The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete

Fair weather, sunny green sea-water speckled with yachts shooting and bounding, and sending me the sharp sense of life there is in dashed-up fountains of silvery salt-spray, would have quickened my blood sooner but for this hot-bed of fruitless adventure, tricksy precepts, and wisdom turned imp, in which my father had again planted me. To pity him seemed a childish affectation. His praise of my good looks pleased me, for on that point he was fitted to be a judge, and I was still fancying I had lost them on the heath. Troops of the satellites of his grand parade surrounded him. I saw him walk down the pier like one breaking up a levee. At times he appeared to me a commanding phantasm in the midst of phantasm figures of great ladies and their lords, whose names he told off on his return like a drover counting his herd; but within range of his eye and voice the reality of him grew overpowering. It seduced me, and, despite reason, I began to feel warm under his compliments. He was like wine. Gaiety sprang under his feet. Sitting at my window, I thirsted to see him when he was out of sight, and had touches of the passion of my boyhood.

I listened credulously, too, as in the old days, when he repeated, ‘You will find I am a magician, and very soon, Richie, mark me.’ His manner hinted that there was a surprise in store. ‘You have not been on the brink of the grave for nothing.’ He resembled wine in the other conditions attached to its rare qualities. Oh for the choice of having only a little of him, instead of having him on my heart! The unfilial wish attacked me frequently: he could be, and was, so ravishing to strangers and light acquaintances. Did by chance a likeness exist between us? My sick fancy rushed to the Belthams for a denial. There did, of some sort, I knew; and the thought partitioned my dreamy ideas, of which the noblest, taking advantage of my physical weakness, compelled me to confess that it was a vain delusion for one such as I to hope for Ottilia. This looking at the roots of yourself, if you are possessed of a nobler half that will do it, is a sound corrective of an excessive ambition. Unfortunately it would seem that young men can do it only in sickness. With the use of my legs, and open-air breathing, I became compact, and as hungry and zealous on behalf of my individuality, as proud of it as I had ever been: prouder and hungrier.

My first day of outing, when, looking at every face, I could reflect on the miraculous issue of mine almost clear from its pummelling, and above all, that my nose was safe—not stamped with the pugilist’s brand—inspired a lyrical ebullition of gratitude. Who so intoxicated as the convalescent catching at health?

I met Charles Etherell on the pier, and heard that my Parliamentary seat was considered in peril, together with a deal of gossip about my disappearance.

My father, who was growing markedly restless, on the watch for letters and new arrivals, started to pay Chippenden a flying visit. He begged me urgently to remain for another few days, while he gathered information, saying my presence at his chief quarters did him infinite service, and I always thought that possible. I should find he was a magician, he repeated, with a sort of hesitating fervour.

I had just waved my hand to him as the boat was bearing him away from the pier-head, when a feminine voice murmured in my ear, ‘Is not this our third meeting, Mr. Harry Richmond?—Venice, Elbestadt, and the Isle of Wight?’ She ran on, allowing me time to recognize Clara Goodwin. ‘What was your last adventure? You have been ill. Very ill? Has it been serious?’

I made light of it. ‘No: a tumble.’

‘You look pale,’ she said quickly.

‘That’s from grieving at the loss of my beauty, Miss Goodwin.’

‘Have you really not been seriously ill?’ she asked with an astonishing eagerness.

I told her mock-loftily that I did not believe in serious illnesses coming to godlike youth, and plied her in turn with inquiries.

‘You have not been laid up in bed?’ she persisted.

‘No, on my honour, not in bed.’

‘Then,’ said she, ‘I would give much to be able to stop that boat.’

She amazed me. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s going on a bad errand,’ she replied.

‘Miss Goodwin, you perplex me. My father has started in that boat.’

‘Yes, I saw him.’ She glanced hastily at the foam in a way to show indifference. ‘What I am saying concerns others… who have heard you were dangerously ill. I have sent for them to hasten across.’

‘My aunt and Miss Ilchester?’

‘No.’

‘Who are they? Miss Goodwin, I’ll answer any question. I’ve been queerish, that’s true. Now let me hear who they are, when you arrived, when you expect them. Where are they now?’

‘As to me,’ she responded with what stretched on my ears like an insufferable drawl, ‘I came over last night to hire a furnished house or lodgings. Papa has an appointment attached to the fortifications yonder. We’ll leave the pier, if you please. You draw too much attention on ladies who venture to claim acquaintance with so important a gentleman.’

We walked the whole length of the pier, chatting of our former meetings.

