The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
tell the baronet what he knew, if Richard did not come by twelve.
"What is the time?" he asked Hippias in a modest voice.
"Time for me to be in bed," growled Hippias, as if everybody present had been treating him badly.
Mrs. Berry came in to apprise Lucy that she was wanted above. She quietly rose. Sir Austin kissed her on the forehead, saying: "You had better not come down again, my child." She kept her eyes on him. "Oblige me by retiring for the night," he added. Lucy shook their hands, and went out, accompanied by Mrs. Doria.
"This agitation will be bad for the child," he said, speaking to himself aloud.
Lady Blandish remarked: "I think she might just as well have returned. She will not sleep."
"She will control herself for the child's sake."
"You ask too much of her."
"Of her, not," he emphasized.
It was twelve o'clock when Hippies shut his watch, and said with vehemence: "I'm convinced my circulation gradually and steadily decreases!"
"Going back to the pre-Harvey period!" murmured Adrian as he wrote.
Sir Austin and Lady Blandish knew well that any comment would introduce them to the interior of his machinery, the eternal view of which was sufficiently harrowing; so they maintained a discreet reserve. Taking it for acquiescence in his deplorable condition, Hippies resumed despairingly: "It's a fact. I've brought you to see that. No one can be more moderate than I am, and yet I get worse. My system is organically sound--I believe: I do every possible thing, and yet I get worse. Nature never forgives! I'll go to bed."
The Dyspepsy departed unconsoled.
Sir Austin took up his brother's thought: "I suppose nothing short of a miracle helps us when we have offended her."
"Nothing short of a quack satisfies us," said Adrian, applying wax to an envelope of official dimensions.
Ripton sat accusing his soul of cowardice while they talked; haunted by Lucy's last look at him. He got up his courage presently and went round to Adrian, who, after a few whispered words, deliberately rose and accompanied him out of the room, shrugging. When they had gone, Lady Blandish said to the baronet: "He is not coming."
"To-morrow, then, if not tonight," he replied. "But I say he will come to-night."
"You do really wish to see him united to his wife?"
The question made the baronet raise his brows with some displeasure.
"Can you ask me?"
"I mean," said, the ungenerous woman, "your System will require no further sacrifices from either of them?"
When he did answer, it was to say: "I think her altogether a superior person. I confess I should scarcely have hoped to find one like her."
"Admit that your science does not accomplish everything."
"No: it was presumptuous--beyond a certain point," said the baronet, meaning deep things.
Lady Blandish eyed him. "Ah me!" she sighed, "if we would always be true to our own wisdom!"
"You are very singular to-night, Emmeline." Sir Austin stopped his walk in front of her.
In truth, was she not unjust? Here was an offending son freely forgiven. Here was a young woman of humble birth, freely accepted into his family and permitted to stand upon her qualities. Who would have done more--or as much? This lady, for instance, had the case been hers, would have fought it. All the people of position that he was acquainted with would have fought it, and that without feeling it so peculiarly. But while the baronet thought this, he did not think of the exceptional education his son had received. He, took the common ground of fathers, forgetting his System when it was absolutely on trial. False to his son it could not be said that he had been false to his System he was. Others saw it plainly, but he had to learn his lesson by and by.
Lady Blandish gave him her face; then stretched her hand to the table, saying, "Well! well!" She fingered a half-opened parcel lying there, and drew forth a little book she recognized. "Ha! what is this?" she said.
"Benson returned it this morning," he informed her. "The stupid fellow took it away with him--by mischance, I am bound to believe."
It was nothing other than the old Note-book. Lady Blandish turned over the leaves, and came upon the later jottings.
She read: "A maker of Proverbs--what is he but a narrow mind with the mouthpiece of narrower?"
"I do not agree with that," she observed. He was in no humour for argument.
"Was your humility feigned when you wrote it?"
He merely said: "Consider the sort of minds influenced by set sayings. A proverb is the half-way-house to an Idea, I conceive; and the majority rest there content: can the keeper of such a house be flattered by his company?"
She felt her feminine intelligence swaying under him again. There must be greatness in a man who could thus speak of his own special and admirable aptitude.
Further she read, "Which is the coward among us?--He who sneers at the failings of Humanity!"
"Oh! that is true! How much I admire that!" cried the dark-eyed dame as she beamed intellectual raptures.
Another Aphorism seemed closely to apply to him: "There is no more grievous sight, as there is no greater perversion, than a wise man at the mercy of his feelings."
"He must have written it," she thought, "when he had himself for an example--strange man that he is!"
Lady Blandish was still inclined to submission, though decidedly insubordinate. She had once been fairly conquered: but if what she reverenced as a great mind could conquer her, it must be a great man that should hold her captive. The Autumn Primrose blooms for the loftiest manhood; is a vindictive flower in lesser hands. Nevertheless Sir Austin had only to be successful, and this lady's allegiance was his for ever. The trial was at hand.
She said again: "He is not coming to-night," and the baronet, on whose visage a contemplative pleased look had been rising for a minute past, quietly added: "He is come."
Richard's voice was heard in the hall.
There was commotion all over the house at the return of the young heir. Berry, seizing every possible occasion to approach his Bessy now that her involuntary coldness had enhanced her value--"Such is men!" as the soft woman reflected--Berry ascended to her and delivered the news in pompous tones and wheedling gestures. "The best word you've spoke for many a day," says she, and leaves him unfee'd, in an attitude, to hurry and pour bliss into Lucy's ears.
"Lord be praised!" she entered the adjoining room exclaiming, "we're got to be happy at last. They men have come to their senses. I could cry to your Virgin and kiss your Cross, you sweet!"
"Hush!" Lucy admonished her, and crooned over the child on her knees. The tiny open hands, full of sleep, clutched; the large blue eyes started awake; and his mother, all trembling and palpitating, knowing, but thirsting to hear it, covered him with her tresses, and tried to still her frame, and rocked, and sang low, interdicting even a whisper from bursting Mrs. Berry.
Richard had come. He was under his father's roof, in the old home that had so soon grown foreign to him. He stood close to his wife and child. He might embrace them both: and now the fulness of his anguish and the madness of the thing he had done smote the young man: now first he tasted hard earthly misery.
Had not God spoken to him in the tempest? Had not the finger of heaven directed him homeward? And he had come: here he stood: congratulations were thick in his ears: the cup of happiness was held to him, and he was invited