"What, boy! Is it old Blaize has been putting you up?"

"Never mind, uncle!" The boy nodded mysteriously.

Look there! Adrian read on Ripton's face, he says "never mind," and lets it out!

"Did we beat to-day, uncle?"

"Yes, boy; and we'd beat them any day they bowl fair. I'd beat them on one leg. There's only Natkins and Featherdene among them worth a farthing."

"We beat!" cries Richard. "Then we'll have some more wine, and drink their healths."

The bell was rung; wine ordered. Presently comes in heavy Benson, to say supplies are cut off. One bottle, and no more. The Captain whistled; Adrian shrugged.

The bottle, however, was procured by Adrian subsequently. He liked studying intoxicated urchins.

One subject was at Richard's heart, about which he was reserved in the midst of his riot. Too proud to inquire how his father had taken his absence, he burned to hear whether he was in disgrace. He led to it repeatedly, and it was constantly evaded by Algernon and Adrian.

At last, when the boy declared a desire to wish his father good-night, Adrian had to tell him that he was to go straight to bed from the supper-table. Young Richard's face fell at that, and his gaiety forsook him. He marched to his room without another word.

Adrian gave Sir Austin an able version of his son's behaviour and adventures; dwelling upon this sudden taciturnity when he heard of his father's resolution not to see him. The wise youth saw that his chief was mollified behind his moveless mask, and went to bed, and Horace, leaving Sir Austin in his study. Long hours the baronet sat alone. The house had not its usual influx of Feverels that day.

Austin Wentworth was staying at Poer Hall, and had only come over for an hour. At midnight the house breathed sleep. Sir Austin put on his cloak and cap, and took the lamp to make his rounds. He apprehended nothing special, but with a mind never at rest he const.i.tuted himself the sentinel of Raynham. He pa.s.sed the chamber where the Great-Aunt Grantley lay, who was to swell Richard's fortune, and so perform her chief business on earth. By her door he murmured, "Good creature! you sleep with a sense of duty done," and paced on, reflecting, "She has not made money a demon of discord,"

and blessed her. He had his thoughts at Hippias's somnolent door, and to them the world might have subscribed.

A monomaniac at large, watching over sane people in slumber! thinks Adrian Harley, as he hears Sir Austin's footfall, and truly that was a strange object to see.--Where is the fortress that has not one weak gate? where the man who is sound at each particular angle? Ay, meditates the rec.u.mbent cynic, more or less mad is not every mother's son? Favourable circ.u.mstances--good air, good company, two or three good rules rigidly adhered to--keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a pa.s.sion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode for it?

Sir Austin ascended the stairs, and bent his steps leisurely toward the chamber where his son was lying in the left wing of the Abbey.

At the end of the gallery which led to it he discovered a dim light.

Doubting it an illusion, Sir Austin accelerated his pace. This wing had aforetime a bad character. Notwithstanding what years had done to polish it into fair repute, the Raynham kitchen stuck to tradition, and preserved certain stories of ghosts seen there, that effectually blackened it in the susceptible minds of new housemaids and under-cooks, whose fears would not allow the sinner to wash his sins. Sir Austin had heard of the tales circulated by his domestics underground. He cherished his own belief, but discouraged theirs, and it was treason at Raynham to be caught traducing the left wing.

As the baronet advanced, the fact of a light burning was clear to him. A slight descent brought him into the pa.s.sage, and he beheld a poor human candle standing outside his son's chamber. At the same moment a door closed hastily. He entered Richard's room. The boy was absent. The bed was unpressed: no clothes about: nothing to show that he had been there that night. Sir Austin felt vaguely apprehensive. Has he gone to my room to await me? thought the father's heart. Something like a tear quivered in his arid eyes as he meditated and hoped this might be so. His own sleeping-room faced that of his son. He strode to it with a quick heart. It was empty.

Alarm dislodged anger from his jealous heart, and dread of evil put a thousand questions to him that were answered in air. After pacing up and down his room he determined to go and ask the boy Thompson, as he called Ripton, what was known to him.

The chamber a.s.signed to Master Ripton Thompson was at the northern extremity of the pa.s.sage, and overlooked Lobourne and the valley to the West. The bed stood between the window and the door. Sir Austin found the door ajar, and the interior dark. To his surprise, the boy Thompson's couch, as revealed by the rays of his lamp, was likewise vacant. He was turning back when he fancied he heard the sibilation of a whispering in the room. Sir Austin cloaked the lamp and trod silently toward the window. The heads of his son Richard and the boy Thompson were seen crouched against the gla.s.s, holding excited converse together. Sir Austin listened, but he listened to a language of which he possessed not the key. Their talk was of fire, and of delay: of expected agrarian astonishment: of a farmer's huge wrath: of violence exercised upon gentlemen, and of vengeance: talk that the boys jerked out by fits, and that came as broken links of a chain impossible to connect. But they awoke curiosity. The baronet condescended to play the spy upon his son.

