"Do you think so? Perhaps. Not in all cases"; all the while I was exulting at the sweet beams of England radiating from these dear early-morning-looking women.
My aunt Dorothy swam up to me, and, kissing me, murmured:
"Take no rebuff from your grandpapa, darling."
My answer was: "I have found him!"
Captain Bulsted sang out our names; I caught sight of Julia Rippenger"s face; the squire had his back turned to me, which reminded me of my first speech with Captain Jasper Welsh, and I thought to myself, I know something of the world now, and the thing is to keep a good temper. Here there was no wire-coil to intercept us, so I fronted him quickly.
"Hulloa!" he cried, and gave me his shoulder.
"Temple is your guest, sir," said I.
He was obliged to stretch out his hand to Temple.
A prompt instinct warned me that I must show him as much Beltham as I could summon.
"Dogs and horses all right, sir?" I asked.
Captain Bulsted sauntered near.
"Here, William," said the squire, "tell this fellow about my stables."
"In excellent condition, Harry Richmond," returned the captain.
"Oh! he "s got a new name, I "ll swear," said the squire.
"Not I!"
"Then what have you got of your trip, eh?"
"A sharper eye than I had, sir."
"You"ve been sharpening it in London, have you?"
"I"ve been a little farther than London, squire."
"Well, you"re not a liar."
"There, you see the lad can stand fire!" Captain Bulsted broke in.
"Harry Richmond, I"m proud to shake your hand, but I"ll wait till you"re through the ceremony with your grandad."
The squire"s hands were crossed behind him. I smiled boldly in his face.
"Shall I make the tour of you to get hold of one of them, sir?" He frowned and blinked.
"Shuffle in among the ladies; you seem to know how to make friends among them," he said, and pretended to disengage his right hand for the purpose of waving it toward one of the groups.
I seized it, saying heartily, "Grandfather, upon my honour, I love you, and I"m glad to be home again."
"Mind you, you"re not at home till you"ve begged Uberly"s pardon in public, you know what for," he rejoined.
"Leaving the horse at that inn is on my conscience," said I.
The squire grumbled a bit.
"Suppose he kicks?" said I; and the captain laughed, and the squire too, and I was in such high spirits I thought of a dozen witty suggestions relative to the seat of the conscience, and grieved for a minute at going to the ladies.
All the better; keep him there Captain Bulsted convoyed me to pretty Irish-eyed Julia Rippenger. Temple had previously made discovery of Janet Ilchester. Relating our adventures on different parts of the lawn, we both heard that Colonel Goodwin and his daughter had journeyed down to Riversley to smooth the way for my return; so my easy conquest of the squire was not at all wonderful; nevertheless, I maintained my sense of triumph, and was a.s.sured in my secret heart that I had a singular masterfulness, and could, when I chose to put it forth, compel my grandfather to hold out his hand to my father as he had done to me.
Julia Rippenger was a guest at Riversley through a visit paid to her by my aunt Dorothy in alarm at my absence. The intention was to cause the squire a distraction. It succeeded; for the old man needed lively prattle of a less childish sort than Janet Ilchester"s at his elbow, and that young lady, though true enough in her fashion, was the ardent friend of none but flourishing heads; whereas Julia, finding my name under a cloud at Riversley, spoke of me, I was led to imagine by Captain Bulsted, as a ballad hero, a gloriful fellow, a darling whose deeds were all pardonable--a mere puff of smoke in the splendour of his nature.
"To hear the young lady allude to me in that style!" he confided to my ear, with an ineffable heave of his big chest.
Certain good influences, at any rate, preserved the squire from threatening to disinherit me. Colonel Goodwin had spoken to him very manfully and wisely as to my relations with my father. The squire, it was a.s.sumed by my aunt, and by Captain Bulsted and Julia, had undertaken to wink at my father"s claims on my affection. All three vehemently entreated me to make no mention of the present of Hock to him, and not to attempt to bring about an interview. Concerning the yellow wine I disregarded their advice, for I held it to be a point of filial duty, and an obligation religiously contracted beneath a cathedral dome; so I performed the task of offering the Hock, stating that it was of ancient birth. The squire bunched his features; he tutored his temper, and said not a word. I fancied all was well. Before I tried the second step, Captain Bulsted rode over to my father, who himself generously enjoined the prudent course, in accordance with his aforegone precepts. He was floated off, as he termed it, from the inn where he lay stranded, to London, by I knew not what heaven-sent gift of money, bidding me keep in view the grand career I was to commence at Dipwell on arriving at my majority. I would have gone with him had he beckoned a finger.
The four-and-twenty bottles of Hock were ranged in a line for the stable-boys to c.o.c.k-shy at them under the squire"s supervision and my enforced attendance, just as revolutionary criminals are executed. I felt like the survivor of friends, who had seen their blood flow.
He handed me a cheque for the payment of debts incurred in my recent adventures. Who could help being grateful for it? And yet his remorseless spilling of the kindly wine full of mellow recollections of my father and the little princess, drove the sense of grat.i.tude out of me.
CHAPTER XX. NEWS OF A FRESH CONQUEST OF MY FATHER"S
Temple went to sea. The wonder is that I did not go with him: we were both in agreement that adventures were the only things worth living for, and we despised English fellows who had seen no place but England. I could not bear the long separation from my father that was my reason for not insisting on the squire"s consent to my becoming a midshipman. After pa.s.sing a brilliant examination, Temple had the good fortune to join Captain Bulsted"s ship, and there my honest-hearted friend dismally composed his letter of confession, letting me know that he had been untrue to friendship, and had proposed to Janet Ilchester, and interchanged vows with her. He begged my forgiveness, but he did love her so!--he hoped I would not mind. I sent him a reproachful answer; I never cared for him more warmly than when I saw the letter shoot the slope of the postoffice mouth. Aunt Dorothy undertook to communicate a.s.surances of my undying affection for him. As for Janet--Temple"s letter, in which he spoke of her avowed preference for Oriental presents, and declared his intention of acc.u.mulating them on his voyages, was a harpoon in her side. By means of it I worried and terrified her until she was glad to have it all out before the squire.
