Many hours, much labour and anxiety of mind, Mrs. Berry had expended upon this breakfast, and why? There is one who comes to all feasts that have their basis in Folly, whom criminals of trained instinct are careful to provide against: who will speak, and whose hateful voicemust somehow be silenced while the feast is going on. This personage isThe Philosopher. Mrs. Berry knew him. She knew that he would come. She provided against him in the manner she thought most efficacious: that is, by cheating her eyes and intoxicating her conscience with the due and proper glories incident to weddings where fathers dilate, mothers collapse, and marriage settlements are flourished on high by the family lawyer: and had there been no show of the kind to greet her on her return from the church, she would, and she foresaw she would, have stared at squalor and emptiness, and repented her work. The Philosopher would have laid hold of her by the ear, and called her bad names. Entrenched behind a breakfast-table so legitimately adorned, Mrs. Berry defied him. In the presence of that cake he dared not speak above a whisper. And there were wines to drown him in, should he still think of protesting; fiery wines, and cool: claret sent purposely by the bridegroom for the delectation of his friend.
For one good hour, therefore, the labour of many hours kept him dumb. Ripton was fortifying himself so as to forget him altogether, and the word as well, till the next morning. Ripton was excited, overdone with delight. He had already finished one bottle, and listened, pleasantly flushed, to his emphatic and more abstemious chief. He had nothing to do but to listen, and to drink. The hero would not allow him to shout Victory! or hear a word of toasts; and as, from the quantity of oil poured on it, his eloquence was becoming a natural force in his bosom, the poor fellow was afflicted with a sort of elephantiasis of suppressed emotion. At times he half-rose from his chair, and fell vacuously into it again; or he chuckled in the face of weighty, severely-worded instructions; tapped his chest, stretched his arms, yawned, and in short behaved so singularly that Richard observed it, and said: "On my soul, I don't think you know a word I'm saying."
"Every word, Ricky!" Ripton spirted through the opening. "I'm going down to your governor, and tell him: Sir Austin! Here's your only chance of being a happy father—no, no!—Oh! don't you fear me, Ricky! I shall talk the old gentleman over."
His chief said:
"Look here. You had better not go down to-night. Go down the first thing to-morrow, by the six o'clock train. Give him my letter. Listen to me—give him my letter, and don't speak a word till he speaks. His eyebrows will go up and down, he won't say much. I know him. If he asks you about her, don't be a fool, but say what you think of her sensibly"——
No cork could hold in Ripton when she was alluded to He shouted: "She's an angel!"
Richard checked him: "Speak sensibly, I say—quietly. You can say how gentle and good she is—my fleur-de-luce! And say, this was not her doing. If any one's to blame, it's I. I made her marry me. Then go to Lady Blandish, if you don't find her at the house. You may say whatever you please to her. Give her my letter, and tell her I want to hear from her immediately. She has seen Lucy, and I know what she thinks of her. You will then go to Farmer Blaize. I told you Lucy happens to be his niece—she has not lived long there. She lived with her aunt Desborough in France while she was a child, and can hardly be called a relative to the farmer—there's not a point of likeness between them. Poor darling! she never knew her mother. Go to Mr. Blaize, and tell him. You will treat him just as you would treat any other gentleman. If you are civil, he is sure to be. And if he abuses me, for my sake and hers you will still treat him with respect. You hear? And then write me a full account of all that has been said and done. You will have my address the day after to-morrow. By the way, Tom will be here this afternoon. Write out for him where to call on you the day after to-morrow, in case you have heard anything in the morning you think I ought to know at once, as Tom will join me that night. Don't mention to anybody about my losing the ring, Ripton. I wouldn't have Adrian get hold of that for a thousand pounds. How on earth I came to lose it! How well she bore it, Rip! How beautifully she behaved!"
Ripton again shouted: "An angel!" Throwing up the heels of his second bottle, he said:
"You may trust your friend, Richard. Aha! when youpulled at old Mrs. Berry I didn't know what was up. I do wish you'd let me drink her health?"
"Here's to Penelope!" said Richard, just wetting his mouth. The carriage was at the door: a couple of dire organs, each grinding the same tune, and a vulture-scented itinerant band (from which not the secretest veiled wedding can escape) worked harmoniously without in the production of discord, and the noise acting on his nervous state made him begin to fume and send in messages for his bride by the maid.
By and by the lovely young bride presented herself dressed for her journey, and smiling from stained eyes.
Mrs. Berry was requested to drink some wine, which Ripton poured out for her, enabling Mrs. Berry thereby to measure his condition.
The bride now kissed Mrs. Berry, and Mrs. Berry kissed the bridegroom, on the plea of her softness. Lucy gave Ripton her hand, with a musical "Good-bye, Mr. Thompson," and her extreme graciousness made him just sensible enough to sit down before he murmured his fervent hopes for her happiness.
"I shall take good care of him," said Mrs. Berry, focussing her eyes to the comprehension of the company.
"Farewell, Penelope!" cried Richard. "I shall tell the police everywhere to look out for your lord."
"Oh my dears! good-bye, and Heaven bless ye both!"
Berry quavered, touched with compunction at the thoughts of approaching loneliness. Ripton, his mouth drawn like a bow to his ears, brought up the rear to the carriage, receiving a fair slap on the cheek from an old shoe precipitated by Mrs. Berry's enthusiastic female domestic.
White handkerchiefs were waved, the adieux had fallen to signs: they were off. Then did a thought of such urgency illumine Mrs. Berry, that she telegraphed, hand in air, awakening Ripton's lungs, for the coachman to stop, and ran back to the house. Richard chafed to be gone, but at his bride's intercession he consented to wait. Presently they beheld the old black-satin bunch stream through the street-door, down the bit of garden, and up the astonished street, halting, panting, capless at the carriage door, a book in her hand,—a much-used, dog-leaved,steamy, greasy book, which, at the same time calling out in breathless jerks, "There! never ye mind looks! I ain't got a new one. Read it, and don't ye forget it!" she discharged into Lucy's lap, and retreated to the railings, a signal for the coachman to drive away for good.
