The Ordeal of Richard Feverel — Complete. George Meredith

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СКАЧАТЬ whose inevitable battle is against itself, drew aside the curtains of poor Tom's prison, crying a second time, “Behold your Benefactor!” and, with the words burning in his ears, Richard swallowed the dose:

      “Well, then, I want you, Mr. Blaize,—if you don't mind—will you help me to get this man Bakewell off his punishment?”

      To do Farmer Blaize justice, he waited very patiently for the boy, though he could not quite see why he did not take the gate at the first offer.

      “Oh!” said he, when he heard and had pondered on the request. “Hum! ha! we'll see about it t'morrow. But if he's innocent, you know, we shan't mak'n guilty.”

      “It was I did it!” Richard declared.

      The farmer's half-amused expression sharpened a bit.

      “So, young gentleman! and you're sorry for the night's work?”

      “I shall see that you are paid the full extent of your losses.”

      “Thank'ee,” said the farmer drily.

      “And, if this poor man is released to-morrow, I don't care what the amount is.”

      Farmer Blaize deflected his head twice in silence. “Bribery,” one motion expressed: “Corruption,” the other.

      “Now,” said he, leaning forward, and fixing his elbows on his knees, while he counted the case at his fingers' ends, “excuse the liberty, but wishin' to know where this 'ere money's to come from, I sh'd like jest t'ask if so be Sir Austin know o' this?”

      “My father knows nothing of it,” replied Richard.

      The farmer flung back in his chair. “Lie number Two,” said his shoulders, soured by the British aversion to being plotted at, and not dealt with openly.

      “And ye've the money ready, young gentleman?”

      “I shall ask my father for it.”

      “And he'll hand't out?”

      “Certainly he will!”

      Richard had not the slightest intention of ever letting his father into his counsels.

      “A good three hundred pounds, ye know?” the farmer suggested.

      No consideration of the extent of damages, and the size of the sum, affected young Richard, who said boldly, “He will not object when I tell him I want that sum.”

      It was natural Farmer Blaize should be a trifle suspicious that a youth's guarantee would hardly be given for his father's readiness to disburse such a thumping bill, unless he had previously received his father's sanction and authority.

      “Hum!” said he, “why not 'a told him before?”

      The farmer threw an objectionable shrewdness into his query, that caused Richard to compress his mouth and glance high.

      Farmer Blaize was positive 'twas a lie.

      “Hum! Ye still hold to't you fired the rick?” he asked.

      “The blame is mine!” quoth Richard, with the loftiness of a patriot of old Rome.

      “Na, na!” the straightforward Briton put him aside. “Ye did't, or ye didn't do't. Did ye do't, or no?”

      Thrust in a corner, Richard said, “I did it.”

      Farmer Blaize reached his hand to the bell. It was answered in an instant by little Lucy, who received orders to fetch in a dependent at Belthorpe going by the name of the Bantam, and made her exit as she had entered, with her eyes on the young stranger.

      “Now,” said the farmer, “these be my principles. I'm a plain man, Mr. Feverel. Above board with me, and you'll find me handsome. Try to circumvent me, and I'm a ugly customer. I'll show you I've no animosity. Your father pays—you apologize. That's enough for me! Let Tom Bakewell fight't out with the Law, and I'll look on. The Law wasn't on the spot, I suppose? so the Law ain't much witness. But I am. Leastwise the Bantam is. I tell you, young gentleman, the Bantam saw't! It's no moral use whatever your denyin' that ev'dence. And where's the good, sir, I ask? What comes of 't? Whether it be you, or whether it be Tom Bakewell—ain't all one? If I holds back, ain't it sim'lar? It's the trewth I want! And here't comes,” added the farmer, as Miss Lucy ushered in the Bantam, who presented a curious figure for that rare divinity to enliven.

CHAPTER IX

       Table of Contents

      In build of body, gait and stature, Giles Jinkson, the Bantam, was a tolerably fair representative of the Punic elephant, whose part, with diverse anticipations, the generals of the Blaize and Feverel forces, from opposing ranks, expected him to play. Giles, surnamed the Bantam, on account of some forgotten sally of his youth or infancy, moved and looked elephantine. It sufficed that Giles was well fed to assure that Giles was faithful—if uncorrupted. The farm which supplied to him ungrudging provender had all his vast capacity for work in willing exercise: the farmer who held the farm his instinct reverenced as the fountain source of beef and bacon, to say nothing of beer, which was plentiful at Belthorpe, and good. This Farmer Blaize well knew, and he reckoned consequently that here was an animal always to be relied on—a sort of human composition out of dog, horse, and bull, a cut above each of these quadrupeds in usefulness, and costing proportionately more, but on the whole worth the money, and therefore invaluable, as everything worth its money must be to a wise man. When the stealing of grain had been made known at Belthorpe, the Bantam, a fellow-thresher with Tom Bakewell, had shared with him the shadow of the guilt. Farmer Blaize, if he hesitated which to suspect, did not debate a second as to which he would discard; and, when the Bantam said he had seen Tom secreting pilkins in a sack, Farmer Blaize chose to believe him, and off went poor Tom, told to rejoice in the clemency that spared his appearance at Sessions.

      The Bantam's small sleepy orbits saw many things, and just at the right moment, it seemed. He was certainly the first to give the clue at Belthorpe on the night of the conflagration, and he may, therefore, have seen poor Tom retreating stealthily from the scene, as he averred he did. Lobourne had its say on the subject. Rustic Lobourne hinted broadly at a young woman in the case, and, moreover, told a tale of how these fellow-threshers had, in noble rivalry, one day turned upon each other to see which of the two threshed the best; whereof the Bantam still bore marks, and malice, it was said. However, there he stood, and tugged his forelocks to the company, and if Truth really had concealed herself in him she must have been hard set to find her unlikeliest hiding-place.

      “Now,” said the farmer, marshalling forth his elephant with the confidence of one who delivers his ace of trumps, “tell this young gentleman what ye saw on the night of the fire, Bantam!”

      The Bantam jerked a bit of a bow to his patron, and then swung round, fully obscuring him from Richard.

      Richard fixed his eyes on the floor, while the Bantam in rudest Doric commenced his narrative. Knowing what was to come, and thoroughly nerved to confute the main incident, Richard barely listened to his barbarous locution: but when the recital arrived at the point where the Bantam affirmed he had seen “T'm Baak'll wi's owen hoies,” Richard faced him, and СКАЧАТЬ