The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Volume 6

"Could you get ready to come with me to Raynham in ten minutes?"

Austin looked as if he had asked a commonplace question.

Lucy's lips parted to speak. She could not answer.

Loud rattled the teaboard to Mrs. Berry's dropping hands.

"Joy and deliverance!" she exclaimed with a foundering voice.

"Will you come?" Austin kindly asked again.

Lucy tried to stop her beating heart, as she answered, "Yes." Mrs. Berry cunningly pretended to interpret the irresolution in her tones with a mighty whisper: "She's thinking what's to be done with baby."

"He must learn to travel," said Austin.

"Oh!" cried Mrs. Berry, "and I'll be his nuss, and bear him, a sweet! Oh! and think of it! me nurse-maid once more at Raynham Abbey! but it's nurse-woman now, you must say. Let us be goin' on the spot."

She started up and away in hot haste, fearing delay would cool the heaven-sent resolve. Austin smiled, eying his watch and Lucy alternately. She was wishing to ask a multitude of questions. His face reassured her, and saying: "I will be dressed instantly," she also left the room. Talking, bustling, preparing, wrapping up my lord, and looking to their neatnesses, they were nevertheless ready within the time prescribed by Austin, and Mrs. Berry stood humming over the baby. "He'll sleep it through," she said. "He's had enough for an alderman, and goes to sleep sound after his dinner, he do, a duck!" Before they departed, Lucy ran up to Lady Feverel. She returned for, the small one.

"One moment, Mr. Wentworth?"

"Just two," said Austin.

Master Richard was taken up, and when Lucy came back her eyes were full of tears.

"She thinks she is never to see him again, Mr. Wentworth."

"She shall," Austin said simply.

Off they went, and with Austin near her, Lucy forgot to dwell at all upon the great act of courage she was performing.

"I do hope baby will not wake," was her chief solicitude.

"He!" cries nurse-woman Berry, from the rear, "his little tum-tum's as tight as he can hold, a pet! a lamb! a bird! a beauty! and ye may take yer oath he never wakes till that's slack. He've got character of his own, a blessed!"

There are some tremendous citadels that only want to be taken by storm. The baronet sat alone in his library, sick of resistance, and rejoicing in the pride of no surrender; a terror to his friends and to himself. Hearing Austin's name sonorously pronounced by the man of calves, he looked up from his book, and held out his hand. "Glad to see you, Austin." His appearance betokened complete security. The next minute he found himself escaladed.

It was a cry from Mrs. Berry that told him others were in the room besides Austin. Lucy stood a little behind the lamp: Mrs. Berry close to the door. The door was half open, and passing through it might be seen the petrified figure of a fine man. The baronet glancing over the lamp rose at Mrs. Berry's signification of a woman's personality. Austin stepped back and led Lucy to him by the hand. "I have brought Richard's wife, sir," he said with a pleased, perfectly uncalculating, countenance, that was disarming. Very pale and trembling Lucy bowed. She felt her two hands taken, and heard a kind voice. Could it be possible it belonged to the dreadful father of her husband? She lifted her eyes nervously: her hands were still detained. The baronet contemplated Richard's choice. Had he ever had a rivalry with those pure eyes? He saw the pain of her position shooting across her brows, and, uttering- gentle inquiries as to her health, placed her in a seat. Mrs. Berry had already fallen into a chair.

"What aspect do you like for your bedroom?—East?" said the baronet.

Lucy was asking herself wonderingly: "Am I to stay?"

"Perhaps you had better take to Richard's room at once," he pursued. "You have the Lobourne valley there and a good morning air, and will feel more at home."

Lucy's colour mounted. Mrs. Berry gave a short cough, as one who should say, "The day is ours!" Undoubtedly—strange as it was to think it—the fortress was carried.

"Lucy is rather tired," said Austin, and to hear her Christian name thus bravely spoken brought grateful dew to her eyes.

The baronet was about to touch the bell. "But have you come alone?" he asked.

At this Mrs. Berry came forward. Not immediately: it seemed to require effort for her to move, and when she was within the region of the lamp, her agitation could not escape notice. The blissful bundle shook in her arms.

"By the way, what is he to me?" Austin inquired generally as he went and unveiled the younger hope of Raynham. "My relationship is not so defined as yours, sir."

An observer might have supposed that the baronet peeped at his grandson with the courteous indifference of one who merely wished to compliment the mother of anybody's child.

"I really think he's like Richard," Austin laughed. Lucy looked: I am sure he is!

"As like as one to one," Mrs. Berry murmured feebly; but Grandpapa not speaking she thought it incumbent on her to pluck up. "And he's as healthy as his father was, Sir Austin—spite o' the might 'a beens. Reg'lar as the clock! We never want a clock since he come. We knows the hour o' the day, and of the night."

"You nurse him yourself, of course?" the baronet spoke to Lucy, and was satisfied on that point.

Mrs. Berry was going to display his prodigious legs. Lucy, fearing the consequent effect on the prodigious lungs, begged her not to wake him. "'T'd take a deal to do that," said Mrs. Berry, and harped on Master Richard's health and the small wonder it was that he enjoyed it, considering the superior quality of his diet, and the lavish attentions of his mother, and then suddenly fell silent on a deep sigh.

"He looks healthy," said the baronet, "but I am not a judge of babies."

Thus, having capitulated, Raynham chose to acknowledge its new commandant, who was now borne away, under the directions of the housekeeper, to occupy the room Richard had slept in when an infant.

Austin cast no thought on his success. The baronet said: "She is extremely well-looking." He replied: "A person you take to at once." There it ended.

But a much more animated colloquy was taking place aloft, where Lucy and Mrs. Berry sat alone. Lucy expected her to talk about the reception they had met with, and the house, and the peculiarities of the rooms, and the solid happiness that seemed in store. Mrs. Berry all the while would persist in consulting the looking-glass. Her first distinct answer was, "My dear! tell me candid, how do I look?"

"Very nice indeed, Mrs. Berry; but could you have believed he would be so kind, so considerate?"

"I am sure I looked a frump," returned Mrs. Berry. "Oh dear! two birds at a shot. What do you think, now?"

"I never saw so wonderful a likeness," says Lucy.

"Likeness! look at me." Mrs. Berry was trembling and hot in the palms.

"You're very feverish, dear Berry. What can it be?"

"Ain't it like the love-flutters of a young gal, my dear."

"Go to bed, Berry, dear," says Lucy, pouting in her soft caressing way. "I will undress you, and see to you, dear heart! You've had so much excitement."

"Ha! ha!" Berry laughed hysterically; "she thinks it's about this business of hers. Why, it's child's-play, my darlin'. But I didn't look for tragedy to-night. Sleep in this house I can't, my love!"

Lucy was astonished. "Not sleep here, Mrs. Berry?—Oh! why, you silly old thing? I know."

"Do ye!" said Mrs. Berry, with a sceptical nose.

"You're afraid of ghosts."

"Belike I am when they're six foot two in their shoes, and bellows when you stick a pin into their calves. I seen my Berry!"

"Your husband?"