How Richard laughed at the Berry's bridal gift! Lucy, too, lost the omen at her heart as she glanced at the title of the volume. It was Dr. Kitchener on Domestic Cookery!
General withdrawing of heads from street-windows, emigration of organs and bands, and a relaxed atmosphere in the circle of Mrs. Berry's abode, proved that Dan Cupid had veritably flown to suck the life of fresh regions. With a pensive mind she grasped Ripton's arm to regulate his steps, and returned to the room where her creditor awaited her. In the interval he had stormed her undefended fortress, the cake, from which altitude he shook a dolorous head at the guilty woman. She smoothed her excited apron, sighing. Let no one imagine that she regretted her complicity. She was ready to cry torrents, but there must be absolute castigation before this criminal shall conceive the sense of regret; and probably then she will cling to her wickedness the more—such is the born Pagan's tenacity! Mrs. Berry sighed, and gave him back his shake of the head. O you wanton, improvident creature! said he. O you very wise old gentleman! said she. He asked her the thing she had been doing. She enlightened him with the fatalist's reply. He sounded a bogey's alarm of contingent grave results. She retreated to the entrenched camp of the fact she had helped to make.
"It's done!" she exclaimed. How could she regret what she felt comfort to know was done? Convinced that events alone could stamp a mark on such stubborn flesh, he determined to wait for them, and crouched silent on the cake,with one finger downward at Ripton's incision there, showing a crumbling chasm and gloomy rich recess.
The eloquent indication was understood. "Dear! dear!" cried Mrs. Berry, "what a heap o' cake, and no one to send it to!"
Ripton had resumed his seat by the table and his embrace of the claret. Clear ideas of satisfaction had left him and resolved to a boiling geysir of indistinguishable transports. He bubbled, and waggled, and nodded amicably to nothing, and successfully, though not without effort, preserved his uppermost member from the seductions of the nymph, Gravitation, who was on the look-out for his whole length shortly.
"Ha! ha!" he shouted, about a minute after Mrs. Berry had spoken, and almost abandoned himself to the nymph on the spot. Mrs. Berry's words had just reached his wits.
"Why do you laugh, young man?" she inquired, familiar and motherly on account of his condition.
Ripton laughed louder, and caught his chest on the edge of the table and his nose on a chicken. "That's goo'!" he said, recovering, and rocking under Mrs. Berry's eyes. "No friend!"
"I did not say, no friend," she remarked. "I said, no one; meanin', I know not where for to send it to."
Ripton's response to this was: "You put a Griffin on that cake. Wheatsheaves each side."
"His crest?" Mrs. Berry said sweetly.
"Oldest baronetcy 'n England!" waved Ripton.
"Yes?" Mrs. Berry encouraged him on.
"You think he's Richards. We're oblige' be very close. And she's the most lovely!—If I hear man say thing 'gainst her."
"You needn't for to cry over her, young man," said Mrs. Berry. "I wanted for to drink their right healths by their right names, and then go about my day's work, and I do hope you won't keep me."
Ripton stood bolt upright at her words.
"You do?" he said, and filling a bumper he with cheerfully vinous articulation and glibness of tongue proposed the health of Richard and Lucy Feverel, of Raynham Abbey! and that mankind should not require an expeditious example of the way to accept the inspiring toast,he drained his bumper at a gulp. It finished him. The farthing rushlight of his reason leapt and expired. He tumbled to the sofa and there stretched.
Some minutes subsequent to Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done it, as her disastrous aspect seemed to testify, and her evident, but inexplicable, access of misery induced the sympathetic maid to tender those caressing words that were all Mrs. Berry wanted to go off into the self-caressing fit without delay; and she had already given the preluding demoniac ironic outburst, when the maid called heaven to witness that the gentleman would hear her; upon which Mrs. Berry violently controlled her bosom, and ordered that he should be shown upstairs instantly to see her the wretch she was. She repeated the injunction.
The maid did as she was told, and Mrs. Berry, wishing first to see herself as she was, mutely accosted the looking-glass, and tried to look a very little better. She dropped a shawl on Ripton and was settled, smoothing her agitation when her visitor was announced.
The gentleman was Adrian Harley. An interview with Tom Bakewell had put him on the track, and now a momentary survey of the table, and its white-vestured cake, made him whistle.
Mrs. Berry plaintively begged him to do her the favour to be seated.
"A fine morning, ma'am," said Adrian.
"It have been!" Mrs. Berry answered, glancing over her shoulder at the window, and gulping as if to get her heart down from her mouth.
"A very fine Spring," pursued Adrian, calmly anatomizing her countenance.
Mrs. Berry smothered an adjective to "weather" on a deep sigh. Her wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waxed cheerful and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some strangeintelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing hysterics before him; and as he was never more in his element than when he had a sinner, and a repentant prostrate abject sinner in hand, his affable countenance might well deceive poor Berry.
"I presume these are Mr. Thompson's lodgings?" he remarked, with a look at the table.
Mrs. Berry's head and the whites of her eyes informed him that they were not Mr. Thompson's lodgings.
"No?" said Adrian, and threw a carelessly inquisitive eye about him. "Mr. Feverel is out, I suppose?"
A convulsive start at the name, and two corroborating hands dropped on her knees, formed Mrs. Berry's reply.
"Mr. Feverel's man," continued Adrian, "told me I should be certain to find him here. I thought he would be with his friend, Mr. Thompson. I'm too late, I perceive. Their entertainment is over. I fancy you have been having a party of them here, ma'am?—a bachelors' breakfast!"