‘Not here,’ she said, as soon as I began to question.

I was led farther on, half expecting that the accessories of time and place would have to do with the revelation.

The bitter creature drew me at her heels into a linendraper’s shop. There she took a seat, pitched her voice to the key of a lady’s at a dinner-table, when speaking to her cavalier of the history or attire of some one present, and said, ‘You are sure the illness was not at all feigned?’

She had me as completely at her mercy in this detestable shop as if I had been in a witness-box.

‘Feigned!’ I exclaimed.

‘That is no answer. And pray remember where you are.’

‘No, the illness was not feigned.’

‘And you have not made the most of it?’

‘What an extraordinary thing to say!’

‘That is no answer. And please do not imagine yourself under the necessity of acting every sentiment of your heart before these people.’

She favoured a shopman with half-a-dozen directions.

‘My answer is, then, that I have not made the most of it,’ I said.

‘Not even by proxy?’

‘Once more I’m adrift.’

‘You are certainly energetic. I must address you as a brother, or it will be supposed we are quarrelling. Harry, do you like that pattern?’

‘Yes. What’s the meaning of proxy?’

‘With the accent you give it, heaven only knows what it means. I would rather you did not talk here like a Frenchman relating his last love-affair in company.

Must your voice escape control exactly at the indicatory words? Do you think your father made the most of it?’

‘Of my illness? Oh! yes; the utmost. I should undoubtedly think so. That’s his way.’

‘Why did you permit it?’

‘I was what they call “wandering” half the time. Besides, who could keep him in check? I rarely know what he is doing.’

‘You don’t know what he wrote?’

‘Wrote?’

‘That you were dying.’

‘Of me? To whom?’

She scrutinized me, and rose from her chair. ‘I must try some other shop. How is it, that if these English people cannot make a “berthe” fit to wear, they do not conceive the idea of importing such things from Paris? I will take your arm, Harry.’

‘You have bought nothing,’ I remarked.

‘I have as much as I went for,’ she replied, and gravely thanked the assistant leaning on his thumbs across the counter; after which, dropping the graceless play of an enigma, she inquired whether I had forgotten the Frau von Dittmarsch.

I had, utterly; but not her maiden name of Sibley.

‘Miss Goodwin, is she one of those who are coming to the island?’

‘Frau von Dittmarsch? Yes. She takes an interest in you. She and I have been in correspondence ever since my visit to Sarkeld. It reminds me, you may vary my maiden name with the Christian, if you like. Harry, I believe you are truthful as ever, in spite—’

‘Don’t be unjust,’ said I.

‘I wish I could think I was!’ she rejoined. ‘Frau von Dittmarsch was at Sarkeld, and received terrible news of you. She called on me, at my father’s residence over the water yonder, yesterday afternoon, desiring greatly to know—she is as cautious as one with a jewel in her custody—how it fared with you, whether you were actually in a dying state. I came here to learn; I have friends here: you were not alone, or I should have called on you. The rumour was that you were very ill; so I hired a furnished place for Frau von Dittmarsch at once. But when I saw you and him together, and the parting between you, I began to have fears; I should have countermanded the despatch I sent by the boat, had it been possible.’

‘It has gone! And tell me the name of the other.’

‘Frau von Dittmarsch has a husband.’

‘Not with her now. Oh! cruel! speak: her name?’

‘Her name, Harry?’ Her title is Countess von Delzenburg.’

‘Not princess?’

‘Not in England.’

Then Ottilia was here!

My father was indeed a magician!

CHAPTER XLVIII. THE PRINCESS ENTRAPPED

‘Not princess in England,’ could betoken but one thing—an incredible act of devotion, so great that it stunned my senses, and I thought of it, and of all it involved, before the vision of Ottilia crossing seas took possession of me.

‘The Princess Ottilia, Miss Goodwin?’

‘The Countess of Delzenburg, Harry.’

‘To see me? She has come!’

‘Harry, you talk like the boy you were when we met before you knew her. Yes and yes to everything you have to say, but I think you should spare her name.’

‘She comes thinking me ill?’

‘Dying.’

‘I’m as strong as ever I was.’

‘I should imagine you are, only rather pale.’

‘Have you, tell me, Clara, seen her yourself? Is she well?’

‘Pale: not unwell: anxious.’

‘About me?’

‘It may be about the political affairs of the Continent; they are disturbed.’

‘She spoke of me?’

‘Yes.’

‘She is coming by the next boat?’

‘It’s my fear that she is.’

