The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and SonMeredith, George
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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son
Meredith, George
Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction
It came to pass that Mrs. Berry, having certain business that led
her through Kensington Gardens, spied a figure that she had once
dandled in long clothes, and helped make a man of, if ever woman
did. He was walking under the trees beside a lady, talking to her,
not indifferently. The gentleman was her bridegroom and her babe. "I
know his back," said Mrs. Berry, as if she had branded a mark on it
in infancy. But the lady was not her bride. Mrs. Berry diverged from
the path, and got before them on the left flank; she stared,
retreated, and came round upon the right. There was that in the
lady's face which Mrs. Berry did not like. Her innermost question
was, why he was not walking with his own wife? She stopped in front
of them. They broke, and passed about her. The lady made a laughing
remark to him, whereat he turned to look, and Mrs. Berry bobbed. She
had to bob a second time, and then he remembered the worthy
creature, and hailed her Penelope, shaking her hand so that he put
her in countenance again. Mrs. Berry was extremely agitated. He
dismissed her, promising to call upon her in the evening. She heard
the lady slip out something from a side of her lip, and they both
laughed as she toddled off to a sheltering tree to wipe a corner of
each eye. "I don't like the looks of that woman," she said, and
repeated it resolutely.
"Why doesn't he walk arm-in-arm with her?" was her next inquiry.
"Where's his wife?" succeeded it. After many interrogations of the
sort, she arrived at naming the lady a bold-faced thing; adding
subsequently, brazen. The lady had apparently shown Mrs. Berry that
she wished to get rid of her, and had checked the outpouring of her
emotions on the breast of her babe. "I know a lady when I see one,"
said Mrs. Berry. "I haven't lived with 'em for nothing; and if she's
a lady bred and born, I wasn't married in the church alive."
Then, if not a lady, what was she? Mrs. Berry desired to know.
"She's imitation lady, I'm sure she is!" Berry vowed. "I say she
don't look proper."
Establishing the lady to be a spurious article, however, what was
one to think of a married man in company with such? "Oh no! it ain't
that!" Mrs. Berry returned immediately on the charitable tack.
"Belike it's some one of his acquaintance 've married her for her
looks, and he've just met her.... Why it'd be as bad as my Berry!"
the relinquished spouse of Berry ejaculated, in horror at the idea
of a second man being so monstrous in wickedness. "Just coupled,
too!" Mrs. Berry groaned on the suspicious side of the debate. "And
such a sweet young thing for his wife! But no, I'll never believe
it. Not if he tell me so himself! And men don't do that," she
whimpered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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