The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and SonMeredith, George
General
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son
Meredith, George
Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction
His brother smiled with gratification, and applauded him loudly:
"Excellent! worthy of your best days! You're wrong, though, in
applying it to Adrian. He has never been precocious. All he has done
has been to bring sound common sense to bear upon what he hears and
sees. I think, however," the baronet added, "he may want faith in
the better qualities of men." And this reflection inclined him not
to let his son be alone with Adrian. He gave Richard his choice, who
saw which way his father's wishes tended, and decided so to please
him. Naturally it annoyed Adrian extremely. He said to his chief:
"I suppose you know what you are doing, sir. I don't see that we
derive any advantage from the family name being made notorious for
twenty years of obscene suffering, and becoming a byword for our
constitutional tendency to stomachic distention before we
fortunately encountered Quackem's Pill. My uncle's tortures have
been huge, but I would rather society were not intimate with them
under their several headings." Adrian enumerated some of the most
abhorrent. "You know him, sir. If he conceives a duty, he will do it
in the face of every decency--all the more obstinate because the
conception is rare. If he feels a little brisk the morning after the
pill, he sends the letter that makes us famous! We go down to
posterity with heightened characteristics, to say nothing of a
contemporary celebrity nothing less than our being turned inside-out
to the rabble. I confess I don't desire to have my machinery made
bare to them."
Sir Austin assured the wise youth that Hippias had arranged to go to
Dr. Bairam. He softened Adrian's chagrin by telling him that in
about two weeks they would follow to London: hinting also at a
prospective Summer campaign. The day was fixed for Richard to
depart, and the day came. Madame the Eighteenth Century called him
to her chamber and put into his hand a fifty-pound note, as her
contribution toward his pocket-expenses. He did not want it, he
said, but she told him he was a young man, and would soon make that
fly when he stood on his own feet. The old lady did not at all
approve of the System in her heart, and she gave her grand-nephew to
understand that, should he require more, he knew where to apply, and
secrets would be kept. His father presented him with a hundred
pounds--which also Richard said he did not want--he did not care for
money. "Spend it or not," said the baronet, perfectly secure in him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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