In the presence of that cake this observation seemed to mask an irony so shrewd that Mrs. Berry could barely contain herself. She felt she must speak. Making her face as deplorably propitiating as she could, she began:
"Sir, may I beg for to know your name?"
Mr. Harley accorded her request.
Groaning in the clutch of a pitiless truth, she continued:
"And you are Mr. Harley, that was—oh! and you've come for Mr.?"——
Mr. Richard Feverel was the gentleman Mr. Harley had come for.
"Oh! and it's no mistake, and he's of Raynham Abbey?" Mrs. Berry inquired.
Adrian, very much amused, assured her that he was born and bred there.
"His father's Sir Austin?" wailed the black-satin bunch from behind her handkerchief.
Adrian verified Richard's descent.
"Oh, then, what have I been and done!" she cried, and stared blankly at her visitor. "I been and married my baby! I been and married the bread out of my own mouth. O Mr. Harley! Mr. Harley! I knew you when you was aboy that big, and wore jackets; and all of you. And it's my softness that's my ruin, for I never can resist a man's asking. Look at that cake, Mr. Harley!"
Adrian followed her directions quite coolly. "Wedding-cake, ma'am!" he said.
"Bride-cake it is, Mr. Harley!"
"Did you make it yourself, ma'am?"
The quiet ease of the question overwhelmed Mrs. Berry, and upset that train of symbolic representations by which she was seeking to make him guess the catastrophe and spare her the furnace of confession.
"I did not make it myself, Mr. Harley," she replied. "It's a bought cake, and I'm a lost woman. Little I dreamed when I had him in my arms a baby that I should some day be marrying him out of my own house! I little dreamed that! Oh, why did he come to me! Don't you remember his old nurse, when he was a baby in arms, that went away so sudden, and no fault of hers, Mr. Harley! The very mornin' after the night you got into Mr. Benson's cellar, and got so tipsy on his Madeary I remember it as clear as yesterday!—and Mr. Benson was that angry he threatened to use the whip to you, and I helped put you to bed. I'm that very woman."
Adrian smiled placidly at these reminiscences of his guileless youthful life.
"Well, ma'am! well?" he said. He would bring her to the furnace.
"Won't you see it all, kind sir?" Mrs. Berry appealed to him in pathetic dumb show.
Doubtless by this time Adrian did see it all, and was mentally cursing at Folly, and reckoning the immediate consequences, but he looked uninstructed, his peculiar dimple-smile was undisturbed, his comfortable full-bodied posture was the same. "Well, ma'am?" he spurred her on.
Mrs. Berry burst forth: "It were done this mornin', Mr. Harley, in the church, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to, by licence."
Adrian was now obliged to comprehend a case of matrimony. "Oh!" he said, like one who is as hard as facts, and as little to be moved: "Somebody was married this morning; was it Mr. Thompson, or Mr. Feverel?"
Mrs. Berry shuffled up to Ripton, and removed the shawlfrom him, saying: "Do he look like a new married bridegroom, Mr. Harley?"
Adrian inspected the oblivious Ripton with philosophic gravity.
"This young gentleman was at church this morning?" he asked.
"Oh, quite reasonable and proper then," Mrs. Berry begged him to understand.
"Of course, ma'am." Adrian lifted and let fall the stupid inanimate limbs of the gone wretch, puckering his mouth queerly. "You were all reasonable and proper, ma'am. The principal male performer, then, is my cousin, Mr. Feverel? He was married by you, this morning, by licence at your parish church, and came here, and ate a hearty breakfast, and left intoxicated."
Mrs. Berry flew out. "He never drink a drop, sir. A more moderate young gentleman you never see. Oh! don't ye think that now, Mr. Harley. He was as upright and master of his mind as you be."
"Ay!" the wise youth nodded thanks to her for the comparison, "I mean the other form of intoxication."
Mrs. Berry sighed. She could say nothing on that score.
Adrian desired her to sit down, and compose herself, and tell him circumstantially what had been done.
She obeyed, in utter perplexity at his perfectly composed demeanour.
Mrs. Berry, as her recital declared, was no other than that identical woman who once in old days had dared to behold the baronet behind his mask, and had ever since lived in exile from the Raynham world on a little pension regularly paid to her as an indemnity. She was that woman, and the thought of it made her almost accuse Providence for the betraying excess of softness it had endowed her with. How was she to recognize her baby grown a man? He came in a feigned name; not a word of the family was mentioned. He came like an ordinary mortal, though she felt something more than ordinary to him—she knew she did. He came bringing a beautiful young lady, and on what grounds could she turn her back on them? Why, seeing that all was chaste and legal, whyshouldshe interfere to make them unhappy—so few thechances of happiness in this world! Mrs. Berry related the seizure of her ring.
"One wrench," said the sobbing culprit, "one, and my ring was off!"
She had no suspicions, and the task of writing her name in the vestry-book had been too enacting for a thought upon the other signatures.
"I daresay you were exceedingly sorry for what you had done," said Adrian.
"Indeed, sir," moaned Berry, "I were, and am."
"And would do your best to rectify the mischief—eh, ma'am?"
"Indeed, and indeed, sir, I would," she protested solemnly.
"—As, of course, you should—knowing the family. Where may these lunatics have gone to spend the Moon?"
Mrs. Berry swimmingly replied: "To the Isle——I don't quite know, sir!" she snapped the indication short, and jumped out of the pit she had fallen into. Repentant as she might be, those dears should not be pursued and cruelly balked of their young bliss! "To-morrow, if you please, Mr. Harley: not to-day!"
"A pleasant spot," Adrian observed, smiling at his easy prey.
By a measurement of dates he discovered that the bridegroom had brought his bride to the house on the day he had quitted Raynham, and this was enough to satisfy Adrian's mind that there had been concoction and chicanery. Chance, probably, had brought him to the old woman: chance certainly had not brought him to the young one.