‘Why do you fear?’

‘Shall I answer you, Harry? It is useless now. Well, because she has been deceived. That is why. You will soon find it out.’

‘Prince Ernest is at Sarkeld?’

‘In Paris, I hear.’

‘How will your despatch reach these ladies in time for them to come over by the next boat?’

‘I have sent my father’s servant. The General—he is promoted at last, Harry—attends the ladies in person, and is now waiting for the boat’s arrival over there, to follow my directions.’

‘You won’t leave me?’

Miss Goodwin had promised to meet the foreign ladies on the pier. We quarrelled and made it up a dozen times like girl and boy, I calling her aunt Clara, as in the old days, and she calling me occasionally son Richie: an imitation of my father’s manner of speech to me when we formed acquaintance first in Venice. But I was very little aware of what I was saying or doing. The forces of my life were yoked to the heart, and tumbled as confusedly as the world under Phaethon charioteer. We walked on the heights above the town. I looked over the water to the white line of shore and batteries where this wonder stood, who was what poets dream of, deep-hearted men hope for, none quite believe in. Hardly could I; and though my relenting spinster friend at my elbow kept assuring me it was true that she was there, my sceptical sight fixed on the stale prominences visible in the same features which they had worn day after empty day of late. This deed of hers was an act of devotion great as death. I knew it from experience consonant to Ottilia’s character; but could a princess, hereditary, and bound in the league of governing princes, dare so to brave her condition? Complex of mind, simplest in character, the uncontrollable nobility of her spirit was no sooner recognized by me than I was shocked throughout by a sudden light, contrasting me appallingly with this supreme of women, who swept the earth aside for truth. I had never before received a distinct intimation of my littleness of nature, and my first impulse was to fly from thought, and then, as if to prove myself justly accused, I caught myself regretting—no, not regretting, gazing, as it were, on a picture of regrets—that Ottilia was not a romantic little lady of semi-celestial rank, exquisitely rash, wilful, desperately enamoured, bearing as many flying hues and peeps of fancy as a love-ballad, and not more roughly brushing the root-emotions.

If she had but been such an one, what sprightly colours, delicious sadness, magical transformations, tenderest intermixture of earth and heaven; what tears and sunbeams, divinest pathos: what descents from radiance to consolatory twilight, would have surrounded me for poetry and pride to dwell on! What captivating melody in the minor key would have been mine, though I lost her—the legacy of it all for ever! Say a petulant princess, a star of beauty, mad for me, and the whisper of our passion and sorrows traversing the flushed world! Was she coming? Not she, but a touchstone, a relentless mirror, a piercing eye, a mind severe as the Goddess of the God’s head: a princess indeed, but essentially a princess above women: a remorseless intellect, an actual soul visible in the flesh. She was truth. Was I true? Not so very false, yet how far from truth! The stains on me (a modern man writing his history is fugitive and crepuscular in alluding to them, as a woman kneeling at the ear-guichet) burnt like the blood-spots on the criminal compelled to touch his victim by savage ordinance, which knew the savage and how to search him. And these were faults of weakness rather than the sins of strength. I might as fairly hope for absolution of them from Ottilia as from offended laws of my natural being, gentle though she was, and charitable.

Was I not guilty of letting her come on to me hoodwinked at this moment? I had a faint memory of Miss Goodwin’s saying that she had been deceived, and I suggested a plan of holding aloof until she had warned the princess of my perfect recovery, to leave it at her option to see me.

‘Yes,’ Miss Goodwin assented: ‘if you like, Harry.’

Her compassion for me only tentatively encouraged the idea. ‘It would, perhaps, be right. You are the judge. If you can do it. You are acting bravely.’ She must have laughed at me in her heart.

The hours wore on. My curse of introspection left me, and descending through the town to the pier, amid the breezy blue skirts and bonnet-strings, we watched the packet-boat approaching. There was in advance one of the famous swift island wherries. Something went wrong with it, for it was overtaken, and the steamer came in first. I jumped on board, much bawled at. Out of a crowd of unknown visages, Janet appeared: my aunt Dorothy was near her. The pair began chattering of my paleness, and wickedness in keeping my illness unknown to them. They had seen Temple on an excursion to London; he had betrayed me, as he would have betrayed an archangel to Janet.

‘Will you not look at us, Harry?’ they both said.

The passengers were quitting the boat, strangers every one.

‘Harry, have we really offended you in coming?’ said Janet.

My aunt Dorothy took the blame on herself.

