The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete. George Meredith
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