"Very well, ma'am," he said, in answer to her petitions for his favourable offices with Sir Austin in behalf of her little pension and the bridal pair, "I will tell him you were only a blind agent in the affair, being naturally soft, and that you trust he will bless the consummation. He will be in town to-morrow morning; but one of you two must see him to-night. An emetic kindly administered will set our friend here on his legs. A bath and a clean shirt, and he might go. I don't see why your name should appear at all. Brush him up, and send him to Bellingham by the seven o'clock train. He will find his way to Raynham;he knows the neighbourhood best in the dark. Let him go and state the case. Remember, one of you must go."
With this fair prospect of leaving a choice of a perdition between the couple of unfortunates, for them to fight and lose all their virtue over, Adrian said, "Good morning."
Mrs. Berry touchingly arrested him. "You won't refuse a piece of his cake, Mr. Harley?"
"Oh, dear, no, ma'am," Adrian turned to the cake with alacrity. "I shall claim a very large piece. Richard has a great many friends who will rejoice to eat his wedding-cake. Cut me a fair quarter, Mrs. Berry. Put it in paper, if you please. I shall be delighted to carry it to them, and apportion it equitably according to their several degrees of relationship."
Mrs. Berry cut the cake. Somehow, as she sliced through it, the sweetness and hapless innocence of the bride was presented to her, and she launched into eulogies of Lucy, and clearly showed how little she regretted her conduct. She vowed that they seemed made for each other; that both were beautiful; both had spirit; both were innocent; and to part them, or make them unhappy, would be, Mrs. Berry wrought herself to cry aloud, oh, such a pity!
Adrian listened to it as the expression of a matter-of-fact opinion. He took the huge quarter of cake, nodded multitudinous promises, and left Mrs. Berry to bless his good heart.
"So dies the System!" was Adrian's comment in the street. "And now let prophets roar! He dies respectably in a marriage-bed, which is more than I should have foretold of the monster. Meantime," he gave the cake a dramatic tap, "I'll go sow nightmares."
Adrian really bore the news he had heard with creditable disinterestedness, and admirable repression of anything beneath the dignity of a philosopher. When onehas attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them: their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still. On this intellectual eminence the wise youth had built his castle, and he had lived in it from an early period. Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to his morality, his comfort to his conscience. Not that voluntarily he cut himself off from his fellows: on the contrary, his sole amusement was their society. Alone he was rather dull, as a man who beholds but one thing must naturally be. Study of the animated varieties of that one thing excited him sufficiently to think life a pleasant play; and the faculties he had forfeited to hold his elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others. Thus:—wonder at Master Richard's madness: though he himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on his beloved relatives. As he carried along his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the prospect. For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome: a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of History and tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived. This had been planned during Richard's absence to surprise him.
Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the race of young men. It supplanted that foolishness. It was his Romance, as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, isa safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton. Adrian had never travelled. He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron. His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground: he must recline on Mammon's imperial cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient world. The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the shelter of a hut and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the bitterness of beggarliness. Let his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and splendour due to his superior emotions, or not at all. Consequently the wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery. Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after.
Hippias received the first portion of the cake.
He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading. He had fought down his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to his dinner at the Foreys' with less than usual timidity.
"Ah! glad you've come, Adrian," he said, and expanded his chest. "I was afraid I should have to ride down. This is kind of you. We'll walk down together through the park. It's absolutely dangerous to walk alone in these streets. My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it. I give you my word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in Piccadilly, and I thought I was down! I saved myself by a miracle."
"You have an appetite, I hope?" asked Adrian.
"I think I shall get one, after a bit of a walk," chirped Hippias. "Yes. I think I feel hungry now."
"Charmed to hear it," said Adrian, and began unpinning his parcel on his knees. "How should you define Folly?" he checked the process to inquire.
"Hm!" Hippias meditated; he prided himself on being oracular when such questions were addressed to him. "I think I should define it to be a slide."
"Very good definition. In other words, a piece of orange-peel; once on it, your life and limbs are in danger, and you are saved by a miracle. You must present that to thePilgrim. And the monument of folly, what would that be?"
Hippias meditated anew. "All the human race on one another's shoulders." He chuckled at the sweeping sourness of the instance.
"Very good," Adrian applauded, "or in default of that, some symbol of the thing, say; such as this of which I have here brought you a chip."
Adrian displayed the quarter of the cake.
"This is the monument made portable—eh?"
"Cake!" cried Hippias, retreating to his chair to dramatize his intense disgust. "You're right of them that eat it. If I—if I don't mistake," he peered at it, "the noxious composition bedizened in that way is what they call wedding-cake. It's arrant poison! Who is it you want to kill? What are you carrying such stuff about for?"
Adrian rang the bell for a knife. "To present you with your due and proper portion. You will have friends and relatives, and can't be saved from them, not even by miracle. It is a habit which exhibits, perhaps, the unconscious inherent cynicism of the human mind, for people who consider that they have reached the acme of mundane felicity, to distribute this token of esteem to their friends, with the object probably" (he took the knife from a waiter and went to the table to slice the cake) "of enabling those friends (these edifices require very delicate incision—each particular currant and subtle condiment hangs to its neighbour—a wedding-cake is evidently the most highly civilized of cakes, and partakes of the evils as well as the advantages of civilization!)—I was saying, they send us these love-tokens, no doubt (we shall have to weigh out the crumbs, if each is to have his fair share) that we may the better estimate their state of bliss by passing some hours in purgatory. This, as far as I can apportion it without weights and scales, is your share, my uncle!"
He pushed the corner of the table bearing the cake towards Hippias.