I scarcely noticed them, beyond leading them on to the pier-steps and leaving them under charge of Miss Goodwin, who had, in matters of luggage and porterage, the practical mind and aplomb of an Englishwoman that has passed much of her time on the Continent. I fancied myself vilely duped by this lady. The boat was empty of its passengers; a grumbling pier-man, wounded in his dignity, notified to me that there were fines for disregard of the Company’s rules and regulations. His tone altered; he touched his hat: ‘Didn’t know who you was, my lord.’ Janet overheard him, and her face was humorous.

‘We may break the rules, you see,’ I said to her.

‘We saw him landing on the other side of the water,’ she replied; so spontaneously did the circumstance turn her thoughts on my father.

‘Did you speak to him?’

‘No.’

‘You avoided him?’

‘Aunty and I thought it best. He landed… there was a crowd.’

Miss Goodwin interposed: ‘You go to Harry’s hotel?’

‘Grandada is coming down to-morrow or next day,’ Janet prompted my aunt Dorothy.

‘If we could seek for a furnished house; Uberly would watch the luggage,’ Dorothy murmured in distress.

‘Furnished houses, even rooms at hotels, are doubtful in the height of the season,’ Miss Goodwin remarked. ‘Last night I engaged the only decent set of rooms I could get, for friends of Harry’s who are coming.’

‘No wonder he was disappointed at seeing us—he was expecting them!’ said Janet, smiling a little.

‘They are sure to come,’ said Miss Goodwin.

Near us a couple of yachtsmen were conversing.

‘Oh, he’ll be back in a day or two,’ one said. ‘When you ‘ve once tasted that old boy, you can’t do without him. I remember when I was a youngster—it was in Lady Betty Bolton’s day; she married old Edbury, you know, first wife—the Magnificent was then in his prime. He spent his money in a week: so he hired an eighty-ton schooner; he laid violent hands on a Jew, bagged him, lugged him on board, and sailed away.’

‘What the deuce did he want with a Jew?’ cried the other.

‘Oh, the Jew supplied cheques for a three months’ cruise in the Mediterranean, and came home, I heard, very good friends with his pirate. That’s only one of dozens.’

The unconscious slaughterers laughed.

‘On another occasion’—I heard it said by the first speaker, as they swung round to parade the pier, and passed on narrating.

‘Not an hotel, if it is possible to avoid it,’ my aunt Dorothy, with heightened colour, urged Miss Goodwin. They talked together.

‘Grandada is coming to you, Harry,’ Janet said. ‘He has business in London, or he would have been here now. Our horses and carriages follow us: everything you would like. He does love you! he is very anxious. I’m afraid his health is worse than he thinks. Temple did not say your father was here, but grandada must have suspected it when he consented to our coming, and said he would follow us. So that looks well perhaps. He has been much quieter since your money was paid back to you. If they should meet… no, I hope they will not: grandada hates noise. And, Harry, let me tell you: it may be nothing: if he questions you, do not take fire; just answer plainly: I’m sure you understand. One in a temper at a time I’m sure ‘s enough: you have only to be patient with him. He has been going to London, to the City, seeing lawyers, bankers, brokers, and coming back muttering. Ah! dear old man. And when he ought to have peace! Harry, the poor will regret him in a thousand places. I write a great deal for him now, and I know how they will. What are you looking at?’

I was looking at a man of huge stature, of the stiffest build, whose shoulders showed me their full breadth while he stood displaying frontwards the open of his hand in a salute.

‘Schwartz!’ I called. Janet started, imagining some fierce interjection. The giant did not stir.

But others had heard. A lady stepped forward. ‘Dear Mr. Harry Richmond! Then you are better? We had most alarming news of you.’

I bowed to the Frau von Dittmarsch, anciently Miss Sibley.

‘The princess?’

‘She is here.’

Frau von Dittmarsch clasped Miss Goodwin’s hand. I was touching Ottilia’s. A veil partly swathed her face. She trembled: the breeze robbed me of her voice.

Our walk down the pier was almost in silence. Miss Goodwin assumed the guardianship of the foreign ladies. I had to break from them and provide for my aunt Dorothy and Janet.

‘They went over in a little boat, they were so impatient. Who is she?’ Dorothy Beltham asked.

‘The Princess Ottilia,’ said Janet.

‘Are you certain? Is it really, Harry?’

I confirmed it, and my aunt said, ‘I should have guessed it could be no other; she has a foreign grace.’

