The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
at a gallop.
Her conjecture chanced to be quite correct. The cause for Richard's laughter was simple enough. Hippias, on finding the carriage-door closed on him, became all at once aware of the bright-haired hope which dwells in Change; for one who does not woo her too frequently; and to express his sudden relief from mental despondency at the amorous prospect, the Dyspepsy bent and gave his hands a sharp rub between his legs: which unlucky action brought Adrian's pastoral,
"Hippy verteth, Sing cuckoo!"
in such comic colours before Richard, that a demon of laughter seized him.
"Hippy verteth!"
Every time he glanced at his uncle the song sprang up, and he laughed so immoderately that it looked like madness come upon him.
"Why, why, why, what are you laughing at, my dear boy," said Hippias, and was provoked by the contagious exercise to a modest "ha! ha!"
"Why, what are you laughing at, uncle?" cried Richard.
"I really don't know," Hippias chuckled.
"Nor I, uncle! Sing, cuckoo!"
They laughed themselves into the pleasantest mood imaginable. Hippias not only came aboveground, he flew about in the very skies, verting like any blithe creature of the season. He remembered old legal jokes, and anecdotes of Circuit; and Richard laughed at them all, but more at him--he was so genial, and childishly fresh, and innocently joyful at his own transformation, while a lurking doubt in the bottom of his eyes, now and then, that it might not last, and that he must go underground again, lent him a look of pathos and humour which tickled his youthful companion irresistibly, and made his heart warm to him.
"I tell you what, uncle," said Richard, "I think travelling's a capital thing."
"The best thing in the world, my dear boy," Hippias returned. "It makes me wish I had given up that Work of mine, and tried it before, instead of chaining myself to a task. We're quite different beings in a minute. I am. Hem! what shall we have for dinner?"
"Leave that to me, uncle. I shall order for you. You know, I intend to make you well. How gloriously we go along! I should like to ride on a railway every day."
Hippias remarked: "They say it rather injures the digestion."
"Nonsense! see how you'll digest to-night and to-morrow."
"Perhaps I shall do something yet," sighed Hippias, alluding to the vast literary fame he had aforetime dreamed of. "I hope I shall have a good night to-night."
"Of course you will! What! after laughing like that?"
"Ugh!" Hippias grunted, "I daresay, Richard, you sleep the moment you get into bed!"
"The instant my head's on my pillow, and up the moment I wake. Health's everything!"
"Health's everything!" echoed Hippias, from his immense distance.
"And if you'll put yourself in my hands," Richard continued, "you shall do just as I do. You shall be well and strong, and sing 'Jolly!' like Adrian's blackbird. You shall, upon my honour, uncle!"
He specified the hours of devotion to his uncle's recovery--no less than twelve a day--that he intended to expend, and his cheery robustness almost won his uncle to leap up recklessly and clutch health as his own.
"Mind," quoth Hippias, with a half-seduced smile, "mind your dishes are not too savoury!"
"Light food and claret! Regular meals and amusement! Lend your heart to all, but give it to none!" exclaims young Wisdom, and Hippias mutters, "Yes! yes!" and intimates that the origin of his malady lay in his not following that maxim earlier.
"Love ruins us, my dear boy," he said, thinking to preach Richard a lesson, and Richard boisterously broke out:
"The love of Monsieur Francatelli, It was the ruin of--et coetera."
Hippias blinked, exclaiming, "Really, my dear boy! I never saw you so excited."
"It's the railway! It's the fun, uncle!"
"Ah!" Hippias wagged a melancholy head, "you've got the Golden Bride! Keep her if you can. That's a pretty fable of your father's. I gave him the idea, though. Austin filches a great many of my ideas!"
"Here's the idea in verse, uncle:
'O sunless walkers by the tide! O have you seen the Golden Bride! They say that she is fair beyond All women; faithful, and more fond!
"You know, the young inquirer comes to a group of penitent sinners by the brink of a stream. They howl, and answer:
Faithful she is, but she forsakes: And fond, yet endless woe she makes: And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd; To know her not till she is lost!'
"Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the fabulist pursues:
'She hath a palace in the West: Bright Hesper lights her to her rest: And him the Morning Star awakes Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
So lives he till he sees, alas! The maids of baser metal pass.'
"And prodigal of the happiness she lends him, he asks to share it with one of them. There is the Silver Maid, and the Copper, and the Brassy Maid, and others of them. First, you know, he tries Argentine, and finds her only twenty to the pound, and has a worse experience with Copperina, till he descends to the scullery; and the lower he goes, the less obscure become the features of his Bride of Gold, and all her radiance shines forth, my uncle."
"Verse rather blunts the point. Well, keep to her, now you've got her," says Hippias.
"We will, uncle!--Look how the farms fly past! Look at the cattle in the fields! And how the lines duck, and swim up!
'She claims the whole, and not the part-- The coin of an unused heart! To gain his Golden Bride again, He hunts with melancholy men,'
--and is waked no longer by the Morning Star!"
"Not if he doesn't sleep till an hour before it rises!" Hippias interjected. "You don't rhyme badly. But stick to prose. Poetry's a Base-metal maid. I'm not sure that any writing's good for the digestion. I'm afraid it has spoilt mine."
"Fear nothing, uncle!" laughed Richard. "You shall ride in the park with me every day to get an appetite. You and I and the Golden Bride. You know that little poem of Sandoe's?
'She rides in the park on a prancing bay, She and her squires together; Her dark locks gleam from a bonnet of grey, And toss with the tossing feather.
'Too calmly proud for a glance of pride Is the beautiful face as it passes; The cockneys nod to each other aside, The coxcombs lift their glasses.
'And throng to her, sigh to her, you that can breach The ice-wall that guards her securely; You have not such bliss, though she smile on you each, As the heart that can image her purely.'
"Wasn't Sandoe once a friend of my father's? I suppose they quarrelled. He understands the heart. What does he make his 'Humble Lover' say?
'True, Madam, you may think to part Conditions by a glacier-ridge, But Beauty's for the largest heart, And all abysses Love can bridge!
"Hippias now laughed; grimly, as men laugh at the emptiness of words."
"Largest heart!" he sneered. "What's a 'glacier-ridge'? I've never seen one. I can't deny it rhymes with 'bridge.' But don't go parading your admiration of that person, Richard. Your father will speak to you on the subject when he thinks fit."
"I thought they had quarrelled," said Richard. "What a pity!" and he murmured to a pleased ear:
"Beauty's