"Get away!" Hippias vehemently motioned, and started from his chair. "I'll have none of it, I tell you! It's death! It's fifty times worse than that beastly compound Christmas pudding! What fool has been doing this, then? Who dares send me cake? Me! It's an insult."
"You are not compelled to eat any before dinner," said Adrian, pointing the corner of the table after him, "but your share you must take, and appear to consume. One who has done so much to bring about the marriage cannot in conscience refuse his allotment of the fruits. Maidens, I hear, first cook it under their pillows, and extract nuptial dreams therefrom—said to be of a lighter class, taken that way. It's a capital cake, and, upon my honour, you have helped to make it—you have indeed! So here it is."
The table again went at Hippias. He ran nimbly round it, and flung himself on a sofa exhausted, crying: "There!... My appetite's gone for to-day!"
"Then shall I tell Richard that you won't touch a morsel of his cake?" said Adrian, leaning on his two hands over the table and looking at his uncle.
"Richard?"
"Yes, your nephew: my cousin: Richard! Your companion since you've been in town. He's married, you know. Married this morning at Kensington parish church, by licence, at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve. Married, and gone to spend his honeymoon in the Isle of Wight: a very delectable place for a month's residence. I have to announce to you that, thanks to your assistance, the experiment is launched, sir!"——
"Richard married!"
There was something to think and to say in objection to it, but the wits of poor Hippias was softened by the shock. His hand travelled half-way to his forehead, spread out to smooth the surface of that seat of reason, and then fell.
"Surely you knew all about it? you were so anxious to have him in town under your charge."
"Married?" Hippias jumped up—he had it. "Why, he's under age! he's an infant."
"So he is. But the infant is not the less married. Fib like a man and pay your fee—what does it matter? Any one who is breeched can obtain a licence in our noble country. And the interests of morality demand that it should not be difficult. Is it true—can you persuade anybody that you have known nothing about it?"
"Ha! infamous joke! I wish, sir, you would play your pranks on somebody else," said Hippias, sternly, as he sank back on the sofa. "You've done me up for the day, I can assure you."
Adrian sat down to instil belief by gentle degrees, and put an artistic finish to the work. He had the gratification of passing his uncle through varied contortions, and at last Hippias perspired in conviction, and exclaimed, "This accounts for his conduct to me. That boy must have a cunning nothing short of infernal! I feel ... I feel it just here," he drew a hand along his midriff.
"I'm not equal to this world of fools," he added faintly, and shut his eyes. "No, I can't dine. Eat? ha! ... no. Go without me!"
Shortly after Hippias went to bed, saying to himself, as he undressed, "See what comes of our fine schemes! Poor Austin!" and as the pillow swelled over his ears, "I'm not sure that a day's fast won't do me good." The Dyspepsy had bought his philosophy at a heavy price; he had a right to use it.
Adrian resumed the procession of the cake.
He sighted his melancholy uncle Algernon hunting an appetite in the Row, and looking as if the hope ahead of him were also one-legged. The Captain did not pass without querying the ungainly parcel.
"I hope I carry it ostentatiously enough?" said Adrian. "Enclosed is wherewithal to quiet the alarm of the land. Now may the maids and wives of Merry England sleep secure. I had half a mind to fix it on a pole, and engage a band to parade it. This is our dear Richard's wedding-cake. Married at half-past eleven this morning, by licence, at the Kensington parish church; his own ring being lost he employed the ring of his beautiful bride's lachrymose landlady, she standing adjacent by the altar. His farewell to you as a bachelor, and hers as a maid, youcan claim on the spot, if you think proper, and digest according to your powers."
Algernon let off steam in a whistle. "Thompson, the solicitor's daughter!" he said. "I met them the other day, somewhere about here. He introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage."
"No." Adrian set him right. "'Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman Catholic dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the Plantagenets! He's quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's daughter, and himself as Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal is in Hymen's chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?"
"Oh, by all means!—not now." Algernon had an unwonted air of reflection.—"Father know it?"
"Not yet. He will to-night by nine o'clock."
"Then I must see him by seven. Don't say you met me." He nodded, and pricked his horse.
"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once more in motion.
The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures! Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate. Well mightThe Pilgrim's Scripsay of her that, "She is always at Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve throughout the ages; whereas thePilgrimwould have us believe that the Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has learnt a lesson from time. Probably thePilgrim'smeaning may be taken to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.
At any rate, Adrian hoped for such natural choruses as you hear in the nursery when a bauble is lost. He was awake to Mrs. Doria's maternal predestinations, and guessed that Clare stood ready with the best form of filial obedience. They were only a poor couple to gratify his Mephistophelian humour, to be sure, but Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty, and they would proclaim the diverse ways with which maidenhood and womanhood took disappointment, while the surrounding Forey girls and other females of the family assembly were expected to develop the finershades and tapering edges of an agitation to which no woman could be cold.
All went well. He managed cleverly to leave the cake unchallenged in a conspicuous part of the drawing-room, and stepped gaily down to dinner. Much of the conversation adverted to Richard. Mrs. Doria asked him if he had seen the youth, or heard of him.
"Seen him? no! Heard of him? yes!" said Adrian. "I have heard of him. I heard that he was sublimely happy, and had eaten such a breakfast that dinner was impossible; claret and cold chicken, cake and"——
"Cake at breakfast!" they all interjected.
"That seems to be his fancy just now."
"What an extraordinary taste!"
"You know, he is educated on a System."
One fast young male Forey allied the System and the cake in a miserable pun. Adrian, a hater of puns, looked at him, and held the table silent, as if he were going to speak; but he said nothing, and the young gentleman vanished from the conversation in a blush, extinguished by his own spark.
Mrs. Doria peevishly exclaimed, "Oh! fish-cake, I suppose! I wish he understood a little better the obligations of relationship."
"Whether he understands them, I can't say," observed Adrian, "but I assure you he is very energetic in extending them."