‘General Goodwin was with them when the boat came in from the island,’ said Janet. ‘He walked up to Harry’s father, and you noticed, aunty, that the ladies stood away, as if they wished to be unobserved, as we did, and pulled down their veils. They would not wait for our boat. We passed them crossing. People joked about the big servant over-weighing the wherry.’

Dorothy Beltham thought the water too rough for little boats.

‘She knows what a sea is,’ I said.

Janet gazed steadily after the retreating figures, and then commended me to the search for rooms. The end of it was that I abandoned my father’s suite to them. An accommodating linen-draper possessed of a sea-view, and rooms which hurled the tenant to the windows in desire for it, gave me harbourage.

Till dusk I scoured the town to find Miss Goodwin, without whom there was no clue to the habitation I was seeking, and I must have passed her blindly again and again. My aunt Dorothy and Janet thanked me for my consideration in sitting down to dine with them; they excused my haste to retire. I heard no reproaches except on account of my not sending them word of my illness. Janet was not warm. She changed in colour and voice when I related what I had heard from Miss Goodwin, namely, that ‘some one’ had informed the princess I was in a dying state. I was obliged to offer up my father as a shield for Ottilia, lest false ideas should tarnish the image of her in their minds. Janet did not speak of him. The thought stood in her eyes; and there lies the evil of a sore subject among persons of one household: they have not to speak to exhibit their minds.

After a night of suspense I fell upon old Schwartz and Aennchen out in the earliest dawn, according to their German habits, to have a gaze at sea, and strange country and people. Aennchen was all wonder at the solitary place, Schwartz at the big ships. But when they tried to direct me to the habitation of their mistress, it was discovered by them that they had lost their bearings. Aennchen told me the margravine had been summoned to Rippau just before they left Sarkeld. Her mistress had informed Baroness Turckems of her intention to visit England. Prince Ernest was travelling in France.

The hour which brought me to Ottilia was noon. The arrangements of the ladies could only grant me thirty minutes, for Janet was to drive the princess out into the country to view the island. She and my aunt Dorothy had been already introduced. Miss Goodwin, after presenting them, insisted upon ceremoniously accompanying me to the house. Quite taking the vulgar view of a proceeding such as the princess had been guilty of, and perhaps fearing summary audacity and interestedness in the son of a father like mine, she ventured on lecturing me, as though it lay with me to restrain the fair romantic head, forbear from calling up my special advantages, advise, and stand to the wisdom of this world, and be the man of honour. The princess had said: ‘Not see him when I have come to him?’ I reassured my undiscerning friend partly, not wholly.

‘Would it be commonly sensible or civil, to refuse to see me, having come?’

Miss Goodwin doubted.

I could indicate forcibly, because I felt, the clear-judging brain and tempered self-command whereby Ottilia had gained her decision.

Miss Goodwin nodded and gave me the still-born affirmative of politeness. Her English mind expressed itself willing to have exonerated the rash great lady for visiting a dying lover, but he was not the same person now that he was on his feet, consequently her expedition wore a different aspect:—my not dying condemned her. She entreated me to keep the fact of the princess’s arrival unknown to my father, on which point we were one. Intensely enthusiastic for the men of her race, she would have me, above all things, by a form of adjuration designed to be a masterpiece of persuasive rhetoric, ‘prove myself an Englishman.’ I was to show that ‘the honour, interests, reputation and position of any lady (demented or not,’ she added) ‘were as precious to me as to the owner’: that ‘no woman was ever in peril of a shadow of loss in the hands of an English gentleman,’ and so forth, rather surprisingly to me, remembering her off-hand manner of the foregoing day. But the sense of responsibility thrown upon her ideas of our superior national dignity had awakened her fervider naturalness—made her a different person, as we say when accounting, in our fashion, for what a little added heat may do.

The half hour allotted to me fled. I went from the room and the house, feeling that I had seen and heard her who was barely of the world of humankind for me, so strongly did imagination fly with her. I kissed her fingers, I gazed in her eyes, I heard the beloved voice. All passed too swift for happiness. Recollections set me throbbing, but recollection brought longing. She said, ‘Now I have come I must see you, Harry.’ Did it signify that to see me was a piece of kindness at war with her judgement? She rejoiced at my perfect recovery, though it robbed her of the plea in extenuation of this step she had taken. She praised me for abstaining to write to her, when I was stammering a set of hastily-impressed reasons to excuse myself for the omission. She praised my step into Parliament. It did not seem to involve a nearer approach to her. She said, ‘You have not wasted your time in England.’ It was for my solitary interests that she cared, then.