Over Lobourne and the valley lay black night and innumerable stars.

"How jolly I feel!" exclaimed Ripton, inspired by claret; and then, after a luxurious pause--"I think that fellow has pocketed his guinea, and cut his lucky."

Richard allowed a long minute to pa.s.s, during which the baronet waited anxiously for his voice, hardly recognizing it when he heard its altered tones.

"If he has, I'll go; and I'll do it myself."

"You would?" returned Master Ripton. "Well, I'm hanged!--I say, if you went to school, wouldn't you get into rows! Perhaps he hasn't found the place where the box was stuck in. I think he funks it. I almost wish you hadn't done it, upon my honour--eh? Look there! what was that? That looked like something.--I say! do you think we shall ever be found out?"

Master Ripton intoned this abrupt interrogation very seriously.

"I don't think about it," said Richard, all his faculties bent on signs from Lobourne.

"Well, but," Ripton persisted, "suppose we are found out?"

"If we are, I must pay for it."

Sir Austin breathed the better for this reply. He was beginning to gather a clue to the dialogue. His son was engaged in a plot, and was, moreover, the leader of the plot. He listened for further enlightenment.

"What was the fellow's name?" inquired Ripton.

His companion answered, "Tom Bakewell."

"I'll tell you what," continued Ripton. "You let it all clean out to your cousin and uncle at supper. How capital claret is with partridge-pie! What a lot I ate!--Didn't you see me frown?"

The young sensualist was in an ecstasy of grat.i.tude to his late refection, and the slightest word recalled him to it. Richard answered him--

"Yes; and felt your kick. It doesn't matter. Rady's safe, and uncle never blabs."

"Well, my plan is to keep it close. You're never safe if you don't.--I never drank much claret before," Ripton was off again.

"Won't I now, though! claret's my wine. You know, it may come out any day, and then we're done for," he rather incongruously appended.

Richard only took up the business-thread of his friend's rambling chatter, and answered--

"You've got nothing to do with it, if we are."

"Haven't I, though! I didn't stick in the box, but I'm an accomplice, that's clear. Besides," added Ripton, "do you think I should leave you to bear it all on your shoulders? I ain't that sort of chap, Ricky, I can tell you."

Sir Austin thought more highly of the boy Thompson. Still it looked a detestable conspiracy, and the altered manner of his son impressed him strangely. He was not the boy of yesterday. To Sir Austin it seemed as if a gulf had suddenly opened between them. The boy had embarked, and was on the waters of life in his own vessel. It was as vain to call him back as to attempt to erase what Time has written with the Judgment Blood! This child, for whom he had prayed nightly in such a fervour and humbleness to G.o.d, the dangers were about him, the temptations thick on him, and the devil on board piloting. If a day had done so much, what would years do? Were prayers and all the watchfulness he had expended of no avail?

A sensation of infinite melancholy overcame the poor gentleman--a thought that he was fighting with a fate in this beloved boy.

He was half disposed to arrest the two conspirators on the spot, and make them confess, and absolve themselves; but it seemed to him better to keep an unseen eye over his son: Sir Austin's old system prevailed.

Adrian characterized this system well, in saying that Sir Austin wished to be Providence to his son.

If immeasurable love were perfect wisdom, one human being might almost impersonate Providence to another. Alas! love, divine as it is, can do no more than lighten the house it inhabits--must take its shape, sometimes intensify its narrowness--can spiritualize, but not expel, the old life-long lodgers above-stairs and below.

Sir Austin decided to continue quiescent.

The valley still lay black beneath the large autumnal stars, and the exclamations of the boys were becoming fevered and impatient.

By-and-by one insisted that he had seen a twinkle. The direction he gave was out of their antic.i.p.ations. Again the twinkle was announced. Both boys started to their feet. It was a twinkle in the right direction now.

"He's done it!" cried Richard, in great heat. "Now you may say old Blaize'll soon be old Blazes, Rip. I hope he's asleep."

"I'm sure he's snoring!--Look there! He's alight fast enough. He's dry. He'll burn.--I say," Ripton re-a.s.sumed the serious intonation, "do you think they'll ever suspect us?"

"What if they do? We must brunt it."

"Of course we will. But, I say! I wish you hadn't given them the scent, though. I like to look innocent. I can't when I know people suspect me. Lord! look there! Isn't it just beginning to flare up!"

The farmer's grounds were indeed gradually standing out in sombre shadows.

"I'll fetch my telescope," said Richard. Ripton, somehow not liking to be left alone, caught hold of him.