The wise youth talked innuendoes whenever he had an opportunity, that his dear relative might be rendered sufficiently inflammable by and by at the aspect of the cake; but he was not thought more than commonly mysterious and deep.
"Was his appointment at the house of those Grandison people?" Mrs. Doria asked, with a hostile upper-lip.
Adrian warmed the blindfolded parties by replying, "Do they keep a beadle at the door?"
Mrs. Doria's animosity to Mrs. Grandison made her treat this as a piece of satirical ingenuousness. "I daresay they do," she said.
"And a curate on hand?"
"Oh, I should think a dozen!"
Old Mr. Forey advised his punning grandson Clarenceto give that house a wide berth, where he might be disposed of and dished-up at a moment's notice, and the scent ran off at a jest.
The Foreys gave good dinners, and with the old gentleman the excellent old fashion remained in permanence of trooping off the ladies as soon as they had taken their sustenance and just exchanged a smile with the flowers and the dessert, when they rose to fade with a beautiful accord, and the gallant males breathed under easier waistcoats, and settled to the business of the table, sure that an hour for unbosoming and imbibing was their own. Adrian took a chair by Brandon Forey, a barrister of standing.
"I want to ask you," he said, "whether an infant in law can legally bind himself."
"If he's old enough to affix his signature to an instrument, I suppose he can," yawned Brandon.
"Is he responsible for his acts?"
"I've no doubt we could hang him."
"Then what he could do for himself, you could do for him?"
"Not quite so much; pretty near."
"For instance, he can marry?"
"That's not a criminal case, you know."
"And the marriage is valid?"
"You can dispute it."
"Yes, and the Greeks and the Trojans can fight. It holds then?"
"Both water and fire!"
The patriarch of the table sang out to Adrian that he stopped the vigorous circulation of the claret.
"Dear me, sir!" said Adrian, "I beg pardon. The circumstances must excuse me. The fact is, my cousin Richard got married to a dairymaid this morning, and I wanted to know whether it held in law."
It was amusing to watch the manly coolness with which the announcement was taken. Nothing was heard more energetic than, "Deuce he has!" and, "A dairymaid!"
"I thought it better to let the ladies dine in peace," Adrian continued. "I wanted to be able to console my aunt"——
"Well, but—well, but," the old gentleman, much themost excited, puffed—"eh, Brandon? He's a boy, this young ass! Do you mean to tell me a boy can go and marry when he pleases, and any trull he pleases, and the marriage is good? If I thought that I'd turn every woman off my premises. I would! from the housekeeper to the scullery-maid. I'd have no woman near him till—till"——
"Till the young greenhorn was grey, sir?" suggested Brandon.
"Till he knew what women are made of, sir!" the old gentleman finished his sentence vehemently. "What, d'ye think, will Feverel say to it, Mr. Adrian?"
"He has been trying the very System you have proposed, sir—one that does not reckon on the powerful action of curiosity on the juvenile intelligence. I'm afraid it's the very worst way of solving the problem."
"Of course it is," said Clarence. "None but a fool!"——
"At your age," Adrian relieved his embarrassment, "it is natural, my dear Clarence, that you should consider the idea of an isolated or imprisoned manhood something monstrous, and we do not expect you to see what amount of wisdom it contains. You follow one extreme, and we the other. I don't say that a middle course exists. The history of mankind shows our painful efforts to find one, but they have invariably resolved themselves into asceticism, or laxity, acting and reacting. The moral question is, if a naughty little man, by reason of his naughtiness, releases himself from foolishness, does a foolish little man, by reason of his foolishness, save himself from naughtiness?"
A discussion, peculiar to men of the world, succeeded the laugh at Mr. Clarence. Then coffee was handed round and the footman informed Adrian, in a low voice, that Mrs. Doria Forey particularly wished to speak with him. Adrian preferred not to go in alone. "Very well," he said, and sipped his coffee. They talked on, sounding the depths of law in Brandon Forey, and receiving nought but hollow echoes from that profound cavity. He would not affirm that the marriage was invalid: he would not affirm that it could not be annulled. He thought not: still he thought it would be worth trying. A consummatedand a non-consummated union were two different things....
"Dear me!" said Adrian, "does the Law recognize that? Why, that's almost human!"
Another message was brought to Adrian that Mrs. Doria Foreyveryparticularly wished to speak with him.
"What can be the matter?" he exclaimed, pleased to have his faith in woman strengthened. The cake had exploded, no doubt.
So it proved, when the gentlemen joined the fair society. All the younger ladies stood about the table, whereon the cake stood displayed, gaps being left for those sitting to feast their vision, and intrude the comments and speculations continually arising from fresh shocks of wonder at the unaccountable apparition. Entering with the half-guilty air of men who know they have come from a grosser atmosphere, the gallant males also ranged themselves round the common object of curiosity.
"Here! Adrian!" Mrs. Doria cried. "Where is Adrian? Pray, come here. Tell me! Where did this cake come from? Whose is it? What does it do here? You know all about it, for you brought it. Clare saw you bring it into the room. What does it mean? I insist upon a direct answer. Now do not make me impatient, Adrian."
Certainly Mrs. Doria was equal to twenty. By her concentrated rapidity and volcanic complexion it was evident that suspicion had kindled.
"I was really bound to bring it," Adrian protested.
"Answer me!"
The wise youth bowed: "Categorically. This cake came from the house of a person, a female, of the name of Berry. It belongs to you partly, partly to me, partly to Clare, and to the rest of our family, on the principle of equal division: for which purpose it is present...."
"Yes! Speak!"
"It means, my dear aunt, what that kind of cake usually does mean."
"This, then, is the Breakfast! And the ring! Adrian! where is Richard?"
Mrs. Doria still clung to unbelief in the monstrous horror.
