In which the Last Act of a Comedy Takes the Place of the First

Although it blew hard when C?sar crossed the Rubicon, the passage of that river is commonly calm; calm as Acheron. So long as he gets his fare, the ferryman does not need to be told whom he carries: he pulls with a will, and heroes may be over in half-an-hour. Only when they stand on the opposite bank, do they see what a leap they have taken. The shores they have relinquished shrink to an infinite remoteness. There they have dreamed: here they must act. There lie youth and irresolution: here manhood and purpose. They are veritably in another land: a moral Acheron divides their life. Their memories scarce seem their own! The PHILOSOPHICAL GEOGRAPHY (about to be published) observes that each man has, one time or other, a little Rubicon — a clear or a foul water to cross. It is asked him: “Wilt thou wed this Fate, and give up all behind thee?” And “I will,” firmly pronounced, speeds him over. The above-named manuscript authority informs us, that by far the greater number of carcases rolled by this heroic flood to its sister stream below, are those of fellows who have repented their pledge, and have tried to swim back to the bank they have blotted out. For though every man of us may be a hero for one fatal minute, very few remain so after a day’s march even: and who wonders that Madam Fate is indignant, and wears the features of the terrible Universal Fate to him? Fail before her, either in heart or in act, and lo, how the alluring loves in her visage wither and sicken to what it is modelled on! Be your Rubicon big or small, clear or foul, it is the same: you shall not return. On — or to Acheron! — I subscribe to that saying of THE PILGRIM’S SCRIP:

“The danger of a little knowledge of things is disputable: but beware the little knowledge of one’s self!”

Richard Feverel was now crossing the River of his Ordeal. Already the mists were stealing over the land he had left: his life was cut in two, and he breathed but the air that met his nostrils. His father, his father’s love, his boyhood and ambition, were shadowy. His poetic dreams had taken a living attainable shape. He had a distincter impression of the Autumnal Berry and her household than of anything at Raynham. And yet the young man loved his father, loved his home: and I daresay C?sar loved Rome: but whether he did or no, C?sar when he killed the Republic was quite bald, and the hero we are dealing with is scarce beginning to feel his despotic moustache. Did he know what he was made of? Doubtless, nothing at all. But honest passion has an instinct that can be safer than conscious wisdom. He was an arrow drawn to the head, flying to the bow. His audacious mendacities and subterfuges did not strike him as in any way criminal; for he was perfectly sure that the winning and securing of Lucy would in the end be boisterously approved of, and in that case, were not the means justified? Not that he took trouble to argue thus, as older heroes and self-convicting villains are in the habit of doing, to deduce a clear conscience. Conscience and Lucy went together.

It was a soft fair day. The Rubicon sparkled in the morning sun. One of those days when London embraces the prospect of summer, and troops forth all its babies. The pavement, the squares, the parks, were early alive with the cries of young Britain. Violet and primrose girls, and organ boys with military monkeys, and systematic bands very determined in tone if not in tune, filled the atmosphere, and crowned the blazing procession of omnibuses, freighted with business men, Cityward, where a column of reddish brown smoke — blown aloft by the South-west, marked the scene of conflict to which these persistent warriors repaired. Richard had seen much of early London that morning. His plans were laid. He had taken care to ensure his personal liberty against accidents, by leaving his hotel and his injured uncle Hippias at sunrise. To-day or tomorrow his father was to arrive. Farmer Blaize, Tom Bakewell reported to him, was raging in town. Another day and she might be torn from him: but today this miracle of creation would be his, and then from those glittering banks yonder, let them summon him to surrender her who dared! The position of things looked so propitious that he naturally thought the powers waiting on love conspired in his behalf. And she, too — since she must cross this river, she had sworn to him to be brave, and do him honour, and wear the true gladness of her heart in her face. Without a suspicion of folly in his acts, or fear of results, Richard strolled into Kensington Gardens, breakfasting on the foreshadow of his great joy, now with a vision of his bride, now of the new life opening to him. Mountain masses of clouds, rounded in sunlight, swung up the blue. The flowering chestnut pavilions overhead rustled and hummed. A sound in his ears as of a banner unfolding in the joyful distance lulled him.

