed. 'Before that child your h's must be like the panting of an

engine--to please his father. He 'd stop me carrying the dinner-tray on

meat-dish hot, and I'm to repeat what I said, to make sure the child

haven't heard anything ungrammatical. The child's nursemaid he'd lecture

so, the poor girl would come down to me ready to bend double, like a

bundle of nothing, his observations so took the pride out of her. That's

because he 's a father who knows his duty to the child:--"Child!" says

he, "man, ma'am." It's just as you, John, when you sow your seed you

think of your harvest. So don't take it ill of me, John; I beg of you be

careful of your English. Turn it over as you're about to speak.'

'Change loads on the road, you mean,' said John Thresher. 'Na, na, he's

come to settle nigh a weedy field, if you like, but his crop ain't nigh

reaping yet. Hark you, Mary Waddy, who're a widde, which 's as much as

say, an unocc'pied mind, there's cockney, and there's country, and there

's school. Mix the three, strain, and throw away the sediment. Now, yon

's my view.

His wife and Mrs. Waddy said reflectively, in a breath, 'True!'

'Drink or no, that's the trick o' brewery,' he added.

They assented. They began praising him, too, like meek creatures.

'What John says is worth listening to, Mary. You may be over-careful.

A stew's a stew, and not a boiling to shreds, and you want a steady fire,

and not a furnace.'

'Oh, I quite agree with John, Martha: we must take the good and the evil

in a world like this.'

'Then I'm no scholar, and you're at ease,' said John.

Mrs. Waddy put her mouth to his ear.

Up went his eyebrows, wrinkling arches over a petrified stare.

In some way she had regained her advantage. 'Art sure of it?' he

inquired.

'Pray, don't offend me by expressing a doubt of it,' she replied, bowing.

John Thresher poised me in the very centre of his gaze. He declared he

would never have guessed that, and was reproved, inasmuch as he might

have guessed it. He then said that I could not associate with any of the

children thereabout, and my dwelling in the kitchen was not to be thought

of. The idea of my dwelling in the kitchen seemed to be a serious

consideration with Mrs. Martha likewise. I was led into the rooms of

state. The sight of them was enough. I stamped my feet for the kitchen,

and rarely in my life have been happier than there, dining and supping

with John and Martha and the farm-labourers, expecting my father across

the hills, and yet satisfied with the sun. To hope, and not be

impatient, is really to believe, and this was my feeling in my father's

absence. I knew he would come, without wishing to hurry him. He had the

world beyond the hills; I this one, where a slow full river flowed from

the sounding mill under our garden wall, through long meadows. In Winter

the wild ducks made letters of the alphabet flying. On the other side of

the copses bounding our home, there was a park containing trees old as

the History of England, John Thresher said, and the thought of their

venerable age enclosed me comfortably. He could not tell me whether he

meant as old as the book of English History; he fancied he did, for the

furrow-track follows the plough close upon; but no one exactly could

swear when that (the book) was put together. At my suggestion, he fixed

the trees to the date of the Heptarchy, a period of heavy ploughing.

Thus begirt by Saxon times, I regarded Riversley as a place of extreme

baldness, a Greenland, untrodden by my Alfred and my Harold. These

heroes lived in the circle of Dipwell, confidently awaiting the arrival

of my father. He sent me once a glorious letter. Mrs. Waddy took one of

John Thresher's pigeons to London, and in the evening we beheld the bird

cut the sky like an arrow, bringing round his neck a letter warm from him

I loved. Planet communicating with planet would be not more wonderful to

men than words of his to me, travelling in such a manner. I went to

sleep, and awoke imagining the bird bursting out of heaven.

Meanwhile there was an attempt to set me moving again. A strange young

man was noticed in the neighbourhood of the farm, and he accosted me at

Leckham fair. 'I say, don't we know one another? How about your

grandfather the squire, and your aunt, and Mr. Bannerbridge? I've got

news for you.'