But when Adrian told her that Richard had left town,her struggling hope sank. "The wretched boy has ruined himself!" she said, and sat down trembling.
Oh! that System! The delicate vituperations gentle ladies use instead of oaths, Mrs. Doria showered on that System. She hesitated not to say that her brother had got what he deserved. Opinionated, morbid, weak, justice had overtaken him. Now he would see! but at what a price! at what a sacrifice!
Mrs. Doria commanded Adrian to confirm her fears.
Sadly the wise youth recapitulated Berry's words. "He was married this morning at half-past eleven of the clock, or twenty to twelve, by licence, at the Kensington parish church."
"Then that was his appointment!" Mrs. Doria murmured.
"That was the cake for breakfast!" breathed a second of her sex.
"And it was his ring!" exclaimed a third.
The men were silent, and made long faces.
Clare stood cold and sedate. She and her mother avoided each other's eyes.
"Is it that abominable country person, Adrian?"
"The happy damsel is, I regret to say, the Papist dairymaid," said Adrian, in sorrowful but deliberate accents.
Then arose a feminine hum, in the midst of which Mrs. Doria cried, "Brandon!" She was a woman of energy. Her thoughts resolved to action spontaneously.
"Brandon," she drew the barrister a little aside, "can they not be followed, and separated? I want your advice. Cannot we separate them? A boy! it is really shameful if he should be allowed to fall into the toils of a designing creature to ruin himself irrevocably. Can we not, Brandon?"
The worthy barrister felt inclined to laugh, but he answered her entreaties: "From what I hear of the young groom I should imagine the office perilous."
"I'm speaking of law, Brandon. Can we not obtain an order from one of your Courts to pursue them and separate them instantly?"
"This evening?"
"Yes!"
Brandon was sorry to say she decidedly could not.
"You might call on one of your Judges, Brandon."
Brandon assured her that the Judges were a hard-worked race, and to a man slept heavily after dinner.
"Will you do so to-morrow, the first thing in the morning? Will you promise me to do so, Brandon?—Or a magistrate! A magistrate would send a policeman after them. My dear Brandon! I beg—I beg you to assist us in this dreadful extremity. It will be the death of my poor brother. I believe he would forgive anything but this. You have no idea what his notions are of blood."
Brandon tipped Adrian a significant nod to step in and aid.
"What is it, aunt?" asked the wise youth. "You want them followed and torn asunder by wild policemen?"
"To-morrow;" Brandon queerly interposed.
"Won't that be—just too late?" Adrian suggested.
Mrs. Doria sighed out her last spark of hope.
"You see," said Adrian....
"Yes! yes!" Mrs. Doria did not require any of his elucidations. "Pray be quiet, Adrian, and let me speak. Brandon! it cannot be! it's quite impossible! Can you stand there and tell me that boy is legally married? I never will believe it! The law cannot be so shamefully bad as to permit a boy—a mere child—to do such absurd things. Grandpapa!" she beckoned to the old gentleman. "Grandpapa! pray do make Brandon speak. These lawyers never will. He might stop it, if he would. If I were a man, do you think I would stand here?"
"Well, my dear," the old gentleman toddled to compose her, "I'm quite of your opinion. I believe he knows no more than you or I. My belief is they none of them know anything till they join issue and go into Court. I want to see a few female lawyers."
"To encourage the bankrupt perruquier, sir?" said Adrian. "They would have to keep a large supply of wigs on hand."
"And you can jest, Adrian!" his aunt reproached him. "But I will not be beaten. I know—I am firmly convinced that no law would ever allow a boy to disgrace his family and ruin himself like that, and nothing shall persuade me that it is so. Now, tell me, Brandon, and pray do speak in answer to my questions, and please to forget you are dealingwith a woman.Canmy nephew be rescued from the consequences of his folly?Iswhat he has done legitimate?Ishe bound for life by what he has done while a boy?"
"Well—a," Brandon breathed through his teeth. "A—hm! the matter's so very delicate, you see, Helen."
"You're to forget that," Adrian remarked.
"A—hm! well!" pursued Brandon. "Perhaps if you could arrest and divide them before nightfall, and make affidavit of certain facts"....
"Yes?" the eager woman hastened his lagging mouth.
"Well ... hm! a ... in that case ... a.... Or if a lunatic, you could prove him to have been of unsound mind."...
"Oh! there's no doubt of his madness onmymind, Brandon."
"Yes! well! in that case.... Or if of different religious persuasions"....
"Sheisa Catholic!" Mrs. Doria joyfully interjected.
"Yes! well! in that case ... objections might be taken to the form of the marriage.... Might be proved fictitious.... Or if he's under, say, eighteen years."
"Hecan'tbe much more," cried Mrs. Doria. "I think," she appeared to reflect, and then faltered imploringly to Adrian, "What is Richard's age?"
The kind wise youth could not find it in his heart to strike away the phantom straw she caught at.
"Oh! about that, I should fancy," he muttered, and found it necessary at the same time to duck and turn his head for concealment. Mrs. Doria surpassed his expectations.
"Yes! well, then...." Brandon was resuming with a shrug, which was meant to say he still pledged himself to nothing, when Clare's voice was heard from out the buzzing circle of her cousins: "Richard is nineteen years and six months old to-day, mama."
"Nonsense, child."
"He is, mama." Clare's voice was very steadfast.
"Nonsense, I tell you. Howcanyou know?"
"Richard is one year and nine months older than me, mama."
Mrs. Doria fought the fact by years and finally by months. Clare was too strong for her.
"Singular child!" she mentally apostrophized the girl who scornfully rejected straws while drowning.
"But there's the religion still!" she comforted herself, and sat down to cogitate.
The men smiled and looked vacuous.
