LITMIR.BIZ

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catch a last impression of the young stranger’s lowering face, and darted through.

      Farmer Blaize laughed and chuckled. “She an’t so fond of her uncle as that, every day! Not that she an’t a good nurse—the kindest little soul you’d meet of a winter’s walk! She’ll read t’ ye, and make drinks, and sing, too, if ye likes it, and she won’t be tired. A obstinate good ‘un, she be! Bless her!”

      The farmer may have designed, by these eulogies of his niece, to give his visitor time to recover his composure, and establish a common topic. His diversion only irritated and confused our shame-eaten youth. Richard’s intention had been to come to the farmer’s threshold: to summon the farmer thither, and in a loud and haughty tone then and there to take upon himself the whole burden of the charge against Tom Bakewell. He had strayed, during his passage to Belthorpe, somewhat back to his old nature; and his being compelled to enter the house of his enemy, sit in his chair, and endure an introduction to his family, was more than he bargained for. He commenced blinking hard in preparation for the horrible dose to which delay and the farmer’s cordiality added inconceivable bitters. Farmer Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a hurry. He spoke of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at the Abbey: glanced over that year’s cricketing; hoped that no future Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw and heard Arson in it all. He blinked harder as he neared the cup. In a moment of silence, he seized it with a gasp.

      “Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire to your rick the other night.”

      An odd consternation formed about the farmer’s mouth. He changed his posture, and said, “Ay? that’s what ye’re come to tell me sir?”

      “Yes!” said Richard, firmly.

      “And that be all?”

      “Yes!” Richard reiterated.

      The farmer again changed his posture. “Then, my lad, ye’ve come to tell me a lie!”

      Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush of ire he had kindled.

      “You dare to call me a liar!” cried Richard, starting up.

      “I say,” the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his thigh thereto, “that’s a lie!”

      Richard held out his clenched fist. “You have twice insulted me. You have struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have apologized—I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that fellow in prison. Yes! I would have degraded myself that another man should not suffer for my deed”—

      “Quite proper!” interposed the farmer.

      “And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You’re a coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own house.”

      “Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master,” said the farmer, indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. “Sit ye down. Don’t ye be hasty. If ye hadn’t been hasty t’other day, we sh’d a been friends yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh’d be sorry to reckon you out a liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o’ your name. I respects yer father though we’re opp’site politics. I’m willin’ to think well o’ you. What I say is, that as you say an’t the trewth. Mind! I don’t like you none the worse for’t. But it an’t what is. That’s all! You knows it as well’s I!”

      Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily reseated himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his late interview with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely that a towering passion is hardly the justification for a wrong course of conduct.

      “Come,” continued the farmer, not unkindly, “what else have you to say?”

      Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at Richard’s lips again! Alas, poor human nature! that empties to the dregs a dozen of these evil drinks, to evade the single one which Destiny, less cruel, had insisted upon.

      The boy blinked and tossed it off.

      “I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for your striking me.”

      Farmer Blaize nodded.

      “And now ye’ve done, young gentleman?”

      Still another cupful!

      “I should be very much obliged,” Richard formally began, but his stomach was turned; he could but sip and sip, and gather a distaste which threatened to make the penitential act impossible. “Very much obliged,” he repeated: “much obliged, if you would be so kind,” and it struck him that had he spoken this at first he would have given it a wording more persuasive with the farmer and more worthy of his own pride: more honest, in fact: for a sense of the dishonesty of what he was saying caused him to cringe and simulate humility to deceive the farmer, and the more he said the less he felt his words, and, feeling them less, he inflated them more. “So kind,” he stammered, “so kind” (fancy a Feverel asking this big brute to be so kind!) “as to do me the favour” (me the favour!) “to exert yourself” (it’s all to please Austin) “to endeavour to—hem! to” (there’s no saying it!)—

      The cup was full as ever. Richard dashed at it again.

      “What I came to ask is, whether you would have the kindness to try what you could do” (what an infamous shame to have to beg like this!) “do to save—do to ensure—whether you would have the kindness” It seemed out of all human power to gulp it down. The draught grew more and more abhorrent. To proclaim one’s iniquity, to apologize for one’s wrongdoing; thus much could be done; but to beg a favour of the offended party—that was beyond the self-abasement any Feverel could consent to. Pride, however, whose inevitable battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom’s prison, crying a second time, “Behold your Benefactor!” and, with the words burning in his ears, Richard swallowed the dose:

      “Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,—if you don’t mind—will you help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?”

      To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for the boy, though he could not quite see why he did not take the gate at the first offer.

      “Oh!” said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request. “Hum! ha! we’ll see about it t’morrow. But if he’s innocent, you know, we shan’t mak’n guilty.”

      “It was I did it!” Richard declared.

      The farmer’s half-amused expression sharpened a bit.

      “So, young gentleman! and you’re sorry for the night’s work?”

      “I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your losses.”

      “Thank’ee,” said the farmer drily.

      “And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don’t care what the amount is.”

      Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. “Bribery,” one motion expressed: “Corruption,” the other.

      “Now,” said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on his knees, while he counted the case at his fingers’ ends, “excuse the liberty, but wishin’ to know where this ‘ere money’s to come from, I sh’d like jest t’ask if so be Sir Austin know o’ this?”

      “My father knows nothing of it,” replied Richard.

      The farmer flung back in his chair. “Lie number Two,” said his shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being plotted at, and not dealt with openly.

      “And ye’ve the money ready, young gentleman?”

      “I shall ask my father for it.”

      “And he’ll hand’t out?”

      “Certainly he will!”

      Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting his father into his counsels.

      “A good three hundred pounds, ye know?” the farmer suggested.

      No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of the sum, affected young

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