Not unwilling to hear him, I took his hand, leaving my companion, the

miller's little girl, Mabel Sweetwinter, at a toy-stand, while Bob, her

brother and our guardian, was shying sticks in a fine attitude. 'Yes,

and your father, too,' said the young man; 'come along and see him; you

can run?' I showed him how fast. We were pursued by Bob, who fought for

me, and won me, and my allegiance instantly returned to him. He carried

me almost the whole of the way back to Dipwell. Women must feel for the

lucky heroes who win them, something of what I felt for mine; I kissed

his bloody face, refusing to let him wipe it. John Thresher said to me

at night, 'Ay, now you've got a notion of boxing; and will you believe

it, Master Harry, there's people fools enough to want to tread that ther'

first-rate pastime under foot? I speak truth, and my word for 't, they'd

better go in petticoats. Let clergymen preach as in duty bound; you and

I'll uphold a manful sport, we will, and a cheer for Bob!'

He assured me, and he had my entire faith, that boxing was England's

natural protection from the foe. The comfort of having one like Bob to

defend our country from invasion struck me as inexpressible. Lighted by

John Thresher's burning patriotism, I entered the book of the History of

England at about the pace of a carthorse, with a huge waggon at my heels

in the shape of John. There was no moving on until he was filled. His

process of receiving historical knowledge was to fight over again the

personages who did injury to our honour as a nation, then shake hands and

be proud of them. 'For where we ain't quite successful we're cunning,'

he said; 'and we not being able to get rid of William the Conqueror,

because he's got a will of his own and he won't budge, why, we takes

and makes him one of ourselves; and no disgrace in that, I should hope!

He paid us a compliment, don't you see, Master Harry? he wanted to be an

Englishman. "Can you this?" says we, sparrin' up to him. "Pretty

middlin'," says he, "and does it well." "Well then," says we, "then

you're one of us, and we'll beat the world"; and did so.'

John Thresher had a laborious mind; it cost him beads on his forehead to

mount to these heights of meditation. He told me once that he thought

one's country was like one's wife: you were born in the first, and

married to the second, and had to learn all about them afterwards, ay,

and make the best of them. He recommended me to mix, strain, and throw

away the sediment, for that was the trick o' brewery. Every puzzle that

beset him in life resolved to this cheerful precept, the value of which,

he said, was shown by clear brown ale, the drink of the land. Even as a

child I felt that he was peculiarly an Englishman. Tales of injustice

done on the Niger river would flush him in a heat of wrath till he cried

out for fresh taxes to chastise the villains. Yet at the sight of the

beggars at his gates he groaned at the taxes existing, and enjoined me

to have pity on the poor taxpayer when I lent a hand to patch the laws.

I promised him I would unreservedly, with a laugh, but with a sincere

intention to legislate in a direct manner on his behalf. He, too, though

he laughed, thanked me kindly.

I was clad in black for my distant mother. Mrs. Waddy brought down a

young man from London to measure me, so that my mourning attire might be

in the perfect cut of fashion. 'The child's papa would strip him if he

saw him in a country tailor's funeral suit,' she said, and seemed to blow

a wind of changes on me that made me sure my father had begun to stir up

his part of the world. He sent me a prayer in his own handwriting to say

for my mother in heaven. I saw it flying up between black edges whenever

I shut my eyes. Martha Thresher dosed me for liver. Mrs. Waddy found me

pale by the fireside, and prescribed iron. Both agreed upon high-

feeding, and the apothecary agreed with both in everything, which

reconciled them, for both good women loved me so heartily they were near

upon disputing over the medicines I was to consume.

