The Ordeal of Richard Feverel | Page 4

a fault in early youth, redeemed by him nobly, according to his
light, he was condemned to undergo the world's harsh judgment: not for
the fault--for its atonement.
"--Married his mother's housemaid," whispered Mrs. Doria, with a
ghastly look, and a shudder at young men of republican sentiments,
which he was reputed to entertain. "'The compensation for Injustice,'
says the 'Pilgrim's Scrip,' is, that in that dark Ordeal we gather the
worthiest around us."
And the baronet's fair friend, Lady Blandish, and some few true men
and women, held Austin Wentworth high.
He did not live with his wife; and Sir Austin, whose mind was bent on
the future of our species, reproached him with being barren to posterity,
while knaves were propagating.
The principal characteristic of the second nephew, Adrian Harley, was
his sagacity. He was essentially the wise youth, both in counsel and in
action.
"In action," the "Pilgrim's Scrip" observes, "Wisdom goes by
majorities."
Adrian had an instinct for the majority, and, as the world invariably
found him enlisted in its ranks, his appellation of wise youth was

acquiesced in without irony.
The wise youth, then, had the world with him, but no friends. Nor did
he wish for those troublesome appendages of success. He caused
himself to be required by people who could serve him; feared by such
as could injure. Not that he went out of the way to secure his end, or
risked the expense of a plot. He did the work as easily as he ate his
daily bread. Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have
scourged out of his garden, certainly: an epicurean of our modern
notions. To satisfy his appetites without rashly staking his character,
was the wise youth's problem for life. He had no intimates except
Gibbon and Horace, and the society of these fine aristocrats of
literature helped him to accept humanity as it had been, and was; a
supreme ironic procession, with laughter of Gods in the background.
Why not laughter of mortals also? Adrian had his laugh in his
comfortable corner. He possessed peculiar attributes of a heathen God.
He was a disposer of men: he was polished, luxurious, and happy--at
their cost. He lived in eminent self-content, as one lying on soft cloud,
lapt in sunshine. Nor Jove, nor Apollo, cast eye upon the maids of earth
with cooler fire of selection, or pursued them in the covert with more
sacred impunity. And he enjoyed his reputation for virtue as something
additional. Stolen fruits are said to be sweet; undeserved rewards are
exquisite.
The best of it was, that Adrian made no pretences. He did not solicit the
favourable judgment of the world. Nature and he attempted no other
concealment than the ordinary mask men wear. And yet the world
would proclaim him moral, as well as wise, and the pleasing converse
every way of his disgraced cousin Austin.
In a word, Adrian Harley had mastered his philosophy at the early age
of one-and-twenty. Many would be glad to say the same at that age
twice-told: they carry in their breasts a burden with which Adrian's was
not loaded. Mrs. Doria was nearly right about his heart. A singular
mishap (at his birth, possibly, or before it) had unseated that organ, and
shaken it down to his stomach, where it was a much lighter, nay, an
inspiring weight, and encouraged him merrily onward. Throned there it

looked on little that did not arrive to gratify it. Already that region was
a trifle prominent in the person of the wise youth, and carried, as it
were, the flag of his philosophical tenets in front of him. He was
charming after dinner, with men or with women: delightfully sarcastic:
perhaps a little too unscrupulous in his moral tone, but that his moral
reputation belied him, and it must be set down to generosity of
disposition.
Such was Adrian Harley, another of Sir Austin's intellectual favourites,
chosen from mankind to superintend the education of his son at
Raynham. Adrian had been destined for the Church. He did not enter
into Orders. He and the baronet had a conference together one day, and
from that time Adrian became a fixture in the Abbey. His father died in
his promising son's college term, bequeathing him nothing but his legal
complexion, and Adrian became stipendiary officer in his uncle's
household.
A playfellow of Richard's occasionally, and the only comrade of his
age that he ever saw, was Master Ripton Thompson, the son of Sir
Austin's solicitor, a boy without a character.
A comrade of some description was necessary, for Richard was neither
to go to school nor to college. Sir Austin considered that the schools
were corrupt, and maintained that young lads might by parental
vigilance be kept pretty secure from the