He was to meet his bride at the church at a quarter past eleven. His watch said a quarter to ten. He strolled on beneath the long-stemmed trees toward the well dedicated to a saint obscure. Some people were drinking at the well. A florid lady stood by a younger one, who had a little silver mug half-way to her mouth, and evinced undisguised dislike to the liquor of the salutary saint.

“Drink, child!” said the maturer lady. “That is only your second mug. I insist upon your drinking three full ones every morning we’re in town. Your constitution positively requires iron!”

“But, mama,” the other expostulated, “it’s so nasty. I shall be sick.”

“Drink!” was the harsh injunction. “Nothing to the German waters, my dear. Here, let me taste.” She took the mug and gave it a flying kiss. “I declare I think it almost nice — not at all objectionable. Pray, taste it,” she said to a gentleman standing below them to act as cup-bearer.

An unmistakable cis-Rubicon voice replied: “Certainly, if it’s good fellowship; though I confess I don’t think mutual sickness a very engaging ceremony.”

Can one never escape from one’s relatives? Richard ejaculated inwardly.

Without a doubt those people were Mrs. Doria, Clare, and Adrian. He had them under his eyes.

Clare, peeping up from her constitutional dose to make sure no man was near to see the possible consequence of it, was the first to perceive him. Her hand dropped.

“Now, pray, drink, and do not fuss!” said Mrs. Doria.

“Mama!” Clare gasped.

Richard came forward and capitulated honourably, since retreat was out of the question. Mrs. Doria swam to meet him: “My own boy! My dear Richard!” profuse of exclamations. Clare shyly greeted him. Adrian kept in the background.

“Why, we were coming for you today, Richard,” said Mrs. Doria, smiling effusion; and rattled on, “We want another cavalier. This is delightful! My dear nephew! You have grown from a boy to a man. And there’s down on his lip! And what brings you here at such an hour in the morning? Poetry, I suppose! Here, take my arm, child. — Clare! finish that mug and thank your cousin for sparing you the third. I always bring her, when we are by a chalybeate, to take the waters before breakfast. We have to get up at unearthly hours. Think, my dear boy! Mothers are sacrifices! And so you’ve been alone a fortnight with your agreeable uncle! A charming time of it you must have had! Poor Hippias! what may be his last nostrum?”

“Nephew!” Adrian stretched his head round to the couple. “Doses of nephew taken morning and night fourteen days! And he guarantees that it shall destroy an iron constitution in a month.”

Richard mechanically shook Adrian’s hand as he spoke.

“Quite well, Ricky?”

“Yes: well enough,” Richard answered.

“Well?” resumed his vigorous aunt, walking on with him, while Clare and Adrian followed. “I really never saw you looking so handsome. There’s something about your face — look at me — you needn’t blush. You’ve grown to an Apollo. That blue buttoned-up frock coat becomes you admirably — and those gloves, and that easy neck-tie. Your style is irreproachable, quite a style of your own! And nothing eccentric. You have the instinct of dress. Dress shows blood, my dear boy, as much as anything else. Boy! — you see, I can’t forget old habits. You were a boy when I left, and now! — Do you see any change in him, Clare?” she turned half round to her daughter.

“Richard is looking very well, mama,” said Clare, glancing at him under her eyelids.

“I wish I could say the same of you, my dear. — Take my arm, Richard. Are you afraid of your aunt? I want to get used to you. Won’t it be pleasant, our being all in town together in the season? How fresh the Opera will be to you! Austin, I hear, takes stalls. You can come to the Forey’s box when you like. We are staying with the Foreys close by here. I think it’s a little too far out, you know; but they like the neighbourhood. This is what I have always said: Give him more liberty! Austin has seen it at last. How do you think Clare looking?”