Under such affectionate treatment I betrayed the alarming symptom that my

imagination was set more on my mother than on my father: I could not help

thinking that for any one to go to heaven was stranger than to drive to

Dipwell, and I had this idea when my father was clasping me in his arms;

but he melted it like snow off the fields. He came with postillions in

advance of him wearing crape rosettes, as did the horses. We were in the

cricket-field, where Dipwell was playing its first match of the season,

and a Dipwell lad, furious to see the elevens commit such a breach of the

rules and decency as to troop away while the game was hot, and surround

my father, flung the cricket-ball into the midst and hit two or three of

the men hard. My father had to shield him from the consequences. He

said he liked that boy; and he pleaded for him so winningly and funnily

that the man who was hurt most laughed loudest.

Standing up in the carriage, and holding me by the hand, he addressed

them by their names: 'Sweetwinter, I thank you for your attention to my

son; and you, Thribble; and you, my man; and you, Baker; Rippengale, and

you; and you, Jupp'; as if he knew them personally. It was true he

nodded at random. Then he delivered a short speech, and named himself a

regular subscriber to their innocent pleasures. He gave them money, and

scattered silver coin among the boys and girls, and praised John

Thresher, and Martha, his wife, for their care of me, and pointing to the

chimneys of the farm, said that the house there was holy to him from

henceforth, and he should visit it annually if possible, but always in

the month of May, and in the shape of his subscription, as certain as the

cowslip. The men, after their fit of cheering, appeared unwilling to

recommence their play, so he alighted and delivered the first ball, and

then walked away with my hand in his, saying:

'Yes, my son, we will return to them tenfold what they have done for you.

The eleventh day of May shall be a day of pleasure for Dipwell while I

last, and you will keep it in memory of me when I am gone. And now to

see the bed you have slept in.'

Martha Thresher showed him the bed, showed him flowers I had planted, and

a Spanish chestnut tree just peeping.

'Ha!' said he, beaming at every fresh sight of my doings: 'madam, I am

your life-long debtor and friend!' He kissed her on the cheek.

John Thresher cried out: 'Why, dame, you trembles like a maid.'

She spoke very faintly, and was red in the face up to the time of our

departure. John stood like a soldier. We drove away from a cheering

crowd of cricketers and farm-labourers, as if discharged from a great

gun. 'A royal salvo!' said my father, and asked me earnestly whether I

had forgotten to reward and take a particular farewell of any one of my

friends. I told him I had forgotten no one, and thought it was true,

until on our way up the sandy lane, which offered us a last close view of

the old wall-flower farm front, I saw little Mabel Sweetwinter, often my

playfellow and bedfellow, a curly-headed girl, who would have danced on

Sunday for a fairing, and eaten gingerbread nuts during a ghost-story.

She was sitting by a furze-bush in flower, cherishing in her lap a lamb

that had been worried. She looked half up at me, and kept looking so,

but would not nod. Then good-bye, thought I, and remembered her look

when I had forgotten that of all the others.

CHAPTER IV

I HAVE A TASTE OF GRANDEUR

Though I had not previously seen a postillion in my life, I gazed on the

pair bobbing regularly on their horses before me, without a thought upon

the marvel of their sudden apparition and connection with my fortunes.

I could not tire of hearing the pleasant music of the many feet at the

trot, and tried to explain to my father that the men going up and down

made it like a piano that played of itself. He laughed and kissed me;

he remembered having once shown me the inside of a piano when the keys

were knocked. My love for him as we drove into London had a recognized

footing: I perceived that he was my best friend and only true companion,

besides his being my hero. The wicked men who had parted us were no

longer able to do harm, he said. I forgot, in my gladness at their

defeat, to ask what had become of Shylock's descendant.

Mrs. Waddy welcomed us when we alighted. Do not imagine that it was at

the door of her old house. It was in a wide street opening on a splendid

square, and pillars were before the houses, and inside there was the

enchantment of a little fountain playing thin as whipcord, among ferns,

in a rock-basin under a window that glowed with kings of England, copied

from boys' history books. All the servants were drawn up in the hall to

do homage to me. They seemed less real and living than the wonder of the

sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs. Richest of

treats, a monkey was introduced to me. 'It 's your papa's whim,' Mrs.

Waddy said, resignedly; 'he says he must have his jester. Indeed it is

no joke to me.'

