George Meredith - The Adventures of Harry Richmond. Complete

He hugged me up to him.

‘I’d take anything for you, Heriot,’ said I.

‘All right,’ he answered, never meaning me to suffer on his account. He had an inimitable manner of sweet speaking that endeared him to younger boys capable of appreciating it, with the supernatural power of music. It endeared him, I suppose, to young women also. Julia repeated his phrases, as for instance, ‘Silly boy, silly boy,’ spoken with a wave of his hand, when a little fellow thanked him for a kindness. She was angry at his approval of what she called my defiance of her father, and insisted that I was the catspaw of one of Heriot’s plots to vex him. ‘Tell Heriot you have my command to say you belong to me and must not be misled,’ she said. His answer was that he wanted it in writing. She requested him to deliver up her previous letters. Thereupon he charged me with a lengthy epistle, which plunged us into boiling water. Mr. Boddy sat in the schoolroom while Heriot’s pen was at work, on the wet Sunday afternoon. His keen little eyes were busy in his flat bird’s head all the time Heriot continued writing. He saw no more than that Heriot gave me a book; but as I was marching away to Julia he called to know where I was going.

‘To Miss Rippenger,’ I replied.

‘What have you there?’

‘A book, sir.’

‘Show me the book.’

I stood fast.

‘It ‘s a book I have lent him, sir,’ said Heriot, rising. ‘I shall see if it’s a fit book for a young boy,’ said Boddy; and before Heriot could interpose, he had knocked the book on the floor, and out fell the letter. Both sprang down to seize it: their heads encountered, but Heriot had the quicker hand; he caught the letter, and cried ‘Off!’ to me, as on another occasion. This time, however, he was not between me and the usher. I was seized by the collar, and shakes roughly.

‘You will now understand that you are on a footing with the rest of the boys, you Roy,’ said Boddy. ‘Little scoundrelly spoilt urchins, upsetting the discipline of the school, won’t do here. Heriot, here is your book. I regret,’ he added, sneering, ‘that a leaf is torn.’

‘I regret, sir, that the poor boy was so savagely handled,’ said Heriot.

He was warned to avoid insolence.

‘Oh, as much Virgil as you like,’ Heriot retorted; ‘I know him by heart.’

It was past the hour of my customary visit to Julia, and she came to discover the reason of my delay. Boddy stood up to explain. Heriot went forward, saying, ‘I think I’m the one who ought to speak, Miss Rippenger. The fact is, I hear from little Roy that you are fond of tales of Indian adventure, and I gave him a book for you to read, if you like it. Mr. Boddy objected, and treated the youngster rather rigorously. It must have been quite a misunderstanding on his part. Here is the book it’s extremely amusing.’

Julia blushed very red. She accepted the book with a soft murmur, and the sallow usher had not a word.

‘Stay,’ said Heriot. ‘I took the liberty to write some notes. My father is an Indian officer, you know, and some of the terms in the book are difficult without notes. Richie, hand that paper. Here they are, Miss Rippenger, if you’ll be so kind as to place them in the book.’

I was hoping with all my might that she would not deny him. She did, and my heart sank.

‘Oh, I can read it without notes,’ she said, cheerfully.

After that, I listened with indifference to her petition to Boddy that I might be allowed to accompany her, and was not at all chagrined by his refusal. She laid down the book, saying that I could bring it to her when I was out of disgrace.

In the evening we walked in the playground, where Heriot asked me to do a brave thing, which he would never forget. This was that I should take a sharp run right past Boddy, who was pacing up and down before the gate leading into Julia’s garden, and force her to receive the letter. I went bounding like a ball. The usher, suspecting only that I hurried to speak to him, let me see how indignant he was with my behaviour by striding all the faster as I drew near, and so he passed the gate, and I rushed in. I had just time to say to Julia, ‘Hide it, or I’m in such a scrape.’

The next minute she was addressing my enemy:

‘Surely you would not punish him because he loves me?’ and he, though he spoke of insubordination, merited chastisement; and other usher phrases, seemed to melt, and I had what I believe was a primary conception of the power of woman. She led him to talk in the gentlest way possible of how the rain had refreshed her flowers, and of this and that poor rose.

I could think of nothing but the darling letter, which had flashed out of sight as a rabbit pops into burrows. Boddy departed with a rose.

‘Ah, Richie,’ she said, ‘I have to pay to have you with me now.’

We walked to the summer-house, where she read Heriot’s letter through. ‘But he is a boy! How old is Heriot? He is not so old as I am!’

These were her words, and she read the letter anew, and read it again after she had placed it in her bosom, I meanwhile pouring out praises of Heriot.

‘You speak of him as if you were in love with him, Richmond,’ she said.

‘And I do love him,’ I answered.

‘Not with me?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I do love you too, if you will not make him angry.’

‘But do you know what it is he wants of me?’

I guessed: ‘Yes; he wants you to let him sit close to you for half an hour.’

She said that he sat very near her in church.

‘Ah,’ said I, ‘but he mustn’t interrupt the sermon.’

She laughed, and mouthed me over with laughing kisses. ‘There’s very little he hasn’t daring enough for!’

We talked of his courage.

‘Is he good as well?’ said Julia, more to herself than to me; but I sang out,

‘Good! Oh, so kind!’

This appeared to convince her.

‘Very generous to you and every one, is he not?’ she said; and from that moment was all questions concerning his kind treatment of the boys, and as to their looking up to him.

I quitted her, taking her message to Heriot: ‘You may tell him—tell him that I can’t write.’

Heriot frowned on hearing me repeat it.

‘Humph!’ he went, and was bright in a twinkling: ‘that means she’ll come!’ He smacked his hands together, grew black, and asked, ‘Did she give that beast Boddy a rose?’

I had to confess she did; and feeling a twinge of my treason to her, felt hers to Heriot.

‘Humph!’ he went; ‘she shall suffer for that.’

All this was like music going on until the curtain should lift and reveal my father to me.

There was soon a secret to be read in Heriot’s face for one who loved it as I did. Julia’s betrayed nothing. I was not taken into their confidence, and luckily not; otherwise I fear I should have served them ill, I was so poor a dissembler and was so hotly plied with interrogations by the suspicious usher. I felt sure that Heriot and Julia met. His eyes were on her all through prayer-time, and hers wandered over the boys’ heads till they rested on him, when they gave a short flutter and dropped, like a bird shot dead. The boys must have had some knowledge that love was busy in their midst, for they spoke of Heriot and Julia as a jolly couple, and of Boddy as one meaning to play the part of old Nick the first opportunity. She was kinder to them than ever. It was not a new thing that she should send in cakes of her own making, but it was extraordinary that we should get these thoughtful presents as often as once a fortnight, and it became usual to hear a boy exclaim, either among a knot of fellows or to himself, ‘By jingo, she is a pretty girl!’ on her passing out of the room, and sometimes entirely of his own idea. I am persuaded that if she had consented to marry Boddy, the boys would have been seriously disposed to conspire to jump up in the church and forbid the banns. We should have preferred to hand her to the junior usher, Catman, of whom the rumour ran in the school that he once drank a bottle of wine and was sick after it, and he was therefore a weak creature to our minds; the truth of the rumour being confirmed by his pale complexion. That we would have handed our blooming princess to him was full proof of our abhorrence of Boddy. I might have thought with the other boys that she was growing prettier, only I never could imagine her so delicious as when she smiled at my father.