The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete

‘In everything that builds a young gentleman’s repute.’

‘You swear to me you gave your Balls and dinners, and the lot, for Harry Richmond’s sake?’

‘On my veracity, I did, sir!’

‘Please don’t talk like a mountebank. I don’t want any of your roundabout words for truth; we’re not writing a Bible essay. I try my best to be civil.’

My father beamed on him.

‘I guarantee you succeed, sir. Nothing on earth can a man be so absolutely sure of as to succeed in civility, if he honestly tries at it. Jorian DeWitt,—by the way, you may not know him—an esteemed old friend of mine, says—that is, he said once—to a tolerably impudent fellow whom he had disconcerted with a capital retort, “You may try to be a gentleman, and blunder at it, but if you will only try to be his humble servant, we are certain to establish a common footing.” Jorian, let me tell you, is a wit worthy of our glorious old days.’

My grandfather eased his heart with a plunging breath.

‘Well, sir, I didn’t ask you here for your opinion or your friend’s, and I don’t care for modern wit.’

‘Nor I, Mr. Beltham, nor I! It has the reek of stable straw. We are of one mind on that subject. The thing slouches, it sprawls. It—to quote Jorian once more—is like a dirty, idle, little stupid boy who cannot learn his lesson and plays the fool with the alphabet. You smile, Miss Ilchester: you would appreciate Jorian. Modern wit is emphatically degenerate. It has no scintillation, neither thrust nor parry. I compare it to boxing, as opposed to the more beautiful science of fencing.’

‘Well, sir, I don’t want to hear your comparisons,’ growled the squire, much oppressed. ‘Stop a minute…’

‘Half a minute to me, sir,’ said my father, with a glowing reminiscence of Jorian DeWitt, which was almost too much for the combustible old man, even under Janet’s admonition.

My aunt Dorothy moved her head slightly toward my father, looking on the floor, and he at once drew in.

‘Mr. Beltham, I attend to you submissively.’

‘You do? Then tell me what brought this princess to England?’

‘The conviction that Harry had accomplished his oath to mount to an eminence in his country, and had made the step she is about to take less, I will say, precipitous: though I personally decline to admit a pointed inferiority.’

‘You wrote her a letter.’

‘That, containing the news of the attack on him and his desperate illness, was the finishing touch to the noble lady’s passion.’

‘Attack? I know nothing about an attack. You wrote her a letter and wrote her a lie. You said he was dying.’

‘I had the boy inanimate on my breast when I despatched the epistle.’

‘You said he had only a few days to live.’

‘So in my affliction I feared.’

‘Will you swear you didn’t write that letter with the intention of drawing her over here to have her in your power, so that you might threaten you’d blow on her reputation if she or her father held out against you and all didn’t go as you fished for it?’

My father raised his head proudly.

‘I divide your query into two parts. I wrote, sir, to bring her to his side. I did not write with any intention to threaten.’

‘You’ve done it, though.’

‘I have done this,’ said my father, toweringly: ‘I have used the power placed in my hands by Providence to overcome the hesitations of a gentleman whose illustrious rank predisposes him to sacrifice his daughter’s happiness to his pride of birth and station. Can any one confute me when I assert that the princess loves Harry Richmond?’

I walked abruptly to one of the windows, hearing a pitiable wrangling on the theme. My grandfather vowed she had grown wiser, my father protested that she was willing and anxious; Janet was appealed to. In a strangely-sounding underbreath, she said, ‘The princess does not wish it.’

‘You hear that, Mr. Richmond?’ cried the squire.

He returned: ‘Can Miss Ilchester say that the Princess Ottilia does not passionately love my son Harry Richmond? The circumstances warrant me in beseeching a direct answer.’

She uttered: ‘No.’

I looked at her; she at me.

‘You can conduct a case, Richmond,’ the squire remarked.

My father rose to his feet. ‘I can conduct my son to happiness and greatness, my dear sir; but to some extent I require your grandfatherly assistance; and I urge you now to present your respects to the prince and princess, and judge yourself of his Highness’s disposition for the match. I assure you in advance that he welcomes the proposal.’

‘I do not believe it,’ said Janet, rising.

My aunt Dorothy followed her example, saying: ‘In justice to Harry the proposal should be made. At least it will settle this dispute.’

Janet stared at her, and the squire threw his head back with an amazed interjection.

‘What! You’re for it now? Why, at breakfast you were all t’ other way! You didn’t want this meeting because you pooh-poohed the match.’

‘I do think you should go,’ she answered. ‘You have given Harry your promise, and if he empowers you, it is right to make the proposal, and immediately, I think.’

She spoke feverishly, with an unsweet expression of face, that seemed to me to indicate vexedness at the squire’s treatment of my father.

‘Harry,’ she asked me in a very earnest fashion, ‘is it your desire? Tell your grandfather that it is, and that you want to know your fate. Why should there be any dispute on a fact that can be ascertained by crossing a street? Surely it is trifling.’

Janet stooped to whisper in the squire’s ear.

He caught the shock of unexpected intelligence apparently; faced about, gazed up, and cried: ‘You too! But I haven’t done here. I ‘ve got to cross-examine… Pretend, do you mean? Pretend I’m ready to go? I can release this prince just as well here as there.’

Janet laughed faintly.

‘I should advise your going, grandada.’

‘You a weathercock woman!’ he reproached her, quite mystified, and fell to rubbing his head. ‘Suppose I go to be snubbed?’

‘The prince is a gentleman, grandada. Come with me. We will go alone. You can relieve the prince, and protect him.’

My father nodded: ‘I approve.’

‘And grandada—but it will not so much matter if we are alone, though,’ Janet said.

‘Speak out.’

‘See the princess as well; she must be present.’