Yet she smiled happily, though her voice was melancholy. From her I now

learnt that my name was Richmond Roy, and not Harry Richmond. I said,

'Very well,' for I was used to change. Everybody in the house wore a

happy expression of countenance, except the monkey, who was too busy.

As we mounted the stairs I saw more kings of England painted on the back-

windows. Mrs. Waddy said: 'It is considered to give a monarchical

effect,'--she coughed modestly after the long word, and pursued: 'as it

should.' I insisted upon going to the top floor, where I expected to

find William the Conqueror, and found him; but that strong connecting

link between John Thresher and me presented himself only to carry my

recollections of the Dipwell of yesterday as far back into the past as

the old Norman days.

'And down go all the kings, downstairs,' I said, surveying them

consecutively.

'Yes,' she replied, in a tone that might lead one to think it their

lamentable fate. 'And did the people look at you as you drove along

through the streets, Master Richmond?'

I said 'Yes,' in turn; and then we left off answering, but questioned one

another, which is a quicker way of getting at facts; I know it is with

boys and women. Mrs. Waddy cared much less to hear of Dipwell and its

inhabitants than of the sensation created everywhere by our equipage.

I noticed that when her voice was not melancholy her face was. She

showed me a beautiful little pink bed, having a crown over it, in a room

opening to my father's. Twenty thousand magnificent dreams seemed to

flash their golden doors when I knew that the bed was mine. I thought it

almost as nice as a place by my father's side.

'Don't you like it, Mrs. Waddy?' I said.

She smiled and sighed. 'Like it? Oh! yes, my dear, to be sure I do.

I only hope it won't vanish.' She simpered and looked sad.

I had too many distractions, or I should have asked her whether my

amazing and delightful new home had ever shown symptoms of vanishing; it

appeared to me, judging from my experience, that nothing moved violently

except myself, and my principal concern was lest any one should carry me

away at a moment's notice. In the evening I was introduced to a company

of gentlemen, who were drinking wine after dinner with my father. They

clapped their hands and laughed immoderately on my telling them that I

thought those kings of England who could not find room on the windows

must have gone down to the cellars.

'They are going,' my father said. He drank off a glassful of wine and

sighed prodigiously. 'They are going, gentlemen, going there, like good

wine, like old Port, which they tell us is going also. Favour me by

drinking to the health of Richmond Roy the younger.'

They drank to me heartily, but my father had fallen mournful before I

left the room.

Pony-riding, and lessons in boxing and wrestling, and lessons in French

from a French governess, at whose appearance my father always seemed to

be beginning to dance a minuet, so exuberantly courteous was he; and

lessons in Latin from a tutor, whom my father invited to dinner once a

fortnight, but did not distinguish otherwise than occasionally to take

down Latin sentences in a notebook from his dictation, occupied my

mornings. My father told the man who instructed me in the art of self-

defence that our family had always patronized his profession. I wrestled

ten minutes every day with this man's son, and was regularly thrown. On

fine afternoons I was dressed in black velvet for a drive in the park,

where my father uncovered his head to numbers of people, and was much

looked at. 'It is our duty, my son, never to forget names and persons;

I beg you to bear that in mind, my dearest Richie,' he said. We used to

go to his opera-box; and we visited the House of Lords and the House of

Commons; and my father, though he complained of the decay of British

eloquence, and mourned for the days of Chatham, and William Pitt (our old

friend of the cake and the raspberry jam), and Burke, and Sheridan,

encouraged the orators with approving murmurs.

My father no longer laid stress on my studies of the Peerage. 'Now I

have you in the very atmosphere, that will come of itself,' he said.