Music was proposed. There are times when soft music hath not charms; when it is put to as base uses as Imperial Cæsar's dust and is taken to fill horrid pauses. Angelica Forey thumped the piano, and sang: "I'm a laughing Gitana, ha—ha! ha—ha!" Matilda Forey and her cousin Mary Bransburne wedded their voices, and songfully incited all young people toHaste to the bower that love has built, and defy the wise ones of the world; but the wise ones of the world were in a majority there, and very few places of assembly will be found where they are not; so the glowing appeal of the British ballad-monger passed into the bosom of the emptiness he addressed. Clare was asked to entertain the company. The singular child calmly marched to the instrument, and turned over the appropriate illustrations to the ballad-monger's repertory.
Clare sang a little Irish air. Her duty done, she marched from the piano. Mothers are rarely deceived by their daughters in these matters; but Clare deceived her mother; and Mrs. Doria only persisted in feeling an agony of pity for her child, that she might the more warrantably pity herself—a not uncommon form of the emotion, for there is no juggler like that heart the ballad-monger puts into our mouths so boldly. Remember that she saw years of self-denial, years of a ripening scheme, rendered fruitless in a minute, and by the System which had almost reduced her to the condition of constitutional hypocrite. She had enough of bitterness to brood over, and some excuse for self-pity.
Still, even when she was cooler, Mrs. Doria's energetic nature prevented her from giving up. Straws were straws, and the frailer they were the harder she clutched them.
She rose from her chair, and left the room, calling to Adrian to follow her.
"Adrian," she said, turning upon him in the passage, "you mentioned a house where this horrible cake ...where he was this morning. I desire you to take me to that woman immediately."
The wise youth had not bargained for personal servitude. He had hoped he should be in time for the last act of the opera that night, after enjoying the comedy of real life.
"My dear aunt" ... he was beginning to insinuate.
"Order a cab to be sent for, and get your hat," said Mrs. Doria.
There was nothing for it but to obey. He stamped his assent to thePilgrim'sdictum, that Women are practical creatures, and now reflected on his own account, that relationship to a young fool may be a vexation and a nuisance. However, Mrs. Doria compensated him.
What Mrs. Doria intended to do, the practical creature did not plainly know; but her energy positively demanded to be used in some way or other, and her instinct directed her to the offender on whom she could use it in wrath. She wanted somebody to be angry with, somebody to abuse. She dared not abuse her brother to his face: him she would have to console. Adrian was a fellow-hypocrite to the System, and would, she was aware, bring her into painfully delicate, albeit highly philosophic, ground by a discussion of the case. So she drove to Bessy Berry simply to inquire whither her nephew had flown.
When a soft woman, and that soft woman a sinner, is matched with a woman of energy, she does not show much fight, and she meets no mercy. Bessy Berry's creditor came to her in female form that night. She then beheld it in all its terrors. Hitherto it had appeared to her as a male, a disembodied spirit of her imagination possessing male attributes, and the peculiar male characteristic of being moved, and ultimately silenced, by tears. As female, her creditor was terrible indeed. Still, had it not been a late hour, Bessy Berry would have died rather than speak openly that her babes had sped to make their nest in the Isle of Wight. They had a long start, they were out of the reach of pursuers, they were safe, and she told what she had to tell. She told more than was wise of her to tell. She made mention of her early service in the family, and of her little pension. Alas! her little pension! Her creditor had come expecting no payment—come,as creditors are wont in such moods, just to take it out of her—to employ the familiar term. At once Mrs. Doria pounced upon the pension.
"That, of course, you know is at an end," she said in the calmest manner, and Berry did not plead for the little bit of bread to her. She only asked a little consideration for her feelings.
True admirers of women had better stand aside from the scene. Undoubtedly it was very sad for Adrian to be compelled to witness it. Mrs. Doria was not generous. ThePilgrimmay be wrong about the sex not growing; but its fashion of conducting warfare we must allow to be barbarous, and according to what is deemed the pristine, or wild cat, method. Ruin, nothing short of it, accompanied poor Berry to her bed that night, and her character bled till morning on her pillow.
The scene over, Adrian reconducted Mrs. Doria to her home. Mice had been at the cake during her absence apparently. The ladies and gentlemen present put it on the greedy mice, who were accused of having gorged and gone to bed.
"I'm sure they're quite welcome," said Mrs. Doria. "It's a farce, this marriage, and Adrian has quite come to my way of thinking. I would not touch an atom of it. Why, they were married in a married woman's ring! Canthatbe legal, as you call it? Oh, I'm convinced! Don't tell me. Austin will be in town to-morrow, and if he is true to his principles, he will instantly adopt measures to rescue his son from infamy. I want no legal advice. I go upon common sense, common decency. This marriage is false."
Mrs. Doria's fine scheme had become so much a part of her life, that she could not give it up. She took Clare to her bed, and caressed and wept over her, as she would not have done had she known the singular child, saying, "Poor Richard! my dear poor boy! we must save him, Clare! we must save him!" Of the two the mother showed the greater want of iron on this occasion. Clare lay in her arms rigid and emotionless, with one of her hands tight-locked. All she said was: "I knew it in the morning, mama." She slept clasping Richard's nuptial ring.
By this time all specially concerned in the System knewit. The honeymoon was shining placidly above them. Is not happiness like another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later. Who knows the honeymoon that did not steal somebody's sweetness? Richard Turpin went forth, singing "Money or life" to the world: Richard Feverel has done the same, substituting "Happiness" for "Money," frequently synonyms. The coin he wanted he would have, and was just as much a highway robber as his fellow Dick, so that those who have failed to recognize him as a hero before, may now regard him in that light. Meanwhile the world he has squeezed looks exceedingly patient and beautiful. His coin chinks delicious music to him. Nature and the order of things on earth have no warmer admirer than a jolly brigand or a young man made happy by the Jews.