What did he do? He said that Margery, her mother, was n.i.g.g.ardly; a girl wanted presents, and I did not act up to my duty; I ought to buy Turkey and Tunis to please her, if she had a mind for them.
The further she was flattered the faster she cried; she had the face of an old setter with these hideous tears. The squire promised her fifty pounds per annum in quarterly payments, that she might buy what presents she liked, and so tie herself to constancy. He said aside to me, as if he had a knowledge of the s.e.x--"Young ladies must have lots of knickknacks, or their eyes "ll be caught right and left, remember that."
I should have been delighted to see her caught. She talked of love in a ludicrous second-hand way, sending me into fits of disgusted laughter.
On other occasions her lips were not hypocritical, and her figure anything but awkward. She was a bold, plump girl, fond of male society.
Heriot enraptured her. I believed at the time she would have appointed a year to marry him in, had he put the question. But too many women were in love with Heriot. He and I met Kiomi on the road to the race-course on the Southdowns; the prettiest racecourse in England, shut against gipsies. A bare-footed swarthy girl ran beside our carriage and tossed us flowers. He and a friend of his, young Lord Destrier, son of the Marquis of Edbury, who knew my father well, talked and laughed with her, and thought her so very handsome that I likewise began to stare, and I suddenly called "Kiomi!" She bounded back into the hedge. This was our second meeting. It would have been a pleasant one had not Heriot and Destrier pretended all sorts of things about our previous acquaintance.
Neither of us, they said, had made a bad choice, but why had we separated? She s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand out of mine with a grin of anger like puss in a fury. We had wonderful fun with her. They took her to a great house near the race-course, and there, a.s.sisted by one of the young ladies, dressed her in flowing silks, and so pa.s.sed her through the gate of the enclosure interdicted to bare feet. There they led her to groups of fashionable ladies, and got themselves into pretty sc.r.a.pes. They said she was an Indian. Heriot lost his wagers and called her a witch. She replied, "You"ll find I"m one, young man," and that was the only true thing she spoke of the days to come. Owing to the hubbub around the two who were guilty of this unmeasured joke upon consequential ladies, I had to conduct her to the gate. Instantly, and without a good-bye, she scrambled up her skirts and ran at strides across the road and through the wood, out of sight. She won her dress and a piece of jewelry.
With Heriot I went on a sad expedition, the same I had set out upon with Temple. This time I saw my father behind those high red walls, once so mysterious and terrible to me. Heriot made light of prisons for debt.
He insisted, for my consolation, that they had but a temporary dishonourable signification; very estimable gentlemen, as well as scamps, inhabited them, he said. The impression produced by my visit--the feasting among ruined men who believed in good luck the more the lower they fell from it, and their fearful admiration of my imprisoned father--was as if I had drunk a stupefying liquor. I was unable clearly to reflect on it. Daily afterwards, until I released him, I made journeys to usurers to get a loan on the faith of the reversion of my mother"s estate. Heriot, like the real friend he was, helped me with his name to the bond. When my father stood free, I had the proudest heart alive; and as soon as we had parted, the most amazed. For a long while, for years, the thought of him was haunted by racketb.a.l.l.s and bearded men in their shirtsleeves; a scene sickening to one"s pride.
Yet it had grown impossible for me to think of him without pride.
I delighted to hear him. We were happy when we were together. And, moreover, he swore to me on his honour, in Mrs. Waddy"s presence, that he and the constable would henceforth keep an even pace. His exuberant cheerfulness and charming playfulness were always fascinating. His visions of our glorious future enchained me. How it was that something precious had gone out of my life, I could not comprehend.
Julia Rippenger"s marriage with Captain Bulsted was, an agreeable distraction. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, she went to the altar poignantly pale. My aunt Dorothy settled the match. She had schemed it, her silence and half-downcast look seemed to confess, for the sake of her own repose, but neither to her nor to others did that come of it.
I wrote a plain warning of the approaching catastrophe to Heriot, and received his reply after it was over, to this effect:
"In my regiment we have a tolerable knowledge of women. They like change, old Richie, and we must be content to let them take their twenty shillings for a sovereign. I myself prefer the Navy to the Army; I have no right to complain. Once she swore one thing, now she has sworn another. We will hope the lady will stick to her choice, and not seek smaller change. "I could not forgive coppers"; that "s quoting your dad.
I have no wish to see the uxorious object, though you praise him. His habit of falling under the table is middling old-fashioned; but she may like him the better, or she may cure him. Whatever she is as a woman, she was a very nice girl to enliven the atmosphere of the switch. I sometimes look at a portrait I have of J. R., which, I fancy, Mrs.
William Bulsted has no right to demand of me; but supposing her husband thinks he has, why then I must consult my brother officers. We want a war, old Richie, and I wish you were sitting at our mess, and not mooning about girls and women."
I presumed from this that Heriot"s pa.s.sion for Julia was extinct. Aunt Dorothy disapproved of his tone, which I thought admirably philosophical and c.o.xcombi-cally imitable, an expression of the sort of thing I should feel on hearing of Janet Ilchester"s nuptials.
The daring and success of that foreign adventure of mine had, with the aid of Colonel and Clara Goodwin, convinced the squire of the folly of standing between me and him I loved. It was considered the best sign possible that he should take me down on an inspection of his various estates and his great coal-mine, and introduce me as the heir who would soon relieve him of the task.