I wished to know whether I was likely to be transported suddenly to some

other place. He assured me that nothing save a convulsion of the earth

would do it, which comforted me, for I took the firmness of the earth in

perfect trust. We spoke of our old Sunday walks to St. Paul's and

Westminster Abbey as of a day that had its charm. Our pew among a

fashionable congregation pleased him better. The pew-opener curtseyed

to none as she did to him. For my part, I missed the monuments and the

chants, and something besides that had gone--I knew not what. At the

first indication of gloom in me, my father became alarmed, and, after

making me stand with my tongue out before himself and Mrs. Waddy, like a

dragon in a piece of tapestry, would resume his old playfulness, and try

to be the same that he had been in Mrs. Waddy's lodgings. Then we read

the Arabian Nights together, or, rather, he read them to me, often acting

out the incidents as we rode or drove abroad. An omission to perform a

duty was the fatal forgetfulness to sprinkle pepper on the cream-tarts;

if my father subjected me to an interrogation concerning my lessons, he

was the dread African magician to whom must be surrendered my acquisition

of the ring and the musty old lamp. We were quite in the habit of

meeting fair Persians. He would frequently ejaculate that he resembled

the Three Calendars in more respects than one. To divert me during my

recovery from measles, he one day hired an actor in a theatre, and put a

cloth round his neck, and seated him in a chair, rubbed his chin with

soap, and played the part of the Barber over him, and I have never

laughed so much in my life. Poor Mrs. Waddy got her hands at her sides,

and kept on gasping, 'Oh, sir! oh!' while the Barber hurried away from

the half-shaved young man to consult his pretended astrolabe in the next

room, where we heard him shouting the sun's altitude, and consulting its

willingness for the impatient young man to be further shaved; and back he

came, seeming refreshed to have learnt the sun's favourable opinion, and

gabbling at an immense rate, full of barber's business. The servants

were allowed to be spectators; but as soon as the young man was shaved,

my father dismissed them with the tone of a master. No wonder they loved

him. Mrs. Waddy asked who could help it?

I remember a pang I had when she spoke of his exposure to the risk of

marrying again; it added a curious romantic tenderness to my adoration of

him, and made me feel that he and I stood against the world. To have his

hand in mine was my delight. Then it was that I could think earnestly of

Prince Ahmed and the kind and beautiful Peribanou, whom I would not have

minded his marrying. My favourite dream was to see him shooting an arrow

in a match for a prize, and losing the prize because of not finding his

arrow, and wondering where the arrow had flown to, and wandering after it

till he passed out of green fields to grassy rocks, and to a stony

desert, where at last he found his arrow at an enormous distance from the

shooting line, and there was the desert all about him, and the sweetest

fairy ever imagined going to show herself to him in the ground under his

feet. In his absence I really hungered for him, and was jealous.

During this Arabian life, we sat on a carpet that flew to the Continent,

where I fell sick, and was cured by smelling at an apple; and my father

directed our movements through the aid of a telescope, which told us the

titles of the hotels ready to receive us. As for the cities and

cathedrals, the hot meadows under mountains, the rivers and the castles-

they were little more to me than an animated book of geography, opening

and shutting at random; and travelling from place to place must have

seemed to me so much like the life I had led, that I was generally as

quick to cry as to laugh, and was never at peace between any two

emotions. By-and-by I lay in a gondola with a young lady. My father

made friends fast on our travels: her parents were among the number, and

she fell in love with me and enjoyed having the name of Peribanou, which

I bestowed on her for her delicious talk of the blue and red-striped

posts that would spout up fountains of pearls if they were plucked from

their beds, and the palaces that had flown out of the farthest corners of

the world, and the city that would some night or other vanish suddenly,

leaving bare sea-ripple to say 'Where? where?' as they rolled over.

I would have seen her marry my father happily. She was like rest and

dreams to me, soft sea and pearls. We entered into an arrangement to

correspond for life. Her name was Clara Goodwin; she requested me to go

always to the Horse Guards to discover in what part of the world Colonel

Goodwin might be serving when I wanted to write to her. I, in return,

could give no permanent address, so I related my history from the

beginning. 'To write to you would be the same as writing to a river,'

she said; and insisted that I should drop the odious name of Roy when I

grew a man. My father quarrelled with Colonel Goodwin. Months after I

felt as if I had only just been torn from Clara, but she stood in a mist,

irrecoverably distant. I had no other friend.