The question had to be repeated. Richard surveyed his cousin hastily, and praised her looks.

“Pale!” Mrs. Doria sighed.

“Rather pale, aunt.”

“Grown very much — don’t you think, Richard?”

“Very tall girl indeed, aunt.”

“If she had but a little more colour, my dear Richard! I’m sure I give her all the iron she can swallow, but that pallor still continues. I think she does not prosper away from her old companion. She was accustomed to look up to you, Richard”——

“Did you get Ralph’s letter, aunt?” Richard interrupted her.

“Absurd!” Mrs. Doria pressed his arm. “The nonsense of a boy! Why did you undertake to forward such stuff?”

“I’m certain he loves her,” said Richard, in a serious way.

The maternal eyes narrowed on him. “Life, my dear Richard, is a game of cross-purposes,” she observed, dropping her fluency, and was rather angered to hear him laugh. He excused himself by saying that she spoke so like his father.

“You breakfast with us,” she freshened off again. “The Foreys wish to see you; the girls are dying to know you. Do you know, you have a reputation on account of that”— she crushed an intruding adjective —“System you were brought up on. You mustn’t mind it. For my part, I think you look a credit to it. Don’t be bashful with young women, mind! As much as you please with the old ones. You know how to behave among men. There you have your Drawing-room Guide! I’m sure I shall be proud of you. Am I not?”

Mrs. Doria addressed his eyes coaxingly.

A benevolent idea struck Richard, that he might employ the minutes to spare, in pleading the case of poor Ralph; and, as he was drawn along, he pulled out his watch to note the precise number of minutes he could dedicate to this charitable office.

“Pardon me,” said Mrs. Doria. “You want manners, my dear boy. I think it never happened to me before that a man consulted his watch in my presence.”

Richard mildly replied that he had an engagement at a particular hour, up to which he was her servant.

“Fiddlededee!” the vivacious lady sang. “Now I’ve got you, I mean to keep you. Oh! I’ve heard all about you. This ridiculous indifference that your father makes so much of! Why, of course, you wanted to see the world! A strong, healthy young man shut up all his life in a lonely house — no friends, no society, no amusements but those of rustics! Of course you were indifferent! Your intelligence and superior mind alone saved you from becoming a dissipated country boor. — Where are the others?”

Clare and Adrian came up at a quick pace.

“My damozel dropped something,” Adrian explained.

Her mother asked what it was.

“Nothing, mama,” said Clare, demurely, and they proceeded as before.

Overborne by his aunt’s fluency of tongue, and occupied in acute calculation of the flying minutes, Richard let many pass before he edged in a word for Ralph. When he did, Mrs. Doria stopped him immediately.

“I must tell you, child, that I refuse to listen to such rank idiotcy.”

“It’s nothing of the kind, aunt.”

“The fancy of a boy.”

“He’s not a boy. He’s half-a-year older than I am!”

“You silly child! The moment you fall in love, you all think yourselves men.”

“On my honour, aunt! I believe he loves her thoroughly.”

“Did he tell you so, child?”

“Men don’t speak openly of those things,” said Richard.

“Boys do,” said Mrs. Doria.

“But listen to me in earnest, aunt. I want you to be kind to Ralph. Don’t drive him to — You may be sorry for it. Let him — do let him write to her, and see her. I believe women are as cruel as men in these things.”

“I never encourage absurdity, Richard.”

“What objection have you to Ralph, aunt?”

“Oh, they’re both good families. It’s not that absurdity, Richard. It will be to his credit to remember that his first fancy wasn’t a dairymaid.” Mrs. Doria pitched her accent tellingly. It did not touch her nephew.

“Don’t you want Clare ever to marry?” He put the last point of reason to her.

Mrs. Doria laughed. “I hope so, child. We must find some comfortable old gentleman for her.”

“What infamy!” mutters Richard.

“And I engage Ralph shall be ready to dance at her wedding, or eat a hearty breakfast — We don’t dance at weddings now, an............