LITMIR.BIZ

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upon it laden equally with force to create and to destroy." He deliberated to announce the intelligence, with deep meaning: "There are women in the world, my son!"

      The young man's heart galloped back to Raynham.

      "It is when you encounter them that you are thoroughly on trial. It is when you know them that life is either a mockery to you, or, as some find it, a gift of blessedness. They are our ordeal. Love of any human object is the soul's ordeal; and they are ours, loving them, or not."

      The young man heard the whistle of the train. He saw the moon-lighted wood, and the vision of his beloved. He could barely hold himself down and listen.

      "I believe," the baronet spoke with little of the cheerfulness of belief, "good women exist."

      Oh, if he knew Lucy!

      "But," and he gazed on Richard intently, "it is given to very few to meet them on the threshold—I may say, to none. We find them after hard buffeting, and usually, when we find the one fitted for us, our madness has misshaped our destiny, our lot is cast. For women are not the end, but the means, of life. In youth we think them the former, and thousands, who have not even the excuse of youth, select a mate—or worse—with that sole view. I believe women punish us for so perverting their uses. They punish Society."

      The baronet put his hand to his brow as his mind travelled into consequences.

      'Our most diligent pupil learns not so much as an earnest teacher,' says The Pilgrim's Scrip; and Sir Austin, in schooling himself to speak with moderation of women, was beginning to get a glimpse of their side of the case.

      Cold Blood now touched on love to Hot Blood.

      Cold Blood said, "It is a passion coming in the order of nature, the ripe fruit of our animal being."

      Hot Blood felt: "It is a divinity! All that is worth living for in the world."

      Cold Blood said: "It is a fever which tests our strength, and too often leads to perdition."

      Hot Blood felt: "Lead whither it will, I follow it."

      Cold Blood said: "It is a name men and women are much in the habit of employing to sanctify their appetites."

      Hot Blood felt: "It is worship; religion; life!"

      And so the two parallel lines ran on.

      The baronet became more personal:

      "You know my love for you, my son. The extent of it you cannot know; but you must know that it is something very deep, and—I do not wish to speak of it—but a father must sometimes petition for gratitude, since the only true expression of it is his son's moral good. If you care for my love, or love me in return, aid me with all your energies to keep you what I have made you, and guard you from the snares besetting you. It was in my hands once. It is ceasing to be so. Remember, my son, what my love is. It is different, I fear, with most fathers: but I am bound up in your welfare: what you do affects me vitally. You will take no step that is not intimate with my happiness, or my misery. And I have had great disappointments, my son."

      So far it was well. Richard loved his father, and even in his frenzied state he could not without emotion hear him thus speak.

      Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he was winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the dryness of his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green, absolutely wanting to be—that most awful thing, which the wisest and strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification and penance— married! He sketched the Foolish Young Fellow—the object of general ridicule and covert contempt. He sketched the Woman—the strange thing made in our image, and with all our faculties—passing to the rule of one who in taking her proved that he could not rule himself, and had no knowledge of her save as a choice morsel which he would burn the whole world, and himself in the bargain, to possess. He harped upon the Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin tingle and was half suffocated with shame and rage.

      After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased: he had quite undone his work. He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman. He might accord to her her due position, and paint her fair: he might be shrewd, jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise: he spoke to deaf ears.

      Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered: "Have you anything to tell me, Richard?" and hoping for a confession, and a thorough re- establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him cold: "I have not."

      The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.

      Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window. In the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining faintly, feeling the moon. The moon was rising: the woods were lifting up to her: his star of the woods would be there. A bed of moss set about flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.

      A succession of hard sighs brought his father's hand on his shoulder.

      "You have nothing you could say to me, my son? Tell me, Richard! Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of untruth!"

      "Nothing at all, sir," the young man replied, meeting him with the full orbs of his eyes.

      The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.

      At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he said: "Do you intend me to stay here, sir? Am I not to return to Raynham at all to-night?"

      His father was again falsely jocular:

      "What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes' start?"

      "Cassandra will take me," said the young man earnestly. "I needn't ride her hard, sir. Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried? I should be down with him in little better than three hours."

      "Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked."

      "Well, I could stable him in the village. Dowling knows the horse, and would treat him properly. May I have him, sir?"

      The cloud cleared off Richard's face as he asked. At least, if he missed his love that night he would be near her, breathing the same air, marking what star was above her bedchamber, hearing the hushed night-talk of the trees about her dwelling: looking on the distances that were like hope half fulfilled and a bodily presence bright as Hesper, since he knew her. There were two swallows under the eaves shadowing Lucy's chamber-windows: two swallows, mates in one nest, blissful birds, who twittered and cheep- cheeped to the sole-lying beauty in her bed. Around these birds the lover's heart revolved, he knew not why. He associated them with all his close-veiled dreams of happiness. Seldom a morning passed when he did not watch them leave the nest on their breakfast-flight, busy in the happy stillness of dawn. It seemed to him now that if he could be at Raynham to see them in to-morrow's dawn he would be compensated for his incalculable loss of to-night: he would forgive and love his father, London, the life, the world. Just to see those purple backs and white breasts flash out into the quiet morning air! He wanted no more.

      The baronet's trifling had placed this enormous boon within the young man's visionary grasp.

      He still went on trying the boy's temper.

      "You know there would be nobody ready for you at Raynham. It is unfair to disturb the maids."

      Richard overrode every objection.

      "Well, then, my son," said the baronet, preserving his half-jocular air, "I must tell you that it is my wish to have you in town."

      "Then you have not been ill at all, sir!" cried Richard, as in his despair he seized the whole plot.

      "I have been as well as you could have desired me to be," said his father.

      "Why did they lie to me?" the young man wrathfully exclaimed.

      "I think, Richard, you can best answer that," rejoined Sir Austin, kindly severe.

      Dread of being signalized as the Foolish Young Fellow prevented Richard from expostulating further. Sir Austin saw him grinding his passion into powder for future explosion, and thought it best to leave

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