Twelve dozen of splendid Burgundy were the fruit of our tour, to be laid

down at Dipwell farm for my arrival at my majority, when I should be a

legal man, embarked in my own ship, as my father said. I did not taste

the wine. 'Porter for me that day, please God!' cried Mrs. Waddy, who

did. My father eyed her with pity, and ordered her to send the wine down

to Dipwell, which was done. He took me between his knees, and said

impressively, 'Now, Richie, twelve dozen of the best that man can drink

await you at the gates of manhood. Few fathers can say that to their

sons, my boy! If we drink it together, blessings on the day! If I'm

gone, Richie, shut up in the long box,' his voice shook, and he added,

'gone to Peribanou underneath, you know, remember that your dada saw that

the wine was a good vintage, and bought it and had it bottled in his own

presence while you were asleep in the Emperor's room in the fine old

Burgundy city, and swore that, whatever came to them both, his son should

drink the wine of princes on the day of his majority.' Here my father's

tone was highly exalted, and he sat in a great flush.

I promised him I would bend my steps toward Dipwell to be there on my

twenty-first birthday, and he pledged himself to be there in spirit at

least, bodily if possible. We sealed the subject with some tears. He

often talked of commissioning a poet to compose verses about that

wonderful coming day at Dipwell. The thought of the day in store for us

sent me strutting as though I had been in the presence of my drill-

master. Mrs. Waddy, however, grew extremely melancholy at the mention of

it.

'Lord only knows where we shall all be by that time!' she sighed.

'She is a dewy woman,' said my father, disdainfully They appeared always

to be at variance, notwithstanding her absolute devotion to him. My

father threatened to have her married to somebody immediately if she

afflicted him with what he called her Waddyism. She had got the habit

of exclaiming at the end of her remarks, 'No matter; our clock strikes

soon!' in a way that communicated to me an obscure idea of a door going

to open unexpectedly in one of the walls, and conduct us, by subterranean

passages, into a new country. My father's method of rebuking her anxious

nature was to summon his cook, the funniest of Frenchmen, Monsieur

Alphonse, and issue orders for a succession of six dinner-parties.

'And now, ma'am, you have occupation for your mind,' he would say.

To judge by the instantaneous composure of her whole appearance, he did

produce a temporary abatement of her malady. The good soul bustled out

of the room in attendance upon M. Alphonse, and never complained while

the dinners lasted, but it was whispered that she had fits in the upper

part of the house. No sooner did my father hear the rumour than he

accused her to her face of this enormity, telling her that he was

determined to effect a permanent cure, even though she should drive him

to unlimited expense. We had a Ball party and an Aladdin supper, and for

a fortnight my father hired postillions; we flashed through London. My

father backed a horse to run in the races on Epsom Downs named Prince

Royal, only for the reason that his name was Prince Royal, and the horse

won, which was, he said, a proof to me that in our country it was common

prudence to stick to Royalty; and he bade me note that if he went in a

carriage and two, he was comparatively unnoticed, whereas when he was

beheld in a carriage and four, with postillions, at a glance from him the

country people tugged their forelocks, and would like, if he would let

them, to kiss his hand. 'We will try the scarlet livery on one of our

drives, Richie,' said he. Mrs. Waddy heard him. 'It is unlawful, sir,'

she said. 'For whom, ma'am?' asked my father. 'None but Royal . . .'

she was explaining, but stopped, for he showed her an awful frown, and

she cried so that my heart ached for her. My father went out to order

the livery on the spot. He was very excited. Then it was that Mrs.

Waddy, embracing me, said, 'My dear, my own Master Richmond, my little

Harry, prepare your poor child's heart for evil days.' I construed her

unintelligible speech as an attack upon my father, and abused her

violently.