The Essential George Meredith Collection. George Meredith
"What did you say, Richard?"
Clearly his intelligence had taken it, but this--the worst he could hear--this that he had dreaded once and doubted, and smoothed over, and cast aside--could it be?
Richard said: "I told you all but the very words when we last parted. What else do you think would have kept me from her?"
Angered at his callous aspect, his father cried: "What brings you to her now?"
"That will be between us two," was the reply.
Sir Austin fell into his chair. Meditation was impossible. He spoke from a wrathful heart: "You will not dare to take her without"--
"No, sir," Richard interrupted him, "I shall not. Have no fear."
"Then you did not love your wife?"
"Did I not?" A smile passed faintly over Richard's face.
"Did you care so much for this--this other person?"
"So much? If you ask me whether I had affection for her, I can say I had none."
O base human nature! Then how? then why? A thousand questions rose in the baronet's mind. Bessy Berry could have answered them every one.
"Poor child! poor child!" he apostrophized Lucy, pacing the room. Thinking of her, knowing her deep love for his son--her true forgiving heart--it seemed she should be spared this misery.
He proposed to Richard to spare her. Vast is the distinction between women and men in this one sin, he said, and supported it with physical and moral citations. His argument carried him so far, that to hear him one would have imagined he thought the sin in men small indeed. His words were idle.
"She must know it," said Richard, sternly. "I will go to her now, sir, if you please."
Sir Austin detained him, expostulated, contradicted himself, confounded his principles, made nonsense of all his theories. He could not induce his son to waver in his resolve. Ultimately, their good-night being interchanged, he understood that the happiness of Raynham depended on Lucy's mercy. He had no fears of her sweet heart, but it was a strange thing to have come to. On which should the accusation fall--on science, or on human nature?
He remained in the library pondering over the question, at times breathing contempt for his son, and again seized with unwonted suspicion of his own wisdom: troubled, much to be pitied, even if he deserved that blow from his son which had plunged him into wretchedness. Richard went straight to Tom Bakewell, roused the heavy sleeper, and told him to have his mare saddled and waiting at the park gates East within an hour. Tom's nearest approach to a hero was to be a faithful slave to his master, and in doing this he acted to his conception of that high and glorious character. He got up and heroically dashed his head into cold water. "She shall be ready, sir," he nodded.
"Tom! if you don't see me back here at Raynham, your money will go on being paid to you."
"Rather see you than the money, Mr. Richard," said Tom.
"And you will always watch and see no harm comes to her, Tom."
"Mrs. Richard, sir?" Tom stared. "God bless me, Mr. Richard"--
"No questions. You'll do what I say."
"Ay, sir; that I will. Did'n Isle o' Wight."
The very name of the Island shocked Richard's blood; and he had to walk up and down before he could knock at Lucy's door. That infamous conspiracy to which he owed his degradation and misery scarce left him the feelings of a man when he thought of it.
The soft beloved voice responded to his knock. He opened the door, and stood before her. Lucy was half-way toward him. In the moment that passed ere she was in his arms, he had time to observe the change in her. He had left her a girl: he beheld a woman--a blooming woman: for pale at first, no sooner did she see him than the colour was rich and deep on her face and neck and bosom half shown through the loose dressing-robe, and the sense of her exceeding beauty made his heart thump and his eyes swim.
"My darling!" each cried, and they clung together, and her mouth was fastened on his.
They spoke no more. His soul was drowned in her kiss. Supporting her, whose strength was gone, he, almost as weak as she, hung over her, and clasped her closer, closer, till they were as one body, and in the oblivion her lips put upon him he was free to the bliss of her embrace. Heaven granted him that. He placed her in a chair and knelt at her feet with both arms around her. Her bosom heaved; her eyes never quitted him: their light as the light on a rolling wave. This young creature, commonly so frank and straightforward, was broken with bashfulness in her husband's arms--womanly bashfulness on the torrent of womanly love; tenfold more seductive than the bashfulness of girlhood. Terrible tenfold the loss of her seemed now, as distantly--far on the horizon of memory--the fatal truth returned to him.
Lose her? lose this? He looked up as if to ask God to confirm it.
The same sweet blue eyes! the eyes that he had often seen in the dying glories of evening; on him they dwelt, shifting, and fluttering, and glittering, but constant: the light of them as the light on a rolling wave.
And true to him! true, good, glorious, as the angels of heaven! And his she was! a woman--his wife! The temptation to take her, and be dumb, was all powerful: the wish to die against her bosom so strong as to be the prayer of his vital forces. Again he strained her to him, but this time it was as a robber grasps priceless treasure--with exultation and defiance. One instant of this. Lucy, whose pure tenderness had now surmounted the first wild passion of their meeting, bent back her head from her surrendered body, and said almost voicelessly, her underlids wistfully quivering: "Come and see him--baby;" and then in great hope of the happiness she was going to give her husband, and share with him, and in tremour and doubt of what his feelings would be, she blushed, and her brows worked: she tried to throw off the strangeness of a year of separation, misunderstanding, and uncertainty.
"Darling! come and see him. He is here." She spoke more clearly, though no louder.
Richard had released her, and she took his hand, and he suffered himself to be led to the other side of the bed. His heart began rapidly throbbing at the sight of a little rosy-curtained cot covered with lace like milky summer cloud.
It seemed to him he would lose his manhood if he looked on that child's face.
"Stop!" he cried suddenly.
Lucy turned first to him, and then to her infant, fearing it should have been disturbed.
"Lucy, come back."
"What is it, darling?" said she, in alarm at his voice and the grip he had unwittingly given her hand.
O God! what an Ordeal was this! that to-morrow he must face death, perhaps die and be torn from his darling--his wife and his child; and that ere he went forth, ere he could dare to see his child and lean his head reproachfully on his young wife's breast--for the last time, it might be--he must stab her to the heart, shatter the image she held of him.
"Lucy!" She saw him wrenched with agony, and her own face took the whiteness of his--she bending forward to him, all her faculties strung to hearing.
He held her two hands that she might look on him and not spare the horrible wound he was going to lay open to her eyes.
"Lucy. Do you know why I came to you to-night?"
She moved her lips repeating his words.
"Lucy. Have you guessed why I did not come before?"
Her head shook widened eyes.
"Lucy. I did not come because I was not worthy of my wife! Do you understand?"
"Darling," she faltered plaintively, and