The Adventures of Harry Richmond — Complete. George Meredith
in. I had just time to say to Julia, 'Hide it, or I'm in such a scrape.'
The next minute she was addressing my enemy:
'Surely you would not punish him because he loves me?' and he, though he spoke of insubordination, merited chastisement; and other usher phrases, seemed to melt, and I had what I believe was a primary conception of the power of woman. She led him to talk in the gentlest way possible of how the rain had refreshed her flowers, and of this and that poor rose.
I could think of nothing but the darling letter, which had flashed out of sight as a rabbit pops into burrows. Boddy departed with a rose.
'Ah, Richie,' she said, 'I have to pay to have you with me now.'
We walked to the summer-house, where she read Heriot's letter through. 'But he is a boy! How old is Heriot? He is not so old as I am!'
These were her words, and she read the letter anew, and read it again after she had placed it in her bosom, I meanwhile pouring out praises of Heriot.
'You speak of him as if you were in love with him, Richmond,' she said.
'And I do love him,' I answered.
'Not with me?' she asked.
'Yes, I do love you too, if you will not make him angry.'
'But do you know what it is he wants of me?'
I guessed: 'Yes; he wants you to let him sit close to you for half an hour.'
She said that he sat very near her in church.
'Ah,' said I, 'but he mustn't interrupt the sermon.'
She laughed, and mouthed me over with laughing kisses. 'There's very little he hasn't daring enough for!'
We talked of his courage.
'Is he good as well?' said Julia, more to herself than to me; but I sang out,
'Good! Oh, so kind!'
This appeared to convince her.
'Very generous to you and every one, is he not?' she said; and from that moment was all questions concerning his kind treatment of the boys, and as to their looking up to him.
I quitted her, taking her message to Heriot: 'You may tell him—tell him that I can't write.'
Heriot frowned on hearing me repeat it.
'Humph!' he went, and was bright in a twinkling: 'that means she'll come!' He smacked his hands together, grew black, and asked, 'Did she give that beast Boddy a rose?'
I had to confess she did; and feeling a twinge of my treason to her, felt hers to Heriot.
'Humph!' he went; 'she shall suffer for that.'
All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal my father to me.
There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot's face for one who loved it as I did. Julia's betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served them ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and Julia met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers wandered over the boys' heads till they rested on him, when they gave a short flutter and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had some knowledge that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of Heriot and Julia as a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play the part of old Nick the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than ever. It was not a new thing that she should send in cakes of her own making, but it was extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful presents as often as once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy exclaim, either among a knot of fellows or to himself, 'By jingo, she is a pretty girl!' on her passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of his own idea. I am persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy, the boys would have been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the church and forbid the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the junior usher, Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once drank a bottle of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak creature to our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his pale complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him was full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have thought with the other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never could imagine her so delicious as when she smiled at my father.
The consequence of the enlistment of the whole school in Heriot's interests was that at cricket-matches, picnics on the hills, and boating on the canal, Mr. Boddy was begirt with spies, and little Temple reported to Heriot a conversation that he, lying hidden in tall grass, had heard between Boddy and Julia. Boddy asked her to take private lessons in French from him. Heriot listened to the monstrous tale as he was on the point of entering Julia's boat, where Boddy sat beside her, and Heriot rowed stroke-oar. He dipped his blade, and said, loud enough to be heard by me in Catman's boat,
'Do you think French useful in a military education, sir?'
And Boddy said, 'Yes, of course it is.'
Says Heriot, 'Then I think I shall take lessons.'
Boddy told him he was taking lessons in the school.
'Oh!' says Heriot, 'I mean private lessons'; and here he repeated one of Temple's pieces of communication: 'so much more can be imparted in a private lesson!'
Boddy sprang half up from his seat. 'Row, sir, and don't talk,' he growled.
'Sit, sir, and don't dance in the boat, if you please, or the lady will be overset,' said Heriot.
Julia requested to be allowed to land and walk home. Boddy caught the rudder lines and leapt on the bank to hand her out; then all the boys in her boat and in Catman's shouted, 'Miss Julia! dear Miss Julia, don't leave us!' and we heard wheedling voices: 'Don't go off with him alone!' Julia bade us behave well or she would not be able to come out with us. At her entreaty Boddy stepped back to his post, and the two boats went forward like swans that have done ruffling their feathers.
The boys were exceedingly disappointed that no catastrophe followed the events of the day. Heriot, they thought, might have upset the boat, saved Julia, and drowned Boddy, and given us a feast of pleasurable excitement: instead of which Boddy lived to harass us with his tyrannical impositions and spiteful slaps, and it was to him, not to our Heriot, that Julia was most gracious. Some of us discussed her conduct.
'She's a coquette,' said little Temple. I went off to the French dictionary.
'Is Julia Rippenger a coquette, Heriot?' I asked him.
'Keep girls out of your heads, you little fellows,' said he, dealing me a smart thump.
'Is a coquette a nasty girl?' I persisted.
'No, a nice one, as it happens,' was his answer.
My only feeling was jealousy of the superior knowledge of the sex possessed by Temple, for I could not fathom the meaning of coquette; but he had sisters. Temple and I walked the grounds together, mutually declaring how much we would forfeit for Heriot's sake. By this time my Sunday visits to Julia had been interdicted: I was plunged, as it were, in the pit of the school, and my dreams of my father were losing distinctness. A series of boxes on the ears from Boddy began to astound and transform me. Mr. Rippenger, too, threatened me with carvings, though my offences were slight. 'Yes,' said Temple and I, in chorus, 'but you daren't strike Heriot!' This was our consolation, and the sentiment of the school. Fancy, then, our amazement to behold him laying the cane on Heriot's shoulders as fiercely as he could, and Boddy seconding him. The scene was terrible. We were all at our desks doing evening tasks for the morrow, a great matchday at cricket, Boddy watching over us, and bellowing, 'Silence at your work, you lazy fellows, if you want lessons to be finished at ten in the morning!' A noise came growing up to us from below, up the stairs from the wet-weather shed, and Heriot burst into the room, old Rippenger after him, panting.
'Mr. Boddy, you were right,' he cried, 'I find him a prowler, breaking all rules of discipline.